Despite improved understanding of global and regional climate change and increased model complexity, the relative contribution of different feedbacks (clouds, ocean circulation, vegetation and its coupling with water and carbon cycles, ice…) continues to vary from model to model, leading to mismatches between climate reconstructions and simulations. Acquiring new Quaternary paleoclimatic records and comparing them with model results is, more than ever, the basic science needed to explain current climate change and improve climate projections.
In this lecture, María Fernanda Sánchez Goñi, Professor of Paleoclimatology, will briefly introduce the discovery of the ice ages, the astronomical theory explaining them, and the unexpected identification of abrupt climate variability (millennial-to-centennial) in the 1980s.
After summarizing the evolution of global climate over the last million year, she will show its impact on different regions of the planet. She will highlight the mismatch between past climates and model simulations and, in particular, the problems linked to modelling regional responses to past global climate changes, for example in monsoon regions.
These issues have strong implications for future climate models, projections of sea level rise and regional impact of climate change. Basic research on the Quaternary is still needed to evaluate model simulations and improve climate projections.
16/05/2023
The webinar can be seen in here: https://council.science/events/theory-ice-ages-ipcc-climate/