Institute at Brown for Environment and Society

Xiaojing Du is a paleoclimatologist with a broad interest in the history of Earth’s climate, particularly the hydroclimate variability on interannual to millennial time scales. She integrates proxy measurements, modeling approaches, and instrumental observations to understand the causes of climate variability in the southwestern US and the western tropical Pacifica since the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years ago). Her past work has investigated the relationship between El Niño Southern Oscillation and interannual precipitation changes in Southern California over the Holocene, and the vegetation response to hydroclimate changes in this region. At Brown, she is currently integrating isotopic reconstructions of western Pacific climate change with isotope-enabled climate model simulations to examine the causes of paleoclimate variability in the region.