Academic Staff
adriana.dutkiewicz@sydney.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9351 5192
Madsen Building F09, Room 431View Adriana’s Sydney Uni page
See below for EarthByte content related to Adriana.
Solid Earth CO2 outgassing, driven by plate tectonic processes, is a key driver of carbon cycle models. However, the magnitudes and variations in outgassing are poorly constrained in deep-time. We assess plate tectonic carbon emissions and sequestration by coupling a plate tectonic model with reconstructions of oceanic plate carbon reservoirs and with a thermodynamic model … Read more…
Leading Faculty of Science researcher awarded prestigious AAS Mawson Medal and Lecture Congratulations to Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz who was formally awarded the AAS Mawson Medal late last month, the first woman to ever receive this illustrious award. Dr Dutkiewicz was awarded the medal at the 70th birthday celebration of the Australian Academy of Science in … Read more…
In their comment, Gernon et al. (2024) maintain that their “shallow ridge hypothesis” for cap carbonate formation (Gernon et al., 2016) is valid, disregarding abundant evidence to the contrary. Here we address four flaws in their argument. First, their hypothesis (Gernon et al., 2016) is based on a “proof by example” argument—a logical fallacy. Evidence … Read more…
Space Connect reported how EarthByters discovered that Earth’s interactions with Mars can drive deep sea circulation here on Earth. The podcast covers how geological records of the deep sea were used to discover a link between the orbits of the two planets and past global warming patterns, talking through the research and their collaboration with Sorbonne … Read more…
Mars has more influence on Earth than non-astrologers might have thought. Mars is, on average, about 225 million kilometres from Earth, which would suggest that it has little impact on our planet. Which is true, but as they say, a little goes a long way. In our recent paper in Nature Communications, we studied the history of deep … Read more…
12 March 2024, The University of Sydney Media Release Giant whirlpools in warming oceans could mitigate Gulf Stream stagnation Geoscientists at Sydney and Sorbonne have identified a 2.4-million-year cycle in the geological record that show the energy of deep-sea currents wax and wane as oceans cool and warm. Earth’s distance to Mars varies between 55 … Read more…
Astronomical forcing of Earth’s climate is embedded in the rhythms of stratigraphic records, most famously as short-period (10^4–10^5 year) Milankovitch cycles. Astronomical grand cycles with periods of millions of years also modulate climate variability but have been detected in relatively few proxy records. Here, we apply spectral analysis to a dataset of Cenozoic deep-sea hiatuses … Read more…
Notebook resting on an Ice Age or the transition from the Tonian Skillogallee and Myrtle Springs Formations to the overlying Cryogenian Sturt Formation (Sturt Glaciation, marked by the notebook) in the Willouran Ranges, Adnyamathanha Country, South Australia. Image: Alan Collins ARC Future Fellow Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz from the EarthByte Group and colleagues have used NCRIS … Read more…
Earth’s topography and bathymetry with revised boundaries between continental and ocean crust overlain as thin red lines. We have released a refined data set of the boundaries between continental and ocean crust (COBs). The data can be downloaded from zenodo as GPlates-compatible gpmlz and as ESRI shapefile. The COBs are based on the data set … Read more…
The termination of Neoproterozoic “Snowball Earth” glaciations is marked globally by laterally extensive neritic cap carbonates directly overlying glacial diamictites. The formation of these unique deposits on deglaciation calls for anomalously high CaCO3 saturation. A popular mechanism to account for the source of requisite ocean alkalinity is the shallow-ridge hypothesis, in which initial spreading ridges … Read more…
The Sturtian ‘Snowball Earth’ glaciation (~717–661 Ma) is regarded as the most extreme interval of icehouse climate in Earth’s history. The exact trigger and sustention mechanisms for this long-lived global glaciation remain obscure. The most widely debated causes are silicate weathering of the ~718 Ma Franklin LIP, and changes in the length and degassing of … Read more…
The Atlantic is the only ocean basin almost entirely surrounded by passive margins, and a major global long-term sink of carbonate carbon that has evaded subduction. Quantifying the history of carbonate accumulation in the Atlantic has been limited by the absence of well-defined regional carbonate compensation depth (CCD) models. We determine the CCD for the … Read more…
This video shows plate motions, carbon storage within tectonic plates and carbon degassing along mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones through time. Our carbon model shows these processes alone cannot explain global cooling in the Cenozoic Era. The effects of rock erosion, not shown here, played a key role. Arrows indicate plate motion speed relative to … Read more…
By Adriana Dutkiewicz Abstract: Scientific ocean drilling data collected over half a century have generated a treasure trove of data to map deep sea currents. We have compiled data from more than 200 drill sites to map the continuity of the deep sea sedimentary record and to understand how global warming– or cooling – is … Read more…
Sixty-six million years of geological data suggests that heating makes ocean currents stronger. By Ellen McPhiddian, Cosmos Ocean currents play a big role in floods, droughts, and other large-scale weather patterns. We know that ocean circulation will be affected by global warming – but figuring out exactly how it will be affected is much more difficult. Will there be … Read more…
