Nicolás J. CosentinoPontificia Universidad Católica de Chile | UC · Instituto de Geografía
Nicolás J. Cosentino
BSc in Physics and Geology. MSc and PhD in Geology.
Interested in all things dust! 1) Monitoring in South America. 2) Global paleo modeling. 3) Biogeochemistry. 4) Loess.
About
39
Publications
5,208
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222
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
My main research interest is the dust cycle and climatic/biogeochemical feedbacks. I use in situ dust sampling techniques, time series analysis, chemical characterization of dust, particle atmospheric dispersion modeling, satellite and reanalysis data analysis, and isotope geochemistry. I am currently working on global kriging interpolation techniques for model-observation comparisons. More info: https://sites.google.com/cornell.edu/nicolas-cosentino/.
Additional affiliations
April 2018 - March 2020
March 2018 - March 2020
February 2015 - April 2016
Ministerio de Ciencia Tecnología e Innovación Productiva
Position
- Technology Transfer Coordinator
Education
August 2010 - September 2016
March 2002 - July 2010
March 2002 - October 2009
Publications
Publications (39)
Andean volcanic rocks typically have low to moderate arsenic (As) concentrations.
However, elevated levels of As in groundwaters of southern South America have been
reported as a consequence of weathering of volcanic glass. This study discusses the
abundance, speciation and dispersion of As species in fresh volcanic ash from highly
explosive (Volca...
Records of wind-blown mineral dust provide an excellent proxy of past atmospheric circulation, a key parameter to understanding Earth's climate changes. Dust deposition at distal sites depends on atmospheric conditions both in sink areas, along transport pathways, and close to dust sources. To disentangle the contributions of changes in these condi...
The Pampean loess is the most extensive continental paleo-record of aeolian material in the Southern Hemisphere, recording the deposition of dust transported by two major zonal wind systems: the southern westerly winds and the subtropical jets. In order to increase the understanding on paleo-atmospheric circulation over the Southern Hemisphere, we...
Where atmospheric processing is weak due to low anthropogenic emissions, fertilization of iron-limited oceans by non-volcanic mineral dust aerosols strongly depends on iron solubility at the sources. Southern South America (SSA) is a pristine environment and the main dust supplier to the southern oceans, the most sensitive to iron fertilization. Th...
Dry lakebeds exposed by shrinking water bodies in arid regions constitute sodium (Na)-rich mineral dust emission hotspots that may potentially affect agriculture through soil sodification. However, no soluble Na mass balance has so far been attempted. We modeled 13 years (2005-2017) of dust emission from Mar Chiquita (MC), the most extensive shrink...
The magnitude of the climatic forcing associated with mineral dust aerosols remains uncertain due in part to a lack of observations on dust sources. While modeling and satellite studies provide spatially extensive constraints, they must be supported by surface-validating dust monitoring. Southern South America is the main dust source to the souther...
This is the 2-minute vPICO presentation of our work in EGU2021 (EGU21-156). There is a description in the notes on the .pptx file.
The magnitude of the climate forcing associated with mineral dust aerosols remains uncertain, due in part to a lack of direct observations on dust source areas. While modeling and satellite studies provide spatially extensive constraints, these studies must be supported by surface-validating, in situ dust monitoring. Our study focuses on Patagonia,...
Patagonia’s Santa Cruz River exhibits the second largest discharge in the region (i.e. ~23 km3 y-1) and an outstanding runoff (i.e. ~1500 mm y-1). Several glaciers with accumulation zones in the Southern Patagonia Ice field calve into two large proglacial lakes, Argentino (~1400 km2) and Viedma (~1100 km2), which are the main Santa Cruz River water...
The Gallegos is the southernmost river of continental Patagonia. It has the smallest drainage basin of all the main rivers in the region. Moderate atmospheric precipitations (500 mm y-1 in the uppermost catchments) determine discharge maxima in austral winter (rainfall/snowfall) and spring (snowmelt), delivering 0.573 km3 y-1 of freshwater (i.e., 5...
![(a) Map of [Chl‐a] for 20–24 February 2018. The black diamonds...](profile/Nicolas-Cosentino/publication/346471234/figure/fig4/AS:1099229741236230@1639088201640/a-Map-of-Chl-a-for-20-24-February-2018-The-black-diamonds-represent-the-final_Q320.jpg)
Mineral aerosols may affect global climate indirectly by enhancing net primary productivity (NPP) upon deposition to the oceans and associated atmosphere-to-ocean CO2 flux. This mechanism is hypothesized to have contributed significantly to the last interglacial-to-glacial climatic transition. However, the dust-NPP connection remains contentious fo...
High-resolution studies of palaeorecords located closer to the dust source areas of South America are relevant for increasing the knowledge on past climatic conditions in the Southern Hemisphere. In this sense, the Pampean loess archives can offer explicit records of dust source, transport, and deposition in the region, providing new insights which...
Mineral aerosols profoundly impact global climate. Modeling of the dust cycle is the main tool used to gauge this effect. However, the scarcity of in situ modern dust flux measurements is the main reason why validation of existing models is hampered. We present the first long-term (14 yr) record of dust flux in the Pampas, southern South America, h...
Wind-blown dust deposits are considered one of the most important terrestrial archives for past climate change studies. In the Southern Hemisphere, the Pampean loess is the most extensive paleo-dust record, whose origin is still a matter of debate. In this paper, grain-size was carried out at three high-resolution loess profiles deposited during th...
