7th Jul, 2022
U.S. Cellular
Question
Asked 25th Feb, 2016
What are the greatest challenges currently in paleoclimatology?
I would like to know your opinion about what are currently the greatest unsolved problems or opportunities for further research in palaeoclimatology.
Most recent answer
Here is an idea for a research project. I recently published a paper on using time series models to predict paleoclimatic data sets over long horizons, on a scale of several millennia. The link is appended below, and the paper is open-access.
One natural question is how well physics-based models can predict over similar horizons. Studies from other fields have found that statistical models generally forecast more accurately over shorter horizons, while physics models are generally better as the horizon extends. This in itself would be an interesting comparison. A related idea is whether statistical adjustment of physics models would forecast more accurately than the physics models on their own.
In my mind, this would make for a useful study, but it would have to be done through a lab or university which has access to physics models and to funding.
Forecasting Paleoclimatic Data with Time Series Models. Results in Geophysical Sciences, 6, 2021, 10015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ringps.2021.100015
Popular answers (1)
How about: humans are the greatest challenge? The idea that a capitalistic economy based on consumerism is the "best"? That we need to have the latest smartphone, buy "fast" fashion, eat meat, follow influencer, follow celebrities...to be humans? Human greed is the greatest challenge to Climate Change. Failure to be capable of being able to cope with less things and enjoy Life for what it is. But we all fear Death, don't we? And we fill this fear with meaningless things. If we were Penguins, we would Live and Die because this is how it is. We would not need more than we need. And we could live in a much better World.
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All Answers (50)
Quick thought--higher degree of resolution of investigated sites (all too many are still scattered such that it is difficult to get a good local/regional picture of the dynamics of change over time), as well as better 14-C control on sites investigated. More detailed mapping of pre-settlement vegetation is important, as is adding to the already large data set of modern pollen (surface samples) and pre-settlement fossil pollen spectra.
In absence of delta O18, is there any other method of paleoclimate determination? Specially in case of deep sea sediments, beyond CCD, where calcareous foraminifera dissolve.
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What caused the abrupt warmings at the start of the Bolling-Allerod inter-stadial and the abrupt warming at the start of the Holocene, and could a similar event occur as a result of AGW.
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These are more "methods" type questions, but I think they're useful to consider.
- How do we reliably compare multiple proxies that are sampled at different resolutions with different spatial coverage that are all reconstructing some part of the climate space, but (usually) through some sort of filter (biological, physical, etc.)?
- How do we generate estimates of uncertainty that are reliable and represent the true uncertainty of our models, accounting for both temporal and proxy uncertainty?
- How do we represent our data in a way that captures the processes used to generate our estimates in a reproducible and transparent manner? [this is discussed in a paper on Climate of the Past Discussions by Nick McKay and Julien Emile-Geay: http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/cp-2015-109/)
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How can we diversify our tool chest to obtain a clearer picture of paleoclimate trends in relation to paleo- precipitation patterns for North America?
I would say that one major challenge is that statistics have come to take so much place in palaeoecology that we sort of lost foot from the field. There is a danger of using overly-complicated statistical tools without completely understanding their functioning, the assumptions they are based on, and their limits. It might sound "cliché", but statistics will tell you what you want to hear. But what does it really mean ecologically? Does it even make sense?
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I think the greatest challenge is one - the validity of the orbital theory of paleoclimate.
After publication of D. Paillard paper ( QSR, 2015, V.107, p. 11-24) the main question is the next: "What drives climate in Pleistocene - orbital variations insolation, or oscillations of CO2?" See also discussion in Quat. Sci. Rev., 2015, V. 120, p. 126-132
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Quantitative reconstructions of a global rainfall pattern from different time slices of geological time.
Yusheng Liu has a good point here. There is far more imprecision in precipitation reconstructions than in temperature reconstructions and this needs to be addressed. A lot of reconstructions are on "received water" instead of precipitation (water can come from melting ice or snow, for example). In addition, the moment in the year when precipitation is received is of major importance and annual precipitation is likely not much useful.
From a neoecological perspective I think the challenges associated with most paleoclimatological models is the applicability to near modern and modern scenarios - especially in topographically complex regions. This is tied to issues associated with the spatial resolution of the proxies being used to infer climate (i.e., pollen studies) as well as the temporal control of the studies used to generate paleoclimate models (late - Holocene and past few hundred years). Improving spatial and temporal resolution of paleoclimate models in a Holocene/Anthropocene context could make these models much more applicable to ecology and landscape management questions related to conservation and restoration etc...
