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We have great enthusiasms in deep-time climate evolution. Earth’s climate had experienced alternating hothouse and icehouse intervals in its 4.6 billion year history. Studying deep-time climate changes not only benefits reconstructing climate and life evolution in the past, but also helps our fundamental understanding the ongoing climate change at present.

Our research in paleoclimate has a wide span of the past, from the “Boring Billion” in the Mesoproterozoic, to the “Snowball Earth” in the Neoproterozoic, and to climate evolution of the Phanerozoic. We are interested in the mechanisms of climate evolution, especially the coupling of Earth’s different spheres and its implications to life evolution. In the recent few years, we focused simulating climates of the Phanerozoic, including changes of the global and regional monsoon system and continental evolution, deep-time hydrological cycle, atmospheric and oceanic circulations, plant evolution, marine biogeochemistry, weathering reactions, glacier-climate coupling, and quantitative relationships of geological proxies with climate conditions. We aim at a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental principle of the co-variations of the climate system, life, and coupling of different spheres.

The black curve shows simulated global and annual mean surface temperatures in the Phanerozoic, and red stars show reconstructed surface temperatures. The plot show large fluctuations of Earth climate.