We always ask our guests how they got interested in working on environmental issues, either as a kid or later in life. Erika, we're going to talk about your work on paleoclimate and tree rings, and I'm really looking forward to it, because it's pretty different from a lot of the topics we cover on this show. Stay with us.Īll right, Erika Wise, from the wonderful University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill near my hometown of Durham, North Carolina-welcome to Resources Radio.ĭaniel Raimi: We're thrilled to have you. In today's episode, Erika will give us a fascinating look into how that work gets done and what it can tell us about the future. To do that, she and her colleagues analyze tree rings, ship logs, diaries, and a variety of other data sources to reconstruct annual, seasonal, and even monthly variation in local and regional climates. Erika's work focuses on understanding the long history of the Earth's climate and what that history can tell us about the effects of human causes of climate change. Erika Wise, professor in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and head of the Climate and Tree-Ring Environmental Science Research Group. In this case, I was focused on precipitation on a rolling basis throughout the year … I found that, by making these seasonal and monthly records, I was able to get a clear picture of what happened over the entire year-particularly some of those extreme events and precipitation extremes that happened outside of the normal season.” (20:48)ĭaniel Raimi: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future. By combining and recombining the different sites through statistical analysis, I was able to get climate information. These data from trees growing at different elevations-they’re different species, so each site has a slightly different part of the climate year that they’re more sensitive to and recording in their rings. From tree ring data to climate information: “In the western United States in particular, we have very high amounts of data.Even the spatial pattern of that drought is picked up really well.” (15:53) Some people think that’s what led to the development trajectory of Southern California, and it’s picked up really well by both tree rings and historical records. There’s also other regional events in extreme years, like 1864, which was an extreme drought year centered in Southern California. This is a year when Sacramento and a lot of the Central Valley of California were very heavily flooded, which is recorded by both the tree rings and the historical records quite well.
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