100 million years of changes.. An interactive climate model that reveals the history of planet Earth

Our knowledge of Earth's history is a first step and a cornerstone for predicting its future.

Scientists have been trying to understand the dynamics of the earth's movement and the terrain and climatic changes that shaped the face of our planet, in an attempt to predict what the future will bring in terms of changes that affect life in all its forms on the planet, but the overlapping of the forces affecting these changes was the reason for their lack of understanding of the history of the planet. Thus, it was a stumbling block in attempts to predict and foresee what the future holds.

One hundred million years of changes

Now, a team of geoscientists from the University of Sydney, in collaboration with scientists from France, has developed a detailed and dynamic model of the Earth's surface over the past 100 million years at high resolution (up to 10 kilometers), broken down into frames per million years.

The model overlaps the forces of climate, tectonic movement, time, and the gradual sculpting of the Earth's surface by rivers, which represent the influencing forces that change the face of our planet.

The results of the research were published in the prestigious "Science" journal on the second of March.

The model provides - for the first time - a high-resolution understanding of how the geophysical landscapes we see today were formed, and how millions of tons of sediment flowed into the oceans. Eurek Alert said, "To predict the future, we must understand the past. But our geological models have provided little understanding of how the modern physical features of our planet formed."

The first interactive dynamic model

"If you're looking for a continuous model of the interaction between river basins and erosion on a global scale and sediment deposition at high resolution over the past 100 million years, it doesn't exist. So this is a huge advance. It's not just a tool to help us investigate the past, but it's It will also help scientists understand and predict the future."

"This unprecedented high-resolution model of Earth's recent past will provide geoscientists with a more complete and dynamic understanding of the Earth's surface," said second researcher Dr. Laurent Huson of the Institut des Sciences de la Terre in Grenoble, France. "With extreme precision, it can illustrate the dynamics of sediment transport from land to the oceans in a way we've never been able to before."

Animated world map of landscape evolution over the past 100 million years (University of Sydney)

A more accurate understanding of the planet's past

Also in the press release, Sales says that understanding the flow of terrestrial sediments into marine environments is vital to understanding current ocean chemistry. "Given that ocean chemistry changes rapidly due to human-caused climate change, a more complete picture could aid our understanding of marine environments," he added. .

The model will allow scientists to test different theories about how the Earth's surface responds to climate change and tectonic forces. Furthermore, the research provides an improved model for understanding how Earth's sediment transport regulates the planet's carbon cycle over millions of years.

"Our findings will provide a dynamic and detailed background for scientists in other areas to prepare and test hypotheses, such as biochemical cycles or in biological evolution," Sales concludes.