Thomas Westerhold
Thomas Westerhold is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) at the University of Bremen in Germany. His research focuses on Paleoceanography, Paleoclimatology and Stratigraphy using ocean and continental drilling material. The goal of his work is to contribute to and facilitate a deeper comprehension of Earth's climate system in the geological past, particularly its responses to disruptions on Milankovitch time scales. Timing is important for comprehending Earth's biological and climatic processes shaping evolution, extinction, and recovery. However, essential climate proxy records from the last 100 million years are not well-synchronized across different regions. Therefore a significant portion of my current research efforts is aimed to initiate the Time Integrated Matrix for Earth Sciences (TIMES) program, an international coordination network to precisely synchronize age models for key geological climate records from the past 100 million years.
Stratigraphy is the Backbone of Palaeoceanography
Timing is crucial for understanding Earth's biological and climatic processes, including evolution, extinction and recovery. To unravel the causes and consequences of changing climate, we must synchronize geological proxy data from different regions in time. This allows us to rigorously test causality arguments. Many key climate proxy records from the last 100 million years come from deep ocean sediments. However, they are not currently sufficiently synchronized across regions on Milankovitch cycle level. Synchronizing these records is vital for meaningful interpretations.
In this perspective lecture I will give insight how to revise and recalibrate the dating tools available to palaeoclimatologists - that is, the local and regional information obtained from bio-, magneto-, and chemo-stratigraphy as well as radioisotopic geochronology - with the synchronizing tool of astrochronology. As a test case I will show how Earth's orbital rhythms link the timing of the up to two kilometres thick basaltic rocks of the Deccan Traps, which cover a large part of western India, and global climate changes 67 million years ago.
