Paleoclimate Research Group

Research emphasizes the ice ages as a natural laboratory for understanding past, present and future climate and sea-level change. Ongoing projects examine the factors causing changes in global ocean circulation and the global carbon cycle, document the role that oceans play in long-term climate changes, investigate the role that the northeast Pacific played in global climate change, document past changes and their causes in ice-sheets and glaciers, and analyze patterns of large-scale climate and sea-level change. Faculty and students collect and analyze deep sea sediment cores, lake sediments, ice cores, and glacial and other sedimentary deposits from around the world, and run and analyze state-of-the-art climate models.