Multi-Time-Scale Climate Dynamics in California (CA): An Integrated Multi-Proxy Stalagmite, Monitoring, and Modeling Approach

Clay Tabor, University of Connecticut

Usage Details

Southwest North America is one of the world's most climatically sensitive regions with inherently variable hydroclimate. Much evidence exists for repeated, large regime shifts in this region's hydroclimate at the sub-decadal to millennial-scale during the last glacial cycle and Holocene, but the mechanisms driving this change remain uncertain. In the context of this past variability and the potential magnitude of future climate change, a refined understanding of the hydroclimate response to perturbation and of the underlying driving mechanisms is needed.

The research team aims to generate a set of multiproxy calcite and fluid inclusion records, resolved at the sub-decadal to centennial-scale, for four stalagmites from the central and southern Sierra Nevada, CA that span the last deglaciation through Holocene. By integrating high-precision Uranium-Thorium dating, cave monitoring, multi-stalagmite records, and Earth system modeling (single-forcing water-isotope tracking simulations), the research team will (1) evaluate how North Pacific storm track behavior and the resulting precipitation signal is archived in the stalagmite proxy records, and (2) apply this knowledge to investigating the mechanisms underlying this precipitation response in the context of the changing environmental forcings of the past 21,000 years.