How to know the climates at the remote past? Unfortunately, we don’t have a time machine to go back and measure them. We have to infer them from some indicators….Read More >
Partner institutions
The SPECIAL presence at the PMIP2020 meeting
The Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison project (PMIP; https://pmip.lsce.ipsl.fr/), which began in the early 1990s to provide an efficient mechanism for coordinating palaeoclimate modelling activities, held it’s biannual meeting in Nanjing (China)…Read More >
What are the drivers of regional-scale speleothem oxygen isotope trends? By Sarah Parker
The first paper of my PhD, “A data-model approach to interpreting speleothem oxygen isotope records from monsoon regions on orbital timescales”, is available online at Climate of the Past Discussions…Read More >
Benchmarking is a necessary evil. By Sandy Harrison
The FireMIP paper describing the benchmarking of fire-enabled vegetation model simulations of the historic period is now out in Geoscientific Model Development (https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-13-3299-2020). The team, led by Stijn Hantson, have…Read More >
Virtual visit to the Tsinghua Tiger Team. By Sandy Harrison
This month I have been in Tsinghua virtually, working on a daily basis with the team in Earth Sciences: Han Wang, Huiying Xu, Shengchao Qiao, Yanghan Ren, Ziqi Zhu and…Read More >
The impact of methodological decisions on climate reconstructions using WA-PLS. By Mark Turner
Finally… long in the making, my “method” paper is out in Quaternary Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/qua.2020.44 today. It could not have been completed without a great deal of help from my co-authors…Read More >
World Without Fire: Another FireMIP paper is out! By Sandy Harrison
The paper “Global ecosystems and fire: a multi-model assessment of fire-induced tree cover and carbon storage reduction” (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.15160), led by Gitta Lasslop (Senckenberg: https://www.senckenberg.de/en/institutes/sbik-f/biodiversity-and-ecosystem-services/team-biodiversitaet-und-oekosystemdienstleistungen-im-erdsystem/) has come out today. This paper…Read More >
Slow train coming. By Sandy Harrison
I am very glad that our paper “Organising principles for vegetation dynamics” was published today in Nature Plants (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-020-0655-x). This perspective paper explores new approaches to modelling the terrestrial biosphere…Read More >
P-model v1.0: an optimality-based light use efficiency model for simulating ecosystem gross primary production. By Sandy Harrison
The P model is increasingly at the centre of work that we are doing in the SPECIAL group, forming the basis for work on past vegetation productivity, peatland growth and…Read More >
Anyone for fieldwork (with elephants)? By Sandy Harrison
Sandy has just returned from a ten-day trip to Bangalore, which was originally planned to coincide with the PACMEDY stakeholder meeting in Pune and opportunities to give lectures at the…Read More >