Matthew Schmidt
The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon is the largest natural signal in the Earth's climate system and has widespread effects on global climate that impact millions of people worldwide. A series of recent studies predict an increase in the frequency of extreme El Niño and La Niña events as Earth's climate continues to warm in the near future. In order for climate scientists to forecast how ENSO will evolve, it is necessary to have accurate records of how the system has naturally changed in the past, especially across past abrupt warming events. Therefore, this project will reconstruct records of past Eastern Equatorial Pacific climate change and ENSO variability over the last 65,000 years by reconstructing past ocean temperatures using chemical clues locked in fossil foraminiferal shells collected from a sediment core recovered near the Galapagos Islands. Results generated from this research will aid in the prediction of how ENSO will change over the next century and greatly improve future mitigation efforts.