Jochen Halfar

Halfar‘s paleoclimate laboratory focuses on deciphering paleoclimates on different time scales ranging from the past centuries to 55 million years ago using sclerochronological, geochemical, and sedimentological multi-proxy approaches. Our highly interdisciplinary research is conducted in close collaboration with biologists, oceanographers, and climate physicists.

Currently, the group focuses on three main directions of research. First, we study crusty Arctic seafloor algae that can live up to 650 years while depositing annual tree-ring like layers. Using geochemical techniques we interpret past ocean climates and even sea-ice conditions from these layers. Another aspect of our current research focuses on modern shallow water marine carbonate environments in the tropics where we evaluate their adaptation to nutrient enrichment and the ongoing acidification of the ocean. Back on land we are studying exceptionally well-preserved fossil wood in volcanoclastic deposits associated with early Paleogene kimberlite pipes (55.1 million years) in the Northwest Territories, Canada, to explore terrestrial climate variability during a period of extreme warmth.