A DETAILED CLIMATE STUDY OF THE EARLY PALEOGENE LARAMIDE FORELAND

As the warmest time interval in the Cenozoic and the most recent of the extreme ‘greenhouse' climates in earth history, the early Paleogene has long captured the attention of the paleoclimate community. Early researchers used plant fossils to develop a portrait of a climate vastly different from that of today. As increasing numbers and types of data became available, the picture of a time of global warmth solidified, and with the advent of general circulation models (GCMs), researchers began to investigate the causes of this intriguing climate. Proxy data do not, however, have uninterrupted spatial coverage and results from GCM studies are at a relatively coarse spatial resolution. Consequently, both proxy data and GCM results fail to capture the spatial and temporal detail characteristic of the actual climate system. We have recently conducted a high-resolution, regional climate modeling study of the North American Laramide foreland. Our high-resolution simulation provides not only a closer look at state variables but also depicts early Paleogene climate dynamics in central North America with an unprecedented level of detail and, as such, presents interesting hypotheses relating to the spatial variability and richness of early Paleogene climate.