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USC College > Faculty > Departments > Department of Earth Sciences > Lowell Stott
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Lowell Stott

Professor of Earth Sciences

Contact Information
Office: ZHS 235
Phone: (213)740-5120
E-mail: stott@usc.edu

LINKS
Faculty Profile on Departmental Website
 

Education
Ph.D. Oceanography, Graduate School of Oceanography
B.S. Geology, Ohio State University
M.S. Geology, Ohio State University
 

Academic Appointment, Affiliation, and Employment History
Professor, University of Southern California, 9/1/1989-  
 

Description of Research

Summary Statement of Research Interests
Professor Stott research attempts to understand what factors have governed the behavior of Earth's climate through time. Climate history is reconstructed from geologic archives such as marine sediments, speloethems (cave deposits), living and fossil trees and other types of archives the contain climate information. These paleo-archives incorporate a geochemical signature that reflects environmental conditions at a particular site at the time the archive was formed. Stott's research group at USC is currently involved in studies that seek to reconstruct climate information from sites located within western tropical Pacific (Indonesia), India and China in an effort to quantify how ocean and atmospheric changes during the past 30,000 years influenced monsoon precipitation. These studies hope to shed light on the magnitude and frequency of large-scale drought associated with failure of the monsoon sytem. Such studies have important implications to climate assessements attempting to evaluate how the monsoon system could respond to future climate changes. Other studies being conducted by Stott's group at USC involve reconstructions of climate variations within the tropical Pacific warm pool during the last glacial. These studies have uncovered a recurrent pattern of SST variability and surface ocean salinity change in the western tropical Pacific that coincided with large global climate changes recorded at high northern latitudes during the last glacial period. These studies suggest that there is a close coupling between tropical and extratropical climate on long time scales of decades to centuries that is complimentary to thos that occur today on interannual time scales (El Nino/La Nina). Some of the ongoing questions being addressed by Stott's group include: 1.) was ENSO (El Nino/La Nina) active during the last glacial period; 2) did changes in tropical ocean/atmospheric behavior influence the history abrupt climate change during the past 80 thousand years and; 3.) how did tropical Pacific SST respond to changes in ice cover versus atmospheric CO2 change at the end of the last glaciation. Answers to these questions have implications for understanding predicting how climate will vary in the future.
 

