EGU23-688, updated on 22 Feb 2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-688
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Update to the SISAL speleothem database -- links to monitoring data, additional palaeoenvironmental proxies and enhanced accessibility

Nikita Kaushal1, Micah Wilhelm2, Franziska Lechleitner3, Kerstin Braun4, Kira Rehfeld5, Istvan Gabor Hatvani6, Peter Tanos7, Magdalena Ritzau5, Vanessa Skiba8, Khalil Azennoud9, Jozsef Gabor Szucs7, Zoltan Kern6, Yuval Burstyn10, and Yassine Ait Brahim11
Nikita Kaushal et al.
  • 1Exeter college, University of Oxford
  • 2Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, Switzerland
  • 3University of Bern, Switzerland
  • 4Arizona State University, United States of America
  • 5University of Tübingen, Germany
  • 6Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, ELKH, Hungary
  • 7Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
  • 8Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany
  • 9University of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdelah, Morocco
  • 10University of California, Davis, USA
  • 11Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco

Speleothems (cave carbonates) are widely distributed in terrestrial regions, and provide highly resolved records of past changes in climate and ecosystem conditions, encoded in the oxygen and carbon isotope proxies. The SISALv2 database, created by the PAGES-SISAL  Phase 1 Working Group, provided 700 speleothem records from 293 cave sites, 500 of which have standardized chronologies. The database provided access to records that were hitherto unavailable in the original publications and/or repositories, and enabled regional-to-global scale analysis of climatic patterns using a variety of approaches such as data-model comparisons. 

During the three  year run of SISAL Phase 2,  the working group members have: 

(i) explored ways to synthesize modern cave monitoring data to provide robust modern baselines and improve proxy interpretations

(ii) added trace element proxies of Mg, Sr, Ba, and U concentrations, and Sr isotopes to a new SISAL database version to increase our understanding of regional climatic variability.

(iii) updated the SISAL database to incorporate an additional ~100 speleothem stable isotope datasets 

(iv) and created an online interface web app (The SISAL App) with a user-friendly GUI to increase SISAL data accessibility.

Here, we present ongoing work synthesizing cave monitoring data, a summary of speleothem proxy records available in the SISALv3 database update and of ongoing Working Group research projects and a simple use case of The SISAL App. We briefly present a synopsis of the SISAL-community level discussions on best practices for reporting trace element data, and reducing data measured with high resolution laser ablation methods. 

We conclude with a short discussion on research projects based on the latest SISAL database update and discuss ideas for potential future SISAL phases and projects. For this, we encourage participation and collaboration from researchers in different stages of their academic career and working in different geographical regions and allied disciplines interested in exploiting the new SISAL database version. 



How to cite: Kaushal, N., Wilhelm, M., Lechleitner, F., Braun, K., Rehfeld, K., Gabor Hatvani, I., Tanos, P., Ritzau, M., Skiba, V., Azennoud, K., Gabor Szucs, J., Kern, Z., Burstyn, Y., and Ait Brahim, Y.: Update to the SISAL speleothem database -- links to monitoring data, additional palaeoenvironmental proxies and enhanced accessibility, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-688, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-688, 2023.