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Dear Dr. Linholm, I must follow my bias here, the greatest challenge facing paleoclimatology is to transform what we into applied paleoclimatology. We are faced with global change that will dramatically change our world, our cultures, and our lives in a matter of decades. The fact that we, as palaeoclimatologists, have not become public advocates of addressing these changes is our greatest challenge. We all know not only that there will be changes, but also what they may be. Thus far, global forums are attempting to address how we may slow or reverse these changes. However, I do not see that much progress is being made in this area. In fact, in the US, interest groups, and conservatives are actually succeeding in reversing such attempts. I believe that what we must do is prepare people for the inevitable. We must prepare agendas of change so that how we live, were we live and what we do can adjust to the catastrophic changes that we face. I don't believe anymore that it is a matter of if we will experience these changes, but when.
What I have observed in Iran the last two years, has brought me to the brink of despair. The changes have already progressed to such an extent that the international treaties on global change will be totally ineffectual in dealing with what has already happened. In fact, the changes are accelerating. We as palaeoclimatologists need to become activists collaborating with social scientists and technologists to prepare for the new reality.
Sounds grim doesn't it....well believe it or not, I am an optimist, if I were not, I would just pack my bags and find a place to spend the next few decades until the end.
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10th Jun, 2016
Dear Peter,
Thank you for sharing your worries. However, in my mind your points of view seem to reflect ethical or moral issues rather than scientific challenges or problems. Scientists as advocates of political agenda is certainly controversial and hot topic leading to interesting further questions. I welcome variable opinions and think that scientists should express their worldviews and ideological beliefs.
Hi Markus,
I think we have enough advocates on both sides of the global warming controversy. What would help is more proxy data from micropaleontologists and geochemists aimed at helping to verify some of the numerical models that are being used to predict future temperatures.
Markus,
Scientific and ethical issues are not unrelated. If an abrupt climate change is about to occur then it is the ethical duty of scientists to warn that it will cause disruption to global food supplies in an already over populated world.
But we do not know what causes the abrupt climate changes which happen during Bond cycles. Will global warming cause another to occur, similar to that at the start of the Holocene when the sea ice which had spread as far south as Ireland suddenly retreated to the Arctic? Will the current retreat of the Arctic sea ice lead to another abrupt climate change driven by the positive ice-albedo feedback and the conversion of the Arctic from a continental to maritime climate.
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12th Jun, 2016
Alastair,
You may well be right but I think that science and ethics are connected only if a scientist chooses to do the connection. It is not obvious to me whether or not scientific knowledge helps to choose an appropriate approach to ethical issues. My first impression is that science is more confident with the “true or false” than “right or wrong” questions. Thinking about your example I wonder why a scientist should care and what procedures is she or he supposed to follow with the new knowledge containing potential warning to mankind! Such a message does not easily translate to political agenda or advocacy and the poor scientist is lost in murky waters. A responsible scientist then also becomes answerable to the society for these ethical choices and not just the science. I am looking for paths to find justifying reasons for action.
12th Jun, 2016
C.T. Schafer:
Do you mean that scientists should not act on global problems at all and just continue collecting more and more data.
Marcus,
if a scientist is in a theatre and sees smoke coming from an exit door, is it not his duty to shout "Fire!"
We know that NH temperatures jumped by several degrees Celsius within a decade twice in the last 15,000 years, as the planet warmed at the end of the last ice age. If a scientist knows that, then is it not his duty to warn the general public that this could happen again, as we warm from an increase in CO2?
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I agree with Alastair that scientists have a duty to warn the public of the environmental, economic and social issues related to climate change. However, it is not an easy task and, if done in the wrong way (even though with good intentions), it might result in a result opposite to what was expected. See this blog post for an interesting discussion on that:
Hence, I think we need both more (and better) data and more (and better) advocates. Climate science is much complicated and climate scientists are the ones with the best understanding of it (or at least they should be!). They need to ring the alarm first and clearly, but then scientific columnists and journalists need to jump in to help make sense out of all this and make the info digestible to the public, all political views combined.
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Заготовка бивней мамонта приобретает сегодня варварский ни кем не контролируемый характер. Только через Беларусь в течение 2020 года транзитом из России вывезено более 20 тонн. Основные страны потребители: Китай, Германия, США
I have translated Dmitry Ivanov 's post using Goole translate. Here it is:
"The harvesting of mammoth tusks is acquiring today a barbaric, uncontrolled character. More than 20 tons were exported from Russia through Belarus alone during 2020. Main consumer countries: China, Germany, USA ."
