Special ClimaTea

Date: 

Wednesday, April 3, 2019, 12:00pm

Location: 

HUCE Seminar Room MCZ 440

Speaker: Professor Valerie Trouet from  University of Arizona

Title: "A paleoclimate perspective on large-scale climate dynamics"

Abstract: We use paleoclimate proxies, such as tree-ring data, to study natural climate variability and to put current and future climatic changes in a long-term context. Climate history of the past ~1,000 years is of particular interest, because it allows us to look at policy-relevant (decadal to centennial) time-scales and to link climate history to the best-documented period of human history. To study recent climate history, tree rings are the most widely used proxy and a century of dendrochronological research has resulted in a broad network of tree-ring chronologies that allows us to study the drivers of continental- to hemispheric-scale climate dynamical patterns over multiple centuries.

Here, I will present three studies in which we used tree-ring data to reconstruct long-term variability in (1) the Northern Hemisphere Hadley Circulation Extent and (2) the position of the jet stream over the North Atlantic and over the North Pacific. I will discuss what our reconstructions tell us about past variability in these climate patterns, how they are linked to ecosystem and human history, and why this information is important for future climate research. [Paper]

 

See also: ClimaTea