Lorraine Lisiecki

Assistant Professor
Department of Earth Science
University of California, Santa Barbara
lisiecki AT geol.ucsb.edu

Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award, Geological Society of America, 2008

Opportunities available for graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral research.

Please contact me for more information. Potential projects:

Create a detailed reconstruction of the last glacial cycle
Study ocean circulation changes over the last 3 million years
Is the climate more stable when it's warm? Evidence from the last 5 million years
Estimate age uncertainty in paleoclimate records

Research Interests

My research focuses on computational approaches to the interpretation of paleoclimate records. I believe that the integrated analysis of widely distributed paleoclimate records will yield important information about the climate system that cannot be obtained by studying these records individually. I am particularly interested in the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene climate as it relates to Milankovitch forcing, 100-kyr glacial cycles, and deep-ocean circulation. I also develop and distribute software related to age model development and stratigraphy. The analytical techniques I use most frequently are stratigraphic correlation, simple physical models, dynamic programming, and mathematical tools such as time series analysis, principal component analysis, and computational probability and statistics.

What does this mean? Simple, non-technical explanations of what I study and why. Also, PowerPoint slides for teachers.

Data & Software

Match & Autocomp Software [Lisiecki and Lisiecki, 2002]
LR04 Benthic Stack [Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005]

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Lisiecki, L. E. (2010), Links between eccentricity forcing and the 100,000-year glacial cycle, Nature Geosciences. Link

Author's Note: I have received many emails about this article asking me what current climate changes should be expected based on orbital forcing. Orbital forcing cannot be used to explain climate changes on a scale of 100 or even 1000 years. The natural response that would be expected is a very gradual cooling trend over the next 90,000 years or so. However, it is uncertain whether this cooling trend would be expected to start thousands of years ago (e.g., Ruddiman) or thousands of years in the future.

Lisiecki, L. E. (2009), A simple mixing explanation for late Pleistocene changes in the Pacific-South Atlantic benthic d13C gradient, Clim. Past Discuss., 5, 2607-2630. Link

Lisiecki, L. E., and M. E. Raymo (2009), Diachronous benthic d18O responses during late Pleistocene terminations, Paleoceanography 24, PA3210, doi:10.1029/2009PA001732. Link

Lisiecki, L. E., M. E. Raymo, and W. B. Curry (2008), Atlantic overturning responses to Late Pleistocene climate forcings, Nature 456, 85-88. Link to PDF

Lisiecki, L. E., and T. D. Herbert (2007), Automated composite depth scale construction and estimates of sediment core extension, Paleoceanography, 22, PA4213, doi:10.1029/2006PA001401. Preprint, Appendix 1: Detailed Methodology, and Appendix 2: Technical Modifications to LL02 (An edited version of this paper was published by AGU. Copyright 2007, American Geophysical Union.)

Kawamura, K., F. Parrenin, L. Lisiecki, R. Uemura, F. Vimeux, J. P. Severinghaus, M. A. Hutterli, T. Nakazawa, S. Aoki, J. Jouzel, M. E. Raymo, K. Matsumoto, H. Nakata, H. Motoyama, S. Fujita, K. Goto-Azuma, Y. Fujii, and O. Watanabe, 2007, Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years, Nature, v. 448, p. 912-917, doi:10.1038/nature06015.

Lisiecki, L. E., and M. E. Raymo (2007), Plio-Pleistocene climate evolution: Trends and transitions in glacial cycle dynamics, Quaternary Science Reviews, 26, 56-69. View PDF

Raymo, M. E., L. E. Lisiecki, and K. H. Nisancioglu (2006), Plio-Pleistocene ice volume, Antarctic climate, and the global d¹⁸O record, Science, doi: 10.1126/science.1123296. PDF

Lisiecki, L. E., and M. E. Raymo (2005), A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack of 57 globally distributed benthic d¹⁸O records, Paleoceanography, 20, PA1003, doi:10.1029/2004PA001071. View PDF

Lisiecki, L. E., and P. A. Lisiecki (2002), Application of dynamic programming to the correlation of paleoclimate records, Paleoceanography, 17(D4), 1049, doi:10.1029/2001PA000733. View PDF

Posters & Abstracts

Dissertation

Title: Paleoclimate time series: New alignment and compositing techniques, a 5.3-Myr benthic d¹⁸O stack, and analysis of Pliocene-Plesitocene climate transitions

Advisor: Prof. Timothy Herbert, Brown University

Summary and Excerpts