Processes responsible for formation and development of the early Earth (> 2500Ma) are not
well understood and strongly debated, reflecting in part the poorly preserved, altered, and
incomplete nature of the geological record from this time.
In this session we encourage the presentation of new approaches and models for the development of Earth's early crust and mantle and their methods of interaction. We encourage contributions from the study of the preserved rock archive as well as geodynamic models of crustal and mantle dynamics so as to better understand the genesis and evolution of continental crust and the stabilization of cratons.
We invite abstracts from a large range of disciplines including geodynamics, geology, geochemistry, and petrology but also studies of early atmosphere, biosphere and early life relevant to this period of Earth history.

This session aims to showcase an interesting diversity of state-of-art advances in all aspects of Cambrian to Cretaceous paleoceanography, paleoclimatology and stratigraphy. Within this broad topic we intend to invite an exciting range of contributions including, but not limited to, organic and inorganic geochemistry, sedimentology, (micro-)paleontology, and modelling. Inter- or multidisciplinary studies are also encouraged. The session will potentially be organized into thematic blocks to allow more in-depth exploration and discussion of topics.

The geological record provides insight into how climate processes may operate and evolve in a high CO2 environment and the nature of the climate system during a turnover from icehouse to greenhouse state — a transition that may potentially occur in the near future. In recent years we have seen major advances in many geochemical techniques and an increase in the complexity of Earth System Models. The aim of this session is to share progress in our understanding of global changes occurring during the pre-Quaternary based on the integration of geochemical/paleobotanical/sedimentological techniques and numerical models. Specifically, we encourage submissions describing research in which both model and data approaches are embedded. We invite abstracts that reconstruct Earth’s climate from the Cambrian to the Pliocene, investigate how the interconnections of the key surface reservoirs (vegetation-ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere-biogeochemistry) impact climate, and identify tipping points and thresholds. Pertinent themes may include greenhouse-icehouse transitions and intervals testifying for extreme changes.

The pacing of the global climate system by orbital variations is clearly demonstrated in the timing of e.g. glacial-interglacial cycles. The mechanisms that translate this forcing into geoarchives and climate changes continue to be debated. We invite submissions that explore the climate system response to orbital forcing, and that test the stability of these relationships under different climate regimes or across evolving climate states (e.g. mid Pleistocene transition, Pliocene-Pleistocene transition, Miocene vs Pliocene, and also older climate transitions). Submissions exploring proxy data and/or modelling work are welcomed, as this session aims to bring together proxy-based, theoretical and/or modelling studies focused on global and regional climate responses to astronomical forcing at different time scales in the Phanerozoic.
Anna-Joy Drury will give an invited presentation about 'Fingerprinting the climate heartbeat of the late Miocene'.

The mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) is a crucial changes in climate dynamics, leading us into our current regime of long, asymmetric glacial cycles. However, evidence about the differences in how climate behaved before and after the MPT remains sparse and we also lack evidence to decide between theories that aim to explain the MPT. Here we hope to gather new datasets that compare climate on either side of the MPT or that offer new evidence about glacial cycles before it. Modelling and conceptual work about the causes of the MPT are also wlecome. Finally we would like to hear about work that paves the way for new projects, including plans and methodologies to obtain pre-MPT ice cores such as (but not limited to) the IPICS Oldest Ice challenge, like Beyond EPICA and other endeavours.

The half-century since the first deep ice core drilling at Camp Century, Greenland, has seen extensive innovation in methods of ice sample extraction, analysis and interpretation. Ice core sciences include isotopic diffusion analysis, multiple-isotope systematics, trace gases and their isotopic compositions, ice structure and physical properties, high-resolution analysis of major and trace impurities, and studies of DNA and radiochemistry in ice, among many others. Many climate and geochemical proxies have been identified from ice cores, with ongoing effort to extend their application and refine their interpretation. Great challenges remain in the field of ice coring sciences, including the identification of suitable sites for recovery of million-year-old ice; spatial integration of climate records (e.g. PAGES groups Antarctica2k and Iso2k); and deeper understanding of glaciological phenomena such as streaming flow, folding of layers and basal ice properties. This session welcomes all contributions reporting the state-of-the-art in ice coring sciences, including drilling and processing, dating, analytical techniques, results and interpretations of ice core records from polar ice sheets and mid- and low-latitude glaciers, remote and autonomous methods of surveying ice stratigraphy, and related modelling research.

