Earth’s climate underwent a significant and complex evolution over the past 66 million years, documented by deep-sea sediment cores recovered by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and its predecessors. This evolution includes gradual trends of warming and cooling driven by tectonic processes on time scales of 10^6 to 10^7 years, rhythmic or periodic cycles driven by orbital processes with 10^4- to 10^6-year cyclicity, and rare rapid shifts and extreme climate events with durations of 10^3 to 10^5 years. This practical course focusses on the sedimentological expression of orbital cycles and extreme climate events during the Cenozoic in Atlantic IODP sediment cores at the Bremen Core Repository. Therewith, students obtain a broad perspective on the Cenozoic climate evolution and insights into the (feedback) mechanisms that govern climate and carbon cycle dynamics.
At the end of the course, we expect students to:
1) Make first-order interpretations of changing environmental parameters, based on sedimentological indicators
2) Have a broad overview of 66 Myr of ocean and climate history.
3) Be able to present difficult content in a concise way, both in writing and during a talk.

- acquire techniques of visual core description as carried out by sedimentologists on sea-going paleoceanographic cruises.
- provide an overview of the climate evolution of the Cenozoic
- study extreme climate events during the past 66 Ma in detail
- discover the mechanisms that altered climate and carbon cycles dynamics over the past 66 Ma
- advance skills literature review, scientific writing and presentation by supplementing sedimentologic observations findings from proxy records and numerical modeling from scientific literature to gain a comprehensive understanding of the studied events

15 minutes conference style talks and ~5-page scientific article style report (in groups of 2-3)

Presentation with written elaboration

will be announced