Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T20:21:04.031Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Climate modelling and deep-time climate change

from Section 1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2011

By
R. Caballero  and
P. Lynch
Edited by
Trevor R. Hodkinson ,
Michael B. Jones ,
Stephen Waldren  and
John A. N. Parnell
R. Caballero
Affiliation:
University College Dublin, Ireland
P. Lynch
Affiliation:
University College Dublin, Ireland
Trevor R. Hodkinson
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Michael B. Jones
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Stephen Waldren
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
John A. N. Parnell
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin
Get access

Summary

Abstract

Detailed and reliable understanding of past climate change is a key ingredient in unravelling how climate has influenced life on earth and will continue to do so in the future. Palaeoclimatology and climate modelling have both made rapid strides over the past decades, and there has been fruitful two-way interaction between the two fields. The application of climate models to palaeoclimates has proved useful both in interpreting palaeoclimate proxy data and in testing the robustness and generality of climate models. Here, we give an overview of the current state of climate modelling and review recent progress in understanding deep-time climate change, with emphasis on problems where climate models have played a salient role. By suitably adjusting the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases, climate models can be made to replicate many key climatic transitions in the earth's history. However, important discrepancies remain between modelled climates and proxy reconstructions, particularly on the warm end of the spectrum.

Introduction

Climate science deals with reconstructing and explaining the long-term mean and variability of physical conditions in the earth's envelope. A striking feature emerging from such analysis is the vast range of timescales on which there is significant variability. Part of this variability, including the diurnal and annual cycles, is periodic and predictable, but mostly it is random and unpredictable. We know from direct experience that the weather changes from hour to hour, from day to day, and from year to year.

