Collaborative Research: A Big Data Approach to Fundamental Paleoclimate Questions

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This project seeks to apply a Big Data approach, harnessing emerging standards for paleoclimate data, to address two fundamental questions in climate dynamics: (Q1) the spatial extent of abrupt changes in hydroclimate; and (Q2) How can knowledge of past temperature variations help reduce the spread of twenty-first century climate projections. The potential Broader Impacts include building capacity in Big Data analysis in the global paleoclimate community. All analyses will be shared as open-source computational narratives to disseminate best practices in paleo data science among early-career researchers, and to provide a template for future analyses of this kind.Specifically, the researchers will leverage recent paleoclimate data synthesis efforts, as well as advances in the analysis of chronologically uncertain timeseries, to explore fundamental questions in Holocene paleoclimatology. The proposed work will also link paleoclimate data to future climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) ensemble. The project will provide training to early career scientists through three yearly workshops in data management and analysis based on workflows and methodology developed as part of this research. Additionally, the project will support one graduate student working at the intersection between paleoclimatology, data science, and climate modeling. Other Broader Impacts include outreach through the Young Researchers program and Center for Knowledge-Powered Interdisciplinary Data Science to expose high-school students and graduate students in data science to interdisciplinary research.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.