Advancing knowledge of the sea surface on the past

Paleoceanographer (Serrano-Rebollo & Serrano) is a free software package designed to estimate paleoceanographic parameters. Using modern calibration datasets, the application processes paleoceanographic proxy data to reconstruct past oceanographic conditions by means of the Modern Analog Technique (MAT). The program was developed collaboratively by members of the Paleontology Laboratory at the University of Malaga and the Microcomputing Department of the Provincial Council of Malaga.

The software incorporates PaleoUma (Serrano, González-Donoso, Pérez-Claros, Linares, Serrano-Rebollo), a custom calibration database specifically compiled for paleoceanographic studies in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic regions. This dataset consists of the planktonic foraminiferal assemblages represented by 26 taxa (genera, species, or morphotypes) from 735 core-tops (576 from the North Atlantic and 159 from the Mediterranean) paired with modern values of mean annual temperature, seasonality, and salinity of the sea-surface, along with the geographic coordinates of the core-tops (longitude, latitude, and the Mercator transformed value of the latitude). Users may also upload their own calibration datasets to address studies in other geographic regions or fields of research.

As presented in origin, the program is applicable to the Late Pleistocene and Holocene studies. However, its application can be extended to the entire Late Neogene by adjusting the taxonomic variables in accordance with the bio-events that occurred during the studied time interval. To this end, the program includes modifications to the calibration database adapted to each Late Neogene stage.