Climate: Past, Present & Future

How humans are influencing climate change and its significance in defining a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene

Colin Waters, Colin Summerhayes and Simon Turner April 26, 2021

Modern atmospheric CO2 increases, driven mainly by human activities, have led to a marked increase in global mean temperatures and rates of sea-level rise in part through melting of ice-sheets. (© C N Waters).

The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is the body tasked to propose a formal definition for the Anthropocene as a geological time unit. Join us at the EGU2021 General Assembly on Wednesday 28th April at 14:15-15:00 CEST for a series of presentations on the Anthropocene in session SSP2.6. The Anthropocene concept Geologists cope with the enormity of 4.5 billion years of Earth history by divid ...[Read More]

Generation #polarprediction

François Massonnet April 14, 2021

Arctic reflection by Fabien Darrouzet, Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Brussels, Belgium. Credit: Fabien Darrouzet (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu).

More than 11 years ago, I joined the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium as a teaching assistant. The 2007-2009 International Polar Year (IPY), a worldwide collaborative effort aiming at better understanding our polar regions, had just finished, and the scientific community was concerned about the sudden drop in the summer Arctic sea ice extent that had occurred two years befor ...[Read More]

Presenting a new European loess map

Janina Nett and Stephan Pötter March 31, 2021

Loess is a silt-sized, aeolian sediment that was produced in large quantities in past geological eras of mid-latitude Europe and Asia, among others (Fig. 1). It is used in Quaternary science to infer about past climatic and environmental conditions. Generally, layers of loess formed during cold and dry periods, while soils formed within/on top the loess during warmer and wetter periods. These soil ...[Read More]

Reconstructing ice sheets and topography of the past

Evan J. Gowan March 24, 2021

Figure 1: Paleotopography of the Arctic at the Last Glacial Maximum, at 20,000 years before present (yr BP). Ice sheets covered much of northern Europe and North America. The lower sea level caused a land bridge to form between Siberia and Alaska. Black lines are the modern coastline.

One of the most profound consequences of past climate changes are the geologically rapid (<100,000 year) changes in global topography. For thousands of years, large ice sheets, similar to what currently exists in Greenland and Antarctica, waxed and waned on North America and Europe. Only 20,000 years ago, if you were sitting in the middle of Canada or Sweden, you would be under thousands ...[Read More]