Hot science comes to Wellington

News release: Hot science comes to Wellington
GNS Science

Over the next two weeks, the world's leading authorities on the history of climate change will converge on Wellington for a conference on the greenhouse climate of the Paleogene period, 65 to 35 million years ago

Over the next two weeks, the world's leading authorities on the history of climate change will converge on Wellington for a conference on the greenhouse climate of the Paleogene period, 65 to 35 million years ago.

The Paleogene was the last time that the Earth experienced greenhouse climate conditions and associated global warming on a scale that is comparable to projected future global warming.

The conference will include a one day "Greenhouse Earth Symposium" on 14 January in which leading international research scientists will showcase the role that research into the ancient greenhouse world of the Paleogene plays in advancing understanding of modern climate change.

Presentations will be targeted towards a non-specialist audience with an interest in the science behind climate change and, specifically, greenhouse gas-induced global warming.

Symposium speakers will explore the role of greenhouse gases in driving Paleogene episodes of extreme global warming; the consequences of global warming for biological systems; the nature of natural feedback systems that serve to modulate climate and atmospheric greenhouse gas levels, and the effectiveness of climate models in simulating greenhouse climate states.

A common theme to several presentations is the discovery that during times of extreme global warming sea temperatures in polar and temperate regions, such as New Zealand, soared to levels far higher than is predicted by climate models.

The symposium will conclude with a public lecture by Professor James Zachos from the University of California, Santa Cruz, on "Rapid global warming and ocean acidification 55 million years ago: Lessons for the future" in Oceania at Te Papa, 5.30-6.30 pm, Wednesday, 14 January.

The conference, "Climatic and Biotic Events of the Paleogene", has drawn together 130 scientists and students from over 20 countries, and runs from Monday 12 of January to Thursday 15 of January.

The conference will be preceded and followed by field excursions to examine New Zealand's unique record of climate change during Paleogene times in Canterbury, Marlborough, Otago, Westland, Hawkes Bay and even the Chatham Islands.

In Hawkes Bay, conference delegates will be hosted by the local iwi at Rongomaraeroa Marae, Porangahau, which is an area of special significance for the development of New Zealand's Paleogene geological record.

The conference is hosted by GNS Science and the Greenhouse Earth Symposium is sponsored by Victoria University of Wellington through the Climate Change Research Institute, the Antarctic Research Centre and the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Some highlights from the Symposium presentations will be:

• The yearly mean temperature of the south Tasman Sea soared to 34 C during a greenhouse gas-forced global warming episode, 55 million years ago, when tropical algae ranged into Antarctic waters (Appy Sluijs, presentation 2).

• This global warming episode had dramatic effects on terrestrial ecosystems, including major migrations, dwarfing of mammals, and changes in plant abundance that resulted from atmospheric composition as well as climatic shifts (Scott Wing, presentation 6).

• Instead of tundra, the Canadian Arctic supported temperate rainforests 57 to 45 million years ago when atmospheric CO2 was 2 to 4 times pre-industrial levels (Dave Greenwood, presentation 9).

• New Zealand's climate oscillated between cool-temperate and hyper-tropical conditions between 60 and 50 million years ago in response to changes in atmospheric greenhouse gas levels (Chris Hollis, presentation 11).

• How a very severe environmental catastrophe 65 million years ago, namely the impact of a giant asteroid, disrupted the global carbon cycle with long term effects on the world's biota and climate (Ellen Thomas, presentation 14)

List of presentations:

1. Greenhouse and icehouse transitions and the role of feedbacks - James Zachos, University of California, Santa Cruz

2. New insights into Paleogene hyperthermals from marginal marine records - Appy Sluijs, Utrecht University

3. The world without us: Paleogene hyperthermals and lessons for future climate - Richard Norris, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

4. Global temperature over the last 100 million years: from greenhouse to icehouse - Peter Barrett, Victoria University of Wellington

5. An Austral view of the history of Paleogene mammals and birds - Ewan Fordyce, University of Otago

6. Life on land during the last great warming - Scott Wing, Smithsonian Institution, Washington

7. A multiple proxy approach to estimating hydrology during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum - Francesca Smith, Northwestern University, Illinois

8. A giant Arctic freshwater pond at the end of the early Eocene - Implications for ocean heat transport and carbon cycling - Henk Brinkhuis, Utrecht University

9. Arctic Paleogene forests and climate - David Greenwood, Brandon University, Canada

10. How global warming affects tropical rainforests? A Paleogene perspective - Carlos Jaramillo, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama

11. Climate see-saws in Paleogene New Zealand - Chris Hollis, GNS Science

12. Eocene ocean temperatures and climate gradients - Paul Pearson, Cardiff University

13. Tracing greenhouse carbon using carbon isotopes - Gabriel Bowen, Purdue University, Indiana

14. The Cretaceous/Paleogene carbon cycle - Ellen Thomas, Yale University

15. Heating up a warm world - Matthew Huber, Purdue University, Indiana

For more information on the conference, symposium and field trips go to:

http://www.gns.cri.nz/cbep2009/

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