Paleoceanography is the scientific study of past ocean states, processes, and variability on geological timescales, using physical, chemical, biological, and isotopic proxies preserved in marine sediments, microfossils, corals, and other archives. It reconstructs parameters such as sea-surface and deep-water temperatures, salinity, circulation patterns, biogeochemical cycles, ice volume, and sea level, often through analyses of stable and radiogenic isotopes, trace metals, and sedimentological characteristics. Paleoceanography is central to understanding ocean–climate feedbacks, carbon cycle dynamics, and the response of the ocean system to external forcings, and it provides critical boundary conditions and validation targets for climate and Earth system models.
A University of Sydney student has developed a completely new way to peer inside coral fossils to recover lost records of past climate change.
Earth Sciences
Oct 7, 2025
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35
Earth's climate has fluctuated between cold and warm periods for millions of years. During the so-called "lukewarm interglacials"—warm phases between 800,000 and 430,000 years ago—atmospheric CO2 concentrations were only ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 6, 2025
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120
Scientists at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have provided conclusive evidence that the Red Sea completely dried out about 6.2 million years ago, before being suddenly refilled by a catastrophic ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 30, 2025
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1750
Earth scientists often face huge challenges when researching Earth's history: many significant events occurred such a long time ago that there is little direct evidence available. Consequently, researchers often have to rely ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 25, 2025
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97
Under the lead of the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), a sediment core from the Southeast Pacific was examined that reflects the last 8 million years of Earth's history.
Earth Sciences
Sep 11, 2025
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81
The Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), a major environmental upheaval occurring approximately 183 million years ago during the Mesozoic Era, stands as one of the most severe perturbations to Earth's carbon cycle in geological ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 5, 2025
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50
The explosion of animal life in Earth's oceans half a billion years ago during and after the Cambrian Period is commonly attributed to a substantial and sustained rise of free oxygen (O2) in seawater. Some researchers even ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 4, 2025
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30
Some 14,000 years ago, algal blooms in the Southern Ocean helped to massively reduce the global carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere—as has now been revealed by new analyses of ancient DNA published by a team from the ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 29, 2025
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119
Research by the University of Southampton and University of East Anglia (UEA) shows a major shift in South Pacific climate conditions—beginning around 1,000 years ago—that may have pushed people to settle further east and ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 27, 2025
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42
What leads to lower atmospheric CO2 during ice ages is a question that has puzzled scientists for decades, and it is one that UConn Department of Marine Sciences Ph.D. student Monica Garity and co-authors are working to understand. ...
Earth Sciences
Aug 26, 2025
0
30
