Graduate Student Fellowship to do Inverse Modeling of Abrupt Climate Change

I am looking for a graduate student with good quantitative skills and a curiosity in climate system dynamics.  I encourage students interested in working with me to contact me and to apply to be a graduate student in the Department of Geological Sciences. Through the Jackson School of Geosciences, the Institute is affiliated with the Department and involves many graduate students in its research projects. Most of these projects evolve into themes of PhD dissertation research. The Institute is particularly strong in the more quantitative aspects of geosciences, particularly in finding connections between observational data, models, and theory. You may also read more generally about climate research at the Institute for Geophysics, and other projects that we are involved in.

Description of Research Project:

Unlike today, the Earth’s climate system was extremely volatile during the last ice age. Climate proxy observations from the Greenland ice core document a series of large flips between warm and cold climate states (see figure). These events correlate with other major environmental changes throughout the globe and turned upside down traditional notions that Earth’s climate only evolves slowly. This topic is galvanizing a large cross section of the observational and modeling components of the climate research community to answer how and why these transitions occur and to assess their relevance to future climate. Now, a decade after the first documented evidence for abrupt climate change, we are still struggling to understand how the wealth of documented evidence concerning the global extent and character of these events can be explained by what we know about the physics of climate.

The project involves the use of a hierarchy of coupled atmosphere/ocean models that incorporate the basic elements of several competing hypotheses concerning the nature of abrupt climate change. These models will then be forced to reproduce the Greenland ice core record of abrupt climate change using tools of “inverse” modeling. Modeling solutions will then be compared to other climate proxy records to assess the adequacy of any given theory to explain abrupt climate change. This work will be done in collaboration with Olivier Marchal, a research scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

• Looking for two main qualifications:

• Good quantitative skills (that is preference will be given to students with Physics/Math/Computer backgrounds)

• Has the potential for long term interests in climate change research

• Possible thesis topic

If you are interested in joining this research effort, please contact Charles Jackson. My email address is charles (at) ig (dot) utexas (dot) edu.

I will be attending Fall AGU 2004. If you would like to meet me there, send me an email, or leave your name and contact information at the Jackson School of Geosciences booth.