In my research I aim to understand the mechanisms that underlie past climate changes. Using climate models and palaeo-proxy evidence I aim to understand how and why the climate was different in the past. I’ve looked at how year to year variability in the tropical Pacific evolved over the last 10 thousand years, how collapsing ice sheets can alter the global climate, and how year to year variability in Antarctica can be changed by the size of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Underpinning all of these studies is a desire to not just document changes but to explain how and why the changes happen.
Currently I am interested in how the temperature in Antarctica could change over long, thousand year, timescales, how rainfall patterns in the South Pacific could change, how changes in the amount of sea ice in the North Atlantic might alter rainfall patterns over the whole globe.