How would you summarize your research? 

“A big part of understanding climate change today is understanding climate change in the past. My research focuses on the 19th century, right when the effects of climate change were starting to emerge. To uncover this history, I actually use corals! By studying the isotopic oxygen composition in 19th-century coral skeletons, I can determine what temperatures were like at the time. Different types of oxygen have different weights–lighter oxygen is warmer. So, a lighter composition of oxygen in the coral indicates a warmer climate. It’s a direct correlation, so based on the isotopic composition, the temperature at the time is easily calculated.”

What does your research process with corals look like? How are they collected?  

“I work in Kim Cobb’s lab, which collaborates with a network of researchers who travel to the Pacific islands where these corals are found– central to El Niño activity. The teams go on two-week excursions to collect coral samples and send them all back to Brown, where we get to study them. In the lab, I chop the coral in half, drill along the center of growth, and take tiny amounts of powder to run through a large machine. Over and over!”

What are you discovering, and what does it mean for understanding El Niños?

“My record spans 45 years of coral data. While this isn’t long enough to find long-term trends, we see consistent patterns when we compare it to 20th-century coral records. These patterns indicate that over time, the Pacific got warmer and El Niños events became a lot more extreme. My mid-19th-century records show cooler temperatures and less extreme El Niño events compared to later periods, which aligns with broader findings.”

How does this historical data help us understand climate change today?

“The more historical data that we can incorporate into models, the better we can understand El Niños. For example, if I were to extend this record further into the past, there were periods in which many significant volcanic eruptions cooled the climate. Understanding how the Pacific responds to big cooling events might help us understand how it might respond to warming events now.”

Why is it important for us to understand temperature variations and extreme El Niños events, on a day-to-day level? 

“Two reasons. First, El Niños cause disasters. Historically, they are a natural form of climate variability. But because of climate change, they are getting more extreme to an unnatural level; they can cause flooding in places like Peru and Ecuador or they can cause drought in the United States because their global impact is so severe. Second, El Niños raise temperatures quite dramatically. For example, the most recent heat peak that we’ve seen, in 2015, coincided with an extreme El Niño event. So, if we’re concerned about climate change or the disasters that come from it, understanding El Niños is crucial.” 

Where do you see your research taking you in the future?

“I’ve been lucky to be in a lab that is not only science focused but also involved in policy and communication. Long-term, that’s where I want to take this. It’s been really interesting for me to study on a large-scale how climate change is functioning. But I would like to use those models and predictors to create better legislation, aid programs, and own up to a lot of the consequences of the climate change the US has contributed to.” 

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