Type
Chapter
Information
Climate Change, Ecology and Systematics , pp. 44 - 66
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbot, D. S. and Tziperman, E. (2008). Sea ice, high-latitude convection, and equable climates. Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L03702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alvarez, L. W., Alvarez, W., Asaro, F. and Michel, H. V. (1980). Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction. Science, 208, 1095–1108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bartoli, G., Sarnthein, M., Weinelt, M. et al. (2005). Final closure of Panama and the onset of northern hemisphere glaciation. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 237, 33–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beerling, D. J. and Berner, R. A. (2005). Feedbacks and the coevolution of plants and atmospheric CO2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 102, 1302–1305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benton, M. J. and Twitchett, R. J. (2003). How to kill (almost) all life: the end-Permian extinction event. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18, 358–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beran, J. (1994). Statistics for Long-Memory Processes. Monographs on Statistics and Applied Probability, Boca Raton, FL: Chapman and Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Berner, R. A. (2004). The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle: CO2 and O2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berner, R. A., Lasaga, A. and Garrels, R. (1983). The carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle and its effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 100 million years. American Journal of Science, 283, 641–683.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Billups, K. and Schrag, D. P. (2003). Application of benthic foraminiferal Mg/Ca ratios to questions of Cenozoic climate change. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 209, 181–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buffett, B. and Archer, D. (2004). Global inventory of methane clathrate: sensitivity to changes in the deep ocean. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 227, 185–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caballero, R. and Langen, P. L. (2005). The dynamic range of poleward energy transport in an atmospheric general circulation model. Geophysical Research Letters, 32, L02705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caldeira, K. and Kasting, J. F. (1992). Susceptibility of the early Earth to irreversible glaciation caused by carbon dioxide clouds. Nature, 359, 226–228.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Charney, J. G., Fjørtoft, R. and Neumann, J. (1950). Numerical integration of the barotropic vorticity equation. Tellus, 2, 237–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coxall, H. K., Wilson, P. A., Pälike, H., Lear, C. H. and Backman, J. (2005). Rapid stepwise onset of Antarctic glaciation and deeper calcite compensation in the Pacific Ocean. Nature, 433, 53–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeConto, R. M. and Pollard, D. (2003). Rapid Cenozoic glaciation of Antarctica induced by declining atmospheric CO2. Nature, 421, 245–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DeConto, R. M., Pollard, D., Wilson, P. et al. (2008). Thresholds for Cenozoic bipolar glaciation. Nature, 455, 652–656.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dickens, G. R. (2003). Rethinking the global carbon cycle with a large, dynamic and microbially mediated gas hydrate capacitor. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 213, 169–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donnadieu, Y., Goddéris, Y., Ramstein, G., Nédélec, A. and Meert, J. (2004). A snowball Earth climate triggered by continental break-up through changes in runoff. Nature, 428, 303–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eldrett, J. S., Harding, I. C., Wilson, P. A., Butler, E. and Roberts, A. P. (2007). Continental ice in Greenland during the Eocene and Oligocene. Nature, 446, 176–179.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Emanuel, K. (2001). Contribution of tropical cyclones to meridional heat transport by the oceans. Journal of Geophysical Research, 106, 14771–14781.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emanuel, K. (2002). A simple model for multiple climate regimes. Journal of Geophysical Research, 107 (D9), 4077.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frakes, L. A., Francis, J. E. and Syktus, J. I. (1992). Climate Modes of the Phanerozoic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenwood, D. R. and Wing, S. L. (1995). Eocene continental climates and latitudinal temperature gradients. Geology, 23, 1044–1048.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgins, J. A. and Schrag, D. P. (2006). Beyond methane: towards a theory for the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 245, 523–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, P. F., Kaufman, A. J., Halverson, G. P. and Schrag, D. P. (1998). A Neoproterozoic snowball Earth. Science, 281, 1342–1346.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huber, M. and Caballero, R. (2003). Eocene El Niño: evidence for robust tropical dynamics in the ‘hothouse’. Science, 299, 877–881.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, M. and Sloan, L. C. (2001). Heat transport, deep waters and thermal gradients: coupled climate simulation of an Eocene greenhouse climate. Geophysical Research Letters, 28, 3841–3884.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huber, M., Brinkhuis, H., Stickley, C. E. et al. (2004). Eocene circulation of the Southern Ocean: was Antarctica kept warm by subtropical waters?Paleoceanography, 19, PA4026.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huybers, P. and Curry, W. (2006). Links between annual, Milankovitch and continuum temperature variability. Nature, 441, 329–332.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
,Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007). Climate Change 2007: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. S. Solomon, D.Qin, M. Manning et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Keigwin, L. (1982). Isotopic paleoceanography of the Caribbean and East Pacific: role of Panama uplift in late Neogene time. Science, 217, 350–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennett, J. P. (1977). Cenozoic evolution of Antarctic glaciation, the circum-Antarctic Ocean, and their impact on global paleoceanography. Journal of Geophysical Research, 82, 3843–3860.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent, D. V. and Muttoni, G. (2008). Equatorial convergence of India and early Cenozoic climate trends. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 105, 16065–16070.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kiehl, J. T. and Shields, C. A. (2005). Climate simulation of the latest Permian: implications for mass extinction. Geology, 33, 757–760.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirschvink, J. L. (1992). Late Proterozoic low-latitude global glaciation: the snowball earth. In The Proterozoic Biosphere: a Multidisciplinary Study, ed. Schopf, J. W. and Klein, C.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 51–52.Google Scholar