Global ocean circulation plays a key role in redistributing heat and in setting the oceanic carbon gradients, and thus modulates global climate on centennial to millennial time scales. With the emergence of new methods, greater spatial and temporal paleo-record coverage, and model simulations with numerous tracers, significant improvement has been made in the understanding of past oceanic changes and their impacts on global climate and the carbon cycle. New proxy approaches and increasing geographical coverage fill important gaps in the reconstruction of different ocean states and decrease uncertainty that arises from interpretations based on individual parameters and sites. Similarly, refined model approaches and increased computing capacity allow for the integration of important small- and intermediate scale processes as well as the direct inclusion of proxies in numerical models.

This session welcomes contributions on the role of the ocean circulation in Pleistocene climate and glacial-interglacial climate transitions. This comprises proxy and model assessments of ocean heat and carbon content, circulation strength and other climatic and biogeochemical parameters, including details on their regional variation, given they are relevant for understanding global processes. Furthermore, we encourage contributions of reconstructions that seem contradictory to the prevailing view insofar as their discussion may hint towards processes or pitfalls that are under appreciated and thus potentially important for future research.

The millennial-scale variability associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) cycles during the last glacial is known to have affected the climate system on a global scale. New high-resolution sediment and ice core proxy records document in increasing detail local and global variability of ice sheets, sea ice, as well as oceanic and atmospheric circulation during the D-O cycles. In addition, insights into the dynamics of the coupled ocean-cryosphere-atmosphere system during the millennial-scale climate cycles are emerging from improved model simulations. Documenting the precise timing and sequence of events in proxy records and capturing the processes responsible for the global pattern of rapid climate changes, which stretch from Greenland to Antarctica, remains a major challenge. However, understanding the underlying dynamics will provide fundamental information on the stability of the global climate system. In this interdisciplinary session, we welcome proxy- and model-based research that tests hypotheses on causes and processes behind the D-O events and helps understanding past, present and future changes to the climate system. The session is hosted by the ERC synergy project ice2ice.

Solicited talks include:
Oeschger medal lecture by Edward Brook, Oregon State University
Marlene Klockmann, Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Centre
Bradley Markle, University of Washington

Documenting the diversity of human responses and adaptations to climate, landscapes, ecosystems, natural disasters and the changing natural resources availability in different regions of our planet, cross-disciplinary studies in Geoarchaeology provide valuable opportunities to learn from the past. Furthermore, human activity became a major player of global climatic and environmental change in the course of the late Quaternary, during the Anthropocene. Consequently, we must better understand the archaeological records and landscapes in context of human culture and the hydroclimate-environment nexus at different spatial and temporal scales. This session seeks related interdisciplinary papers and specific geoarchaeological case-studies that deploy various approaches and tools to address the reconstruction of former human-environmental interactions from the Palaeolithic period through the modern. Topics related to records of the Anthropocene from Earth and archaeological science perspectives are welcome. Furthermore, contributions may include (but are not limited to) insights about how people have coped with environmental disasters or abrupt changes in the past; defining sustainability thresholds for farming or resource exploitation; distinguishing the baseline natural and human contributions to environmental changes. Ultimately, we would like to understand how strategies of human resilience and innovation can inform our modern strategies for addressing the challenges of the emerging Anthropocene, a time frame dominated by human modulation of surface geomorphological processes and hydroclimate.

This session aims to place recently observed climate change in a long-term perspective by highlighting the importance of paleoclimate research spanning the past 2000 years.
We invite presentations that provide insights into past climate variability, over decadal to millennial timescales, from different paleoclimate archives (ice cores, marine sediments, terrestrial records, historical archives and more). In particular, we are focussing on quantitative temperature and hydroclimate reconstructions, and reconstructions of large-scale modes of climate variability from local to global scales.

