An essential component of understanding climate change, and predicting its future progression and consequences, is determining the course and drivers of past changes in the Earth system from the geological record.
The rock record provides us not only with a spectrum of events of different magnitudes and drivers, but also the opportunity to study the feedbacks and recovery from the event, as well as the onset.
The Palaeoenvironmental Change Research Group is particularly interested in the following themes:
Members of the team who research palaeoenvironmental change have long-standing reputations for the reconstruction of past environments from chemical, biological and physical measurements in sedimentary deposits and other natural archives. We use these measurements to advance our knowledge of atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic processes, carbon cycling among Earth's reservoirs, and the interaction of life with the environment. We address fundamental problems spanning from annual to multi-million year timescales and from the last few 100 years back to 100s of millions of years ago.
On 22 November Professors Clare Warren, Mark Brandon and Richard Holliman, and Dr Barbara Kunz travelled to Manchester for an OU Graduation Ceremony.
An EEES researcher is leading a new Natural Environmental Research Council-funded project to improve our ability to predict climate change using cutting-edge analysis of fossilised algae molecules.