Rochholz, Fiona Judith

My PhD is part of the ERC pro­ject EARTH­SE­QUEN­CING, that fo­cus­ses on the de­ve­lop­ment of a high- re­so­lu­ti­on and con­ti­nuous re­cord of geo­lo­gi­cal events, ages and du­ra­ti­ons for the past 66 mil­li­on ye­ars to extract pro­per­ties of Ear­t­h’s and so­lar sys­tem or­bi­tal mo­ti­on. Part of this ap­proach is to seek and un­der­stand the cli­ma­te and car­bon cy­cle sen­si­ti­vi­ty to or­bi­tal for­cing throughout the Ce­no­zoic, whe­re deep sea re­cor­ds in­di­ca­te or­bi­tal chan­ges. Wi­t­hin this frame­work, I will in­ves­ti­ga­te cli­ma­te chan­ges in the Pa­leo­ge­ne, that are well de­scri­bed by se­di­ment re­cor­ds, such as the Eo­ce­ne-Oli­go­ce­ne boun­da­ry, the Pa­leo­ce­ne-Eo­ce­ne-Ther­mal-Ma­xi­mum.

My the­sis pro­ject will quan­ti­fy and iden­ti­fy the Ear­t­h’s sys­tem re­ac­tion to cli­ma­te per­tur­ba­ti­on (green­hou­se gas con­cen­tra­ti­on chan­ges, chan­ges in con­ti­nen­tal con­fi­gu­ra­ti­on,..) un­der the for­cing of or­bi­tal pa­ra­me­ters. This can de­scri­be the Ear­t­h’s sen­si­ti­vi­ty and thus de­ter­mi­ne the de­pen­den­cy of the Ear­t­h’s Sys­tems re­ac­tion to the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­ti­ons (ice­hou­se or green­hou­se). This will be rea­li­zed using an Earth Sys­tem Mo­del of In­ter­me­dia­te Com­ple­xi­ty, the cGe­nie Earth Sys­tem Mo­del. For this mo­del, I will de­ve­lop ex­pe­ri­ments over long term am­pli­tu­de mo­du­la­ti­on cy­cles which re­qui­res mo­del runs of at least 500 ka – 1 Ma and test the hy­po­the­sis, that the Ear­t­h’s cli­ma­te re­s­pon­se to the same type of or­bi­tal for­cing has va­ried e.g. bet­ween green­hou­se and ice­hou­se con­di­ti­ons.