Collaborative Research: P2C2--Winter Climate Anomalies across North America: Benchmarking Instrumental Trends and Model Projections with High Resolution Paleoclimatology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project aims to: 1) develop 500 year tree-ring-based data sets in California and Michigan that are distinctive in their ability to reconstruct winter conditions across distinct regions of atmospheric circulation over North America; 2) develop reconstructions of prominent winter atmospheric circulation patterns affecting climate across these regions and much of the United States; and 3) test how external forcing, across the last 500 years, may have impacted the reconstructed winter climate anomalies and associated atmospheric circulation patterns. These continental-scale reconstructions of atmospheric circulation will rely on two distinctive sets of pre-instrumental proxy records that each represents a side of the North American winter dipole that has been characterized by increasingly extreme conditions on either side of the continent over recent decades. Hence, these winter paleo proxies can be used to help decipher drivers of winter climate, such as the polar jet stream and arctic amplification, in response to warming trends and within the context of the internal variability on inter-decadal timescales.The potential Broader Impacts include support for early career scientists and graduate and undergraduate students as well as the development of new and innovative sets of climate data of use to the wider climate research community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.