As the Omicron outbreak is well and truly underway, we have decided to move our Public talks for March and April to a virtual space to keep the community and speakers safe.
The Virtual Public Talks will be held via Zoom and require you to register in advance. After you registered, you will receive an email with the link.
The Waitaki Whitestone Geopark presents:
…and for the last glacial maximum, cold and
windy with some warm spells:
Insights into past climate from loess
Over the last 2.6 million years of Earth’s history, the climate has gone through dramatic reorganisations between cold glacial periods and mild interglacial periods: we have been in the present interglacial for about 11,000 years. The periodicity in climate is understood to be modulated by orbital variations that determine how much, where and in what season the Sun’s energy is received on Earth. However, understanding how those subtle variations are amplified and transmitted to drive global climate has been a major challenge for climatologists. The accepted dogma has been that the northern hemisphere mid to high latitudes have been in the driver’s seat. That idea has recently been challenged and the focus has been shifted to the Aotearoa/NZ region of the southern hemisphere. In this talk, Peter will review these competing ideas, and how NZ records of past climate can address them, with particular emphasis on climate records from loess (accumulated dust). Implications for future climate will be considered.
A presentation by Peter Almond:
Peter Almond is a soil scientist and academic at Lincoln University where he researches pedology (the character and distribution of different soils in the landscape), geomorphology (the science of landforms), and past climate. He has a special interest in loess as both an important material in which soils form, and for the record of past environment and climate it stores.
6 - 7pm Thursday 21 April
Virtually via Zoom - Registration necessary!