research overview
- Ocean-atmosphere interactions, ranging from seasonal to millennial scales, can exert great influence on ecosystems and society, yet are a key source of uncertainty in projections of future climate. Scientific understanding of low-frequency climate variability suffers from a lack of continuous, reliable observations. My research addresses the following general questions: • How can we better understand the extent of unforced climate variability? How can we better understand the climate system's physical and biogeochemical response to forced change? • Can we better leverage paleoclimate archives to answer critical questions in climate research? • What causes unforced climate variability to change? Do we have evidence of changing variability in the past—and should we expect it to change in the future? • How does tropical climate variability influence vulnerable ecosystems and societies? To combat the lack of instrumental observations, I rely heavily on paleoclimate archives and numerical climate models.
