Duration: 1976 to 2011

The project aimed to date paleoenvironmental archives (sediments, tree rings, water, speleothems) with the highest possible temporal resolution and to investigate and document abrupt climate fluctuations in the past. The main objective was to reconstruct global and regional climate changes over the last 10,000 and 300,000 years. The information gathered in the project is relevant for understanding the processes that control the climate and for validating existing climate models. It used 14C, Th/U, and 10Be dating methods, electron spin resonance, and mass spectrometric analyses of the isotopic composition of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. The research center worked very closely and successfully with geoscience institutes in Germany.

Chairman of the Commission

Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Egon Althaus

head of research

Professor Augusto Mangini

Employees

• Holger Braun
• René Eichstädter
• Jens Fohlmeister
• Dr. Bernd Kromer
• Jörg Lippold
• Christian Mühlinghaus
• Daniela Polag
• Dr. Denis Scholz
• Dr. Andrea Schröder-Ritzrau
• Sahra Talamo
• Karoline Thomas
• Nicole Vollweiler
• Sebastian Welk

Further information about the research center can be found at Datierte Speleotheme - Archive der Paläoumwelt(external link) and at the Institute for Environmental Physics ( external link) at Heidelberg University.