This session also encourages presentations on the attribution of past climate variability to external drivers or internal climate processes, data syntheses, model-data comparison exercises, proxy system modelling, and novel approaches to producing multi-proxy climate field reconstructions.

The session is co-sponsored by the PAGES 2k project (http://www.pastglobalchanges.org/ini/wg/2k-network/intro).

As the number of palaeoclimate data from glacial, marine, and continental archives is growing continuously, large-scale compilation and cross-comparison of these data is the imperative next phase in paleoclimate research. Large data sets require meticulous database management and new analysis methodologies to unlock their potential for revealing supra-regional and global trends in palaeoclimate conditions. The compilation of large scale datasets from proxy archives faces challenges related to record quality and data stewardship. This requires record screening and formulation of principles for quality check, as well as transparent communication.

This session aims to bring together contributions from paleoclimatic studies benefiting from the existence of such large data sets, e.g., providing a novel perspective on a proxy and the represented climate variables from the local to the global scale. We want to bridge the gap between data generation and modelling studies. In particular, comparing such large proxy-based datasets with climate modelling data is crucial for improving our understanding of palaeoclimate archives (e.g., bias effects and internal processes), to identify signal and noise components and their temporal dynamics, and to gain insight into the quality of model data comparisons.

We encourage submissions on data compilations, cross-comparison and modelling studies utilizing data repositories and databases (e.g., SISAL, PAGES2k, ACER, EPD), including, but not limited to:
-Comparative studies using one or several archives (e.g., including tests of temporal and spatial synchronicity of past regional to global climate changes)
-Proxy system models (and their tuning)
-Model data comparisons (including isotope enabled models or local calibration studies)
-Integrative multi-proxy/multi archive approaches at multiple study sites
-Large scale age model comparisons and record quality assessment studies, including methods aimed at cross validation between different records and variable spatial and temporal scales.

From modest beginnings some 50 years ago, the field of speleothem palaeo-climatology has seen improved analytical capacity produce ever more detailed, well-dated, and highly resolved records of climate proxies such as stable isotope ratios and trace element compositions. The last two decades have seen a great expansion of cave monitoring campaigns designed to improve understanding of the causal links between these proxies and the surface environment. Cave monitoring over a few years provides a wealth of detailed information about the links between local meteorology, soil processes, karst hydrochemistry, ventilation and carbonate precipitation but the crucial challenge lies in using this information to interpret proxy records on much longer timescales, from centennial to glacial-interglacial.

We invite contributions to discuss new developments in measurement and interpretation of speleothem proxies and how proxy-related environmental monitoring can be applied as an interpretive tool in palaeoclimate reconstruction.

Stable and radiogenic isotopic records have been successfully used for
investigating various settings, such as palaeosols, lacustrine, loess, caves, peatlands, bogs, arid, evaporative and marine environments. We are
looking for contributions using isotopes along with mineralogical, sedimentological, biological, paleontological and chemical records in
order to unravel the past and present climate and environmental changes.
The session invites contributions presenting an applied as well as a
theoretical approach. We welcome papers related to both reconstructions
(at various timescales) as well as on fractionation factors, measurement, methods, proxy calibration, and verification.

In recent decades, quantitative methods have become increasingly important in the field of palaeoenvironmental, palaeoclimatic and palaeohydrological reconstruction, due to the need for comparison between different records and to provide boundary conditions for computational modelling. Continental environmental archives (e.g. speleothems, lakes, land snails, rivers, or peatlands) are often highly temporally resolved (subdecadal to seasonal) and may provide more direct information about atmospheric and hydrological processes than marine archives. The wide variety of archive types available on land also allows for intercomparison and ground-truthing of results from different techniques and different proxies, and multi-proxy reconstructions from the same archive can disentangle local and supra-regional environmental conditions. This approach is particularly useful for the reconstruction of hydrological dynamics, which are challenging to reconstruct due to their high spatial variability, signal buffering, nonlinearities and uncertainties in the response of available paleoclimate archives and proxies. For example, climate-independent factors such as land cover change can affect the local to regional water availability recorded in proxies.

