Holocene-Pleistocene Climate Variability Through Stalagmites

Understanding the changing climate of the past is the key to understanding the changing climate of the present. Historically, various geologic mediums have been used to unearth the mysteries of the ancient past. These include cores of sediment from deep within the oceans, ice cores from glaciers, skeletons of coral reefs, and stalagmites from inside caves. This dissertation aims to shed light on the climate of the past 300,000 years as recorded within the geochemistry of stalagmites from caves in the Bahamas and Iran. With oxygen and carbon stable isotope geochemistry, radiometric dating through Uranium and Thorium, and trace elemental analysis, paleoclimatic environmental conditions are examined in the samples and compared with various other climate archives to better understand the ancient climatic conditions of planet Earth in order to better understand the current and future states of the climate