ICP14 will cover all topics and disciplines relevant for the study of the past ocean and for understanding the ocean’s role in the Earth Climate System. Following the tradition of ICP, all science will be presented during invited talks in plenum and extended poster sessions. The meeting is organized around five broad topics that cover the diverse field of paleoceanography.
Topic 1: Climate and ocean chemistry
Marine biogeochemical cycles (carbon and nutrients) are intimately coupled to global climate and marine ecosystems. Theme 1 focuses on the reconstruction of biogeochemical cycles, seawater chemistry, and elemental cycling in the past and their connection to climate and marine ecology via, for example, ocean carbon uptake, nutrient availability, oxygenation, and pH.
Topic 2: Ocean circulation and its variability
Theme 2 deals with the state, rate, and variability in past ocean circulation and its role in, and sensitivity to, past climate and carbon-nutrient cycling. Quantifying and understanding the changes in past circulation on all timescales, as well as their origins and their impacts, provides important context for the current ocean variability and state and constrains possible future changes.
Topic 3: System interactions and thresholds
The ocean closely interacts with other Earth system components (atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, geosphere). Theme 3 focuses on these interactions between the Earth system components and how they generate climate variability across different timescales. Reconstructions and simulations of, for example, hydroclimate, dust transport, terrestrial and marine ecosystem responses, or cryosphere dynamics and sea level shed light on how the systems have co-evolved, including dynamics and system thresholds.
Topic 4: Improving our understanding of a warmer world
A better understanding of the ocean and climate system under past warm climates and through critical transitions provides crucial insights into how the climate system operates under such conditions and represents a powerful test of the accuracy of numerical climate models. Theme 4 focuses on new insights gained from proxy and model studies on the operation of the dynamical Earth system during warm climate states across a range of timescales.
Topic 5: Innovations to overcome knowledge gaps
Reconstructing and understanding past ocean and climate conditions depends crucially on our ability to read and interpret the geological record and use the data to improve our process understanding. Theme 5 focuses on new developments and approaches in proxies, models, and theory, and how they are integrated.