science activities

focus 2 regional climate dynamics

Structure of Focus 2, showing the Themes (pink boxes) and Working Groups (grey text), and overlap with external programs (white boxes). For descriptions of program acronyms please see Acronym List

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 kyr, in particular the time streams of the last glacial-interglacial cycle, the Holocene, and the last 2 kyr.

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, Eystein Jansen, Cathy Whitlock and José Carriquiry

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.

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