GEOL 2710 - Extreme Ancient Climates

• Be conversant with the leading theories for forcing a Greenhouse climate to shift to a Hothouse climate, and understand the consequences of that change for life on Earth.
• Be conversant with the leading theories for forcing a Greenhouse climate to shift to an Icehouse climate, and understand the consequences of that change for life on Earth.
• Be familiar with examples of rapid climate shifts such as Dansgaard/Oeschger events, Heinrich events, and other millennial scale changes in climate.
• Grasp the evidence for and proposed origin of the intense global refrigeration episode known as Snowball Earth.
• Know how and why significant shifts in land plant coverage of the land surface such as the origin of land plants, rise of the trees, and rise of the grasslands can influence global climate. Recognize when this is thought to have happened in the geologic.
• Know how and why the building of major mountain ranges can influence global climate. Recognize when this has happened in the geologic past.
• Know the leading ideas for why glaciers advance and retreat in an Icehouse climate.
• Understand the consequences to ocean circulation of switching among Icehouse, Greenhouse, and Hothouse planetary states.
• Understand the fundamental workings of Icehouse, Greenhouse, and Hothouse planetary climate states, and when those states have occurred in the geologic past.
• Understand the importance of Large Igneous Provinces to genesis of intense warming. Know when this can be an effective climate forcing mechanism, and understand the conditions that can offset this influence on climate.
• Understand the nature and timing of stepwise cooling through the past 50 million years of the Cenozoic Era from an early Cenozoic Greenhouse climate to the present Icehouse climate.
• Understand the nature and timing of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
• Understand the timing and potential triggers of Proterozoic Icehouse climates in terms of the manner in which they interrupted much warmer climates of the Proterozoic Eon.
• Understand the ¿Canfield Ocean¿ of the Mesoproterozoic, and entertain theories as to its origin and demise.