Climate Past Present Future
Climate PPF combines environmental reconstructions and climate modelling from tectonic to historical timescales, for an improved understanding of long-term climate change and its future evolution.
Bringing together expertise across palaeoecology, Earth system science and modelling, the cluster examines climate dynamics, variability and impacts, with a focus on generating insights that inform responses to ongoing environmental change.
Work informs perspectives on Atlantic Ocean circulation, ice-ocean interactions, hydroclimate variability, biogeochemical cycles in aquatic ecosystems, the climatic context of human evolution and migration, past warm periods as a basis for comparison with the present interglacial, and the concept of the Anthropocene and major challenges facing humanity in the 21st century.
Palaeoclimate Seminar Series
Join our weekly lunchtime seminars exploring past climate change, Earth systems and environmental research with speakers from UCL and beyond.
Seminar scheduleRecent Research Highlights and Activity
Leads: Chris Brierley
Coordinating the global palaeoclimate contributions to the simulations database for the upcoming IPCC report
Leads: Professor Jonathan Holmes
Reconstructing Early and Mid-Holocene Atmospheric circulation change in western and central Europe.
Leads: Professor Mark Maslin
understanding and communicating the impacts of climate change on global health, migration, economics and security
Lead: Aleksandr 'Sasha' Montelli
leading an interdisciplinary research cruise to make the first comprehensive observations underneath an Antarctic ice shelf
Lead: Lucy Roberts
Determining the potential response of Arctic aquatic ecosystems to anthropogenic warming
Lead: David Thornalley
Reassessing our understanding of past abrupt climate events (Wharton et al., 2024, Wharton et al., 2026) and developing an early warning system for North Atlantic circulation change that learns from past tipping points (Project VERIFY)
Lead: Chronis Tzedakis
Challenging the prevailing paradigm of continuous early human occupation of Europe
Cluster Lead
Professor Chronis Tzedakis has been Professor of Physical Geography at UCL since 2009. He was educated at Boston, Brown, and Cambridge universities. He is distinguished for his contribution to understanding environmental and climate changes over the last 2.6 million years.
Research Interests: Understanding the timing, duration and intensity of interglacial and glacial periods, and developing an extended theory of Ice Ages.
- Research Interests: Employing models to simulate past and future climate changes, and using past climate reconstructions to improve climate projections.
- Research Interests: Research on causes and impacts of abrupt Holocene cooling events and on effective moisture variability in low-latitude regions.
- Research Interests: Anthropocene, Human social and biological evolution, climate and health, energy resources and security
- Research Interests: Combining marine geophysical data with sediment cores and numerical modelling to reconstruct past interactions between ice sheets, ocean and solid earth.
- Research Interests: Reconstructing and monitoring the feedback between human activities, climate, biogeochemical cycles, and ecological processes in aquatic ecosystems.
- Research Interests: Investigating the ocean and marine ecosystems and their role in the climate system on decadal to millennial timescales to improve predictions of future climate change
Study BSc Geography at UCL
Study physical geography, climate systems and environmental change with leading UCL researchers exploring past and future climates.
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