University of Sydney media release University of Sydney scientists have used the geological record of the deep sea to discover that past global warming has sped up deep ocean circulation. This is one of the missing links for predicting how future climate change may affect heat and carbon capture by the oceans. Circulation of the … Read more…
The deep-sea stratigraphic record is full of gaps. These hiatuses track changes in ocean circulation and chemistry, but determining their timing and causes has been limited by sparse data and incomplete knowledge of ocean gateway evolution in earlier studies. We combine a significantly expanded, age-calibrated deep-sea stratigraphic database with a global tectonic and paleo–water depth … Read more…
This PhD project with Dr. Adriana Dutkiewicz in the Univ. of Sydney EarthByte Group is aimed at reconstructing the evolution of the deep-sea carbon reservoir and its impact on the long-term global carbon cycle as part of an ARC-funded Future Fellowship. It includes a stipend allowance of $28,854 per annum for three years (with an … Read more…
Abstract: Polymetallic nodules found on the abyssal plains of the oceans represent one of the slowest known geological processes, and are a source of critical and rare metals for frontier technologies. A quantitative assessment of their occurrence worldwide has been hampered by a research focus on the northeastern Pacific Ocean and the lack of a … Read more…
COVID-19 has stimulated both major behavioural change during lockdown; and new thoughts, experiments and even dreams as many of our human-created systems have come to a raging halt. As the traffic dims, we have the opportunity to ‘remind ourselves that we are embedded in a more-than-human world — and have some fun along the way … Read more…
EarthByte has now released a list of Honours/Masters projects to be offered in 2020. These projects are outlined below. We can also tailor projects to your interests. Feel free to contact us by clicking the supervisor links below. Project Title Supervisor(s) How climate and subsidence control the sedimentation along the Norwegian Margin? Claire Mallard , … Read more…
University of Sydney scientists have modelled how carbonate accumulation from ‘marine snow’ in oceans has absorbed carbon dioxide over millennia and been a key driver in keeping the planet cool for millions of years. Researchers in the School of Geosciences have mapped out how carbonate formations have helped regulate Earth’s temperature over 120 million years. … Read more…
We are excited to announce a Sydney-based workshop that will bring existing and emerging leaders in deep carbon research to discuss the state of the discipline, but importantly a plan for future collaboration that builds on the momentum generated by the Deep Carbon Observatory. The workshop will be held on Wednesday and Thursday 24 and … Read more…
Citation: Dutkiewicz, Adriana & Müller, Dietmar & Cannon, John & Vaughan, Sioned & Zahirovic, Sabin. (2018). Sequestration and subduction of deep-sea carbonate in the global ocean since the Early Cretaceous. Geology. 10.1130/G45424.1. Abstract Deep-sea carbonate represents Earth’s largest carbon sink and one of the least-known components of the long-term carbon cycle that is intimately linked … Read more…
A news article published by the Deep Carbon Observatory entitled “Mapping the Growth of Seafloor Carbonates in Deep Time” explains how Adriana Dutkiewicz and colleagues used records of carbonate layers logged from cores collected during scientific ocean drilling expeditions combined with a model of ocean basin evolution to unravel the role deep sea carbonate deposition might have … Read more…
Roberto Spina, a computational geologist from Italy, wrote a lead article in GSA Today, in which he reviews the future of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Analytics in Geosciences, using Adriana Dutkiwicz’s digital seafloor lithology map published 3 years ago as a ground-breaking example. The article includes a South Atlantic view of the virtual globe portraying her map, … Read more…
EarthByte has now released a list of Honours/Masters projects to be offered in 2019. These projects are outlined below. Project Title Supervisor(s) How is landscape complexity driving biodiversity over geological time scales? Tristan Salles & Patrice Rey How well are tectonic and climatic signals preserved in the stratigraphic record? Tristan Salles & Claire Mallard Vertical motions … Read more…
The pyBacktrack software package allows the backtracking of the paleo-water depth of ocean drill sites, providing a framework for reconstructing the accumulation history of sediment components through time. The software incorporates the effects of decompaction of common marine lithologies and allows backtracking of sites on both oceanic and continental crust. Backtracking on ocean crust is based on … Read more…
Abstract Contourite drifts are anomalously high sediment accumulations that form due to reworking by bottom currents. Due to the lack of a comprehensive contourite database, the link between vigorous bottom water activity and drift occurrence has yet to be demonstrated on a global scale. Using an eddy-resolving ocean model and a new georeferenced database of 267 contourites, we show that the … Read more…
Citation: Müller, R.D. and Dutkiewicz, A., 2018, Oceanic crustal carbon cycle drives 26 million-year atmospheric carbon dioxide periodicities, Science Advances, 4:eaaq0500, 1-7. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) data for the last 420 million years (My) show long-term fluctuations related to supercontinent cycles as well as shorter cycles at 26–32 My whose origin is unknown. Periodicities of 26–30 … Read more…