High Resolution Simulation of Oxygen Isotope Stage Three Climate

Abstract ATM-9809239 Barron, Eric J. Pennsylvania State University Title: High Resolution Simulation of Oxygen Isotope Stage Three Climate This award supports an investigation designed to provide a firm physically-based foundation for explaining the climatic record of Europe during Oxygen Isotope Stage 3 (between 60,000 and 25,000 years before present), and specifically to assess the nature of its spatial an temporal variability. This study will describe and explain, using existing data and a series of climate model simulations, the climatic and paleo-environmental conditions of OIS-3 "warm" and "cold" climate excursions, and will examine the sensitivity of European climate to variations in OIS-3 northern hemisphere ice sheets, conditions in the North Atlantic, orbital elements and atmospheric carbon dioxide. This study will also assess the ability of high-resolution, limited-area paleoclimate models as a means of simulating past climates in cases for which the quality and spatial-temporal resolution of the environmental data exceeds much of the capabilities of coarse resolution General Circulation Models (GCMs).