My research integrates field, lab, and model experiments in order to determine how the global water cycle has responded to past episodes of climate change. My primary focus is on the complex setting of tropical land areas, where the behavior of rainfall depends on conditions in distant oceans and land surfaces and on mixing, condensation, and re-evaporation processes that alter water’s fate as it travels. I examine these dynamics at micro- to macro-scales, from molecular to global, minutes to millennia. I disentangle processes on storm-to-seasonal timescales using stable oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios in precipitation and surface waters collected from deep tropical field sites. I use organic and stable isotope geochemistry of sediment cores and multiproxy data networks to examine how these water cycle processes vary on geologic timescales. Finally, I employ isotope-enabled climate models to uncover how planetary warming or cooling can reorganize tropical to global rainfall regimes.
Awards and Achievements
- Nanne Weber Early Career Award ( 2019)
- American Geophysical Union