Mid-Holocene climate changes simulated with the newest UK climate model

There is a concerted international effort to compare the response of climate models to different scenarios. One branch of this effort looks at how well models can simulate climate changes from the geologic past, and its most popular experiment focuses on the climate of 6,000 years ago. The Earth’s axis has precessed since then, leading to changes in the seasonal distribution of sunlight reaching the top of the atmosphere, with more arriving in Summer in the Northern Hemisphere altering regional hydrology. During the mid-Holocene, the northern African and Arabian deserts were smaller and wetter, meaning that substantial amounts of the civilisational changes in the region have occurred on a backdrop of expanding deserts.

A new generation of climate models have been created to support the next IPCC assessment in 2029, including a new version of the UK’s flagship model. This PhD involves undertaking a simulation of the climate of 6,000 years ago with that model. This will form part of the UK’s contribution to the new phase of the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP). You will compare this simulation to proxy reconstructions of past climate across the Middle East. The simulation will form part of a wider ensemble and you will help publish it. A previous student who undertook similar work with the previous generation of PMIP became a contributing author to the IPCC because of it.