| Session Description |
Understanding the past climatic changes is essential to understand factors controlling climate on earth. The oceanic sediments are one of the excellent archives to reconstruct past climatic changes. Numerous studies have made use of the marine sediments to understand the climatic history of the earth. Both the biogenic and abiogenic components of the marine sediments have been used to infer past climatic changes. While the temporal variations in clay mineralogy, major, minor and trace element composition of the bulk sediments, grain size, are among the important abiogenic components studied for paleoclimatic reconstruction, diversity, isotopic and elemental composition of the microfossils are the widely used biogenic proxies. The changes in monsoon strength during the glacial-interglacial periods have been inferred from the marine sediments. Even the quantitative estimates of seawater temperature and salinity during the past have been made from the study of biogenic components of the marine sediments. The late Quaternary period is important as far as climatic history of the earth is concerned. Therefore, this session will include papers discussing recent findings of the Late Quaternary climatic changes based on the study of sediments from the Indian Ocean. It will also include the papers discussing methodological advancements, i.e., studies carried out to develop or refine techniques to infer past climatic changes from the marine sediments. |