Forearc topography and inferred paleotopography are key constraints on the processes acting at plate interfaces along subduction margins. We used along-strike variations in modern topography, trench sediment thickness, and instrumental seismic data sets over >2000 km of the Chilean margin to test previously proposed feedbacks among subducted sedime...
Forearc topography and inferred paleotopography are key constraints on the processes acting at plate interfaces along subduction margins. We used along-strike variations in modern topography, trench sediment thickness, and instrumental seismic data sets over >2000 km of the Chilean margin to test previously proposed feedbacks among subducted sedime...
Forearc topography and inferred paleotopography are key constraints on the processes acting at plate interfaces along subduction margins. We used along-strike variations in modern topography, trench sediment thickness, and instrumental seismic data sets over >2000 km of the Chilean margin to test previously proposed feedbacks among subducted sedime...
The high elevation of the onshore forearc platform in northern Chile cannot be accounted for by previously proposed tectonic mechanisms such as coastal underplating and coseismic deformation, whose topographic effects are restricted to the coastal zone. Subduction channels have been recognized both in modern and fossil non‐collisional convergent ma...
Several lines of geomorphic and geophysical reasoning suggest that the western forearc of northern Chile has undergone kilometer-scale surface uplift relative to sea level during the late Neogene. We have developed a new paleoaltimeter based on the 87Sr/86Sr ratio of ancient gypsic soils in the hyperarid Atacama Desert, and used it to investigate t...
The lithosphere-scale geodynamic mechanisms that control forearc topography are still contentious. In northern Chile, this is in part due to a lack of paleoelevation constraints. In order to rectify this lack of data, this thesis carries out a series of studies.
First, a new paleoaltimetry proxy for the hyperarid Atacama Desert was developed, based...
Sr isotopic composition and soluble chemistry of gypsum/anhydrite surface salt samples in the Atacama Desert.
An elevation-dependent relationship of the 87Sr/86Sr ratio of Holocene surface accumulations of sulfate salts is demonstrated for a continental margin hyperarid setting. In the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, gypsum and anhydrite of multiple origins exist widely on superficial materials that originated during the last 10,000 years. An important s...
We have developed a new altimeter proxy based on the 87Sr/86Sr ratio of surficial accumulations of salts in hyperarid settings. Under hyperarid conditions like in the Andean forearc in northern Chile at altitudes below ~3000 m.a.s.l., gypsum and other soluble salts form saline soils. The altimeter is based on the first-order topographic control on...
The landscape of the hyperarid Atacama Desert in northern Chile records extremely slow change on Earth's surface. Disputed ages for the onset of hyperaridity range from the late Paleogene through the Pleistocene. A long-term paleoclimate record is recorded in a nonmarine basin whose fill is primarily alluvial strata. For this setting, the primary p...
Un nuevo indicador paleoaltimétrico de superficies continentales ha sido desarrollado en base a la relación 87 Sr/ 86 Sr de los sulfatos de calcio presentes en los paleosuelos salinos de zonas hiperáridas. La zona del Desierto de Atacama en el antearco andino del norte de Chile ha sido tomada como ejemplo. Allí, eventos advectivos de aerosoles mari...
A thorough paleomagnetic sampling of the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous rocks at Cierva Point (NW of the Antarctic Peninsula -AP-) has been carried out. The area’s outcrops consist of plutonic rocks emplaced in acid volcaniclastic rocks of the the Antarctic Peninsula Volcanic Group widespread in the northern AP. The age of the volcaniclastic rocks...
Antarctic Peninsula's paleogeographic evolution since Gondwana's fragmentation is still a subject of debate. This is so for two main reasons: the fact that the Scotia plate got in the way between the South America and Antarctica plates many millions of years after Gondwana's break-up, destroying the ocean floor's magnetic anomalies between these tw...
La evolución paleogeográfica de Península Antártica desde la fragmentación de Gondwana hasta nuestros días es todavía tema de debate. Esto es así por dos motivos principales: el hecho de que la placa de Scotia se “interpusiera” entre las placas de Sudamérica y Antártida muchos millones de años después de la ruptura de Gondwana, borrando la mayoría...
Questions
Question (1)
I use Matlab's periodogram function to compute the PSD of a signal. However, I need to assign significance levels to the obtained frequency peaks. Also, I would like to assign significance levels to coherence estimations between two signals, which I calculate using Matlab's mscohere function.
Projects
Projects (4)
This symposium will focus on bringing together international scientists working on observation and modeling of the present-day and paleo dust cycle in the Southern Hemisphere, across temporal and spatial scales, including both feedbacks with climate and impacts on society. Participants will discuss the latest advances in their work and share their major scientific questions. This will provide an opportunity to discuss recent and on-going work on these critical issues, and to expand on pre-existing collaborations that in certain areas of research and in certain regions are still quite limited.
Study the modern dynamics of production, transport, and deposition of atmospheric dust in southern South America, by looking at the multi-annual samples of atmospheric dust obtained from dust traps located along the Patagonian east coast and continent interior. Study the mechanisms of Pampean loess accumulation and their paleoclimatic implications.
Place constraints on the Mesozoic evolution of the Antarctic Peninsula crustal block with respect to the Eastern Antarctica and South America plates using paleomagnetism.
