Past climates offer 'natural experiments' that can be used to analyze the sensitivity of regional hydroclimate to large-scale forcing. In this talk, I analyze climate changes during the Last Glacial Maximum (21,000 years before present) and the transition to the Holocene to identify the drivers of tropical rainfall changes in a variety of settings. I will show results from proxy data synthesis and climate model simulations to demonstrate that reorganizations of tropical and midlatitude atmospheric circulation played a key role in changing regional tropical rainfall. This contrasts with understandings of tropical hydroclimate that emphasize the role of ocean dynamics. 

Speaker: Tripti Bhattacharya  
Affiliation: Assistant Professor, Department of Earth Science, Syracuse University