Originally from Lima, Peru, I am a geologist who studies past climate change.
My work as a graduate student at Brown University was divided into two main projects in two distinct geologic periods: the late Pleistocene and the Pliocene. I worked very closely with Steve Clemens and Warren Prell for my first project, which led to several formal presentations and two publications in peer-reviewed journals. For the remainder of my tenure at Brown, I worked closely with my adviser, Timothy Herbert, and focused my time to investigating the captivating “Pliocene world”. My PhD findings, along with other important evidence, resulted in our current project investigating the role of orbital forcing in Pliocene glaciations. I work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate for DEEPS at Brown University, spending most of my time in Northern Virginia and collaborating with T. Herbert and Harry Dowsett.
Click to download my CV
My work as a graduate student at Brown University was divided into two main projects in two distinct geologic periods: the late Pleistocene and the Pliocene. I worked very closely with Steve Clemens and Warren Prell for my first project, which led to several formal presentations and two publications in peer-reviewed journals. For the remainder of my tenure at Brown, I worked closely with my adviser, Timothy Herbert, and focused my time to investigating the captivating “Pliocene world”. My PhD findings, along with other important evidence, resulted in our current project investigating the role of orbital forcing in Pliocene glaciations. I work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate for DEEPS at Brown University, spending most of my time in Northern Virginia and collaborating with T. Herbert and Harry Dowsett.
Click to download my CV
My current and future research address questions that I believe are key to furthering our understanding of mechanisms and feedbacks for climate change:
These questions and associated projects fall under three main themes:
- How does the ocean respond to fluctuations in natural factors, such as orbital, ice volume, and greenhouse gases (GHG)?
- How do the mechanisms involved above interact with one another?
- Can we infer finer-scale climate change and associated mechanism using these high- resolution datasets?
- Can using multiple and different proxies in these samples help us understand ecosystem change in the geologic past?
- How complete are the stratigraphic sequences we use? Can their chronologies give a response time associated to specific climate variables?
These questions and associated projects fall under three main themes:
- Establishing a baseline of climate variability
- Integrating proxies to infer paleoceanography and environment dynamics
- Refining the chronological constraints applied to these fine-scale datasets
Theme I: Establishing a baseline of climate variability
**Under this theme, I reconstruct long-term and short-term records of environmental variations in the geologic past using deep ocean sediments and multiple-proxies such as organic, inorganic, and stable isotope geochemistry and micropaleontology.
As the world fears, anthropogenic warming will lead to extreme melting of Greenland. Understanding climate dynamics at times of global warming and therefore reduced ice coverage will allow for mitigation. Past warm climates such as the Pliocene and Miocene provide excellent natural laboratories in which to establish the natural variability under warm conditions and test the mechanisms at play under such warmth. These warm climates within the Neogene also allow testing the performance of complex climate models we currently use to project future climate change, and estimating how sensitive the Earth climate system is to changes under warm conditions. Under this theme, I make use of datasets I have developed in my recent work to explore the local response to this long pacing of Pliocene glaciations. Our work so far has been able to connect orbital pacing to major glaciations, but how this pacing translates to mechanisms for climate change is still largely unresolved.
If you are interested in collaborating with me for project related to this them, please contact me.
**Under this theme, I reconstruct long-term and short-term records of environmental variations in the geologic past using deep ocean sediments and multiple-proxies such as organic, inorganic, and stable isotope geochemistry and micropaleontology.
As the world fears, anthropogenic warming will lead to extreme melting of Greenland. Understanding climate dynamics at times of global warming and therefore reduced ice coverage will allow for mitigation. Past warm climates such as the Pliocene and Miocene provide excellent natural laboratories in which to establish the natural variability under warm conditions and test the mechanisms at play under such warmth. These warm climates within the Neogene also allow testing the performance of complex climate models we currently use to project future climate change, and estimating how sensitive the Earth climate system is to changes under warm conditions. Under this theme, I make use of datasets I have developed in my recent work to explore the local response to this long pacing of Pliocene glaciations. Our work so far has been able to connect orbital pacing to major glaciations, but how this pacing translates to mechanisms for climate change is still largely unresolved.
If you are interested in collaborating with me for project related to this them, please contact me.
