DFG - Research Unit - Understanding Cenozoic Climate Cooling: The Role of the Hydrological Cycle, the Carbon Cycle, and Vegetation Changes
Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven
Zentrum für Marine Umweltwissenschaften, Universität Bremen
Senckenberg Institut, Frankfurt
Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie, Hamburg
Forschungszentrum Jülich
Laboratoire de Physique Atmosphérique et Planetaire, Université de Liège, Belgium
Major objectives of the proposed Research Unit will be:
- to examine Cenozoic climate and vegetation changes by compiling and evaluating existing data sets and by own reconstructions from terrestrial and marine sediments
- to quantify the impact of vegetation shifts on terrestrial carbon pools
- to estimate the climate potential of methane associated with Cenozoic biome shifts
- to study the effects of changed paleogeographic and paleoenvironmental boundary conditions on the Cenozoic climate system, such as atmospheric and oceanic circulation regimes
- to identify feedbacks and synergies in the atmosphere-ocean-vegetation system through numerical modeling under different Cenozoic boundary conditions
- to validate model results by paleoenvironmental reconstructions, geostatistical methods and direct simulation of proxy data, such as deuterium in precipitation or the isotopic composition of marine sediments
