The aim of the pACE - Focus of ACE is formulated as: “to understand the palaeoenvironmental, palaeobiological and palaeoclimatological evolution of the Arctic and northern circumpolar regions over geological timescales, using a combination of modelling tools and field-data, which draw on expertise, data, equipment and infrastructure uniquely available at the WUN nodes…
”The assessment of the potential impacts of ongoing- and future global warming requires the analysis of high- and intermediate CO2, essentially ice-free to unipolar glaciated, natural states of the Earth of the past. Such cases may be applied as providing constraints and calibration for climate modeling and environmental process studies of the future Arctic, and Global climatic states.
Questions to be addressed include the dynamics of the warm Arctic, the cooling, biotic responses and the role of the Arctic as carbon sink, the dynamics of the glacial Arctic. Scientists and master students from the department are involved in studying and sedimentological, mineralogical, stratigraphical and micropaleontological developments across the Paleocene-Eocene succession (PETM included) at Svalbard and in the Arctic.At the present the department`s research is concentrated on the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) and surrounding strata in the Central Basin of Svalbard.
Our analyses demonstrate that this highly important warming event in Svalbard was associated with marine hypoxia, markedly increased runoff, a maximum flooding event, strongly reduced marine diversity and a faunal extinction. The depositional conditions of a deltaic succession underlying the PETM are delineated.