A couple of interesting events at the Royal Society later this year:
10-11 October 2011
Warm climates of the past - a lesson for the future?
In several periods in Earth's history, climate has been significantly warmer than present. What lessons about the future can be learnt from past warm periods? The answer depends on the quality of reconstructions of past climates, our understanding of their causes, and the validity of climate models which aim to reproduce them. This meeting will address these exciting and challenging issues.
12-13 October 2011
Reconstructing and understanding CO2 variability in the past
A number of proxy methods are used to infer past atmospheric CO2 concentrations, such as fossilised leaves, paleo soils, and isotopes in ocean sediments. Each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses and methodological uncertainties. This meeting will aim to compare methods and their available records, leading to a deeper understanding of the processes which influence the proxies and the Cenozoic record of atmospheric CO2.