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The extraction of mammoth ivory in Russia has been known since the 18th century. But at present, due to the warming of the climate, active melting of permafrost has begun. At the same time, there is an intensive thawing of the excavated residues that are contained in the permafrost rocks. I fully agree with the facts published by Barry Turner (A trade in remains of
a long.docx). Repeatedly talked with those who are engaged in the export of mammoth tusks and was himself present when the mammoth bone passed through the Belarusian customs near Minsk. Here the mammoth bone is transported quite officially with all the documentation issued.
At the same time, without diminishing the significance of the described problem, the problem of melting permafrost raises a number of much more important and more global environmental problems than the barbaric mining and trade in mammoth tusk.
I would further elaborate Charles Addey reply.
The paleoclimate study provides baseline characteristics of the past natural climate variability and its controlling factors, which can be used to predict the future climatic conditions in a global warming scenario. In the last few decades, there has been an unprecedented push to understand past climatic conditions to comprehend the potential change in future climatic variability and its societal impact. However, due to the lack of long-term data, unavailability of modern calibration data, and proper understanding of the non-linear response of proxies in various environmental conditions, it is always difficult to perform paleoclimate studies.
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What is how the monsoon systems that will react to the climate change?
I think this chapter could help you;
Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, January 2007,
That's available on the ResearchGate Server for download.
How about: humans are the greatest challenge? The idea that a capitalistic economy based on consumerism is the "best"? That we need to have the latest smartphone, buy "fast" fashion, eat meat, follow influencer, follow celebrities...to be humans? Human greed is the greatest challenge to Climate Change. Failure to be capable of being able to cope with less things and enjoy Life for what it is. But we all fear Death, don't we? And we fill this fear with meaningless things. If we were Penguins, we would Live and Die because this is how it is. We would not need more than we need. And we could live in a much better World.
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One challenge in paleoclimatology is the "400kyrs problem". According to Milankovitch theory, the period of long eccentricity is approximately 405kyrs. This period can be noticed in δ13C cyclicity. The frequency change in deep marine δ13C records from normal 400kyrs in pliocene to an approximately 500kyrs period during middle and late Pleistocene ( Wang et al 2003,2004,2010) is still a mystery because Milankovitch theory does not predict the 500kyr period.
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One of the greatest challenges to paleoclimatology is that many of the commentators on climate change are selective about the data. Where it challenges current consensus it is simply dismissed as an aberration but where it agrees it is unchallengeable fact.
When politics and ideology come into conflict with science all reason goes right out of the window.
I do agree with Silvia however that the short term gratification of the capitalist economy is one of the driving factors behind climate change. The now anachronistic idea that growth means prosperity per se is absurd and a threat to us all on many levels.
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8th Oct, 2021
Thanks Barry! I agree with your two first paragraphs. However, I do not see any absurdity in capitalism driving prosperity! Where is the threat!
Markus
The problem with prosperity driven by ultra-consumerism is that it leads to the kind of environmental problems we are faced with today. We can forget about the hype and insanity of organisations like Extinction Rebellion et al whose antics offer no realistic solution to the problems of climate change and plastic pollution but we as a species must grasp the nettle and deal with what we can.
If we gauge prosperity by how many clothes we own or how often we upgrade our cell phones we must consider the negative effects of that.
The Reality Equation: Sustainable development + adaptation = resilience + prosperity. As such, does the UNIPCC use climate change scaremongering based on unverified models to provoke sustainable development? At the end of the day, agreement between paleoclimate data sets from many areas of the Earth will provide the proper answers for developing effective policy for sustainable development that is aimed at creating resilience from factors and processes that are harmful to humans.
9th Oct, 2021
Barry
In a free market economy we are free to make choices. Such freedom is usually considered part of human happiness and wellbeing. I do not believe this freedom is the root cause of abuse or addiction or ultraconsumption (e.g. telephones, clothes, drugs, alcohol) and thus environmental harm.
Indeed, the root cause of consumerism is buried deep within the human psyche and is universal to all cultures, even those eschewing wealth.
The problems it causes in our societies though are numerous. The desire for ever more material gain continues long after needs are met, in fact those with large amounts of material possessions often crave ever more.
However at some point this is going to need to be tempered. As the population gets bigger and consumerism spreads ever further we will eventually run out of things and water and food may be on the list of shortages.
At that stage the free market economy will be abandoned.
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I think that the major challenge is a lack of positive implication of economy and politicians who do not take into account the environmental dimension in their decisions. Despite the advances in our scientific knowledge, the link between scientists and decision makers is often broken.
