Portuguese researcher co-leads the Paleoceanography of the Iberian Margin expedition

Fátima Abrantes, researcher at the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) and collaborator at the Marine Science Center (CCMAR), is co-chief of the Iberian Margin Paleoceanography expedition (EXP397), carried out aboard the American ship JOIDES Resolution, which was anchored at the Alcântara dock.

The researcher was recently honored with the Ambassador Award – Union Award by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and is co-leading this expedition with David Hodell, a researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

This expedition departed from Lisbon last Sunday (October 16) and includes 26 researchers from ten countries—China, Japan, Australia, India, the USA, Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, and the United Kingdom—as well as technicians from the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Portugal is represented by FCT in the European consortium ECORD, enabling researchers affiliated with Portuguese research institutions to participate in IODP international expeditions.

This expedition, "Paleoceanography of the Iberian Margin" (EXP397), which will run until December 2022, aboard the JOIDES Resolution drilling vessel, a flexible and multifunctional platform that allows deep-sea samples to be obtained, available to the international scientific community involved in the IODP program. Its mission is to reconstruct the climate of the last 3 million years, focusing particularly on the warmest periods with atmospheric CO2 levels similar to those expected for 2030.