01/23/2025
By Amanda Vozzo
Date: Wednesday, January 29th, 2025
Time: 4 – 5 p.m.
Location: Olsen Hall, Room 503
Abstract: Extremes in precipitation can have dramatic consequences for people and natural systems. In this talk, I will show how climate models, coupled with moisture tracking techniques, can reveal new insights into the ways precipitation extremes form, respond to climate change, and impact our environment. In the first part of the talk, I will show how atmospheric rivers, which are known to cause heavy precipitation, flooding, and landslides in today’s mid latitudes, may have had a key role in driving the retreat of the continental-scale ice sheets over North America at the end of the last glacial maximum (~21,000 years ago). In the second part of the talk, I will show how a process known as “precipitation recycling” can greatly amplify the development of droughts and pluvials and will discuss the implications of this finding for the ongoing megadrought in the Southwestern United States.
Bio: Chris Skinner is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at UMass Lowell. His research combines instrumental and proxy records of climate with numerical models of the earth system to understand the underlying physical processes behind societally and ecologically relevant climate changes in Earth's past and future. He is especially interested in processes that control the intensity of the hydrologic cycle and the subsequent impacts on precipitation and terrestrial moisture availability. Chris grew up outside of Boston, MA and obtained a B.S. in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Environmental Earth System Science from Stanford University.