I’m currently a postdoctoral researcher at Syracuse University in Tripti Bhattachrya’s Paleoclimate Dynamics Lab where I am using leaf wax biomarkers and isotope-enabled climate simulations to reconstruct tropical circulation from Earth’s recent past. My recent interests are broad but deeply rooted in using the geologic record of past climatological and ecological changes to better understand future global change. In the past, I have used microbial biomarkers, fossil-pollen abundances, leaf-wax biomarkers, and climate simulations to understand the patterns, causes, and legacies of past climate changes.
PhD in Geography, 2022
University of Wisconsin - Madison
MS in Geography, 2018
University of Wisconsin - Madison
BS in Environmental Science and Management, 2016
University of California, Davis
See all of my publications here.
Here we seek to establish the spatial fingerprints of precipitation and temperature changes in eastern North America during the Younger Dryas and explore the role of meltwater forcing in producing this pattern. Our analyses integrate a network of 42 fossil pollen records and 27 other hydroclimate proxy records, three AOGCM experiments with an imposed freshwater forcing, and the TraCE-21ka transient deglacial simulation. A recent synthesis of proxy-based temperature reconstructions suggests that Younger Dryas temperature reversals were limited to sites north of ~35 degrees N, while southern sites experienced either steady warming or a temperature maximum. Proxy records suggest a tripole precipitation pattern during the Younger Dryas and earlier Heinrich events, with the northeastern United States and Florida wetting, while sites from the Great Lakes Region to the Carolinas were dry. Of the AOGCMs analyzed, TraCE-21ka simulates Younger Dryas mean-field temperature and precipitation changes with the most skill but does not simulate warming in the southeastern United States. The likely role of meltwater forcing in producing subregional warming is indicated by the hosing-experiment AOGCMs, which consistently indicate localized warming and tripole precipitation anomalies, but the reconstructed and simulated patterns are poorly aligned, resulting in moderate model skill of mean-field temperature anomalies and negative skill in simulating past fingerprints. The reconstructed tripole helps reconcile prior apparent discrepancies in proxy records about whether eastern North America was wetter or dryer during the Younger Dryas. Although the hosing-experiment AOGCMs simulate the fingerprints poorly, they show that meltwater forcing can produce subregional warming and wetting in the eastern United States. This is due to enhanced northward heat transport from the Gulf of Mexico induced by a geostrophic adjustment of the midlatitude jet to cooling in the North Atlantic.
The Earth is in ceaseless motion with interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere that setting the stage for the world around us. The Global Environment introduces students to these spheres and their interconnectedness which makes Earth a livable planet. This course is developed for a broad audience, irrespective of background, and aims to give students the tools necessary to understand their physical environment. The lab component of the course gives students hands on experience with authentic and simulated data and emphasizes hypothesis testing throughout each assignment.
Syllabus in development
Earth’s climate is constantly changing - ice sheets once covered much of the Northern Hemisphere 21,000 years ago and crocodiles onced lived near the South Pole ~250 million years ago. Yet, human-caused climate change is occurring faster than any climate change experienced within the last 50 million years. This class looks into Earth’s past to understand how climate evolves and how biological systems have responded to past climate changes. This perspective is used to contextualize contemporary climate change and provide students with the tools necessary to understand projected climate change. The lab component of this course provides students with hands-on experience with various types of proxy climate data which culminates in comparisons against student-run paleoclimate simulations from EzGCM.
tidyverse, rioja, sf, sp, terra, neotoma2, RMarkdown
xarray, metpy, SciPy, pandas, NumPy, matplotlib, Jupyter Notebook, keras, PyTorch, TensorFlow, PyNGL
Binder, Docker
ArcGIS, GDAL, OGR
Laboratory and identification methodology