COHMAP - Cooperative Holocene Mapping Project

对过去气候的研究对于量化气候系统的自然变率是必要的。这是跨学科研究小组COHMAP（全新世合作测绘项目）的目标。COHMAP在古气候学领域产生了一些最好的重建。PI研究的重点是全新世：即自大约2万年前最后一次完全冰期以来的一段时间。COHMAP的方法结合了古气候指标的严格重建和对过去气候的复杂数值模拟。通过这种方式，他们能够对过去气候的范围进行严格的限制，并为观测到的变化提供基于物理的机制。在这份更新建议中，COHMAP为他们的研究计划提出了几个新的目标，包括为冰川地球建立一套新的边界条件，其中包括新的冰川消融年表和对冰盖体积和面积范围的新估计。这项新研究很重要，因为它将提供对过去2万年气候性质的基本见解，并为大气环流模式的灵敏度和准确性提供极好的测试。此外，COHMAP的研究将有助于识别信息不足或模型/数据矛盾的区域。以这种方式，COHMAP研究将被证明对各种各样的古气候学研究人员最有用。

The study of past climate is necessary to quantify the natural variability in the climate system. This is the goal of the interdisciplinary research group COHMAP (Cooperative Holocene Mapping Project). COHMAP has produced some of the best reconstructions in the field of paleoclimatology. The focus of the PI's research has been the Holocene: that interval of time since the last full glaciation about 20,000 years ago. COHMAP's approach has combined rigorous reconstructions of paleoclimate indicators with sophisticated numerical simulations of past climate. In this manner they have been able to place strong constraints on the range of past climate and provide physically-based mechanisms for the changes observed. In this renewal proposal, COHMAP suggests several new goals for their research program, including producing a new set of boundary conditions for the glacial earth which incorporate the new chronology of the deglaciation and new estimates of ice sheet volume and areal extent. This new research is important because it will provide fundamental insight into the nature of climate during the last 20,000 years and provide an excellent test of the sensitivity and accuracy of General Circulation Models. In addition, COHMAP's research will help to identify regions with insufficient information or model/data contradictions. In this manner, COHMAP research will prove most useful to a wide variety of researchers in paleoclimatology.