Public Lecture Series in Earth Science: Global Climate Change
The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy

Past Global Warming: Context for Present and Future Fluctuations

DR. JAMES ZACHOS Earth Sciences Department, University of
California, Santa Cruz

Place: Baker Hall, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
       Rice University

Time:  on 7 February at 7 p.m.

Jim Zachos,  Professor of Earth Sciences at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, investigates
mechanisms responsible for driving long- and short-term
changes in global climate. A paleoceanographer by
training, Zachos uses chemical signatures of marine
fossils to reconstruct changes in ocean temperatures,
circulation, and productivity, as well as glacial ice
volume and carbon cycling over the past 100  million
years - and beyond. By understanding Earth's past climate
record, scientists provide a comparative backdrop for
historical, and possible future, global climate changes.

Zachos and his students currently are participating in
several projects to understand the nature of rapid and
extreme climate transitions in Earth history. One project
involves reconstructing the changes in global sea-surface
temperatures from a brief warm period of Earth's history
55 million years ago through the longer-term cooling to
present day. Global climate modelers use these results to
test theories of climate change and to validate climate
models. Other investigations focus on identifying how
oceans transported heat during warmer periods in Earth
history, and establishing the approximate initiation and
extent of ice sheets during the middle Cenozoic (25 to 35
million years ago). With these and other windows on the
past, Zachos and his team are working to identify
possible analogs to future environmental conditions and,
with these analogs, to help constrain and predict future
changes in global climate.

Zachos, author of approximately 60 publications focusing
on climate change in Earth history, is also Director of
the Center for Land-Sea Interface Dynamics, and
co-director of the Stable isotope Laboratory at the
University of California.