An Interdisciplinary Research Program in Climatology

该项目的科学目标是在四个时间尺度上评估气候变化：1)过去18,000年；2)过去15万年；3)过去1000万年；4) 2亿到2.5亿年前。研究策略是通过一系列气候模型实验，在这些时间尺度上分离出导致气候变化的因素，然后将模型结果与地质数据进行比较，以测试观测到的气候变化是否得到了很好的再现。这项研究将集中于分离太阳辐射变化、地理和地形变化以及海洋环流变化对气候的影响。这项研究很重要，因为它将确定各种地质过程的气候意义，从而更好地理解气候系统的自然变化。

The scientific goals of the project are to evaluate climate change on four time scales: 1) the last 18,000 years; 2) the last 150,000 years; 3) the last 10 million years; and 4) the period 200 to 250 million years ago. The research strategy is to isolate the factors which are causing climate change on these time scales through a series of climate model experiments, then compare the model results to geological data in order to test how well the observed changes in climate have been reproduced. The research will focus on isolating the climatological impact of changes in incoming solar radiation, changes in geography and orography, and changes in ocean circulation. This research is important because it will determine the climatic significance of various geological processes leading to a better understanding of the natural variation in the climate system.