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PMIP3 WG - Pre-Pliocene climates
Group description
Questions to be addressed
What are the key scientific questions?
What time periods should we target?
GF: We need a big signal and lots of data coverage. Time periods that are easy to spot in the record and have lots (ish) of data already are Eocene climatic optimum, middle Eocene climatic optimum, PETM.
What is needed for experimental design – paleogeographies and CO2 primarily – what datasets can we use?
What are the best datasets for model-data comparisons, and how can these be improved?
What are the best methodologies for model-data comparisons (close collaboration with the Past2Future working group)
GF: I think a radical way to do this would be to move away from simple difference to modern type studies that have been done to date, instead we could try to look across a number of natural warming events and see whether the models capture the warming the geological record shows. So for instance, pre, peak and post PETM, MECO and EECO - do the models show similar trajectories to the data? CO2 would be much better constrained this way and so will the SSTs (e.g. most of the TEX86 uncertainty in your Eocene paper is due to calibration, for these shorter time periods you could use delta T change which is largely independent of calibration).
Members
Alex Farnsworth
Gavin Foster
Julia Hargreaves
Petra Langebroek
David Lea
Dan Lunt
Bette Otto-Bliesner
Rich Pancost
Chris Poulsen
Arne Winguth
Meetings
Discussion