CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH GROUP

BoliviaThe climate change research group at the University of Michigan is led by Prof. Chris Poulsen. The objective of our group's research is to understand past and future climate change. Our focus is largely on the dynamics and physics of the climate system. We seek to understand "how" the atmosphere, ocean, ice, and biosphere communicate and respond to perturbations.

Our emphasis on paleoclimate stems from the simple fact that most of our knowledge of Earth's climate variability originates from paleoclimate studies of times older than 1kyr. The historical record of climate is short, spanning about 0.00002% of Earth history. To get a full picture of how Earth's climate operates it is essential to look into the past. Besides, the past has been extraordinarily interesting with climate varying between states of severe glaciation and global warmth and everything in between. We are also keenly interested in future climate variabilty, particularly in regions that are susceptible to climate change.

Research topics currently under investigation in our lab include:

There are many tools for studying climate. Our approach has mainly been to use and develop climate models. This approach is motivated by the fact that (i) climate models are great integrators, capable of making sense of widespread and diverse observational records; (ii) climate models are based on physical laws and principles and thus minimize arm waving; (iii) climate models are our sole predictive tool. However, to maintain a sense of reality, we work closely with observationalists and conduct field campaigns of our own.