I recently came across my old PhD blog, and have thoroughly enjoyed reading back through my thoughts at the start of my research career!
One post recorded a summer school course that I attended at the MARUM institute in Bremen, Germany. This Institute houses the European IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program) facilities and is a fascinating place for any marine geoscientist to tour.
The IODP is an international collaboration that facilitates marine drilling for research in deep water. The program is run from three primary location: America, Japan, and Germany. Each location acts as a centre for collecting and preserving sediment cores for future research, and allows for sampling and analysis of sediments in their laboratories. the core repository in Bremen currently stores over 150 km of sediment core, and because of the soft sediment nature of the cores, they must be stored in a giant refrigerator. It is quite a large fridge!
The institute also provides courses to young scientists to educate them on the use of the facilities and the research techniques required. I attended one such course back in 2010 which had a climate change component alongside learning about how to use the laboratory equipment for sediment and climate change analysis.
The course aims to give students a good over-view in the current understanding of paleoclimatology (or climate change). As part of a presentation I composed this poem which was a big hit! It outlines all you need to know about paleoclimatology and the Milankovitch Cycles. Enjoy...
This is my summary of day one,
At an ECORD course at ‘MARUM’
The subject of learning was far from dreary:
‘Climate response to Milankovitch Theory’
Hodell and Mix were the teachers
- World-class climatology preachers.
They lectured us for hours –they must have been mad!
Quaffing much coffee to avoid jet-lag.
First was the topic known as Milankovitch,
Orbital forcing was his climate-change pitch.
The Earth’s axial wobble – named ‘precession’,
Added a 20k year cycle to his vision.
At 41 thousand years, another cycle;
Obliquity – also known as axis angle.
It is closely linked to the 100k trend,
Of eccentricity (or orbital ‘bend’).
All these forcings form a combination,
- A graph over time of insolation.
But alas, when compared with O-eighteen,
Many correlation problems can be seen!
Greenhouse gas and albedo are also key,
When insolation does not match eccentricity.
CO2 may explain the stage 11 problem,
But always more data must be gotten.
The Mid-Pleisto Transition shows a cyclicity switch,
For which may hypothesis may (or may not) fit:
Missing beats in an orbital ‘pace-maker’ perhaps?
Or dynamic collapse due to growing ice-mass?
We conclude after debate that no one model is right,
But that results good and bad can give us insight,
To climate in the future and in the past,
- Next Ice Age predictions have been amassed.
So after a day of squiggly graphs,
Over German Beer we had a good laugh,
For orbital forcing we now all know,
Thank you ECORD and Danke Schön!
--- Happy Exploring! ---
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