€2M ERC Consolidator grant awarded to Dr Pogge von Strandmann for carbon cycle research
Studying silicate weathering during past climate change can help us manage the earth’s carbon cycle.
Dr Philip Pogge von Strandmann has been awarded a €2M European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant for up to five years, titled: Quantifying the link between weathering and past CO2 levels. The European Research Council encourages high quality research across Europe through competitive funding and Consolidator grants are awarded to top researchers.
The funding will support three post-doctoral researchers to use novel isotope geochemistry and advanced Earth System modelling to understand and quantify the processes that maintain long-term climate and keep the Earth habitable. The project will radically improve our quantitative knowledge of the controls over the carbon cycle. By analysing historic climate variations in the Earth’s history this will enable more accurate predictions of future CO2 drawdown.
Dr Pogge von Strandmann’s research uses non-traditional isotope geochemistry to understand the controlling mechanisms of natural climate system change. Severe climate change events in geological history provide evidence of how the Earth responds to rapid warming or cooling.
Project abstract in full
The carbon cycle is a vital aspect of our planet’s well-being. However, there are fundamental aspects of it that we do not understand, without which we cannot accurately quantify CO2 budgets. How, and at what rate, does the carbon cycle respond to, and recover from, events of rapid and extreme global warming or cooling? What process has maintained the climate within a habitable range for billions of years? Silicate weathering is Earth’s main long-term CO2 removal process, and therefore a dominant climate control mechanism. Critically, we do not understand the controls on silicate weathering, or its full effects on atmospheric pCO2 and climate.
The goal of this project is to determine and quantify how weathering responded during past periods of rapid climate change, using an innovative combination of novel stable isotope techniques, laboratory experiments and advanced carbon cycle modelling. This will determine the behaviour of a key, relatively unknown, factor in the carbon cycle. This project comprises three, highly novel, interlinked strands: 1) Examination of the palaeo-weathering record through recent glacial timescales using cave speleothems as a climate archive, 2) Determination of palaeo-weathering records through older, Cenozoic, rapid shifts in climate, using marine carbonates and clays as an archive, and 3) Advanced models to enhance our understanding of this record.
This project will radically improve our quantitative knowledge of the controls over the carbon cycle. This is critical because 1) it is possible that weathering is the process that has maintained Phanerozoic climate in the relatively narrow bands required for life; 2) it is impossible to decipher the causes and consequences of long-term climate variations through Earth’s history without accurate weathering data; 3) detailed comprehension of rapid climate variations will enable more accurate predictions of future CO2 drawdown.