This session aims to highlight recent advances in the use of innovative and quantitative proxies to reconstruct past environmental change on land. We present studies of various continental archives, including but not limited to carbonates (caves, paleosols, snails), sediments (lakes, rivers, alluvial fans), and biological proxies (tree rings, fossil assemblages, plant biomarkers). We particularly include studies involving the calibration of physical and chemical proxies that incorporate modern transfer functions, forward modeling and/or geochemical modeling to predict proxy signals, and quantitative estimates of past temperature and palaeohydrological dynamics. We also include reconstructions of temperature and hydrologic variability over large spatial scales and paleoclimate data assimilation. This session will provide a forum for discussing recent innovations and future directions in the development of terrestrial palaeoenvironmental proxies on seasonal to multi-millennial timescales.

This session aims to highlight recent advances in the use of innovative and quantitative proxies to reconstruct past environmental change on land. We welcome studies of any continental archive, including but not limited to carbonates (caves, paleosols, snails), sediments (lakes, rivers, alluvial fans), ice, and biological proxies (tree rings, fossil assemblages, plant biomarkers). We particularly encourage studies involving the calibration of physical and chemical proxies that incorporate modern transfer functions, forward modeling and/or geochemical modeling to predict proxy signals, and quantitative estimates of past temperature and precipitation amounts. We also welcome reconstructions of temperature and hydrologic variability over large spatial scales, including paleoclimate data assimilation studies. This session will provide a forum for discussing recent innovations and future directions in the development of terrestrial palaeoenvironmental proxies on seasonal to multi-millennial timescales.

During the last decade significant advances in our understanding of the development of Cenozoic polar continental margins have been made. These include more detailed reconstructions of the climatic, oceanographic, and tectonic evolution of high northern and southern latitudes over various time scales, as well as reconstructions of past ice-sheet dynamics and studies of marine geohazards. Results have been obtained from conventional and high-resolution 2D and 3D seismic surveying, as well as from short sediment cores and longer drill cores (e.g. IODP, MeBo).
Fjords are regarded as “small oceans” that incise high latitude coastlines and link continental margins with the interiors of landmasses. Fjord settings allow us to study a variety of geological processes similar to those that have occurred on glaciated continental margins, but typically at smaller scales. The contribution of several sediment sources (e.g. glacial, fluvioglacial, fluvial, biological) to fjord basins along with relatively high sedimentation rates also provides the potential for high-resolution palaeoclimatic and palaeooceanographic records on decadal to centennial timescales.
The aim of this multi-disciplinary session is to follow on from the success of previous years by bringing together researchers working on northern and southern high-latitude continental margins and fjords, investigating the dynamics of past ice sheets, climate, tectonics, sedimentary processes, physical oceanography, and palaeo-biology/ecology.

What role did climate dynamics play in human evolution, the dispersal of Homo sapiens within and beyond the African continent, and key cultural innovations? Were dry spells, stable humid conditions, or rapid climate fluctuations the main driver of human evolution and migration? In order to evaluate the impact that different timescales and magnitudes of climatic shifts might have had on the living conditions of prehistoric humans, we need reliable and continuous reconstructions of paleoenvironmental conditions and fluctuations from the vicinity of paleoanthropological and archaeological sites. The search for the environmental context of human evolution and mobility crucially depends on the interpretation of paleoclimate archives from outcrop geology, lacustrine and marine sediments. Linking archeological data to paleoenvironmental reconstructions and models becomes increasingly important.

As a contribution towards a better understanding of these human-climate interactions the conveners encourage submission of abstracts on their project’s research on (geo)archaeology, paleoecology, paleoclimate, stratigraphy, and paleoenvironmental reconstructions. We especially welcome contributions offering new methods for dealing with difficult archive conditions and dating challenges. We hope this session will appeal to a broad audience by highlighting the latest research on paleoenvironmental reconstructions in the vicinity of key sites of human evolution, showcasing a wide variety of analytical methods, and encouraging collaboration between different research groups. Conceptual models, modelling results and model-data comparisons are warmly welcomed, as collaborative and interdisciplinary research.

