BIO

I am a third year undergraduate student studying meteorology. I grew up in northern Virginia, but I was drawn to Florida by its beautiful beaches and powerful storms. During my time at Florida State University, I have developed a passion for climate science, particularly paleoclimate. Coral, lake sediments, ice sheets, and other proxies contain hints about Earth’s climate history. Paleoclimate allows us to piece these “hints” together like a puzzle and reconstruct climate from thousands of years ago! With a better understanding of how the climate behaves over long time periods, we can make better predictions of anthropogenic climate change. I am also interested in the overlap between environmental science and social science. I would love to be a part of educating the public about climate change, contributing to climate policy, and combating environmental injustice. As an FSU Coastal and Marine Laboratory Diving Scholarship recipient, I am currently taking my education underwater and training to become a American Academy of Underwater Sciences certified scientific diver with the intention of collecting my own coral samples in the future.

Data-model comparisons of mid-Holocene climate in the tropical Pacific

Abstract

Climate models that can accurately simulate global processes of past climates are more reliable for simulating future climate, which will allow us to better predict and understand anthropogenic climate change. As such, paleoclimate data provide useful benchmarks for testing the accuracy of climate models. In particular, coral oxygen isotope (18Ocoral) records provide high-resolution constraints on past changes in sea surface temperature and hydrology from the tropical oceans. Coral records indicate that large changes in tropical Pacific climate occurred several thousand years ago, during a period known as the mid-Holocene. The tropical Pacific was cooler and drier, while seasonal and interannual variations associated with the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) were weaker. However, the driver and mechanisms of these changes are not well understood. The isotope-enabled Community Earth System Model (iCESM) is one of a few global climate models that is enhanced with water isotope tracers, which allows us to directly compare model output to coral proxy data. Analysis of a mid-Holocene simulation with this model demonstrates that iCESM accurately simulates the cooler/drier conditions and the dampening of the annual cycle during the mid-Holocene. However, the iCESM results are inconsistent with proxy data regarding changes in ENSO variability during the mid-Holocene. We present results from these proxy-model comparisons and discuss opportunities for improved understanding of tropical Pacific climate and ENSO.

Keywords: Paleoclimate, Oceanography, Atmospheric Science, Climate Modeling