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As a (actually marginal) palaeoclimate researcher, I believe that the big challenge palaeoclimatology faces is that it has failed to date to reach the common people with its message: rapid climate changes in the past resulted in extinctions. Irrespective to the cause (which are at times still speculative), but there had been severe extinctions in the deep past. It is the unexpected...reaching tipping points. We have...or will soon, reached (reach) a tipping point. Hence, we are facing extinction. It is...normal in Earth's history. This time, however, we know the cause. This cause is us, but the result will be the same as huge volcanic activity...sudden methane release etc....
So, palaeoclimate can potentially provide the public with the correct information...this is what could happen. That is why we need to change. We have been confronted with the IPCC predictive scenarios. But we failed to show the actual scenarios. We know what happened in the past. So, that could be how we may contribute to change the attitude of people. As palaeoclimatologists we can change the human way of thinking by telling the right stories. MAriem has got the point...the link is somewhat broken. Shall we amend this?
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12th Nov, 2021
THE greatest challenge of all is the really differentiating between short Milankovitch cycles of 20K and 40K and human activity that is likely insufficient to override the impact of orbital forcing.
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12th Nov, 2021
Among other things it has become increasingly difficult to separate the science from the politics, the truth from fiction. That has been apparent recently in news reporting from Cop26.
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Our individual task is to teach politicians (one-on-one) about real paleoclimate data using various media pathways, email and phone calls (assuming that they read from time-to-time). The news media are void of ethical standards when it comes to reporting on anthropogenic climate deliberations - especially when the source is the UNIPCC (very sad but like many other scaremongering issues that they promote; it's all about money and retaining paying readership). Of course with politicians, the incentive to follow the anthropogenic climate change herd is mostly about retaining the support of poorly-educated voters and those that confuse climate trends and weather conditions.
Мы научились проводить реконструкции климата и условий среды, даже весьма отдаленных геологических эпох, но, к сожалению, мы еще далеко не всегда можем спрогнозировать изменение климата даже на ближайшую перспективу, не говоря уже на отдаленный отрезок времени. Установление динамики изменения климата на длительных отрезках времени, осознание точного "состояния" и особенностей нынешнего климата в рамках палеоклиматической шкалы и прогноз изменения климата на длительную перспективу - вот основная задача палеоклиматологии.
Dear @Markus Lindholm,
Thank you for your interesting question which, inevitably, turned to a political debate. I have a few suggestions:
- You say that it is increasingly difficult to separate science from politics and the truth from fiction; in an article published in Science in 2018, Wellerstein argues that science is political, which I totally agree with since we are a highly social (and political) species. This aspect of our behaviour deeply conditions the scientific questions we formulate and our interpretations of our scientific results. It is even more true for sciences that deal with the past... Thus, I suspect (but with no paper to mention, sorry) that the idealistic separation between sciences and politics can lead to catastrophic endings, like the threat of climate change among others, where decision-making is totally decorrelated from those who interpret the data, and the free market idelology has a stronger power (and more expensive lobbyists) than the scientific knowledge.
- You also assert that « in a free economy we are free to make our choices ». I am not convinced that this is true, even just refering to a very famous reference like the 1928 Propaganda from E. Bernays, which gives several examples of how communication and advertisement totally bends the reality of « free choice » in a « free market ». People are not only free, they are also submitted to a materialistic history and official or commercial communications on a daily basis. I'd add that conclusions that all mankind supposedly would consume because of some universality of consumerism (@Barry Turner) can not be proven (in terms of science), and the observations in the Amazon from someone like Philippe Descola, among others, might indicate pretty much the opposite. To finish on this point, free market is an ideology, in the same way that free choices can mean many things, according to the place you are speaking from. The idea that the free market would be opposed to the rest of the social structures as more natural or even more free can be seen as a fallacy. This vision of this type of economy also has roots in ideologies that overinterpret and cherrypick in darwinism to justify structures of domination and tries to rethink the question of individual responsibilities in highly complex social structures. These ideologies have been strongly developed in H. Spencer, F. Hayek or M. Friedman, who influenced politics and even supported, in the case of Friedman, the strong limitation of freedom in Chile in order to develop the free market.
- That said, for what concerns paleoclimatology, I do not think that solid, large-scale study has convincingly tackled the issue of the late Pleistocene large fauna exctinctions. The dispersal of Homo sapiens could be one explanation, but there might also be others, like a different development of the Pleniglacial period, or some not yet identified problem in the trophic chain somewhere, etc. Producing a synthetic work regarding these topics could very well find its place in the current debates, such as the hypothetical beginning of the so-called Anthropocene, which poses problems to geologists.
