CCFS – Snowball Earth Short Course
by Professor Paul Hoffman
15 July 2016
A CCFS-sponsored short course on the global climatic phenomenon known as Snowball Earth will be held at Curtin University on Friday 15 July, 2016. Below is the scheduled timetable for the lecture series and a link to view the live webcasts.
The global climatic phenomenon known as Snowball Earth is arguably the most exciting and challenging discovery in geology in the last 35 years. It is inherently multidisciplinary: its recognition came from geology, its origin and predictive nature from climate dynamics, its verification from geochemistry and geochronology, and its legacy is geobiological. The proposed short course will synthesize the latest and most significant results from all four disciplines and highlight outstanding problems. The presenter is a leading spokesman and authority on Snowball Earth, with over 20 years of first-hand experience on six continents.
The seminar schedule is:
9:30am – Lecture 1. Snowball geology: chronology, paleogeography, sedimentology, and paleoenvironmental context of Cryogenian glaciations.
11:00am – Lecture 2. Snowball climate dynamics: the atmosphere, cryosphere, ocean and lithosphere during Snowball Earth.
1:00pm – Lecture 3. Snowball geochemistry: Snowball ocean acidification, deacidification, cap carbonates, elemental and isotopic proxy records, and redox.
2:30pm – Lecture 4. Snowball geobiology: Neoproterozoic paleontology, organic geochemistry and molecular phylogeny; habitats on Snowball Earth for the evolution of eukaryotes.
3:15pm – Lecture 5 (optional). Siderian glaciation and the Great Oxidation Event: Paleoproterozoic glaciation in North America and southern Africa, and evidence for a Siderian Snowball Earth.
Note: The timing of the optional 5th lecture is an estimate only. If presented, the 5th lecture will immediately follow lecture 4.
The link below will take you to the live webcast. The schedule provided above is in the local time of Perth, WA (AWST, UTC/GMT+8:00hrs).