Korty, R. L., Emanuel, K. A. and Scott, J. R. (2008). Tropical cyclone-induced upper-ocean mixing and climate: application to equable climates. Journal of Climate, 21, 638–654.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kump, L. R. and Pollard, D. (2008). Amplification of Cretaceous warmth by biological cloud feedbacks. Science, 320, 195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kutzbach, J. E. (1976). The nature of climate and climatic variations. Quaternary Research, 6, 471–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, J. M. (1998). Clarifying the dynamics of the general circulation: Phillips's 1956 experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 79, 39–60.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindzen, R. S., Chou, M. D. and Hou, A. Y. (2001). Does the earth have an adaptive infrared iris?Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 82, 417–432.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Z., Pagani, M., Zinniker, D. et al. (2009). Global cooling during the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition. Science, 323, 1187–1190.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lourens, L. J., Sluijs, A., Kroon, D. et al. (2005). Astronomical pacing of late Palaeocene to early Eocene global warming events. Nature, 435, 1083–1087.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lunt, D. J., Foster, G. L., Haywood, A. M. and Stone, E. J. (2008). Late Pliocene Greenland glaciation controlled by a decline in atmospheric CO2 levels. Nature, 454, 1102–1105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lynch, P. (2006). The Emergence of Numerical Weather Prediction: Richardson's Dream. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mayhew, P. J., Jenkins, G. B. and Benton, T. G. (2008). A long-term association between global temperature and biodiversity, origination and extinction in the fossil record. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 275, 47–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McElwain, J. C., Beerling, D. J. and Woodward, F. I. (1999). Fossil plants and global warming at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary. Science, 285, 1386–1390.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McGrath, R. and Lynch, P., eds. (2008). Ireland in a Warmer World: Scientific Predictions of the Irish Climate in the Twenty-First Century. Dublin: Met Éireann.
Mitchell, J. M. (1976). An overview of climatic variability and its causal mechanisms. Quaternary Research, 6, 481–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molnar, P. and Cane, M. A. (2002). El Niño's tropical climate and teleconnections as a blueprint for pre-Ice Age climates. Paleoceanography, 17, 1021.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Gorman, P. A. and Schneider, T. (2008). The hydrological cycle over a wide range of climates simulated with an idealized GCM. Journal of Climate, 21, 3815–3832.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagani, M., Zachos, J. C., Freeman, K. H., Tipple, B. and Bohaty, S. (2005). Marked decline in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the Paleogene. Science, 309, 600–603.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pearson, P. N., Dongen, B. E., Nicholas, C. J. et al. (2007). Stable warm tropical climate through the Eocene Epoch. Geology, 35, 211–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Philander, S. G. and Fedorov, A. V. (2003). Role of tropics in changing the response to Milankovich forcing some three million years ago. Paleoceanography, 18, 1045.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, N. (1956). The general circulation of the atmosphere: a numerical experiment. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 82, 123–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierrehumbert, R. T. (2004). High levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide necessary for the termination of global glaciation. Nature, 429, 646–649.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pierrehumbert, R. T. (2005). Climate dynamics of a hard snowball earth. Journal of Geophysical Research, 110, D1111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royer, D. L. (2006). CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 70, 5665–5675.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Royer, D. L., Berner, R. A., Montañez, I. P., Tabor, N. J. and Beerling, D. J. (2004). CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate. Geological Society of America Today, 14, 5.Google Scholar
Ruddiman, W. F. and Kutzbach, J. E. (1989). Forcing of late Cenozoic Northern Hemisphere climate by plateau uplift in southern Asia and the American West. Journal of Geophysical Research, 94, 18, 409–418, 427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sagan, C. and Mullen, G. (1972). Earth and Mars: evolution of atmospheres and surface temperatures. Science, 177, 52–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sepkoski, J. J. (1982). Mass extinctions in the Phanerozoic oceans: a review. Geological Society of America Special Papers, 191, 283–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shackleton, N., Backman, J., Zimmerman, H. et al. (1984). Oxygen isotope calibration of the onset of ice-rafting and history of glaciation in the North Atlantic region. Nature, 307, 620–623.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaviv, N. J. and Veizer, J. (2003). Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?Geological Society of America Today, 13, 4–10.Google Scholar
Shellito, C. J., Sloan, L. C. and Huber, M. (2003). Climate sensititvity to atmospheric CO2 levels in the Early-Middle Paleogene. Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology, 193, 113–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sijp, W. P. and England, M. H. (2004). Effect of the Drake Passage throughflow on global climate. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 34, 1254–1266.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sloan, L. C. and Pollard, D. (1998). Polar stratospheric clouds: a high latitude warming mechanism in an ancient greenhouse world. Geophysical Research Letters, 25, 3517–3520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sluijs, A., Schouten, S., Pagani, M. et al. (2006). Subtropical Arctic Ocean temperatures during the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum. Nature, 441, 610–613.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soden, B. J. and Held, I. M. (2006). An assessment of climate feedbacks in coupled ocean–atmosphere models. Journal of Climate, 19, 3354–3360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Svensen, H., Planke, S., Malthe-Sørenssen, A. et al. (2004). Release of methane from a volcanic basin as a mechanism for initial Eocene global warming. Nature, 429, 542–545.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tripati, A. K., Eagle, R. A., Morton, A. et al. (2008). Evidence for glaciation in the Northern Hemisphere back to 44 Ma from ice-rafted debris in the Greenland Sea. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 265, 112–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schootbrugge, B., Quan, T. M., Lindström, S. et al. (2009). Floral changes across the Triassic/Jurassic boundary linked to flood basalt volcanism. Nature Geoscience, 2, 589–594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, J. C. G., Hays, P. B. and Kasting, J. F. (1981). A negative feedback mechanism for the long-term stabilization of the earth's surface temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research, 86, 9776–9782.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wara, M. W., Ravelo, A. C. and Delaney, M. L. (2005). Permanent El Niño-like conditions during the Pliocene warm period. Science, 309, 758–761.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Washington, W. M. and Parkinson, C. L. (2005). An Introduction to Three-Dimensional Climate Modeling, 2nd edn. Sausalito, CA: University Science Books.Google Scholar
Wilby, R. L. and Wigley, T. M. L. (1997). Downscaling general circulation model output: a review of methods and limitations. Progress in Physical Geography, 21, 530–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, J. T. (1966). Did the Atlantic close and then re-open?Nature, 211, 676–681.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wunsch, C. (2003). The spectral description of climate change including the 100 ky energy. Climate Dynamics, 20, 353–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wunsch, C. (2004). Quantitative estimate of the Milankovitch-forced contribution to observed Quaternary climate change. Quarterly Science Reviews, 23, 1001–1012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zachos, J. C., Stott, L. D. and Lohmann, K. C. (1994). Evolution of early Cenozoic marine temperatures. Paleoceanography, 9, 353–387.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zachos, J. C., Pagani, M., Sloan, L., Thomas, E. and Billups, K. (2001). Trends, rythms and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present. Science, 292, 686–693.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zachos, J. C., Röhl, U., Schellenberg, S. A. et al. (2005). Rapid acidification of the ocean during the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum. Science, 308, 1611–1615.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zeebe, R. E., Zachos, J. C. and Dickens, G. R. (2009). Carbon dioxide forcing alone insufficient to explain Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum warming. Nature Geoscience, 2, 576–580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×