Cenozoic climate: Earth system modeling and analysis

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The major objectives of the Work Package 5 are to analyse the climatic effects of specific processes for the Mid- and Late Miocene (first project period) and the Eocene-Oligocene (second project period). Reorganizations of the global ocean circulation, large-scale shifts of vegetation zones, topographical changes and changes in the global carbon chemistry are supposed to play a dominant role for the major Cenozoic climate transitions. Consequently, it is of utmost importance not only to understand the behaviour of these individual systems in better detail but also to investigate the full dynamics, feedbacks, and synergisms of the coupled system. We will address the numerous interactions between the climate system components by use of suitably choosen components of the complex Earth System Model COSMOS (see Modelling Strategy in the introduction), accompanied by sensitivity studies using the Earth System Model of intermediate complexity (EMIC) Planet Simulator. Feedback analysis including synergisms will be performed in cooperation with WP1, WP3 and WP4. In our work package, we consider the dynamics of the atmosphere-ocean-sea ice-vegetation system with focus on the relative roles of the large-scale ocean circulation, the atmospheric dynamics including high latitude and monsoon circulation, as well as land surface effects. Climate scenarios for the Mid- and Late Miocene are compared with proxy data, both through isotope modelling and statistical tools. The simulations provide furthermore a framework to understand global energy budgets and teleconnections for climate conditions, which strongly deviate from the present.