We use paleoclimate proxies, biological and
geological archives that record past climatic conditions, to
study natural climate variability and to put current and
future climatic changes in a long-term context. Climate
history of the past ~1,000 years is of particular interest,
because it allows us to look at policy-relevant (decadal to
centennial) time scales and to link climate history to the
best-documented period of human history. Tree rings are of
particular interest as climate proxies, because they allow us
to study climate extremes, such as hurricanes, heatwaves, and
wildfires, as well as their continental-scale climate
dynamical drivers, such as the Hadley cell and the jet stream.
Here, I will present two tree-ring based studies aimed at
providing long-term records of (1) jet stream variability and
(2) California wildfires. I will show how our century-long
proxy records have improved our understanding of the
interactions between the climate system, human systems, and
ecosystems and why this information is important for future
research.
About the Speaker:
Valerie Trouet is a Professor in the
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.
She received her PhD in Bioscience Engineering at the KULeuven
in Belgium in 2004 and has worked at PennState University and
at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL before moving to
Tucson. She is a dendrochronologist whose research focuses on
past climate variability and how it has influenced human
systems and ecosystems. She has published more than 75
scientific papers and is the author of Tree Story, a broad
audience book about dendrochronology published by Johns
Hopkins University Press in 2020 that is translated in 7
languages. She leads the 'Spatiotemporal Interactions between
Climate and Ecosystems' research group
(trouetlab.arizona.edu), is a University of Arizona
Distinguished Scholar, and a Kavli Fellow of the National
Academy of Sciences.