The full programme book (PDF) - Royal Geographical Society

More documents

Recommendations

Info

THEME 4: MODELLING THE EARTH SYSTEM Palaeoclimate Modelling: The past, present, and future Paul Valdes School of Georaphical Sciences, University of Bristol University Road, Clifton, Bristol Among the many revolutions that have occurred in Quaternary science during the last 50 years, computer modelling of the past has probably been one of the most dramatic. The first detailed computer palaeoclimate model was developed less than 40 years ago but since then the pace of change in the subject has been immense. Early palaeoclimate models were very limited in their ability and could only examine some large scale "big picture" issues and they quickly proved to be valuable tools in helping to understand the mechanisms and processes thought to be responsible for climate change. However, today the state-of-the-art models represent many of the key components of the Earth system and are increasingly able to address the details of past climate change. Linking palaeoenvironmental data with palaeoclimate modelling is now playing a crucial role in testing and evaluating these models which are the main tool for predicting future climate change. The talk will review the development of the subject, highlight some key results and identify some of the most exciting advances that are likely to happen in the next decade or two.
THEME 4: MODELLING THE EARTH SYSTEM Modelling the Earth System: Challenges in using Observations for Model Evaluation Sandy Harrison 1,2 1 Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Macquarie University, Australia 2 Centre for Past Climate Change and School of Archaeology, Geography and Environmental Science (SAGES), University of Reading The confrontation of palaeo-observations and model experiments has evolved from essentially qualitative “data-model comparisons” to quantitative “model evaluation”. Both have a role to play: the first in elucidating the mechanisms of climate change and regional impacts, the second in testing the reliability of state-of-the-art models. Data-model comparisons have focused on large-scale regional patterns of climate and/or environmental changes. Mapped patterns are used to elucidate the mechanisms of climate change, based on the idea that these patterns provide fingerprints of the response to specific types of forcing. Map comparisons are facilitated by the use of forward modeling, which translates simulated climate changes into environmental responses such as vegetation shifts, changes in fire regimes or changes in peat accumulation rates which can be more directly compared with observations. The use of forward models raises issues about the independent validation those models, but perhaps a more serious issue is how to compare spatial patterns in a mechanistically realistic way – given that features anchoring these patterns in the real world may not be represented in the model world. Various clustering or circulation-based techniques are being explored to address this issue, but the answer is not entirely obvious. Model evaluation has become a major preoccupation with the inclusion of palaeoclimate experiments, specifically the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), mid-Holocene (MH) and last millennium (LM), in the Coupled Modelling Intercomparison Project (CMIP) as a way of testing whether models that are used for future projections can simulate known climate changes. Model evaluation relies on synthesis of quantitative climate reconstructions or of palaeoenvironmental data that can be directly compared with outputs from earth-system models (ESMs). There are a large number of quasi-global palaeodata syntheses now available; whether they are suited to purpose is more debatable. There are issues associated with the reporting of uncertainty and the use of reported uncertainties in comparison exercises. To some extent the importance of such issues is a function of the signal being evaluated. For example, the signal-to-noise ratio in the LGM change in seasurface temperatures is sufficiently large for methodological uncertainties or inter-sensor differences to be negligible. This is not true for the MH, where methodological uncertainties alone are larger than any apparent regional signal in seasonal sea-surface temperature changes, and differences in the reconstructions obtained from different types of record are also large and non-systematic. The growing focus on using transient simulations to understand climate evolution poses new and particular challenges. Observationalists are well aware of the issues associated with temporal uncertainty. We have not yet grappled with temporal uncertainty in a
