Dr Dan Lunt

Contact details:
office: G.9N
tel: +44 (0)117 3317483 (internal 17483)
fax: +44 (0)117 9287878
e-mail: d.j.lunt@bristol.ac.uk

Research interests:
I am a research fellow in the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, and am jointly funded by the British Antarctic Survey and RCUK.

My research interests are broad, but a particular focus is on icesheet-climate interactions, both in the past (1) and in the future (2).

To understand the Earth System by testing hypotheses derived from the palaeodata record

To improve future climate prediction by assessing the ability of climate models to predict the past

Other research focuses on understanding aspects of the palaeo record. The analysis and interpretation of palaeo data has led to the formation of many hypotheses regarding the mechanisms affecting past climate change. Models are ideal tools to test these hypotheses (1,3). In addition, modelling can itself lead to hypotheses which are testable by the collection and interpretation of new data, and can indicate regions in which new data could usefully be collected (4).

I am also carrying out work on the climatic impacts of geoengineering (5) – the ‘‘intentional large-scale manipulation of the environment’’.

I am an executive editor of the new EGU journal, Geoscientific Model Development, which is primarily for model descriptions, from box models to GCMs. The philosophy behind the journal, which aims to improve rigour and traceability in climate modelling, is described here.

I have previously worked at the LSCE in Paris, and the Meteorology department in Reading.

For a full publications list, please visit my personal web page.

Selected publications:
(1) Lunt, D.J., Foster, G.L., Haywood, A.M., Stone, E.J. (2008). Late Pliocene Greenland glaciation controlled by a decline in atmospheric CO₂ levels. Nature, 454, 1102-1105.

(2) Lunt, D.J., de Noblet-Ducoudre, N., and Charbit, S. (2004) Effects of a melted Greenland ice sheet on climate, vegetation, and the crysophere. Climate Dynamics, 23(7-8), 679-694.

(3) Lunt, D.J. and Valdes, P.J. (2001) Dust transport to Dome C, Antarctica, at the Last Glacial Maximum and present day. Geophysical Research Letters 28, 2, 295-298.

(4) Lunt, D.J., Flecker, R., Valdes, P.J., Gladstone, R., Salzmann, U., Haywood, A, (2008), A methodology for targeting palaeo proxy data acquisition: A case study for the terrestrial late Miocene. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 271, 53-62.

(5) Lunt, D.J., A. Ridgwell, P.J. Valdes, and A. Seale (2008), "Sunshade World": A fully coupled GCM evaluation of the climatic impacts of geoengineering, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L12710, doi:10.1029/2008GL033674.

 

Left: The Greenland ice sheet today. Right: A model prediction of the possible state of the Greenland ice sheet in the future (Lunt et al, Climate Dynamics, 2004).