Paleoclimate: Changes and Adaptation

Dear Colleagues,

Climate may be defined as the weather conditions prevailing in an area in general or over a long period. Climate is the planetary response of the atmospheric circulation to its changing composition, to the solar system configuration, to the Earth’s rotation and to the oceans’ and continents’ distributions. It displays, as a result, a restless moving pattern, expressed at a global scale by subsiding and uplifting atmospheric convection cells. These changes have long been recognized and documented in the geologic record since very early times. In many rocks, different geologic features, such as fossil fragments and imprints, paleoweathering surfaces, prehistoric remains and historic reports, contain climate signals that can be analysed and interpreted. The continued gathering of those data and information is the pathway to learn more about past climates and its complex changes. Lessons from the past support the view that deep change is the rule, not the exception, even where no reference is available, due to strongly contrasting extremes, chaotically defined by the whole ensemble of extra-planetary, external, and internal geodynamic controls.

Science-based knowledge is crucial to face current challenges. The overall goal of this Special Issue of Geosciences is to stimulate an observational attitude and to promote an open discussion on paleoclimate signals in order to improve our look at the present and to ground future perspectives.

Specifically, this Special Issue aims to provide an outlet for rapid, widely accessible publication of peer-reviewed studies covering, without being limited to, the following areas:

• Paleoclimates in the Solar System: External forcing and divergent evolutions;
• Climate changes in geological time: Lessons to learn;
• Climate memory in the geological record;
• Climate changes and human adaptations throughout the Quaternary;
• Climatic events and human–environment interactions in the Holocene.

Prof. Dr. Rui Pena dos Reis
Prof. Dr. Maria Helena Henriques
Prof. Dr. Ivo Alves
Dr. Anna Morozova
Prof. Dr. Luiz Oosterbeek
Prof. Dr. Pierluigi Rosina
Prof. Dr. Artur Sá
Prof. Dr. Nuno Vaz
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Climate change: geo-history, prehistory and history
• Paleoclimate reconstructions
• Paleobiogeographic patterns
• Glaciations record
• Paleoclimate biotic and abiotic proxies
• Past ocean circulation
• Past biotic turnovers
• Past astronomical records
• Paleoclimate record in the landscape
• Human response to climate change
• Public perceptions on climate change

• Climate Variability in Antarctica and the Southern Hemisphere over the Last Millennia in Geosciences (9 articles)
• Reconstitutions of Paleoenvironments and Paleoclimates using Stable Isotope Geochemistry in Geosciences (4 articles)
• Climate and Environmental Change of Africa in Geosciences (2 articles)