DEPOSITS of red dust dating back hundreds of thousands of years and tell-tale signs of past sea levels hold the key to understanding climate change today, say scientists beginning a major research programme in Jersey.
Academics from Uppsala University in Sweden, working with Jersey-based Dr Simon Howell, will spend two weeks in October taking samples from around the Island that will be sent to laboratories across the world for the latest scientific testing.
The visit is the first in a series of three field trips, following exploratory work undertaken last year, in a project aiming not simply to understand our past in greater detail but to apply that knowledge to the future.
‘If we can look back and see what’s happened in the past, then that can be used to feed in to climate modelling today,’ Dr Howell said.
He explained that evidence of the changing climate many thousands of years ago was to be found in a number of features in the environment around us today, including ‘raised beaches’ which testify to previous sea levels; loess, a fine wind-blown dust that partly accounts for the richness of Jersey’s soil; geological blocks created by movement during extreme cold weather; and blown sand and peat beds that reveal more recent episodes of differing climates.
Such things constitute what Dr Howell describes as ‘archives’ yielding detailed, comprehensive insights into Jersey’s past climates. Of particular interest is the loess, as he explained: ‘There is a huge amount here and we don’t really understand why at the moment but this dust is a major controller of climate as you might expect because, as the climate gets warmer and there is more dust in the atmosphere, the dust does all kinds of things, including affecting the amount of sunlight that reaches us and it also creates temperature bubbles on the land. Understanding how that has happened in the past and what it has done to the environment helps us model what is going to happen in the future. There is a direct link between the past and future climate.’
October’s visit from the team from Uppsala – comprising members from an MSc student up to the university’s Professor of Earth Sciences Department – launches the research programme, which has received funding of £60,000 from Jersey Heritage and £42,226 from the Jersey Community Foundation. Uppsala University have made in-kind contributions of £128,160 for the detailed testing and dating of samples in laboratories around the world.
Commenting on the project, Jon Carter, chief executive of Jersey Heritage, said: ‘The government’s new Heritage Strategy rightly emphasises the need to support top-flight research and we have been fortunate to have recently received a bequest which has allowed us to make investments in support of that aim. All of this work helps us understand and ultimately better manage this important aspect of Jersey’s heritage and supports our ambitions to seek recognition for the Island as a Global Geopark.’
While the support which has been garnered locally covers the first year of research, Dr Howell hopes that the significance of the work may attract further support to develop the work over a three-to-five-year horizon.
‘What we would really like is for people to understand that this is not a dry academic project – of course, it’s got aspects relating to publications and conferences – but what we would like the public of Jersey to understand is why we are doing this and just what it means,’ he said.
