Climate of the Past 20th Anniversary: Past Ocean Circulation and Climate Change

To mark its 20th anniversary, Climate of the Past, an interactive journal of the European Geosciences Union, is launching a special webinar series celebrating two decades of leading paleoclimate science.

Each webinar will emphasize the journal’s scientific diversity and impact, featuring two invited talks of 30 minutes from leading researchers across different areas of paleoclimate science. Talks will be followed by a live 30 minutes Q&A session, allowing for discussion and engagement with the broader community.  This webinar will be recorded and uploaded to the EGU YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@egu.

This webinar will explore the relationship between ocean circulation and climate change. The invited talks will provide new evidence of changes in deep water formation, or changes in surface circulation and how they impacted global climate and the carbon cycle. The session will emphasize the importance of understanding ocean dynamics in projecting the effects of climate change.

Talks:

Helen Bostock (The University of Queensland) - Carbon isotopes in planktic foraminifera – an under-utilized resource in paleoceanography

Planktic foraminifera have been analyzed from hundreds of cores globally. Planktic oxygen isotopes have been used to develop age models, and when corrected for temperature, used as a salinity indicator. The carbon isotopes from these planktic foraminifera are rarely analyzed as they are often noisy, and are influenced by several different factors which are difficult to entangle. Here, I would like to present how carbon isotopes from planktic foraminifera can provide information about paleo-ocean circulation.

Sam Sheriff-Tadano (University of the Ryukyus) – Isolating Feedback Mechanisms to Unravel Glacial climate variability

Complex coupled climate models have successfully reproduced intrinsic atmosphere-sea ice-ocean variabilities that resemble Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles. However, the driving mechanisms of these cycles remain debated due to the interactions within the climate system. Here, we use a complex climate model to quantitatively assess the role of individual feedback mechanisms by deactivating some key processes. Our results provide a novel understanding of how specific feedbacks control climate variability and offer new insights for interpreting differences across various climate models.

Conveners:

Lorraine Liesicki  & Laurie Menviel 

Speakers:

Helen Bostock (The University of Queensland, Australia) - My research focuses on oceanography and paleoceanography of the oceans around Australia. I use stable isotopes (oxygen, carbon), geochemical tracers, sedimentology and microfossils to understand the present and past changes in ocean chemistry to reconstruct ocean circulation (changes in ocean currents and fronts) and its relationship to global climate. I am particularly interested in understanding past changes in the Great Barrier Reef, and at the other extreme past changes in processe at the Antarctic Margin. I am also interested in mapping marine sediment distribution, sediment transport processes, marine geomorphology, marine microplastic pollution, and multidisciplinary topics such as ocean acidification (the uptake of CO2 by the oceans) and blue carbon and climate change in the oceans (marine heat waves, sea level rise). I have participated in a number of research voyages on open ocean vessels including the RV Tangaroa and RV Investigator, including several as lead or co-lead scientist. I am involved in the Australian-New Zealand International Ocean Discovery Program.

Sam Sheriff-Tadano (University of the Ryukyus, Japan) – Complex coupled climate models have successfully reproduced intrinsic atmosphere-sea ice-ocean variabilities that resemble Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles. However, the driving mechanisms of these cycles remain debated due to the interactions within the climate system. Here, we use a complex climate model to quantitatively assess the role of individual feedback mechanisms by deactivating some key processes. Our results provide a novel understanding of how specific feedbacks control climate variability and offer new insights for interpreting differences across various climate models.

Register for this online event here.

If you have any questions about ‘Climate of the Past 20th Anniversary: Past Ocean Circulation and Climate Change’, please contact us via webinars@egu.eu.