Postdoc opportunities
The Climate and Paleoclimate Lab is always seeking new postdocs, contingent upon funding. Feel free to pitch your own idea. Discussions about NSF-AGS, NSF-EAR, and NOAA C&GC postdoctoral fellowships are welcome.
Please get in touch with Professor Bronwen Konecky at: bkonecky at wustl dot edu. In your email, please describe your interests and background, and attach your CV.
Ph.D. student opportunities
Update 9/19/2024: The Climate and Paleoclimate Lab is NOT recruiting Ph.D. students for Fall 2025. Please check out the other labs in WashU EEPS!
If you’re interested in tropical climate or paleoclimate, especially via biomarkers, light stable isotopes, and/or models, please get in touch with Professor Bronwen Konecky at: bkonecky at wustl dot edu. In your email, please describe your interests and background, and attach your CV.
Ancient climates and environments
- Reconstruction of late glacial to late Holocene climate in Guatemala. The drivers of past changes in Central American hydroclimate are not well understood, and this poor understanding limits our ability to evaluate potential future changes as the planet warms. We will soon begin working on biomarker-based reconstructions from Guatemalan lakes in order to fill in these gaps. Aside from working with lake sediments, this project will have opportunities to analyze data from climate model simulations to help interpret past climate dynamics in Central America.
In addition to illuminating Central American climate history on recent timescales, our data will also help to lay the foundation for investigations over millions of years using soon-to-be-collected drill cores from Lake Izabal, Guatemala. This drilling project was just green-lighted by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program! - Investigation of 50,000 years of Indian Summer Monsoon history and dynamics. This is a new NSF-funded project to reconstruct 50kyr of Indian Monsoon history using leaf waxes and other biomarkers from Loktak Lake, Northeast India. We will also utilize paleoclimate model simulations and modern datasets to improve our understanding of the Indian Monsoon’s response to greenhouse, orbital, and other climate forcings.
- Modern calibration of leaf wax hydrogen isotopes and paleoclimate reconstruction. Can we quantify uncertainties (structural as well as parametric) on leaf wax hydrogen isotopes using a forward model embedded in a GCM? How much uncertainty is reduced when we add rich new measurements of modern tropical plants, soils, and waters? Current opportunities include greenhouse studies, model investigations, and paleoclimate reconstructions via lake sediments. This project can easily be combined with one of the above two projects– it is important to continue building our understanding of proxy systems as we continue to use them to reconstruct past climates.
While I am most actively recruiting students for the above projects, I am always interested to speak with folks who are excited about these areas of ongoing investigation:
Earth system modeling and data synthesis
- Synthesis of hydroclimate proxy records and comparison with isotope-enabled climate model simulations. What physical mechanisms of climate variability and change, explored using models, can explain observations in the geologic record? Current opportunities include analysis of existing/upcoming simulations of the Last Glacial Maximum and the past millennium, and data synthesis-model comparison of the past 2,000 years using the new Iso2k database.
The modern tropical water cycle
- Continental moisture recycling and African climate. How does moisture from the Congo rainforest contribute to rainfall variability and agricultural decision-making in western Uganda? How do the dynamics of seasonal wetlands influence land-atmosphere feedbacks in semi-arid Botswana? Current opportunities include water isotope, meteorological, and remote sensing observations in western Uganda as part of a newly funded initiative to understand rainfall variability and agricultural decision-making. This project is in partnership with physical and human geographers at the University of Colorado, University of New Hampshire, and Georgia State. More info here.
To learn more about these areas of research in the Climate and Paleoclimate Lab, please click here.