Forcing mechanisms behind rapid late Cenozoic climate shifts

Determine the forcing mechanisms responsible for historical climate shifts, including rapid cooling events during the past 10 million years, and quantify their roles relative to internal climate feedbacks and potential heliospheric influences.

Background

The study notes several rapid cooling episodes and increased climatic variability over the last 10 million years, documented by oxygen isotope records, which had significant ecological and evolutionary consequences.

Despite extensive paleoclimate work, the authors stress that the drivers of these shifts, particularly sudden cooling events, remain poorly understood and constitute a major open question, motivating the inclusion of heliospheric interactions as potential contributors in future analyses.

References

However, the forcing mechanisms behind such historical climate shifts, such as sudden cooling events, remain poorly understood and represent a major open question in science.

— Increased and Varied Radiation during the Sun's Encounters with Cold Clouds in the last 10 million years  (2601.11785 - Opher et al., 16 Jan 2026) in Conclusions and Discussion