Julia Brugger has succesfully finished her Phd on Modeling Changes in Climate during Past Mass Extinction

Julia Brugger has completed her PhD in climate physics at Potsdam university by successfully defending her dissertation entitled "Modeling Changes in Climate during Past Mass Extinction". Julia investigated major extinction events in the past of our planet. Especially her work on the effects of the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous received remarkable media attention.
Julia Brugger has succesfully finished her Phd on Modeling Changes in Climate during Past Mass Extinction

Baby, it's cold outside: Climate model simulations of the effects of the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous - This was the title of her publication in Geophysical Research Letters. 66 million years ago, the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs started the ascent of the mammals, ultimately resulting in humankind’s reign on Earth. Julia an her coauthors reconstructed how tiny droplets of sulfuric acid formed high up in the air after the well-known impact of a large asteroid and blocking the sunlight for several years, had a profound influence on life on Earth. Plants died, and death spread through the food web. Previous theories focused on the shorter-lived dust ejected by the impact. The new computer simulations show that the droplets resulted in long-lasting cooling, a likely contributor to the death of land-living dinosaurs. An additional kill mechanism might have been a vigorous mixing of the oceans, caused by the surface cooling, severely disturbing marine ecosystems. (more information)
Weblink to the article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL072241/abstract

A pronounced spike in ocean productivity triggered by the Chicxulub impact and On the sensitivity of the Devonian climate to continental configuration, vegetation cover, orbital configuration, CO2 concentration and insolation are further publications resulting from Julia's doctoral research in the ESMO working group at PIK.

Julia Brugger is now member of the Quantitative Biogeographie Team of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt/Main.