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Dr. Delia Oppo

Senior Scientist
Paleoceanographer
Geology & Geophysics Department

Contact Information:
Work: 508-289-2681
doppo@whoi.edu
Building: Clark 117

Mailing Address:
266 Woods Hole Road, MS #23
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, MA 02543

Research Interests

I study past variability of ocean circulation and the climatic impacts of those changes. My projects include reconstructing ocean circulation during the last Ice Age, during abrupt climate events that occurred as the large Ice Age continental ice sheets collapsed, and during the last 10,000 years in the absence of large ice sheets. With my many collaborators, I also research how these ocean circulation changes and other factors influence tropical rainfall and vegetation.

New paper in Science. Congrats Wanyi!

Lu W., D. W. Oppo, G. Gebbie, D. J. R. Thornalley (2023), Surface climate signals transmitted rapidly to deep North Atlantic throughout last millennium, Science, 382,  834-839 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf1646.

Other Recent Publications:

  • Oppo, D. W., Lu, W., Huang, K.-F., Umling, N. E., Guo, W., Yu, J., et al. (2023). Deglacial temperature and carbonate saturation state variability in the tropical Atlantic at Antarctic Intermediate Water depths. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 38, e2023PA004674. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023PA004674
  • Galochkina, M., Cohen, A. L., Oppo, D. W., Mollica, N., & Horton, F. (2023). Coral Sr-U thermometry tracks ocean temperature and reconciles Sr/Ca discrepancies caused by Rayleigh fractionation. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 38, e2022PA004541. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022PA004541
  • Wang, S., Ummenhofer, C. C., Oppo, D. W., Murty, S. A., Wagner, P., Böning, C. W., & Biastoch, A. (2023). Freshwater contributions to decadal variability of the Indonesian Throughflow. Geophysical Research Letters, 50, e2023GL103906. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103906
  • Lu, W., Costa, K. M., & Oppo, D. W. (2023). Reconstructing the oxygen depth profile in the Arabian Sea during the last glacial period. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 38, e2023PA004632. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023PA004632
  • Mollica, N. R., Cohen, A. L., Horton, F., Oppo, D. W., Solow, A. S., & McGee, D. (2023). Capturing Equatorial Pacific Variability with Multivariate Sr-U Coral Thermometry. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 38, e2022PA004508. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022PA004508
  • Costa K., S. G. Nielsen, Y. Wang, W. Lu. S. K. V. Hines, A. Jacobel, D. W. Oppo (2023). Marine sedimentary uranium to barium ratios as a potential quantitative proxy for Pleistocene bottom water oxygen concentrations Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 343, 1-16, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2022.12.022.
  • Du, X., J.M Russell, Z.Liu, B. L Otto-Bliesner, Y. Gao, C. Zhu, D. Oppo, M. Mohtadi, Y. Yan, V. Galy (2023) North Atlantic cooling triggered a zonal mode over the Indian Ocean during Heinrich Stadial 1, Science Advances, 9 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add49
  • Lu, W., Y. Wang, D. W. Oppo, S. G. Nielsen, K. M. Costa (2022).Comparing paleo-oxygenation proxies (benthic foraminiferal surface porosity, I/Ca, authigenic uranium) on modern sediments and the glacial Arabian Sea, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 331, 69-85, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2022.06.001.
  • Valley, S. G., Lynch-Stieglitz, J., Marchitto, T. M., & Oppo, D. W. (2022). Seawater cadmium in the Florida Straits over the Holocene and implications for upper AMOC variability. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 37, e2021PA004379. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021PA004379
  • Yu, J., D. W. Oppo Z. Jin, M. Lacerra, X. Ji, N. E. Umling, D. C. Lund, N. McCave, L. Menviel, J. Shao (2022) Millennial and centennial CO2 release from the Southern Ocean during the last deglaciation, Nature Geosciences 15, 293–299, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-022-00910-9
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Education

Ph.D.: Geology. 1989. Columbia University, New York, NY.

B.S.: Mathematics. 1981. State University of New York at Albany

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