Report of the Group Studying: Inferences from the Marine Sedimentary Record

The group concerned with paleoclimatic and paleometerological inference from the marine sedimentary record emphasized the diversity of sedimentary indicators of atmospheric processes in their presentations. These include the mineral and chemical composition of dusts, their size and rate of accumulation, the composition of biological material from the continents (such as pollen and freshwater diatoms), as well as proxy indicators of atmospheric circulation (e.g. isotopic and microfossil evidence for sea surface temperature changes related to upwelling). The group believes that the range of inference from such components will be substantially broadened, and the quality of the inferences improved by new research into the nature of modern climate processes, the provenance of eolian continental material, the stratigraphic links between continental and marine eolian deposits, and by climate modeling.