Thermal Maximum 2.

The sedimentary geologic record can be used as a window into past conditions of the Earth, including the climate in which sediments were laid down. During the Cenozoic, there are many examples of shifts in global climate. Potentially significant to the modern climate in which humans live are the hyperthermal events that occurred during the Eocene. Hyperthermals are relatively brief (100,000 years) warming events, some of which coincide with the release of massive amounts of carbon from terrestrial reservoirs. The best understood of these hyperthermals is the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which occurred 55.5 million years ago. During the PETM, 6,800 Gt of carbon were added to the shared carbon pool of the atmosphere and ocean, and global temperatures rose 5-9 ° C (Sluijs et al. 2006, Zachos et al. 2008). Slightly more recently (53.7 Ma), the Eocene Thermal Maximum 2 (ETM2) occurred. The isotopoe excursion denoting ETM2 is about half the size of the PETM isotope excursion (Lourens et al. 2005), and generally much less well understood. In summer 2011, three cores —200m cores will be drilled from the alluvial strata of the Eocene Willwood Formation in the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. One core will capture ETM2, predicted to be —40m thick, as well as the sedimentary record both before and immediately afte