C-CASCADES

'Glacial carbon cycles' by Dr. Victor Brovkin

Dr. Victor Brovkin's short biography:

Dr. Victor Brovkin is head of a group on Climate-Biogeosphere Interactions at the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology and professor at the University of Hamburg, Germany.
He was trained as a mathematician at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, where he got his PhD degree in 1988. Victor Brovkin has over 20 years experience in global climate and carbon cycle science.
His research is focused on interactions between terrestrial ecosystems and the climate, including biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. Victor Brovkin has developed global dynamic vegetation models and applied them for pioneering studies on stability of climate-vegetation system.
He uses models of different complexity to study carbon cycle dynamics in the Quaternary period, including the last glacial cycle and the Holocene. His groups research has now shifted towards understanding the role of high latitude ecosystems in the climate system, focusing on terrestrial and marine permafrost processes.
As a lead author, he has contributed to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and to the IPCC WGI AR5 report (Carbon cycle chapter).
Victor Brovkin has recently become a member of the Academia Europaea.

Dr. Victor Brovkin's personal homepage

Lecture's abstract - 'Glacial carbon cycles':

Ice core records of atmospheric CO₂ concentration through the last 800,000 years show the carbon cycle amplifying the climate forcing from variations in Earth’s orbit.
This positive climate-carbon cycle feedback could weaken or even possibly reverse present-day fossil fuel CO₂ uptake by the natural carbon cycle. Despite much effort over the last decades, a process-based explanation of the carbon cycle feedbacks responsible for the glacial-interglacial CO₂ cycles remains incomplete.
This lecture will focus on proposed marine and terrestrial mechanisms of glacial CO₂ cycles, with especial focus on the last deglaciation and the Holocene.

Recommended background publication on this presentation:

Brovkin, V., Ganopolski, A., Archer, D., and Rahmstorf, S. (2007): Lowering of glacial atmospheric CO2 in response to changes in oceanic circulation and marine biogeochemistry. Paleoceanography, 22, PA4202. doi:10.1029/2006PA001380.