Theme II: Integrating proxies to infer paleoceanography and environment dynamics
**Under this theme, I use the multiple-proxies from theme I to characterize the local environment and explore the interplay of regional and global scale dynamics.
Paleoceanography and paleoclimatology are intimately related. Climate change can impact the global distribution of heat and nutrients via ocean circulation, which in turn can serve to amplify climate change. Much of the work that I do relates to addressing how ocean circulation changes in the past, at various timescales and under a warm climate regime. The paleoenvironmental reconstructions I have generated so far used a high sampling resolution to be able to address orbital-scale forcing mechanisms as one of the primary objectives. At the same time, reconstructing these environmental variables via multiple proxies allows for a more complete “view” of an ecosystem and how it changed through time. While we have been able to use these records to start addressing important questions related to orbital forcing and climate variability in past warm climates, a wealth of information is still locked in these datasets.
For more information on projects related to this theme, please email me.
**Under this theme, I use the multiple-proxies from theme I to characterize the local environment and explore the interplay of regional and global scale dynamics.
Paleoceanography and paleoclimatology are intimately related. Climate change can impact the global distribution of heat and nutrients via ocean circulation, which in turn can serve to amplify climate change. Much of the work that I do relates to addressing how ocean circulation changes in the past, at various timescales and under a warm climate regime. The paleoenvironmental reconstructions I have generated so far used a high sampling resolution to be able to address orbital-scale forcing mechanisms as one of the primary objectives. At the same time, reconstructing these environmental variables via multiple proxies allows for a more complete “view” of an ecosystem and how it changed through time. While we have been able to use these records to start addressing important questions related to orbital forcing and climate variability in past warm climates, a wealth of information is still locked in these datasets.
For more information on projects related to this theme, please email me.
Theme III: Refining the chronological constraints applied to these fine-scale datasets
**Under this theme, I use available and new datasets to apply orbital stratigraphy and statistical techniques, refining their chronological constraints and inferring leads and lags in the system.
As geologists, we require accurate age models to fully understand changes in climate as recorded in the terrestrial and marine archives. Oxygen isotope stratigraphy is the most popular way to arrive at a chronology when using deep ocean sediments. This is reasonably straightforward for the Pleistocene when polar ice in both hemispheres allowed for large isotopic fluctuations and a large signal-to noise ratio, such that a high-resolution chronology via orbital tuning can be achieved. However, the chronology beyond the radiocarbon range is not absolute and therefore marine age models beyond the radiocarbon range are often questioned. Addressing part of this issue, I developed a chronology for Late Pleistocene marine sediments and assessed the differences to traditional methods for assigning an age model. As a result, we provided more reliable ages to Late Pleistocene deep-sea sediments beyond radiocarbon range, while constraining the error associated in using traditional methods for dating sediment cores. In addition, we found different time constants at the precession and obliquity bands, implicating different sets of processes influence the rate of ice accumulation and melting at these two orbital bands. How do these time constants change and apply to a warmer world, such as that of the Late Neogene? Those are the driving question behind this research theme.
Feel free to contact me if you have questions or would like to collaborate in this research theme.
**Under this theme, I use available and new datasets to apply orbital stratigraphy and statistical techniques, refining their chronological constraints and inferring leads and lags in the system.
As geologists, we require accurate age models to fully understand changes in climate as recorded in the terrestrial and marine archives. Oxygen isotope stratigraphy is the most popular way to arrive at a chronology when using deep ocean sediments. This is reasonably straightforward for the Pleistocene when polar ice in both hemispheres allowed for large isotopic fluctuations and a large signal-to noise ratio, such that a high-resolution chronology via orbital tuning can be achieved. However, the chronology beyond the radiocarbon range is not absolute and therefore marine age models beyond the radiocarbon range are often questioned. Addressing part of this issue, I developed a chronology for Late Pleistocene marine sediments and assessed the differences to traditional methods for assigning an age model. As a result, we provided more reliable ages to Late Pleistocene deep-sea sediments beyond radiocarbon range, while constraining the error associated in using traditional methods for dating sediment cores. In addition, we found different time constants at the precession and obliquity bands, implicating different sets of processes influence the rate of ice accumulation and melting at these two orbital bands. How do these time constants change and apply to a warmer world, such as that of the Late Neogene? Those are the driving question behind this research theme.
Feel free to contact me if you have questions or would like to collaborate in this research theme.