Emeritus Professor Patrick De Deckker ‘Australia was much wetter and warmer than today some 8 to 6 millennia ago. Can we learn from this knowing future climate predictions?’

Today, we live in the period called the ‘Anthropocene’, so-called because the effects of human activities on the Planet are extraordinarily visible and will continue to do so. Before that period, was the ‘Holocene’ which lasted some 12,000 years. Many people consider this period to have been rather stable climatically. However, sea level was still rising from the time when the world was extremely cold - and in Australia very dry - some 20,000 years ago. At that time, there was a small glacier in the Snowy Mountains. Remember, people were already established on this continent and witnessed all those changes. Sea level rose to today’s height at about 6,000 years ago. Archaeologists claim that the Holocene saw the advent of agriculture and a change from a nomadic culture to a sedentary one, mostly in the northern hemisphere.

I will explore what conditions were like in Australia during the Holocene and pay particular attention to a period of time spaning 8,000 to 6,000 years ago when temperatures were high both on land and at sea, lake levels were extraordinarily high and vegetation spectra in places very different compared to today. I will seek information from sites extending from southern Queensland to Macquarie Island, as well as at sea.

Can we learn from these climatic changes when predicting what the future holds under a substantial increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels? I will attempt at answering that question to the best of my knowledge.

Biography

Emeritus Professor Patrick De Deckker is at the Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University. Patrick is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. Originally from Belgium, Patrick arrived in Australia over 50 years ago where he continued his university education in geology, micropalaeontology and zoology at several institutions. He has been at ANU since 1981 except for 2 years at Monash. He has worked on salt lakes, their biota and geological history, plus on the evolution of the oceans in our region related to climate variability and on airborne dust (a topic which he presented to the Friends of the ANBG a couple of years ago).

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Emeritus Professor Patrick De Deckker ‘Australia was much wetter and warmer than today some 8 to 6 millennia ago. Can we learn from this knowing future climate predictions?’

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