ERC award to reconstruct Earth’s 500 million year CO2 history

Dr Hana Jurikova, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has been awarded a €2.5 million ERC Starting Grant.  The prestigious award will be used over the next five years to study the 500-million-year history of atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH.

CO2 is an important greenhouse gas and building block for life.

CO2 influences ocean acidity (pH), and plays a central role in regulating Earth’s environment, climate and planetary habitability. Dr Jurikova aims to understand how Earth’s environment and climate respond to changing CO2 by looking into Earth’s geological past.

This new body of work will provide a novel way to reconstruct atmospheric CO2 and ocean pH over the last 500 million years, reaching back to the dawn of complex multi-cellular life. The project will allow researchers to quantify CO2 during key periods of Earth’s history, providing fundamental insights into CO2’s past and future role in shaping conditions and life on our planet. This ambitious reconstruction has never been attempted before, but recent analytical advances pioneered by Dr Jurikova now make it possible.

Dr Jurikova and her team will combine novel analytical approaches with novel geological archives and state-of-the-art modelling to reconstruct Earth’s past CO2 levels. This will provide a step change in our understanding of CO2 and its role in Earth’s climate and habitability, past, present and future.