Focus 2 - Regional Climate Dynamics
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| Structure of Focus 2, showing the Themes (pink boxes) and Working Groups (grey text), and overlap with external programs (white boxes). |
This Focus seeks to achieve a better understanding of past regional climatic and environmental dynamics through comparison of reconstructions and model simulations. Activities contribute towards a global coverage of high-resolution, well-dated paleoclimatic data, reconstructions of past climate-state parameters (e.g., temperature, precipitation, atmospheric pressure fields), a better understanding of past modes of climate variability and their teleconnections, and of rapid and extreme climate events at the regional scale. The Focus hosts activities that promote data-model comparisons and collaborates closely with Cross-Cutting Theme 2 on proxy development and calibration. The timescales covered by this Focus encompass the last 130 ka, in particular the time streams of the last glacial-interglacial cycle, the Holocene, and the last 2 ka.
Overarching Questions
- How have regional climate and the Earth’s natural environment changed in the past?
- What are the main patterns and modes of climate variability on sub-decadal to orbital timescales?
- How does climate variability and extreme events relate to the mean state of the climate system?
Focus Leaders: Heinz Wanner, José Carriquiry, Fátima Abrantes, Steve Colman, Chris Turney and Claudio Latorre
Focus 2 is structured into 4 Themes. Three of the Themes are differentiated by their distinct temporal scope and associated temporal resolution. The fourth Theme is methodological in nature.
Working Groups
The 2k Network
> Arctic2k (Arctic climate of the last 2 millennia)
> Africa2k (African climate of the last 2 millennia)
> Antarctica 2k (Antarctic climate of the last 2 millennia)
> Asia2k (Asian climate of the last 2 millennia)
> Aus2k (Australasian climate of the last 2 millennia)
> Euro-Med 2k (European and Mediterranean climate of the last 2 millennia)
> LOTRED-SA (Long-Term Climate Reconstruction and Dynamics of South America)
> NAmerica2k (North American climate of the last 2 millennia)
> Ocean2k (Marine climate variations of the last 2 millennia)
