Martin Ziegler
Martin Ziegler is an Associate Professor of Paleoclimatology at Utrecht University, specializing in the use of geochemical proxies to reconstruct past climate and ocean conditions. He earned his PhD at Utrecht in 2009, focusing on orbital-scale climate variability and monsoon dynamics. Following postdoctoral research at Columbia University, Cardiff University, and ETH Zürich, he returned to Utrecht in 2015, where he leads research on stable and clumped isotope geochemistry. His work has advanced understanding of Earth’s past climate transitions, including ocean circulation shifts, monsoon variability, and greenhouse climate dynamics. His current research is focused on reconstructing past temperatures in diverse environmental settings to improve estimates of climate sensitivity.
A clumped isotope perspective on hothouse climates
Hothouse periods present an essential context for understanding future climate scenarios. This talk will focus on the use of clumped isotope-based temperature reconstructions to investigate deep-sea temperatures as well as seasonality during these intervals. By examining deep-sea temperatures, we can infer global mean surface temperatures and their relationship to changes in atmospheric CO2. I will also present new methods for reconstructing seasonality using clumped isotopes in bivalve shells. Comparison with climate model outputs highlights that current state of the art climate models appear to underestimate winter warming under elevated atmospheric greenhouse gas conditions.
