Bronwen Konecky
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Monsoons and tropical rain belts are shifting as the climate warms. These changes bring floods, droughts, crop losses and disease outbreaks.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
paleoclimate
hydroclimate
Holocene
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2030
What they work on
- Reconstruct 10,000 years of Holocene rainfall and vegetation in Central America and northern South America by measuring hydrogen isotopes of leaf waxes in six dated lake cores from Guatemala and Venezuela.
- Combine multiple proxy records with climate model simulations to test whether atmospheric processes beyond Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) migration explain past rainfall change.
- Build a 50,000-year record of Indian Summer Monsoon strength from Loktak Lake sediments, using leaf wax isotopes, X-ray fluorescence, pollen, diatoms and biomarkers.
- Test whether greenhouse gases, deep Atlantic circulation or Bay of Bengal warming control monsoon strength, interpreting the Loktak data with isotope-enabled climate models.
More about the research
It remains unclear, however, what controls these rainfall changes. One way to find out is to read past rainfall from lake mud, which builds up layer by layer over thousands of years. Both projects reconstruct past rainfall from lake sediments and compare these records with climate models.
Why it matters
Rainfall shifts in Central and South America are linked to dengue outbreaks and to drought and flood losses. Changes in the Indian Summer Monsoon have caused floods in Pakistan and climate migration from Myanmar and Bangladesh. Identifying what has driven past rainfall change could reduce uncertainty in future climate projections for these regions. That in turn could improve planning for the communities exposed to these hazards.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jason Smerdon
Columbia University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct wet-season rainfall over at least the last 200 years across the neotropics by measuring stable oxygen isotopes (δ18O) in tree-ring cellulose from Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
Yair Rosenthal
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Earth & Environmental Science
Reconstruct movements of the Southern Westerly Winds during the Holocene and five earlier interglacials (MIS 5e, 9e, 11c, 13, 19) using Chilean Margin sediments from site J1001.
Charlotte Demott
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Test how rain-formed cold lids on the ocean delay and then intensify tropical storms and the Madden-Julian Oscillation, by comparing regional atmosphere-ocean simulations with the lid active or disabled.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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