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Earth’s climate is inherently dynamic. Over the past 2.6 million years, our planet has swung repeatedly from an ice-age state, when Ireland was largely buried by ice, to milder conditions like those of today. What drives this variability remains a fascinating ‘unknown’ in climate science, while the impacts of past climate change on our landscapes and societies offer invaluable insight into human sustainability. In the Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit (PRU), we are united by a common goal:  To reconstruct Earth’s past in order to better understand our future.

The PRU is an interdisciplinary research cluster, housed in NUIG’s School of Geography & Archaeology. Members specialise in palaeoceanography, palynology and chironomid palaeoecology, glacial geology, dendroclimatology, historical climatology, and long-term human land use, with which we build records of long-term climate change and human-environment interaction. And while much of our work takes advantage of our unique position in the West of Ireland, we are a distinctly international group, with members pursuing collaborative research on all seven continents and throughout the World Ocean.

 
 
 
Site maintained by Gordon Bromley
Discipline of Geography, NUI Galway
gordon.bromley@nuigalway.ie