Insights into regional patterns of warming and climate change since the last ice age from novel methods

Abstract: 

In environmental science, new tools are emerging that have the potential to illuminate past change from new angles, enabling exploration and discovery, and allowing for hypothesis-testing to resolve long-standing controversies – and for the development of completely new models of climate change. My group is on the forefront of using rare isotopic species of compounds for different applications. This talk will describe how the use of this tool in concert with computational models mean the field has the potential to undergo an intellectual period of growth over the next two decades that is not unlike astronomy and space science. A subset of my group is using ab initio models in concert with experiments to advance tracer development. Another subset is examining how rising greenhouse gas levels have impacted water availability in the Southwestern US, the monsoons of China, and glacial extent in the tropics. Other researchers are deciphering the role of climate change in driving mass extinctions in the oceans and on land, or in triggering the evolution of hominims. We are even figuring out how climate processes operated over a billion years ago, on ancient Earth, an alien Hoth-like planet, to understand how our planet may have been in a “Goldilocks” state and harbored life.