I am a PhD student in geology who is interested in the Sun's activities and the Earth's climate in the past.

I am working in the project ”Paleosun – the paleoperspective on the mechanisms behind the sun-climate link”. The Paleosun project aims at improving solar activity reconstructions using different geologic archives and improving sun-climate studies with cosmogenic radionuclide and climate proxy measurements from the same archive. These studies will also enable us to obtain very accurate and precise time scales that are crucial for reliable paleoclimate studies. Another aspect will be novel solar activity reconstructions and investigations of the linkages to climate change.

Cosmogenic radionuclides (e.g. ¹⁰Be and ¹⁴C) are produced mainly from cosmic ray-induced spallation of nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. Their atmospheric production are influenced by the Sun and therefore the amount of cosmogenic radionuclides produced in the past has been used to reconstruct solar activities. Presently the different radionuclide records show disagreements regarding their long-term (millennial time scales) changes for reasons that are not understood. This leads to major uncertainties in reconstructions of past changes in solar activities.

I measure ¹⁰Be concentration in ice samples from Antarctica that was formed during the last 20,000 years. The new data will be analysed in combination with existing ¹⁰Be data from ice cores and tree- ring ¹⁴C data. It will involve assessment of climate and geomagnetic field influences on radionuclide records and carbon cycle influences on ¹⁴C. I aim at providing an improved solar activity reconstruction.

Supervisors: Raimund Muscheler (main supervisor, LU); Andreas Nilsson (LU), Florian Mekhaldi (LU).