PAGES - Past Global Changes

Welcome to PAGES

The PAGES (Past Global Changes) project is an international effort to coordinate and promote past global change research. The primary objective is to improve our understanding of past changes in the Earth system in order to improve projections of future climate and environment, and inform strategies for sustainability. ... more

PAGES is open and inclusive to all scientists interested in past global changes. In February 2017, PAGES' parent organization Future Earth published a statement affirming its commitment to supporting international collaboration and the free movement of scientists and flow of data, information and knowledge for global sustainability. PAGES fully supports the Future Earth statement.

PAGES is funded by the US National Science Foundation and the Swiss Academy of Sciences, and supported in-kind by the University of Bern, Switzerland. It is a Global Research Project of Future Earth and a scientific partner of WCRP.

Warmer Worlds author interview

Details: Published: Monday, 23 July 2018 10:57

The PAGES' Warmer Worlds Integrative Activity paper "Palaeoclimate constraints on the impact of 2°C anthropogenic warming and beyond", published in Nature Geoscience, continues to attract international media attention.

Researchers from 17 countries studied three well-documented historical warm periods - the Holocene thermal maximum, the last interglacial and the mid-Pliocene warm period - to predict future possibilities.

Read the recent Nexus Media article "The Climate Has Always Changed. Why Is This Time so Much Worse?" which contains extended interviews with co-authors Katrin Meissner and Alan C. Mix.

Access the Nature Geoscience paper, with a reading list of other prominent media mentions, here.

Winter flooding in 1936

Details: Published: Monday, 16 July 2018 15:35

A new paper from the PAGES Floods Working Group, titled "On the extraordinary winter flood episode over the North Atlantic Basin in 1936", was recently published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Led by working group leader Juan Antonio Ballesteros Canovas, authors analyze the linkage between atmosphere and ocean modes and winter flood variability over the 20th century based on long-term flow-discharge series, historical archives, and tree-ring records of past floods in the North Atlantic Basin. The most extreme winter floods occurred in 1936 and had strong impacts on either side of the Atlantic.

Read the latest e-news

Details: Published: Wednesday, 11 July 2018 16:36

Read about the latest PAGES' news, meetings and opportunities from around the world in this month's e-news.

Highlights include a call for feedback (by 31 August) on the future of the printed Past Global Changes Magazine, deadline for new working group proposals, PAGES' working group and ECN updates, EGU and AGU announcements, and an open call for a Future Earth ocean sustainability research project.

PALSEA2 QSR SI underway

Details: Published: Monday, 09 July 2018 16:10

The first contributions to the PALSEA2 special issue of Quaternary Science Reviews, titled "PALeo constraints on SEA level rise (PALSEA): ice-sheet and sea-level responses to past climate warming" are now available.

The importance of high-quality regional sea-level databases is demonstrated in the "Glacial isostatic adjustment along the Pacific coast of central North America" paper by Maryam Yousefi et al.

The authors use such a database to constrain the contribution of glacial isostatic adjustment to sea-level change and vertical land motion along the tectonically active coast of central North America. Their results can be used by other researchers to better understand tectonic processes and make more accurate estimates of future sea-level changes along this coastline.

New Warmer Worlds paper

Details: Published: Monday, 25 June 2018 17:01

A Nature Geoscience paper released today by members of PAGES Warmer Worlds Integrative Activity stresses the urgency of reducing CO₂ emissions to avert major environmental damages.

The study - led by Hubertus Fischer, Katrin Meissner and Alan Mix, with a group of almost 60 scientists from 17 countries - compiled evidence from the past to review the response of different components of the Earth System (such as marine and terrestrial ecosystems, ice sheets, sea ice etc) on a warming in various regions of the globe similar to what is expected for a maximum 1.5-2°C global warming as agreed upon in the Paris Agreement.

New ECN blog posts

Details: Published: Monday, 18 June 2018 12:43

New and recent contributions to the PAGES Early-Career Network (ECN) blog, The Early Pages.

1. They are headliners of paleoceanography, but virtually unknown to the general public - meet the tiny organisms called foraminifera! Robyn Granger shares how these microscopical shells cause her confusion and back pain, but also keep her entertained.

2. Aritina Haliuc talks about newspapers as records for extreme weather events and how they complement natural archives and instrumental data.

3. Heather Plumpton shares her experiences and views on the underlying reasons for doing climate research and how to make a real difference in policy and people's lives by applying a co-production approach.

If you are an early-career researcher and would like to write a science story or share your views and experiences for The Early Pages, email your idea to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..