Paleoclimatology: An

introduction
Daniel Kirk-Davidoff
Department of Meteorology
University of Maryland
 Problems in Paleoclimate
• The Faint Young Sun, Snowball Earth and long-
term homeostasis
• Mass Extinctions: Bolide Impacts, Volcanic
Catastophes & Global Anoxia
• Warm Climates
• Ice Ages: Trends and Cycles
• Paleocalibration
• Odds and Ends
The Faint Young Sun and
Homeostasis
255 K

Blackbody Temperature
248 K

241 K

233 K
Long-Term Carbon Cycle
(Berner, 2003)

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Solution ?
 Energy-Balance Climate Models
(Due to Budyko, Sellars)

dT (ϕ ) ∂ ∂T (ϕ )
C p (ϕ ) = (1− α(T (ϕ )))S(ϕ )+ −(A(CO 2 )+ B(CO 2 ))T (ϕ ))+ (1− sin 2(ϕ ))D
dt ∂ sin(ϕ ) ∂ sin(ϕ )

Where T() is the zonal mean temperature as a function of

latitude, S() is the insolation,  is the albedo (expresed as
a function of temperature), A and B represent infrared cooling of
the earth as a function of surface temperature and greenhouse
gases, and D is a diffusivity (this last term is sometimes replaced
by a Newtonian restoration to an equilibrium temperature
profile).
 Snowball Earth

•Basic idea: something happens to reduce CO2 fluxes into

the atmosphere
•World ices over completely
•Weathering shuts down
•CO2 builds up to very high levels, until
•Ice melts back rapidly to nothing.
•Arguments:
•How thick was the ice?
•How do you model weather processes in a global ice
age?
•If there was so much ice, how did life survive in the
 Mass Extinctions
Deccan Traps:
One of the largest
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the world, erupted

circa 60-65 Ma
The Chicxulub Crater:
Due to an impact around
65 Ma Which one
killed the
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dinosaurs?
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 Warm Climates
Lots of interesting issues here:
•What causes million-year scale climate changes anyway?
Orthodoxy is that they’re forced by changes in mantle
convection, which in turn force CO2, but our knowledge of
past CO2 levels is highly leveraged, and probably highly
uncertain.
•Even for more recent climates, warm climates are so warm,
especially in polar regions, that they’ve defeated models
forced by greenhouse gas increases.
Temperature proxies indicate that the
Eocene (~55-35 MA) was a very warm
period in Earth’s history.
Eocene (and Cretaceous!) polar warmth is difficult to explain:
•If it's due to enhanced greenhouse effect, why aren't the tropics
warmer?
•Solutions involving enhanced dynamical fluxes have been
proposed, but suffer from a basic difficulty: if fluxes are in any
sense diffusive, how can more heat be transported across a
smaller gradient? Only by much stronger stirring!
•Emanuel (2001) proposes that hurricanes provide this stirring
for the ocean: hurricanes might occur over a much broader
swath of the ocean in a climate with warmer poles: but will this
help to warm the continental interiors?

Perhaps we need a radiative solution!

Can Polar Stratospheric Clouds provide
the solution?

Sloan and Pollard (1998) inserted

optically thick PSCs in a GCM and
showed a very substantial warming of
polar regions.
 1. Increasing GHG
1 Reduced
T/∂(latitude)
Warmer Tropical
Tropopause
8. Moister Stratosphere +
more abundant, thicker 2. Reduced T/∂(latitude) 
PSCs  reduced Reduced Generation of
T/∂(latitude) Planetary and Gravity
Waves

7. Moister Stratosphere + 3. Reduced Wave

Cooler Polar Stratosphere Activity  Reduced
 More abundant, thicker Propagation of Waves
PSCs into the Stratosphere

4. Reduced Propagation
of Waves into the
6. Warmer Tropical Stratosphere  Reduced
Tropopause  Moister Stratospheric
Stratosphere Overturning

5. Reduced Stratospheric
Overturning
 Warmer Tropical
Tropopause
 Colder Polar Stratosphere
 a
∂q ∂Tst
dq = dTt dTst = dω
∂Tt ∂ω
430 K
∂Tt ∂T ∂T
dTt = dω + t dTeq
∂ω Teq + st dCO2
390 K ∂CO2

Altitude
∂Tst
+ dτ
€ 350 K ∂τ

∂Teq ∂J
dTeq = dCO2 310 K dJ = dCO2
∂CO2 290 K € ∂CO2

Equator Pole
€
€
b ⎛∂τ ⎞
dq +
dω =
∂ω ∂ω
+ dJ ∂Fp ⎜∂q ⎟
dFp = ⎜ ⎟
∂A ∂J ∂τ ⎜ ∂τ
430 K
⎜ dTst ⎟⎟
⎝∂Tst ⎠
390 K
Altitude

€
350 K € ∂Tp
dTp = dCO2
∂CO2
∂A
dA = d(Teq − Tp ) ∂T
∂(Teq − Tp ) 310 K + p dFp
∂Fp
290 K
Equator Pole
€ €
 Ice Cycles: Trends and Cycles
•Total global ice signal
recorded in variations of
oxygen isotopes of marine
shelled creatures
(foraminifera, others):
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relevant process is Rayleigh

Distillation
•The recorded signal has
oscillations that relate to the
variations of earth’s orbital
parameters.
 Tertiary Climate History

From Billups and

Schrag (2003)

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Continental Drift

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 Obliquity Variations

Note: Martian obliquity variations are much larger, due to

the absence of a large moon. This has interesting
consequences for Martian paleoclimatology
 CO2, Ice Volume, and
Paleocalibration
Can we use paleoclimate evidence to predict the sensitivity
of the earth to changes in CO2?

We’d need to know all the other forcing changes, and we’d
need to know how to separate forcing from response.

Then we can just take Change in Temperature and divide it

by Change in Forcing: T/Q
Antarctic Record of CO2 and
Temperature
Why does CO2 change with
Temperature?
Covey et al., 1996
assembled the data and
came up with this graph:

Difficulties with
paleocalibration:
•Do we really know the
error bars?
•What about the
possibility of different
responses to different
forcing?
•What if only meridional
fluxes are forced?
 Odds and Ends
•Messinian desiccation
•Climate and human evolution
•Paleo-ozone depletion
•Climate and human history
Why I love Paleoclimatology, but
don’t totally trust it.
•There’s so much to study! Almost anything that could have
happened seems to have happened!
•Geologists are cool-they travel to interesting places, go
camping a lot, will sometimes take you along, always need a
hand.
•Because the time scales are so large, small, simple models
are often required, and publishable!
•BUT…. The story is always changing. Biases in estimates
are impossible to know for sure. Big picture usually stays the
same, but details change a lot.