Paleoclimate
The oceans serve as the "long-term memory" of the climate system because they hold so much more heat than the atmosphere. Additionally, oceanic sediments preserve long-term records of environmental conditions. As a result, many attempts to understand how climate has varied in the past focus around understanding changes in ocean circulation and biology. Areas of particular interest in the Oceans and Climate group include the mechanisms behind multi-millennial variability in atmospheric carbon dioxide (as illustrated above). Work done in the group suggests that the Southern Ocean plays an important role in explaining this relationship and that the calcium carbonate cycle may play a role in explaining the 100,000 year cycles seen above. Additional work has looked the impact of continental distribution on global climate. An area of particular interest has been of how open passages such as Drake Passage produce climate asymmetries between the northern and southern hemisphere.
Scientists with interests in this area:
Robbie Toggweiler (global carbon cycle, ice age variability)
Anand Gnanadesikan (links between circulation and atmospheric carbon dioxide)
Geoff Vallis (idealized models of paleoclimate)
Links
Click here for a link to work on the Southern Ocean biogeochemical divide, explaining how past climate change might have been controlled by different parts of the Southern Ocean.
Click here to return to the Oceans and Climate Group main page.
