Deep Time Paleoclimate Modeling and Natural Resource Exploration: Status and Future Challenges

Sohl, Linda E.¹, Mark A. Chandler¹ (1) Columbia University, New York, NY

Deep time paleoclimate studies have been employed to assist in the exploration for natural resources whose formation is dependent upon specific climatic conditions (e.g., petroleum, coal, certain ore deposits, and methane clathrates). Since the 1980s, numerical climate models have complemented qualitative studies, providing testable predictions for regions in which the existing geologic data are sparse. With substantial increases in available computer power, we have gained the ability to run global climate models (GCMs) with as much as a sixteen-fold increase in spatial resolution over the earliest models, with more sophisticated methods of handling climate forcings and feedbacks that result in better reproduction of past climates. In the relatively near future, high resolution models and/or coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models will be capable of resolving subregional-scale features, perhaps even down to the size of individual oil fields, that are of greatest interest for petroleum exploration.

However, GCMs produce output that is only as good as the input they receive – i.e., boundary conditions derived from geologic data. To produce paleoclimate simulations at increasingly high resolutions, more detailed inputs are required: paleogeography and paleotopography, paleovegetation distribution, and ocean temperature data from paleoproxies. Given the limitations of the rock record in assigning such conditions, ensembles of experiments will be required to provide probabilistic hindcasts. GCM simulations of deep time climates can be a valuable tool in the resource exploration toolkit, but only if geologists can provide the necessary inputs and modelers take advantage of new techniques and technologies.