There’s only one right answer.

Yes we can just do things that make the world better, it doesn’t always have to be CDR.

Well 100% of the people I work with don’t know who ICP is!

TCNJ campus

Blair Hall on Princeton's campus

A new agreement between TCNJ and Princeton will allow eligible undergraduate and grad students to enroll in select courses at the other institution during the fall and spring semesters at no additional cost: https://bit.ly/4tqr2le

Ice core reveals low CO2 during warm spell 3 million years ago For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

A warm Miocene climate at low atmospheric CO2 levels We simulate a warm climate of the late Miocene at preindustrial CO2 levels The temperature rise is largely due to the late Miocene vegetation distribution Our results support CO2 reconstructions ba...

Well it turns out that not so long ago folks tired to model these sorts of things (see below). But somewhere along the way everyone was convinced it was >350 ppm in spite of having no direct records. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Well let’s dig in shall we?! What are you skeptical about?

If this is your scene*, maybe this job is for you?

Three-year PDRA in ice core gases at @cambridge-earthsci.bsky.social

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

*Scenes from the Beyond EPICA gas analysis in Copenhagen.

Agree! It just generally defies my intuition where higher T and higher sea-level = higher CH4 emissions. Maybe that's wrong! or maybe that's true and the story is on the SINK side! Heady days for enthusiasts of the global CH4 cycle.

I will defer to @cristiproist.bsky.social on that one!

I don't know! If you've got an idea, let's chat! What I do know is that our models of the CH4 cycle on a warmer Earth ARE PROBABLY WRONG and that we wouldn't know this without paleoclimate DATA. Hooray for DATA! Let's go get more. I know just where to drill.....www.coldex.org

Or this one. A large part of the higher CH4 levels in these papers is due to enhanced natural terrestrial emissions (wetlands) driven by the warmer/wetter conditions. Our ice cores come from a time that was warmer and sea-level was higher. So why no change in CH4? (3/4) www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Polar amplification of Pliocene climate by elevated trace gas radiative forcing | PNAS Warm periods in Earth’s history offer opportunities to understand the dynamics of the Earth system under conditions that are similar to those expec...

This is super interesting because we really have no way of accurately reconstructing this important greenhouse in the geologic past. Attempts to reconstruct CH4 in the atmosphere using numerical models inevitably get higher levels during past warm periods. See www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (2/4)

Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past 3 million years - Nature Blue ice records from Antarctica are used to determine methane and carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 3 million years.

While everyone is (rightly) obsessed with levels of CO2 in the atmosphere 3 million years ago, don't sleep the observation that avg. atmospheric methane (CH4) DOES NOT APPEAR TO HAVE CHANGED AT ALL over the last 3 million years (1/4). www.nature.com/articles/s41...

PS. While I wouldn't say that these lines of evidence are absolutely definitive, they are internally consistent and give us a way to probe this important question going forward. We're also happy to take any suggestions!

Third, we try and use estimates of firn thickness from the enrichment in 38Ar relative to 36Ar in trapped air. The lack of change in 38Ar/36Ar at the site (1901) suggests that whatever the climate bias, it has been constant over time (Fig S7, below).

Second, we compare ice 400-800 ka that we think integrates over glacial cycles ('long' snapshots) with similarly aged ice from continuous cores (Fig. 1d). The 'long' snapshots are consistent with a slight interglacial bias (see the yellow circle in Fig S6).

This is a GREAT question. I'll try to take you through the ways we are thinking about it. First, accumulation rates from the last glacial cycle at a nearby site suggest 10x higher accumulation during warm periods. Even when weighted by duration, this still works out to a (slight) interglacial bias.

Ice core reveals low CO2 during warm spell 3 million years ago For the first time, scientists have measured atmospheric gases from the late Pliocene, yielding data that could help to predict the future climate

New results from old ice....happy to answer any questions!

Great to have you visit!

Truth

I very much enjoyed listening to this book. It does a great job capturing the links between CO2, climate, oxygen, plate tectonics, and Earth history which are both simple and incredibly complex! Recommend!

Some cool science coming up so I guess it’s time to start posting again?

I was wondering where weathering of the oceanic crust fit into the story of everything!

Would anybody like to read one of my long threads about a 2.5bn year old rock, bacteria that could produce oxygen but not consume it, and tank production in wwii

Quantifying changes in central Vietnam rainfall amount since the Late Pleistocene Paleorecords of the Southeast Asian autumn monsoon indicate that global sea-level change drove abrupt shifts in rainfall, yet the magnitude of these c…

🚨 New manuscript! 🚨

We use speleothem calcium isotopes and Mg/Ca to reconstruct rainfall amount. Turns out central Vietnam was 50 % drier during the LGM 🤯. Climate models agree but most underestimate rainfall change.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New Lessons from Old Ice: How We Understand Past (and Future) Heating - Eos Fragments of blue ice up to 6 million years old—the oldest ever found—offer key insights into Earth’s warming cycles. Researchers are using these ancient data to refine models of our future climate.

What’s it like doing fieldwork in Antarctica? 🥶 Sarah Shackleton and @blueicedude.bsky.social from @princeton.edu can answer that.

They just found a 6-million-year-old ice core—a key piece to improve our current climate models!

My story for @eos.org

eos.org/articles/new...

New research from John Higgins @blueicedude.bsky.social & Sarah Shackleton @princeton.edu, comments from Lidia Ferri, story by Mariana Mastache @deerenoir.bsky.social.

⛺️ up! Drill down! Just another day in paradise looking for Earth’s oldest ice.