Paleo-climate Dynamics

Climate has changed on many different time scales over Earth’s history. We aim to contribute to understand the mechanisms of abrupt and gradual climate change as well as climate variability by focussing on modelling past climates with a hierarchy of climate models - from conceptual models to high resolution global climate models.

Climate Tipping Points

Abrupt climate change is often associated with a nonlinear response of subsystems of the Earth to forcing; these have been termed tipping elements. We aim to contribute to the understanding of physical mechanisms associated with climate tipping elements and their connections within the Earth System using dynamical systems approaches and climate modelling.

Climate Response

The response of the climate system to changes in forcing is determined by a large set of interacting climate feedbacks. We aim to understand these feedbacks, how they have acted in past climates and what we can learn from those climates for future changes.

Contact person

Contact person for this theme is dr Anna von der Heydt.

People and current projects

A list of current group members and more details about ongoing projects can be found here.