Page 1: QRA@50: Quaternary Revolutions QRA
Page 6 and 7: Conference Programme Wednesday 8th
Page 8 and 9: General Notes Exhibitors A small nu
Page 10 and 11: QRA50: Top 50 UK Quaternary Sites N
Page 12 and 13: THEME 1: CAUSES OF CLIMATE CHANGE C
Page 14 and 15: THEME 2: MEASURING TIME Radiocarbon
Page 16 and 17: THEME 3: MEASURING AND UNDERSTANDIN
Page 20 and 21: modeling context, or in the context
Page 22 and 23: THEME 5: ICE SHEET DYNAMICS Time, t
Page 24 and 25: THEME 7: THE OCEANS The Oceans, CO
Page 26 and 27: THEME 8: TERRESTRIAL STRATIGRAPHY A
Page 28 and 29: THEME 9: PALAEOECOLOGY Conservation
Page 30 and 31: THEME 9: PALAEOECOLOGY Beetles, bon
Page 32 and 33: THEME 10: HUMAN ORIGINS, ENVIRONMEN
Page 34 and 35: THEME 11: INSIGHTS FROM GENETICS In
Page 36: Van Walt m onitoring your needs Del
Page 41 and 42: T2 TRACEing Tephra Horizons in Nort
Page 43 and 44: T5 The Hebrides Ice Stream (HIS) an
Page 45 and 46: T9 Formation and Cultural Use of We
Page 47 and 48: T3 Glacier-based climate reconstruc
Page 49 and 50: T5 Reconstructing the maximum exten
Page 51 and 52: T6 First recorded evidence of subaq
Page 53 and 54: T2 Towards a Greenland tephra latti
Page 55 and 56: T5 BRITICE-CHRONO Transect 8: const
Page 57 and 58: T8 Pleistocene landscape change at
Page 59 and 60: T10 Advances in geoconservation: fu
Page 61 and 62: T7 ARAMACC: Advancing the use of an
Page 67 and 68: T5 BRITICE-CHRONO: Constraining rat
Page 69 and 70:
T2 Tracing and constraining key tep
Page 71 and 72:
T2 Testing the potential of OSL to
Page 73 and 74:
T5 Reconstruction of ice-sheet chan
Page 75 and 76:
T3 Spatial and temporal variability
Page 77 and 78:
T5 Glacial geomorphology of the Inn
Page 79 and 80:
T2 Revolution and evolution: 35 yea
Page 81 and 82:
T5 BRITICE-CHRONO, Transect 2: cons
Page 83 and 84:
T2 Improving surface exposure ages
Page 85 and 86:
T5 Geomorphology and dynamics of th
Page 87 and 88:
T9 The Anthropogenic Element in the
Page 89 and 90:
Fraser, W.T., Watson, J.S., Sephton
Page 91 and 92:
T10 Human-environment-climate inter
Page 93 and 94:
T9 Island Evolution: a ‘front-lin
Page 95 and 96:
T5 Modelling the water isotope resp
Page 97 and 98:
T9 Biome dynamics in the Ohrid Basi
Page 99 and 100:
T5 The Moffatdale RSF cluster, Sout
Page 101 and 102:
T11 Combining palynology and ecolog
Page 103 and 104:
Figure 1: The palm swamp forest at
Page 105 and 106:
T3 SCOPSCO Lake Ohrid deep drilling
Page 107 and 108:
δ 18 Odiatom); biomarkers; pollen;
Page 109 and 110:
T3 Quaternary revelations: the role
Page 111 and 112:
T8 Late-Middle to Late Pleistocene
Page 113 and 114:
T9 Climate forcing of mammoth range
Page 115 and 116:
T8 Svalbard surging glacier landsys
Page 117 and 118:
T2 Constraining peatland environmen
Page 119 and 120:
T9 Late - glacial/Holocene vegetati
Page 121 and 122:
T10 Developing a Holocene tephrostr
Page 123 and 124:
Roberts, S. J. (1997) The spatial e
Page 125 and 126:
T7 Pleistocene sea-surface and inte
Page 127 and 128:
T10 Man, Megafauna and Mycobacteria
Page 129 and 130:
T5 BRITICE-CHRONO Transect 5: const
Page 131 and 132:
T8 The “Four Ages” of Micromorp
Page 133 and 134:
T3 Continental silicon cycling and
Page 135 and 136:
T5 Reconstructing plateau icefields
Page 137 and 138:
T3 Exploiting multi-proxy analysis
Page 139 and 140:
T3 Tipping Points: Rapid Neo-glacia
Page 141 and 142:
T5 Glacial history of the central n
Page 143 and 144:
T8 Reconstructing Quaternary Rhine-
Page 145 and 146:
T9 When was Europe deforested? Larg
Page 147 and 148:
T9 Long-term vegetation development
Page 149 and 150:
T9 Climate, microtopography and per
Page 151 and 152:
T3 The temperature-δ 18 O relation
Page 153 and 154:
T10 Neolithic land-use change clima
Page 155 and 156:
T5 Assessing existing dating constr
Page 157 and 158:
T10 Assessing the effects of the '2
Page 159 and 160:
Figure 1: Lake ‘Disko 2’ on Dis
Page 161 and 162:
T5 Increased channelization of subg
Page 163 and 164:
T7 Holocene controls on silicic aci
Page 165 and 166:
T8 Tanera Mor: a new stratotype for
Page 167 and 168:
T8 Landscape response to abrupt cli
Page 169 and 170:
T9 Impact of vegetation shifts on i
Page 171 and 172:
T9 Assessing seasonality changes du
Page 173 and 174:
T2 Cryptotephra records as archives
Page 175 and 176:
Westaway, R., Bridgland, D.R., Mish
Page 177 and 178:
T3 Songs from the wood: tales of th
Page 179:
T9 Lateglacial and Holocene Climate
show all

The full programme book (PDF) - Royal Geographical Society

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?