Climatically, the eastern Mediterranean region, including Turkey, is a transition zone for different climatic systems, bridging the Atlantic and continental Eurasian climate realms. Detailed paleoclimate archives recording the interaction of those systems during the Holocene and Pleistocene are pivotal for resolving the driving mechanisms of climate change on regional and global scales. Precisely dated and highly resolved multi-proxy speleothem records from Sofular cave in northern Turkey provide information on fluctuations in precipitation, temperature and ecosystem.

In my PhD project, I will develop a continuous paleoclimate record for the last 700,000 years, making it one of the longest continental time series in the entire Middle East. The project involves stable isotope analysis (hydrogen, oxygen and carbon) of speleothem calcite and fluid inclusion water. A key research interest focuses on rainfall and temperature shifts associated with glacial-interglacial transitions (Terminations) and multi-centennial climate variability like Dansgaard-Oeschger events. In addition, a high sensitivity of Sofular speleothem proxies to temperature changes enables us to reconstruct a temperature record across glacial and interglacial cycles.
 

Educational Background and Professional Experience
 

• Since Oct 2021: PhD student in the the Quaternary Geology Group of Prof Dominik Fleitmann, University of Basel (CH)

• Mar 2019 - Sep 2021: – Jul 2021: Research assistant in the Isotope-geochemical Palaeoclimatology/Speleothem Research Group, Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz (DE)

• Oct 2018 – Sep 2021: Master of Science in Geosciences, Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz (DE

• Oct 2015 – Jan 2019: Bachelor of Science in Geosciences, Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz (DE)