Prof. Dr. Daniel M. Deocampo (Department of Geosciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta) will talk on 'Silicate diagenesis and environmental change in eastern Africa: Examples from key hominin localities'.

Dr. Alice Leplongeon (Institute of Advanced Studies & Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna) will talk about how technological variability, environmental change, and human dispersals may be linked, particularly in the Late Pleistocene in eastern Africa, north-eastern Africa and the Levant.

In the last 20 years, a major breakthrough in palaeo-environmental research has been the utilisation of 2D and 3D seismic reflection data and its integration with borehole petrophysics and core lithologies: the so-called “geological Hubble”. This step-change in seismic data quality and interpretive techniques has allowed imaging and analysis of the subsurface from the seafloor down to the Moho, and for palaeo-geographies and contemporary processes to be reconstructed across 1D (borehole) to 4D (repeat seismic) scales.

Though many Earth scientists know the basic principles of these subsurface datasets, they are often unaware of the full capability of seismic data paired with borehole data. We hope that this session will provide a window into the exciting and cross-disciplinary research currently being performed using geomorphological approaches, state-of-the-art seismic interpretation, and integrative methodologies.

Submissions are welcome from a range of geological settings, thus, exposing seismic interpreters and non-specialists to differing geological perspectives, the latest seismic workflows, and examples of effective seismic and borehole integration. Examples could include (but are not restricted to), glacigenic tunnel valley complexes, igneous intrusions, submarine landslides, channel and canyon systems, salt tectonics overburden expression, methane hydrates, and subsurface fluid flow, all under the theme of how seismic data are interpreted and how the results are applied (e.g. palaeo-environmental reconstruction, seafloor engineering, or carbon sequestration).

The submissions will highlight the rationale behind the interpretation of seismic geometries and will generate discussions around potential issues of equifinality (i.e. similar seismic geometries arising from different Earth processes). We thus invite submissions that aim to present new insights in seismic geomorphology and particularly welcome studies integrating borehole and geotechnical drilling information with shallow high-resolution seismic data and deeper traditional legacy oil industry data. Such studies are a crucial component in seismic inversion and refining or elucidating the accuracy of palaeo-geographies that are interpreted from just seismic data.

The session will be an excellent opportunity for subsurface geoscientists to showcase and discuss with contemporary geomorphologists and environmental scientists what can be achieved by utilising seismic and borehole data to unravel the Earth’s past.

During the past decades numerous sediment records have become available from lakes and paleolakes through shallow and (ICDP) deep drilling. These records have proven to be valuable archives of past climate and environmental change, and tectonic and volcanic activity. We invite contributions emphasizing quantitative and spatial assessments of rates of change, causes and consequences of long- and short-term climate variability, impact, magnitude, and frequency of tectonic and volcanic activity as deduced from sedimentological, geochemical, biological, and chronological tools.

Solicited speaker: Christine Y. Chen (MIT, USA): “Establishing robust lake sediment chronologies: Lessons from U/Th dating the deep drill core from Lake Junín, Peru”

Scientific drilling through the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) continues to provide unique opportunities to investigate the workings of the interior of our planet, Earth’s cycles, natural hazards and the distribution of subsurface microbial life. The past and current scientific drilling programs have brought major advances in many multidisciplinary fields of socio-economic relevance, such as climate and ecosystem evolution, palaeoceanography, the deep biosphere, deep crustal and tectonic processes, geodynamics and geohazards. This session invites contributions that present and/or review recent scientific results from deep Earth sampling and monitoring through ocean and continental drilling projects. Furthermore, we encourage contributions that outline perspectives and visions for future drilling projects, in particular projects using a multi-platform approach.

