Global Change Through Time (GCT)
Research in this programme is founded on the premise that the past is the key to the future. By unlocking geological archives of past global change, we provide crucial constraints on the possible effects of future changes in Earth systems. Archives preserved in glacial ice, seafloor or lake sediments, or sedimentary rocks contain records of past climate events that can be used to refine and test model-based predictions of the magnitude, rate and effects of future climate change.
By combining information from paleontology, sedimentology and geochemistry we can reconstruct past environmental conditions to understand the roles of regional drivers on climate change, such as Antarctic ice sheets, as well as the effects of climate change on South Pacific natural systems.
The programme examines past analogues for future global change at a wide range of geographic and temporal scales: from variation in local catchments over thousands of years to the evolution of Antarctic-sourced ocean currents over tens of millions of year. This range of scale reflects the wide spectra over which climatic and oceanographic systems evolve. Data are drawn from onshore New Zealand, the Southwest Pacific and Southern Ocean, and Antarctica. Current research aims to improve understanding of the effects of anthropogenic, greenhouse gas-induced, global warming and is focussed on three themes:
For more information contact James Crampton (programme leader)
Objectives
1. Quaternary Climate and Biota
2. Antarctic Drivers of Global Change
3. Super-Greenhouse Worlds
4. Paleoclimate Database
5. Outreach
6. Southern Hemisphere Climate Evolution from Ice Cores
7. Soil Carbon Dynamics
