The Power of Paleo: How records of the past help us understand global warming, El Niño, and drought

The risks we face from a changing climate result from a combination of human-caused and natural variability. We can better prepare for future conditions if we fully understand natural patterns of climate variation and how those patterns have behaved in the recent past. Yet the instrumental record of climate variation is sparse and short – inadequate to characterize, for example, the multidecadal processes associated with megadroughts and fluctuations in global temperature, or the intrinsic variability in remote regions of the tropical Pacific critical to the El Niño system. Based on research from my lab, I will show how paleoclimate records add to the physical understanding of natural climate variability in ways that provide insight into future climate changes and their associated risks.