Kind regards
@Corentin, Please read a few TWTW editorials about climate science. They should give you a more comprehensive perspective. Best regards.
23rd Mar, 2022
Thanks Corentin for your insightful comment.
I seem to agree with your first point. We are highly political, imaginative, religious as well as group-conscious species. However, we also seem to percieve and share a common outer reality, independent of our belief systems. If this outer reality exists, a distiction or separation is perhaps not purely artificial and imagination may be separated from reality.
In addition I don't see top-down government regulation working any better with scientific knowlwdge than free markets.
Concerning the second point, I was also thinking a free market of ideas (and maybe ideologies), not mainly consumerism and materialism. Why not let all ideas compete! In my mind people should be free to choose. Naturally this requires freedom of speech. There are many examples where an increase in individual freedoms have produced overall happiness in societies.
The main challenge (in the sense of a new frontier) is to incorporate the variability of paleo-atmospheric density into the overall framework of paleoclimate research. The effects of changes in air density/pressure have enormous impacts on heat, rainfall, Hadley Cell width and strength, UVB radiation, outgassing of CO2 andand canopy height (to mention just a few).
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Cloud formation is not understood now, and much less then.
Another one is that it is too tempting to include current political debate in research.
When it comes to applying knowledge about what happened previously we should notice that we have other means to adapt than was previously available. In modern days, there are over 90% fewer deaths from weather-related events (hurricanes, floods, etc) than in 1900, despite the fact that more people live in dangerous areas.
Christer Johansson Adaptation is the name of the game, especially since today's societies have many more tools than those that lived, for example, through the Iron/Roman Age Climate Optimum. Remember the Reality Equation which states that: Sustainable Development + Adaptation = Resilience + Prosperity. The first term of this theoretical relationship includes addressing such things as urban air pollution and appropriate pubic transportation for all kinds of logistical situations.
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Dear all,
palaeoclimatology still lacks a full understanding of the climate system. Despite decades of research and thousands of papers on Plio-Pleistocene climatology, there are still a number of key unresolved issues that are objectively surprising. Clearly, a full understanding of how climate has worked in the past is the key to an unambiguous understanding of what climate change is today. But the latter is another issue.
Here are some palaeoclimatology topics still to be clarified:
- some people believe that the astronomical theory IS the climate theory. However, the more relevant Plio-Pleistocene variability (~76%) can be attributed to a forcing related to the Earth dynamics and its very long-term effects (trend component) on the atmosphere composition, but this forcing has not yet been fully demonstrated;
- the 100-kyr cycle problem associated with the Mid-Pleistocene Transition is still unresolved. The short eccentricity cycle is a kind of 'Cinderella' of the palaeoclimatology;
- climate responses to forcings result from strong nonlinear feedback mechanisms amplification which, however, are little known;
- It is still unclear why the Pleistocene glacial/interglacial cycles are so different from each other in terms of amplitude, asymmetry and duration.
- the saw-tooth shape of the Pleistocene glacial cycles (slow cooling and rapid warming) need to be clarified;
- it is not still satisfactory how the climate system evolves from glacial to interglacial states and viceversa. This is related to the true nature of glacial terminations and glacial inceptions, which are still an open question;
- suborbital cycles of climate are poorly understood both qualitatively and quantitatively (i.e. impact on climate).
In my opinion, this lack of interpretative quality leap is mainly the result of the current paradigm stagnation, which is essentially based on Fourier spectra of bulk signals, qualitative-based interpretation and a nominal-centric view of climate forcings. There is the need to change the paradigm towards a quantitative approach of signal decomposition with advanced spectral methods (which have existed for some time), and a change of perspective on climate forcings from nominal-centric to response-centric.
For some years now, I have been devoting my experience to promoting this change of mentality (with little result given the few citations) as part of the ‘Quantitative Impact of Forcings on the Climate System’ project. However, there is still much work to be published, if possible.
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Here is an idea for a research project. I recently published a paper on using time series models to predict paleoclimatic data sets over long horizons, on a scale of several millennia. The link is appended below, and the paper is open-access.
One natural question is how well physics-based models can predict over similar horizons. Studies from other fields have found that statistical models generally forecast more accurately over shorter horizons, while physics models are generally better as the horizon extends. This in itself would be an interesting comparison. A related idea is whether statistical adjustment of physics models would forecast more accurately than the physics models on their own.
In my mind, this would make for a useful study, but it would have to be done through a lab or university which has access to physics models and to funding.
Forecasting Paleoclimatic Data with Time Series Models. Results in Geophysical Sciences, 6, 2021, 10015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ringps.2021.100015
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