PAGES - Past Global Changes

Paper questions fluctuation

Details: Published: Wednesday, 08 August 2018 16:27

A new paper from PAGES' PALSEA working group questions the occurrence of a rapid sea-level fluctuation within the Last Interglacial.

Authors, led by the group's next phase co-leader Natasha Barlow, synthesize published geomorphological and stratigraphic indicators from the Last Interglacial, and find no evidence for ice-sheet regrowth within the warm interglacial climate.

They also identify uncertainties in the interpretation of local relative sea-level data that underpin the reconstructions of global mean sea level.

Read the Nature Geoscience paper, titled "Lack of evidence for a substantial sea-level fluctuation within the Last Interglacial" here.

Find out more about the PALSEA working group here.

GPWG2 QI special issue

Details: Published: Monday, 30 July 2018 16:32

PAGES' Global Paleofire Working Group 2 (GPWG2) recently released a Special Issue of Quaternary International, titled "The Fire-Human-Climate-Vegetation Nexus".

The group presents nine original manuscripts focusing on paleofire studies that contribute to our understanding of natural and anthropogenic causes of fire through time. It is global in scope, with manuscripts that explore local-to-regional fire histories from five continents: Africa (Kenya), Asia (China), Europe (Romania and Ireland), Southern America (Bolivia) and Northern America (western Canada and the US Rocky Mountains).

Access the special issue, edited by Boris Vannière and Mitchell Power, here.

Guest advances data needs

Details: Published: Monday, 30 July 2018 15:08

PAGES' Scientific Steering Committee (SSC) member Darrell Kaufman has a date with all things data during his six-month sabbatical in Bern, Switzerland.

Normally you will find PAGES' current guest scientist analyzing lake sediment cores from Alaska, as Regents' Professor at the School of Earth and Sustainability, Northern Arizona University, USA. But a data scare and joining the SSC in 2015 have helped shape the current phase of his career.

PAGES @ INQUA 2019

Details: Published: Thursday, 26 July 2018 11:22

PAGES SSC members and working groups are well represented at the upcoming 20th INQUA Congress in Dublin, Ireland, in July 2019.

Abstracts due 9 January. Full descriptions and how to submit here.

We welcome your submissions to the following sessions:

PAGES @ AGU 2018

Details: Published: Monday, 23 July 2018 16:16

Several PAGES working groups - PAGES 2k Network, DAPS, PALSEA and VICS - will be conducting sessions at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in Washington DC from 10-14 December 2018.

Abstracts are due 1 August. All details on our calendar here.

Submit an abstract to one of the four PAGES sessions (direct links below):

1. 2k: Climate of the Common Era
2. DAPS: New perspectives on past climates: progress in proxy system modeling, reconstruction algorithms and uncertainty quantification
3. PALSEA: Sea Level and Ice Sheet Reconstructions over Glacial Cycles
4. VICS: Understanding the Climatic and Societal Impacts of Past and Future Explosive Volcanism

Warmer Worlds author interview

Details: Published: Monday, 23 July 2018 10:57

The PAGES' Warmer Worlds Integrative Activity paper "Palaeoclimate constraints on the impact of 2°C anthropogenic warming and beyond", published in Nature Geoscience, continues to attract international media attention.

Researchers from 17 countries studied three well-documented historical warm periods - the Holocene thermal maximum, the last interglacial and the mid-Pliocene warm period - to predict future possibilities.

Read the recent Nexus Media article "The Climate Has Always Changed. Why Is This Time so Much Worse?" which contains extended interviews with co-authors Katrin Meissner and Alan C. Mix.

Access the Nature Geoscience paper, with a reading list of other prominent media mentions, here.

Winter flooding in 1936

Details: Published: Monday, 16 July 2018 15:35

A new paper from the PAGES Floods Working Group, titled "On the extraordinary winter flood episode over the North Atlantic Basin in 1936", was recently published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Led by working group leader Juan Antonio Ballesteros Canovas, authors analyze the linkage between atmosphere and ocean modes and winter flood variability over the 20th century based on long-term flow-discharge series, historical archives, and tree-ring records of past floods in the North Atlantic Basin. The most extreme winter floods occurred in 1936 and had strong impacts on either side of the Atlantic.