The Priority Research Program “Integrated analysis of interglacial climate dynamics” (INTERDYNAMIC), funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), aims at a better understanding of climate dynamics using quantitative paleoclimate analyses with a view to create more reliable scenarios for future climate change.
INTERDYNAMIC is based on an integrated approach in paleoclimate research in which all available paleoclimate archives (terrestrial and marine, as well as ice cores) are combined in order to yield a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of global environmental variations. Through close linkage between paleoclimate reconstructions and results from Earth System models, detailed insights into the dynamics of climate variations are gained.
The investigations in INTERDYNAMIC focus on the interglacials of the late Quaternary (including their onset and end) and address the following key questions:
- What are the amplitudes of natural climate variations on timescales of several years to millennia, and how do patterns of climate variability vary in time and space?
- Do abrupt changes in the large-scale circulation of the Atlantic Ocean occur in interglacials?
- Which biogeochemical feedback mechanisms control the natural limits of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols?
- What linkages exist between climate and pre-industrial cultures?
INTERDYNAMIC was established in 2007 and has an expected duration of 6 years. The program consists exclusively of collaborative projects, in which at least two of the research fields (e.g., ice cores, marine archives, terrestrial archives and Earth System modeling) are represented.
Currently 13 projects are active, supporting 22 doctoral and 8 postdoctoral scientists. Information on the individual projects can be found at www.interdynamik.de
At the annual status seminar, initial results from each project were presented and discussed.