Dr. Matthew Schmidt

Bio

Dr. Schmidt's research interests focus on understanding the links between air-sea interactions and climate change during the last several glacial cycles (the past 500,000 years). He studies the geochemistry of both planktonic and benthic foraminifera recovered from deep-sea sediment cores to reconstruct climate variability ranging from orbital to centennial time scales. By measuring trace metal ratios and stable isotopic values in foraminiferal calcite, he has reconstructed records of past temperature, sea surface salinity, and ocean circulation change in the tropical and subtropical North Atlantic.

His ongoing research goals are to investigate how past changes in the hydrologic cycle and ocean circulation impacted inter- and intra-basin salinity gradients and to determine how these changes influence large-scale North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation variability across abrupt climate events such as the Younger Dryas and the millennial-scale climate fluctuations characteristic of the last ice age know as Dansgaard-Oeschger events.

Research Interests

• Paleoceanography
• Paleoclimatology
• Foraminiferal Geochemistry
• Micropaleontology

Projects

• One of Dr. Schmidt ongoing projects includes collaborating with Jean Lynch-Stieglitz at the Georgia Institute of Technology to determine the relative timing between atmospheric vs. ocean circulation change in the tropical and subtropical North Atlantic across last glacial termination by generating proxy records for sea surface salinity and ocean circulation change in several cores recovered from the margins of the Florida Straits.  This project is currently funded by NSF through the P2C2 program.
• In an effort to better understand feedback mechanisms in the climate system, Dr. Schimdt also collaborates with Dr. Ping Chang, a climate modeler / physical oceanographer here at Texas A&M.  By combining paleo-proxy reconstructions of past temperature change and numerical modeling experiments, Drs. Schmidt and Chang are able to test the predictions produced by coupled general circulation models (GCMs) of how the ocean/atmosphere system interacted across abrupt climate transitions.  This project was just funded by NSF through the P2C2 program starting in September 2011.
• Dr. Schmidt also collaborates with Dr. Franco Marcantonio in the Department of Geology and Geophysics on a project that focuses on reconstructing the role of intermediate water changes in the Atlantic across abrupt climate changes over the last deglacial.  By reconstructing changes in the neodymium isotopic composition of iron-manganese crusts on sediments from the Florida Straits and the southern Caribbean, we can determine the timing of Antarctic Intermediate Water/Glacial North Atlantic Intermediate Water changes across the deglacial. 
• Dr. Schmidt and Franco Marcantonio (Department of Geology and Geophysics) are the two PIs responsible for operating and maintaining the High Resolution ICP-MS (Element XR) located in the College's clean lab This state of the art mass spectrometer, together with a newly completed clean lab facility, greatly enhances the analytical capabilities of our College and allows our students to gain hands on analytical experience in the lab.  Dr. Schmidt and his students routinely analyze foraminifera and seawater samples for a suite of minor and trace elements.
• Dr. Schmidt is also working with Niall Slowey in the Oceanography Department here at Texas A&M on reconstructing high-resolution records of the timing of meltwater discharge into the Gulf of Mexico during the last glacial termination - a time when the Laurentide ice sheet of North America was rapidly disintegrating as climate transition from the last ice age into the warm climate of today.

Experience

• 2007-present, Assistant Professor Department of Oceanography, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.
• 2005-2007, NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
• 2000-2005, Graduate Researcher, Department of Geology, University of California, Davis.
• 1995-1997, Teaching Assistant, Department of Geology, University of South Florida.
• 1991-1993, Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Geology, Vanderbilt University.

News

• Dr. Schmidt and Ping Chang were just awared a NSF grant entitled "A Combined Paleo-Proxy and Modeling Study of Abrupt Climate Change in the Tropical Atlantic and Its Relation to Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Variability" for $495,424.
• Dr. Schmidt and his graduate students Jennifer Hertzberg and Teddy Them will travel to Prague this summer to present their research at the 2011 Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference.
• Last October-November, Dr. Schmidt and his graduate student Jennifer Hertzberg participated in a research cruise in the eastern equatorial Pacific.  We were at sea for 4 weeks and sailed from Costa Rica to Arica, Chile.
• Dr. Schmidt is currently looking for new graduate students.  If you are interested in finding out more about my research, please contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Awards

