Jim Russell
Postdoctoral researcher with Thomas C. Johnson

Perhaps the most significant finding of paleoclimatology is that climate can change drastically and abruptly at centennial to millennial time-scales. While instrumental weather records can be used to study inter-annual climate variability, such as El Nino, to study long-term climate variability requires long climate records. Hence, paleoclimatologists reconstruct long-term global patterns of climate dynamics based on proxy climate data in natural archives, such as tree rings or lake sediments.

Tropical regions are a significant source of global atmospheric variability at centennial to millennial time-scales. My research utilizes a variety of chemical and paleoecological techniques to reconstruct moisture balance in equatorial Africa based upon lake sediments. Lakes' responses to climatic perturbations include alterations in productivity, biogeochemical cycling, chemistry, and stratification, changes which are recorded by a variety of chemical, physical, and paleobiologic clues deposited in lake sediments. I use these signals to reconstruct limnologic and climatic variability through time using sediments from lakes in equatorial Africa.

Links to: