Hidden Earth 2017

Yorkshire Dales Cave Climate Monitoring

30 minute Lecture|Miss Jo White

Abstract

Birkbeck University and University College London are currently undertaking research into rapid climate events in the early Holocene using speleotherm samples from Yorkshire Dales caves.

This study aims to provide and analyse current cave climate data as a background to this work. A variety of methods have been used including temperature and drip rate loggers situated in the caves along with hand held temperature, CO2 and relative humidity readings. In addition to this cave and surface water samples have been collected for isotope analysis. This study will be one of the longest running cave climate monitoring studies to date, and we hope that this will provide an interesting insight into both current cave climates and palaeoclimate.

The project began in August 2016, and this presentation provides the findings one year in along with future progressions and objectives for the project.