Tag: PETM

Cry me a river

marbles.jpgI missed out on the field trip to the Waipara Gorge to look at the evidence for tropical temperatures around Eocene New Zealand, laid low by the dreaded lurgy, but TVNZ sent a film crew so that I could see what I missed. Plenty of big hammers on display… Meanwhile, GNS have sent along more details of the conference symposium on Wednesday next week (Jan 14), and it looks fascinating. One highlight (from the GNS release):

The symposium will conclude with a public lecture by Professor James Zachos from the University of California, Santa Cruz, on “Rapid global warming and ocean acidification 55 million years ago: Lessons for the future” in Oceania at Te Papa, 5.30-6.30 pm.

I don’t often wish that I lived in Wellington, but this is one occasion… 😉

Take me to the river

marbles.jpg Climate news doesn’t just turn up in an RSS feed; sometimes it jumps right into your lap. A day or two ago, I discovered that a new paper about sea temperatures around New Zealand during the Eocene (50 million years ago) has significant implications for climate modelling and is based on fieldwork done very close to my home. Stuff reports:

Using sedimentary rocks from the bed of the Waipara River in North Canterbury, an international research group led by GNS Science palaeontologist Chris Hollis has reconstructed ancient sea temperatures. They found surface sea water exceeded 30 degrees Celsius, and water at the sea floor hovered around 20ºC during an episode of greenhouse gas-induced global warming that lasted for between two million and three million years. “These temperatures are at the extreme end of modern tropical water masses,” Dr Hollis said. Year-round sea surface temperatures of 25ºC to 30ºC are today found only at the equator.

At the time, New Zealand was much closer to the South Pole — below 50ºS — yet supported tropical flora and fauna. (GNS press release here).

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Here come the warm jets

Hot Topic has devoted a lot of posts to events in the Arctic over the last northern hemisphere summer. The loss of sea ice was dramatic – there was 25% less ice in September than the previous record, set in 2005. The little graph to the left shows just far off the trend line last year’s September area really was. And as I posted yesterday, recent studies suggest that the Arctic is primed for more significant losses in the near future. If the reduction in summer sea ice continues, there are some pretty major implications for the climate of the northern hemisphere and for our modelling of the global climate, and it’s those things that I want to consider in this post. Please note: I am not a climate scientist, and there are a lot of ifs and handwaves in this argument, but bear with me…

Continue reading “Here come the warm jets”