Geotop Seminar Series: Dr Manuel Chevalier
Dr Manuel Chevalier, Researcher at the Institute for Geosciences, Department of Meteorology, University of Bonn, Germany.
Harnessing proxy data uncertainties to improve climate reconstructions in the tropics
Mardi 2 avril 2024 à 12h30 - Tuesday, April, 2024 at 12:30 pm
Local PK-7605, 7e étage, 201 ave. du Président-Kennedy
Zoom: https://uqam.zoom.us/j/83216327466?pwd=WnZJNldCaS8xL1M4VDdadUVENHQ1dz09
Résumé / abstract:
Pollen-based quantitative climate reconstructions are fundamental to better understanding past environmental changes across various spatial and temporal scales and evaluating climate simulations. However, these currently mainly exist in extratropical North America and Eurasia, and very few quantifications exist in the tropics, where sparse pollen record networks and limitations in existing reconstruction techniques hinder performing comprehensive large-scale reconstructions. My work addresses this global data imbalance by focusing on the tropics. Having developed a novel statistical approach – the CREST (Climate REconstruction SofTware) method – that circumvents the main issues of the most-used techniques, I seek to analyse and integrate extensive networks of tropical pollen records, characterise regional spatiotemporal modes of climate variability, and unveil the main drivers of tropical climate changes at the millennial to orbital timescales. In this presentation, I will showcase the approach with a multivariate reconstruction using a 270,000-year-long, high-resolution pollen record from Laguna Fùquene in Colombia.