WELCOME TO BLUE SKY GENETICS
We work with international teams of expert researchers to pioneer innovative approaches to understanding and modelling climate change processes and impacts, past and present. We bring together the physical, biological, and mathematical sciences to challenge standard concepts, and better understand our world.
High Impact
We focus on the big picture questions, and use novel methods and approaches that are generally unavailable elsewhere.
Expert Researchers
We work with a network of experts and field leaders across Europe, the US, and Australia that has been built over 30 years at the highest levels of scientific research.
Real Results
Proven research outcomes including over 30 Nature and Science papers, and the initiation of new fields of research.
CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS
Research Focus
Our world is currently approaching a wide range of tipping points in critical climate systems, where a sudden shift in state will have huge impacts - which are unlikely to be reversible in timespans relevant to our society. These include the steady slowing down of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) - which allows northern Europe to enjoy warm temperatures far in excess of latitudinal position - or the undercutting of the doomsday Antarctic glaciers such as the Thwaites - which will produce around a metre of sea level rise, and initiate a further 3m in quick succession.
One of the best ways to determine where these tipping points sit, and what will happen when they are crossed is to examine past records. For example, the AMOC shutdown is effectively what has happened every Heinrich Event, enigmatic extreme cold periods in the past marked by massive armadas of icebergs rafting across the Atlantic as far south as Spain. Heinrich Events are preceded by short atmospheric warming phases (which is what we are doing right now with Greenhouse Gas Warming) which are thought to undercut ice shelves via warm sea currents, and fracture terminal buttresses via surface melting and wedging crevasses. A modern Heinrich Event would lead to generalised severe cold across the UK and Scandanavia, with extreme weather patterns (droughts, floods) due to disruption of the jet stream and would destroy agriculture across Europe. To understand this process, the amount of warming required, the speed at which the AMOC shuts off, and the processes required to start it up again we can examine paleoclimate records across multiple past Heinrich Stadial Events.
We are currently modelling climate change during these tipping points, using Arctic and Antarctic ice core records, and marine sediment cores from around the world. This work involves global models of climate change which focus on atmospheric chemistry, ozone, UV, and the impacts of ionisation due to cosmic radiation.
The climate change research is also revealing key steps in human evolution, including the process by which modern humans left Africa in a process halted by glacial temperatures from 70-55,000 years ago. During this extended cold phase, known as Marine Isotope Stage 4, the adventurous population that had left Africa seems to have been marooned in the Arabian Gulf (then a long river valley) for over 20,000 years. During this time they underwent strong selection for the cold, dusty conditions with limited food - very much like the environments depicted in Dune by Frank Herbert. The genetic and cultural adaptations they underwent during this period of intense selection equipped them with the skills to finally survive in the periglacial environment of Eurasia - unlike many previous attempts.
