Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
I just returned home from The Tropics Rule conference up at LDEO, celebrating Mark Cane’s contributions to climatology and highlighting some of the best and most recent work in various areas of tropical climatology, including modeling, dynamics and paleoclimate. Continued reading >
Saturday, October 18th, 2014
Not only did I find a link to here when looking on Google for something else (how very meta), but I took some time to look back a bit. The article that caught my eye was from 2011 about my experience in the lab. What was notable to me was how much my lab experience changed in the 3 years since that was written. Continued reading >
Thursday, October 16th, 2014
I’ll be giving a talk at the 2014 AGU fall meeting. On Thursday, 12/18 at 9:30AM, I’ll be presenting 1000 years of tropical Pacific variability from my individual foraminifera record.
Tuesday, October 14th, 2014
No, I’m not talking about THAT controversy. What I am talking about is a current controversy – or rather, scientific debate – that is currently happening with regard to plate tectonics. Yes, good ol’ plate tectonics is having a bit of a moment at the moment, with the publication of a paper by Anderson and Natland (2014, PNAS) on the evidence for – or rather, lack of evidence for – mantle plumes and other features of deep-convective plate tectonics.
Continued reading >
Thursday, August 21st, 2014
In Collapse, Jared Diamond implicated long-term climate change in the collapse of the Anasazi society, blaming it on consistent La Niña-like conditions during the MCA (which would have featured much lower Eastern Tropical Pacific variability, were this the case). In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis implicates the strong El Niños in 1876-77 and 1881-82 as the climatic causes of failed Indian monsoons that precipitated (no pun intended) the great Indian famines – of course, combined with a large dose of Colonialism, bureaucratic intransigence, and a brutal disregard for the suffering of a large portion of the population (side note: as people were starving, they were still exporting food). From IO9 comes a link to the latest in El Niño historical ephemera, this time from a well-known story: The mutiny on the Bounty. Continued reading >
Earlier this year, it looked like an epic El Niño was brewing. The eastern tropical Pacific subsurface was showing signs of intense warming that seemed poised to erupt into a major El Niño event. Early signs were looking like this may be an historic – or maybe near-historic – event. The latest signs, however, make this seem a little less likely.
That a strong (or rather, historically strong) El Niño doesn’t look as likely is certainly important. Scientists are happy when the expected happens; this means the world is working as we believe it should, that models are accurately predicting the future,that our understanding is improving. When the unexpected happens, however, scientists are (or should be) absolutely ecstatic! Science – well, good science – thrives on the unexpected. “Huh… that looks weird…” is the beginning of many good scientific investigations.
Wednesday, February 5th, 2014
It’s been a bit snowy in NYC this winter, and more is on the way. Just for fun, I took a quick peek at NYC snowfall data for Central Park, which goes back to 1868. Here’s some interesting info: Continued reading >
Wednesday, January 15th, 2014
I actually get a little bit upset when people look at the latest weather phenomenon to argue for or against climate change. Weather is not climate, and although weather is certainly influenced by climate, attribution remains a problem. The (statistical) likelihood that certain event will occur, or the severity and duration of those events, is certainly something that can be argued. Of course, that’s a statistical, scientific and nuanced argument, and it will not win you any imaginary points on the internet or on the I-can-be-louder-than-you medium that is modern sound-byte discourse. Continued reading >
Saturday, December 21st, 2013
AGU2013 was full of good feedback this year – from q-q plots to the role of the ITCZ in modulating ENSO variability to having less text on your poster (!). Even the feedback from the OSPA was useful, if not terribly complete or consistent. According to that, I am personable and a good presenter, and my research is both important and holds up. However, I’m either very good or very bad at answering questions, and may or may not be very knowledgeable on the subject matter – the two results were complete opposites, so I’m not sure how to take it aside from “know more so there’s never a question”. The third result would have helped to constrain the uncertainty! One thing that is certain is that, now that the results seem to be interesting and compelling, I need to focus more on the larger climate context of the results. Continued reading >
Thursday, November 21st, 2013
Interestingly enough, the research that I presented at AGU 2011 and contributed to a 2012 paper has become a major part of the thesis work for one of my compatriots! An article is being prepared (by said compatriots) that extends this work. I’m involved more on the “genesis of the idea” and review side, but it is certainly gratifying to see the seed of an original research idea begin to germinate (to use a plant-growth analogy, badly). Not bad for something that began as the final project for a class and case of “what if I look at this data like this?”. I’ll update if/when the latest update to this work makes it to publication.
