Upcoming Climate Change: Fossil Record as a Key to Predict Future Biotic Response, Volume II

Following the success of the first volume, launched in 2022, we are pleased to open a second collection of this Research Topic. The first volume brought together valuable contributions on how the geological past can inform our understanding of present-day climate change, and this new volume builds on that foundation — inviting fresh, timely research that reflects the rapid advances in the field over the intervening years.Increased global warming is a trend caused by human activity since the mid-20th century. It is proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented and could be analogous to fast climatic changes that affected Earth’s ecosystems in its geological past. The contemporary trend of global warming has the potential to replace present-day biological ecosystems with ones that lack modern analogies, leaving ecologists with no observational basis to predict future biotic effects. The fossil record has the significant advantage of containing a long time series of environmental changes that can help scientists predict future environmental responses to modern changes. Studies of the fossil record can also provide detailed information on the rate of ecological change and pinpoint the factors behind these changes. Answers to how modern ecosystems will react to climate change can be found through the analysis of fossil biotic assemblages, performed with appropriate data resolution and by selecting the appropriate geological formations. Thus, to paraphrase the principle of uniformitarianism, by performing high-resolution geological studies of the past we gain insight into the future — understanding the effects of contemporary environmental changes and learning how Earth’s ecosystems have responded to them.As in the first volume, this Research Topic addresses contemporary climate change by taking up the problem of the geological record of climatic oscillations leading to “greenhouse” conditions during the Phanerozoic. We welcome research using all types of fossils and all traces of biological activity in the geological record. Palaeoecological research plays a very important role in predicting the effects of contemporary climate change and global warming, as well as its probable direction, duration, and long-lasting consequences. The future effects of the present-day biotic changes we observe in modern ecosystems cannot be predicted from observations of contemporary organisms alone, because these processes unfold over thousands and millions of years. The fossil record also has the significant advantage of showing the response of ecosystems to changes occurring without human influence, and reveals how and when environments have the natural potential to return to their initial state. Given the accelerating pace of climate change since this Research Topic first launched, timely contributions are especially welcome, and we hope the articles in this second volume will further advance and disseminate knowledge about contemporary climate change on a global scale and its consequences.In this Research Topic, we welcome a broad spectrum of contributions that address, but are not limited to:• Fossil biotic assemblages that respond to the changing conditions of marine and terrestrial environments due to climate oscillations;• Causes of the development of these ecological conditions in relation to multi-decadal and millennial climate oscillations, especially in marine environments, that could lead to oceanic anoxic events (OAEs) and periods with a well-oxygenated water column on a global scale. Topic editors: Marta Bąk, Dangpeng Xi, Krzysztof Bąk Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84956/upcoming-climate-change-fossil-record-as-a-key-to-predict-future-biotic-response-volume-ii