Arid to sub-humid regions contribute ca. 40 % to the global land surface and are home of more than 40 % of the world’s population. During prehistoric times many important cultures had developed in these regions. Due to the high sensitivity of dryland areas even to small-scale environmental changes and anthropogenic activities, ongoing geomorphological processes but also the Late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental evolution as recorded in sediment archives are becoming increasingly relevant for geomorphological, palaeoenvironmental and geoarchaeological research. Dryland research is also boosted by methodological advances, and especially by emerging linkages with other climatic and geomorphic systems that allow using dryland areas as indicator-regions of global environmental change.
This session aims to pool contributions from the broad field of earth sciences that deal with geomorphological processes and different types of sediment archives in dryland areas (dunes, loess, slope deposits, fluvial sediments, alluvial fans, lake and playa sediments, desert pavements, soils, paleosols etc.) at different spatial and temporal scales. Besides case studies from individual regions and archives, methodical and conceptual contributions, e.g. dealing with the special role of eolian, fluvial, gravitational and biological processes in dryland environments, their preservation over time in the sedimentary records, and emerging opportunities and limitations to resolve past and current dynamics, are especially welcome in this session.

Earth history is punctuated by major extinction events, by perturbations of global biogeochemical cycles and by rapid climate shifts. Investigation of these events in Earth history is based on accurate and integrated stratigraphy. This session will bring together specialists in litho-, bio-, chemo-, magneto-, cyclo-, sequence-, and chronostratigraphy with paleontologists, paleoclimatologists and paleoceanographers. An emphasis is placed upon the use of a variety of tools for deciphering sedimentary records and their stratigraphy across intervals of major environmental change. This session is organized by the International Subcommission on Stratigraphic Classification (ISSC) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and it is open to the Earth science community at large.

During the Quaternary Period, the last 2.6 million years of Earth's history, changes in environments and climate shaped human evolution. In particular, large-scale features of atmospheric circulation patterns varied significantly due to the dramatic changes in global boundary conditions which accompanied abrupt changes in climate. Reconstructing these environmental changes relies heavily on precise and accurate chronologies. Radiocarbon dating continues to play a vital role in providing chronological control over the last 50,000 years, but advances in recent years on a range of other geochronological techniques that are applicable to the Quaternary have made available a much wider diversity of methods. In this session, contributions are particularly welcome that aim to (1) reduce, quantify and express dating uncertainties in any dating method, including high-resolution radiocarbon approaches, (2) use established geochronological methods to answer new questions, (3) use new methods to address longstanding issues, or (4) combine different chronometric techniques for improved results, including the analysis of chronological datasets with novel methods, such as Bayesian age-depth modelling. Applications may aim to understand long-term landscape evolution, quantify rates of geomorphological processes, or provide chronologies for records of climate change.

To fully diagnose the mechanisms behind the complex teleconnections of past abrupt climate transitions accurate dating and correlation is imperative. This is one of the main goals of the INTIMATE initiative. Furthermore, we aim towards a global approach to integrating climate data, by considering archives from the tropics to the poles and develop our understanding of proxy-sensitivities to different aspects of climate and environmental change (e.g. temperature, precipitation, nutrient availability, sunlight). Finally, we should test our hypotheses and challenge our ideas using models of atmosphere-ocean-biosphere processes. INTIMATE aims to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of abrupt climate change, with a particular emphasis on the integration and interpretation of global records of abrupt climate changes during the last glacial to interglacial cycle.

Our invited speaker is Prof. Tim Jull, the Editor of the Radiocarbon Journal who will speak about
"Annual carbon-14 variability in tree-rings: Causes and Implications for the calibration curve."

Tree rings are a key terrestrial archive providing insight into past climate conditions at annual and intra-annual resolution and from local to hemispheric scales. Tree ring proxies are also important indicators of plant physiological responses to changing environments and of long-term ecological processes. In this broad context we welcome contributions using one or more of the following approaches to either study the impact of environmental change on growth and physiology of trees and forest ecosystems or to assess and reconstruct past environmental change: (i) traditional dendrochronological methods including studies based on tree ring width and density, (ii) stable isotopes in tree rings and related plant compounds, (iii) dendrochemistry, (iv) quantitative wood anatomy, (v) sap flow, dendrometer and related monitoring data analyses, and (vi) mechanistic modelling, all at different temporal and spatial scales.