Interconnections of Past Greenhouse Climates: Lessons For the Future

The Earth has already warmed by 1°C, and rainfall patterns are shifting in ways that existing climate models struggle to predict. To test those predictions, scientists need climate records stretching back millions of years—far beyond the span of direct weather observation. This project will extract those records from deep-sea drill cores that contain both marine sediments and material washed or blown in from continents. By analysing layers of riverine sediment and wind-blown dust, the team will reconstruct how past interactions between tectonic shifts, solar radiation, ice sheets, and ocean currents drove regional climate responses. They will focus on three types of regions: places where models fail to reconstruct past climates (such as North Africa), places where future warming predictions are most alarming (the Mediterranean, California, Southern Africa), and past warm intervals—the Pliocene, Miocene, and the Eocene-Oligocene transition—when global climate changed radically but the response of these hotspots remains unknown. This is fundamental science. If successful, it will provide the long-term observational baseline needed to test and improve climate models, ultimately making predictions of future rainfall shifts more reliable for water management, agriculture, and infrastructure planning in vulnerable regions.