
The Future of Past Climate
Recent attention to paleoclimate research has made apparent to the wider global change community the relevance of paleo perspectives on climate change. Of particular importance, paleoclimate has documented amplitudes and rates of climate change that are not knowable from historical records and has identified drivers of climate change on a range of timescales. Of equal importance, paleoclimate provides targets and points of validation for current-generation climate models used to predict near-term climate change. Recent advances in proxy methods, numerical approaches, and modeling capabilities have opened new avenues of investigation into past climate change. However, key gaps in knowledge and capabilities persist. Among them are uncertainties in proxies and their calibrations; uncertainties in the absolute timing and spatial coherence of past climate events; gaps in data availability for broad intervals of the Phanerozoic; and limitations in modeling capabilities and knowledge of past boundary conditions.
There is motivation by the research community and funders to chart new directions for future research into Earth’s past climate in order to understand how climate operates in climate states different than the present, and especially in warm states that might be analogues to a future state. Discussion topics will include how climate sensitivity and variability, extreme events, and the hydrological cycle and other aspects of the climate system, operated during past climate states, and what forcings and feedbacks caused the transition between states. Potential elements of this vision could include proxy and model development, new methods of treating existing data sets including through assimilation, and a focus on critical regions or transitions in Earth history.
This AGCI workshop will bring together experts in paleoclimate data generation, modeling, and data-model synthesis to present ideas from recent efforts and to develop ideas/recommendations for the way forward.
Recent attention to paleoclimate research has made apparent to the wider global change community the relevance of paleo perspectives on climate change. Of particular importance, paleoclimate has documented amplitudes and rates of climate change that are not knowable from historical records and has identified drivers of climate change on a range of timescales. Of equal importance, paleoclimate provides targets and points of validation for current-generation climate models used to predict near-term climate change. Recent advances in proxy methods, numerical approaches, and modeling capabilities have opened new avenues of investigation into past climate change. However, key gaps in knowledge and capabilities persist. Among them are uncertainties in proxies and their calibrations; uncertainties in the absolute timing and spatial coherence of past climate events; gaps in data availability for broad intervals of the Phanerozoic; and limitations in modeling capabilities and knowledge of past boundary conditions.
There is motivation by the research community and funders to chart new directions for future research into Earth’s past climate in order to understand how climate operates in climate states different than the present, and especially in warm states that might be analogues to a future state. Discussion topics will include how climate sensitivity and variability, extreme events, and the hydrological cycle and other aspects of the climate system, operated during past climate states, and what forcings and feedbacks caused the transition between states. Potential elements of this vision could include proxy and model development, new methods of treating existing data sets including through assimilation, and a focus on critical regions or transitions in Earth history.
This AGCI workshop will bring together experts in paleoclimate data generation, modeling, and data-model synthesis to present ideas from recent efforts and to develop ideas/recommendations for the way forward.
Workshop Outcomes
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Past climates inform our future
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Agenda
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9:30 am Scene Setting, Intended Outcomes Presented by Isabel Patricia Montanez, Christopher J Poulsen, Jessica Tierney
10:00 am Understanding Cloud Feedback and Natural Aerosol Fingerprints to Interpret Past Warm Climate Forcing and Constrain Tropical Climate Sensitivity Presented by Natalie Burls
11:15 am What the Pliocene Can Teach Us About Rainfall In A Warmer World Presented by Tripti Bhattacharya
11:25 am The Evolution of Plio-Pleistocene Climate and Potential Thresholds of “Catastrophic” Climate Change Presented by Gavin Foster
11:30 am Stability of the Earth Climate in Response to Deep Time Large Perturbations Presented by Yves Godderis
2:15 pm Reconstructing CO2 and Related Feedbacks in Deep Time Presented by Isabel Patricia Montanez
3:05 pm Paleoseasonality – A Missing Piece of the Paleoclimate Puzzle
3:10 pm Paleotraits and Paleobiomes in a High CO2 World. Can They Inform Paleoclimate Models?
4:40 pm Narrowing the Model-Data Gap with Isotope-Enabled Climate Models
9:00 am National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine CORES A Decadal Survey for NSF’s Division of Earth Sciences
9:15 am Silicate Weathering Earth Climate Stability Presented by Yves Godderis
9:40 am What Are the Different States of the Climate System in the Geologic Past and How Do They Relate to the Future? and Discussion Presented by Dan Lunt
11:00 am Is CO2 the Sole Pacemaker? Does Background State Matter? Presented by Gavin Foster
4:00 pm Breakout Groups to Discuss Sessions 1-3
5:00 pm Report Outs on BOGs and Group Discussion
9:25 am Paleoclimatic Lessons for Human Timescales Presented by Tripti Bhattacharya
11:00 am Breakout Groups to Discuss 4-6
2:00 pm Working Groups on Key Knowledge Gaps to be Included in Review Paper
4:00 pm Representatives From Working Groups Present Back to the Group
11:00 am Define Timeline and Set Writing Assignments for Review Paper
Organizers
Attendees

















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