After receiving the 15th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change, Ellen Thomas reflects in this interview on how marine fossil records make it possible to reconstruct episodes of intense warming in Earth’s history. Through the detailed study of microfossils and ocean sediments, she explains how these natural archives reveal the effects that abrupt temperature changes had on past ecosystems. Her perspective highlights the importance of understanding these precedents in order to interpret today’s climate crisis and anticipate its possible consequences.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category has gone in this fifteenth edition to paleoclimatologist James C. Zachos (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Ellen Thomas (Yale University and Wesleyan University) “for their seminal contributions to the identification of a major natural eve
After receiving the 15th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate Change, Ellen Thomas reflects in this interview on how marine fossil records make it possible to reconstruct episodes of intense warming in Earth’s history. Through the detailed study of microfossils and ocean sediments, she explains how these natural archives reveal the effects that abrupt temperature changes had on past ecosystems. Her perspective highlights the importance of understanding these precedents in order to interpret today’s climate crisis and anticipate its possible consequences.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Climate Change category has gone in this fifteenth edition to paleoclimatologist James C. Zachos (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Ellen Thomas (Yale University and Wesleyan University) “for their seminal contributions to the identification of a major natural event in the fossil record that provides a compelling analog for anthropogenic climate change,” said the committee in its citation.
00:00 Introduction
00:05 Could you explain your role in the discovery of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), and why it has represented such a significant breakthrough in the field of climate change science?
06:23 In what sense can the PETM be considered an analogue of the current human-induced climate change? What can we learn from this extreme event in the past to better understand and address today’s global warming?
10:07 What has the evidence from the PETM specifically revealed about the potential impact of climate change on biodiversity? Could the current global warming lead to a mass extinction similar to the one that occurred 55 million years ago?
15:25 What would you say to climate change skeptics and critics who argue that Earth’s climate has always changed naturally in the past and that humans therefore cannot be held responsible for the current global warming?
20:06 Do you have hope in the measures currently being adopted by the international community to curb climate change, or do you believe that much more needs to be done to effectively address the threat of global warming?