Publications

Journal Article
Timmermann, A., Timm, O., Stott, L. D., Menviel, L. (2008). Austral spring insolation changes help to jump-start deglacial temperature rise in Antarctica. Journal of Climate.
Berkelhammer, M., Stott, L. D. (2008). Recent and dramatic changes in Pacific storm trajectories recorded in d18O from Bristlecone Pine tree-ring cellulose. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.
Stott, L. D., Timmermann, A., Thunell, R. (2007). Deep sea temperatures warmed before atmospheric CO2 and tropical temperatures began to rise at the last glacial termination. Science. Science. Vol. 318 (435)
Stott, L. D. (2007). Comment on ‘‘Anomalous radiocarbon ages for foraminifera shells’’. Paleoceanography. Vol. 22 (PA1211, doi:10.1029/2006PA001379)
Sinha, A., Cannariato, K., Stott, L. D., Cheng, H., Edwards, R. L., Yadava, M., Ramesh, R., Singh, I. (2007). A 900-year (600 to 1500 A.D.) record of the Indian summer monsoon. Geophysical Research Letters. Vol. 34, pp. L16707, doi:10.1029/2007GL030431.
Newton, A., Thunell, R., Stott, L. D. (2006). Climate and hydrographic Pacific warm pool during the last millennium. Geophysical Research Letters. Vol. 33, pp. 10.1029/2006GL027234.
Graham, N., Hughes, M., Ammann, C., Cobb, K., Hoerling, M., Kennett, D., Kennett, J., Rein, B., Stott, L. D., Wigand, P., Xu, T. (2006). Tropical Pacific – Mid-Latitude Teleconnections in Medieval Times. Climate Dynamics.
Prokopenko, M., Hammond, D. E., Berelson, W. M., Bernhard, J., Stott, L. D., Douglas, R. (2006). Nitrogen cycling in the sediments of Santa Barbara basin and Eastern Subtropical North Pacific: Nitrogen isotopes, diagenesis and possible chemosymbiosis between two lithotrophs - "riding a glider". Earth and Planetary Science letters/Elsevier. Vol. 242, pp. 186–204.
Lund, S., Stott, L. D. (2006). Holocene paleomagnetic secular variation records from the western Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Vol. 246, pp. 381–392.
Prokopenko, M., Hammond, D., Berelson, W., Bernhard, J., Stott, L. D., Douglas, R. (2006). Nitrogen cycling in the sediments of Santa Barbara basin and Eastern Subtropical North Pacific: Nitrogen isotopes, diagenesis and possible chemosymbiosis between two lithotrophs (Thioploca and anammox) - "riding on a glider. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Vol. 242, pp. 186-204.
Sinha, A., Prokopenko, M., Stott, L. D., Li, H. C., You, C. D., Cheng, H. D., Edwards, L. D., Singh, I. B. (2005). Variability of Southwest Indian summer monsoon precipitation during the Bolling-Allerod. Geology/Geological Society of America. Vol. 33, pp. p. 813-816..
Broecker, W., Barker, S., Clark, E., Hajdas, I., Bonani, G., Stott, L. D. (2004). Ventilation of glacial deep Pacific Ocean. Science. Vol. 306, pp. 1169-1172.
Broecker, W., Barker, S., Clark, E., Hajdas, I., Bonani, G., Stott, L. D. (2004). Ventilation of the Glacial Deep Pacific Ocean. Science. Vol. 306, pp. 1169-1172.
Stott, L. D., Prokopenko, M., Thunell, R., Haug, G., Koutavas, A., Lund, S. P. (2004). Decline of surface temperature and salinity in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in the Holocene epoch: Nature, v. 431, p. 56-59. Nature. Vol. v. 431, pp. 56-59.
Holsten, J., Stott, L. D., Berelson, W. (2004). Reconstructing Benthic Carbon Oxidation Rates Using d13C of Benthic Foraminifers. Marine Micropaleontology. Vol. 53 (2004) 117–132
Cannariato, K., Stott, L. D. (2004). High-resolution bulk organic carbon d13C values argue against brief catastrophic releases of sedimentary methane to the surface waters of Santa Barbara Basin. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Vol. 5(5), pp. doi.
Rosenthal, Y., Stott, L. D. (2004). Inter-laboratory comparison study of Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca measurements in planktonic foraminifera for paleoceanographic research. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Vol. 5(5), pp. doi.
Berelson, W., Stott, L. D. (2003). Productivity and Organic Carbon Rain to the California Margin Sea Floor: Modern and Paleoceanographic Perspectives, Paleoceanography 18, 2003. Paleoceanography.
Stott, L. D. (2002). Stott, L.D., Poulsen, C., Lund, S., and Thunell, R., Super ENSO and Global Climate Oscillations at Millenial Time Scales, Science, 2002.
 

Other
Stott, L. D. Stott, L.D., The influence of diet on the d13C of shell carbon in the pulmonate snail Helix aspersa, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 195, 249-259, 2002.
Stott, L. D. Stott, L.D. Berelson, W., Gorsline, D., Douglas, R., Increased dissolved oxygen in Pacific Intermediate waters due to lower rates of carbon oxidation in sediments, Nature 407, 367-370, 2000 .
Stott, L. D. Stott, L.D., Neumann, M., and Hammond, D. Intermediate water ventilation on the northeasthern Pacific margin during the late Pleistocene inferred from benthic foraminiferal d13C, Paleoceanography, 15 (2), 161-169, 2000 .
Stott, L. D. Visser, K., Thunell, R., and Stott, L., Magnitude and timing of temperature change in the Indo-Pacific warm pool during deglaciation, Nature, 421, 152 - 155, 2003.
 

Proceedings
Prokopenko, M., Hammond, D., Spivak, A., Stott, L. D. (2006). Impact of long term diagensis on d15N of organic matter in marine sediments. Proc. ODP, Sci. Results, 201.
 
 
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