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Vera Meyer
Report of GLOMAR PhD student Vera Meyer about her participation in the Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology, Italy, 15 July – 1 August 2015
In July 2015 I went to Urbino/Italy in order to participate in the Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology. It focused on how to the reconstruct paleoclimate change using proxies and climate models but it also addressed the prediction of future climate change.
In the first week introductory lectures were held to give an overview of the broad variety of common proxies and different modeling techniques used in paleoclimatology. The lectures addressed e.g. stable isotopes, biomarkers or the ecology of benthic and planktonic foraminifera. The students learned how to reconstruct environmental parameters such as water and air temperature, variations in the carbon cycle, sea-level variations or changes of sea-water pH. The lectures also explained the functionality and the fields of application of different model-types, ranging from simple box models to general circulation models and earth system models. An important aspect of the introductory part was how to establish profound age models for deep time records. The application of biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy and astrochronology were introduced with lectures but also practices.
The second part of the summer school focused on case studies addressing current hot topics in paleoclimatology and provided an overview about the state of the art and open questions. They served as examples of how proxies and climate models are applied. Specifically, mechanisms driving Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events and Paleocene/Eocene hyperthermals were discussed as analogues for future global warming. Furthermore, mechanisms leading to the Greenhouse-Icehouse transition (the glaciation of the Earth’s poles) as well as Quaternary climate dynamics and greenhouse gas variations were addressed. The summer school also included a one-day field trip to outcrops of cretaceous and tertiary deposits. We visited the famous K/T-boundary which is well known for the big mass extinction event that marked the end of dinosaur-era. Next to the K/T boundary we also studied deposits of the PETM and tried to identify orbital cycles in Tertiary deposits.
For me the summer school was a benefit because I was able to refresh my knowledge about the variety of different proxies and past climate change. I got several new ideas what topics I would be interested to work on after my PhD. The reason why I decided to go to the summer school was to gain basic knowledge about the application of climate models and to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. As I mainly work with proxies I am not well aware of the functionality of climate models. By attending the summer school I was able to obtain a better feeling for interpreting model results and how to evaluate their reliability. This will help me conducting my PhD project because I compare proxy derived data with model outputs. I also appreciated to talk to many leading scientists in the field of paleoclimatology and to listen to their lectures. I enjoyed the free-time I spent together with the other PhD students and I made many new friends.
I thank GLOMAR very much for funding my trip to Urbino since I could scientifically benefit from the summer school and I made several new contacts which will be fruitful for my future career.
In the first week introductory lectures were held to give an overview of the broad variety of common proxies and different modeling techniques used in paleoclimatology. The lectures addressed e.g. stable isotopes, biomarkers or the ecology of benthic and planktonic foraminifera. The students learned how to reconstruct environmental parameters such as water and air temperature, variations in the carbon cycle, sea-level variations or changes of sea-water pH. The lectures also explained the functionality and the fields of application of different model-types, ranging from simple box models to general circulation models and earth system models. An important aspect of the introductory part was how to establish profound age models for deep time records. The application of biostratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy and astrochronology were introduced with lectures but also practices.
The second part of the summer school focused on case studies addressing current hot topics in paleoclimatology and provided an overview about the state of the art and open questions. They served as examples of how proxies and climate models are applied. Specifically, mechanisms driving Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Events and Paleocene/Eocene hyperthermals were discussed as analogues for future global warming. Furthermore, mechanisms leading to the Greenhouse-Icehouse transition (the glaciation of the Earth’s poles) as well as Quaternary climate dynamics and greenhouse gas variations were addressed. The summer school also included a one-day field trip to outcrops of cretaceous and tertiary deposits. We visited the famous K/T-boundary which is well known for the big mass extinction event that marked the end of dinosaur-era. Next to the K/T boundary we also studied deposits of the PETM and tried to identify orbital cycles in Tertiary deposits.
For me the summer school was a benefit because I was able to refresh my knowledge about the variety of different proxies and past climate change. I got several new ideas what topics I would be interested to work on after my PhD. The reason why I decided to go to the summer school was to gain basic knowledge about the application of climate models and to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. As I mainly work with proxies I am not well aware of the functionality of climate models. By attending the summer school I was able to obtain a better feeling for interpreting model results and how to evaluate their reliability. This will help me conducting my PhD project because I compare proxy derived data with model outputs. I also appreciated to talk to many leading scientists in the field of paleoclimatology and to listen to their lectures. I enjoyed the free-time I spent together with the other PhD students and I made many new friends.
I thank GLOMAR very much for funding my trip to Urbino since I could scientifically benefit from the summer school and I made several new contacts which will be fruitful for my future career.