• National Science Foundation, $495,424 A Combined Paleo-Proxy and Modeling Study of Abrupt Climate Change in the Tropical Atlantic and Its Relation to Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Variability, OCE - MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS, 2011.
• National Science Foundation, $309,000, Linking Atmospheric and Ocean Circulation Variability to Abrupt
  Climate Change Over the Last 40 Kyr, OCE - MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS, 2008.
• Allen G. Marr Prize, University of California, Davis, for most distinguished dissertation in the fields of Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Social Sciences, 2006.
• USSSP Schlanger Ocean Drilling Fellowship. $23,000. Given by the Ocean Drilling Program in support of graduate research on: Temperature and hydrological changes in the western Caribbean and the central North Atlantic during the last 450 kyr. 2002-2003
• USSSP Schlanger Ocean Drilling Fellowship. $23,000. Given by the Ocean Drilling Program in support of graduate research on: Temperature and Hydrological Changes in the Western Caribbean and the Tropical Pacific During the Last 750 kyr. 2001-2002.

Publications

Schmidt, M.W., Chang, P., Hertzberg, J.E.*, Them, T.R.*, Link, J., and Otto-Bliesner, B.L. (in review), Impact of Abrupt Deglacial Climate Change on Tropical Atlantic subsurface temperatures.  Submitted to Nature.

Xie, R.*,Marcantonio, F., and Schmidt, M. W. (in review), Deglacial variability in the penetration of Antarctic Intermediate Water into the subtropical North Atlantic.  Submitted to Nature Geoscience.

Schmidt, M.W., Weinlein, W.A.*, Marcantonio, F., and Lynch-Stieglitz, J. (in review), Solar forcing of Florida Straits surface salinity during the early Holocene.  In review at Paleoceanography.

Schmidt, M.W. and Lynch-Stieglitz, J. (2011), Florida Straits Deglacial Temperature and Salinity Change: Implications for Tropical Hydrologic Cycle Variability During the Younger Dryas. Paleoceanography, 26, PA4205, doi:10.1029/2011PA002157.

Schmidt, M. W. and Hertzberg, J.E.* (2011), Abrupt climate change during the last Ice Age. Nature Education Knowledge (online open access library of peer reviewed educational articles), 2(12):11.  www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097

Schmidt, M.W. and Spero, H.J. (2011), Meridional Shifts in the Marine ITCZ and the Tropical Hydrologic Cycle over the Last Three Glacial Cycles.  Paleoceanography, 26, PA1206, doi:10.1029/2010PA001976.

Lynch-Stieglitz, J., Schmidt, M.W. and Curry, W.B. (2011), Evidence from the Florida Straits for Younger Dryas Ocean Circulation Changes. Paleoceanography, 26, PA1205, doi:10.1029/2010PA002032.

Wan, X., Chang, P., and Schmidt, M.W. (2010), Causes of Tropical Atlantic Paleo‐salinity Variation During Periods of Reduced AMOC.  Geophysical Research Letters, 37, doi:10.1029/2009GL042013.

Wan, X., Chang, P., Saravanan, R., Zhang, R., and Schmidt, M. W. (2009), On the Interpretation of Caribbean Paleotemperature Reconstructions during the Younger Dryas. Geophysical Research Letters 36, L02701, doi:10.1029/2008GL035805.

Cléroux, C., Lynch-Stieglitz, J., Schmidt, M.W., Cortijo, E., and Duplessy, J-C. (2009), Evidence for Calcification Depth Change of Globorotalia truncatulinoides Between Deglaciation and Holocene in the Western Atlantic Ocean.  Marine Micropaleontology, 73, 57-61. doi:10.1016/j.marmicro.2009.07.001.

Nürnberg, D., Ziegler, M., Karas, C., Tiedemann, R., and Schmidt, M.W.  (2008),  Interacting Loop Current Variability and Mississippi River Discharge over the Past 400 kyrs. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 272, 278-289.

Schmidt, M.W., Vautravers, M.J., and Spero, H.J. (2006), Rapid North Atlantic Salinity Oscillations Across Dansgaard-Oeschger Cycles. Nature, 443, 5 October, 561-564, doi:10.1038/nature05121.

Schmidt, M.W., Vautravers, M.J., and Spero, H.J. (2006), Western Caribbean Sea Surface Temperatures During the Late Quaternary. Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 7, doi:10.1029/2005GC000957.

Schmidt, M.W., Spero, H.J., and Lea, D.W. (2004), Links Between Salinity Variation in the Caribbean and North Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation. Nature, 428, 11 March, 160-163, doi:10.1038/nature02346.

*denotes student author