Why Paleoclimate?

As questions arise about the impact humans are having on the global climate, it is becoming increasingly important to understand the natural fluctuations of the climate. Paleoclimate studies provide a baseline for what is ‘natural’ variability by going back in time well beyond the period over which humans have been recording the climate. This baseline is important to address whether the changes that have occurred over the last century are due to human activity.

Why the tropics?

Almost half the area of the Earth lies within the tropics. The tropics are also the heat engine for the climate system, where solar energy is converted into atmospheric and oceanic motions. However, most of the work that has been done observing and modelling past climate changes has focused on the high northern latitudes, particularly the North Atlantic. High latitude records from this region have revealed complex and often surprising behavior of the climate system. This includes the recurrence approximately every 100,000 years of major glaciations, and abrupt climate changes that recur every several thousand years. Many of these events also appear in the tropics, though with a different character. It is important to characterize and model changes in the tropics in order to fully understand past climate changes.

What do we do?

At RSMAS, we take several different approaches to tropical paleoclimatology including both observational work and modelling studies. Click on the links below to find out more about ongoing projects at RSMAS:

• Climate change and the collapse of the Mayan Civilization
• Coral records of climate change in the Atlantic
• Modelling past changes in the El Nino/Southern Oscialltion