This week I have come to appreciate the complexity of the climate system with its many feedbacks both positive and negative. In particular, the influence of the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
The most difficult part was Section 2.6 on 400 parts per million. I'm still not entirely clear what forced the rise in carbon dioxide in the mid-Pliocene. Was it just the orbital changes driving up temperature? Clearly lots of different processes interacting ...
Not exactly further research but I did attend the second in the Adaptation to Climate Change Seminar Series organised by the Centre for Science and Policy. Although both the course and the seminar series are aimed at a general audience their focus is different. As the title suggests, the seminar series is more narrowly focused on adaptation. Thursday evening's seminar mentioned the U.S. Global Change Reseach Program which might be in interesting source of information.
A couple of interesting observations from the seminar: A temperature increase of between 1.75 C and 2.75 C by 2050 is predicted by all the climate models; and the rate of climate change will double over the next 20 years.
The first seminar had pointed out that even in the highly unlikely event that no more man made greenhouse gases were emitted the levels of the oceans will continue to rise for at least a thousand years.
Thanks to Deirdre De Barra for posting this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWLHyxwEADo to the Irish TV Eco Eye programme on 'Climate Change'. Always interesting to see how climate change is viewed in another country.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Steve Tomlin for posting the information that lead me to this link: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/199704_pliocene/. I was particularly interested in the use of palynology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palynology), the study of dust, including pollen and spores as proxies.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear from the article, which dates from 1997, that there was still plenty of uncertainty about the mid-Pliocene. If time permits, I will try to find out if the science has advance over the intervening years.
A bit of searching shows that Mark A. Chandler is still actively researching the climate of the mid-Pliocene: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/authors/mchandler.html
ReplyDeleteThe abstract for a recent paper: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/hi05200c.html suggests there is still uncertainty about the mid-Pliocene.