Host Dave Schlom visits with Isabel Montañez, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis.
Dr. Montañez is a leading paleoclimatologist who studies climate change through Earth's past. By analyzing geochemical data and other proxies, paleoclimatologists can reconstruct the composition and characteristics of our planet's atmosphere and oceans over deep geological time.
Some of the dramatic shifts in climate during the past (such as a period that Montañez and colleagues have studied recently -- the Carboniferous, 300 million years ago) offer a window into how we are affecting our global climate system now.
Periods of intense warming followed carbon "burps" in the past (probably from volcanic activity or massive fires), but these events and changes to climate took much longer time spans than what we are observing now.
