Opportunities Arising from Upcoming Modelling of Climates in the Geologic Past

Prof. Chris Brierley

University College London

邀请人：周天军 研究员

2025年5月30日 上午10:00

3号楼1218会议室

报告摘要

Paleoclimate information has played a key role in demonstrating how the Earth System responds to a variety of external forcings and how the earth’s climate is tightly related to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Although no strict analogue of possible future climate states exists, testing our understanding of the earth system, as embedded in earth system models, for conditions widely different from the historical period, is made possible by the existence of paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. Since its start in 1995, PMIP, the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (https://pmip.lsce.ipsl.fr/), has fostered and coordinated model-model and model-data comparisons for key periods: the cold Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) from 21,000 years ago, interglacials conditions with their 'green Sahara', and the Pliocene warm period were the key periods for PMIP4-CMIP6, with specific targets for each period. For instance, the enhanced monsoons and response of the northern high latitudes for the mid-Holocene, the fate of Arctic sea ice and climate of the last interglacial, large spatial gradients and equilibrium climate sensitivity for the LGM and Pliocene. In addition, each of these periods stood as reference for further PMIP experiments aimed to better understand the response of the climate system to external forcings. For the next CMIP phase, PMIP continues to contribute studies on the responses to external forcings, with a Fast Track simulation called abrupt-127k looking at the response to changes in the seasonal distribution of incoming solar radiation.  

报告人介绍

Prof. Chris Brierley is a climate modeller at University College London. He is a co-chair of the Paleoclimate Model Intercomparison Project, so therefore involved in organising their contribution to CMIP7. He runs UCL's Climate Change MSc and chairs the university's partnership with the UK Met Office. His particular research interest is looking how climate variability shifted in the geologic past and how we can use these insights to constrain future projections.