Media Releases 2023

Showing 1-5 of 24 items.

Planktonic foraminifera are microorganisms that live in the uppermost water layers of all oceans. When they die their small calcareous shells sink to the seafloor and remain preserved in the sediments there. The fossil foraminifera document the conditions in the oceans and their study enables a view into the past. Photo: MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen; M. Kucera

Why regional differences in global warming are critical

Dec 5, 2023

Tiny fossils in marine sediments verify that climate models provide accurate calculations of average ocean temperatures during the last glacial maximum ...

Analyzed sediment core from the Caribbean Sea. The inset shows a foraminifera species called Globigerinoides ruber (white), which was extracted from the sediment samples and used to reconstruct past changes in tropical temperature and salinity. Photo: A. Zhuravleva and T. Boeschen, GEOMAR

How salt from the Caribbean affects our climate

Nov 3, 2023

Past cold periods such as the Little Ice Age were associated with reduced strength of North Atlantic currents and increased surface salinity in the ...

Bronwen Konecky at Washington University in St. Louis (far right) examines a core of lake sediment from Lake Sibinacocha, Peru. Photo: Thomas Malkowicz, Washington University in St. Louis

Study links changes in global water cycle to higher temperatures

Nov 2, 2023

It’s a multi-billion dollar question: What will happen to water as temperatures continue to rise? There will be winners and losers with any change that ...

An international team of scientists studied the natural multi-centennial climate variability between 23,000 and 19,000 years ago; climate model and paleo data show that this variability was particularly pronounced in the subpolar North Atlantic. The photo shows sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Photo: MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen; V. Diekamp

How a climate model can illustrate and explain ice-age climate variability

Nov 2, 2023

During the last ice age, the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, the climate in the North Atlantic underwent much greater multi-centennial ...

Close-up picture of a core sample: The oldest samples are drill core samples from the 1.6-billion-year-old McArthur Basin in Northern Australia. This is among the oldest biomarker samples known to date and contains the information about primary production by photosynthetic organisms at that time. Photo: MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, B. Nettersheim

Genetic methods enable the use of fossil lipids as biomarkers for oxygen-producing primordial bacteria

Oct 26, 2023

Cyanobacteria are a key species in Earth's history, as they introduced atmospheric oxygen for the first time. The analysis of their evolution therefore ...