Climate: Past, Present & Future

Ricardo N. Santos

I'm a geologist by training and enthusiastic about molecular paleoclimatology. My main research interest is to enhance our understanding of lipid biomarkers as tools for past climate and environmental reconstructions. In my PhD at the Department of Environmental Sciences, the University of Basel, I'm focusing on using the distribution and stable isotope composition of leaf waxes and other lipid biomarkers to reconstruct hydroclimate and ecological changes in Switzerland and upstate New York. I'm particularly interested in exploring hydroclimate dynamics since the last deglaciation using lake records to answer key questions about past spatiotemporal hydroclimate, vegetation dynamics, and ocean-atmospheric-land teleconnections, especially during abrupt climate events such as the Younger Dryas, the 8.2 ka event, and the Little Ice Age.

A glimpse into the INTIMATE’s summer school of 2022

Ricardo N. Santos November 21, 2022

Group photo of the INTIMATE summer school 2022 at Kokkila. Photo Credit: Francesco Muschitiello.

The Earth’s climate has been rapidly changing in the last decades. That’s a fact! Virtually, every one of us has been experiencing those changes in person, but how do we know that Earth’s climate has changed in the past beyond the instrumental data of the last ~200 years? From ancient manuscripts to geologic records, there are many “archives” one might consider “reading” to infer or reconstruct pa ...[Read More]

Atmospheric Rivers: the water tap of extreme precipitation

Ana C. Pires, Alexandre M. Ramos and Ricardo N. Santos October 7, 2021

Figure 1. The atmospheric river over the North Atlantic that delivered record-breaking rainfall to Norway in September 2005. No-data areas are colored in gray (Source: NOAA, 2016).

Extreme precipitation events, i.e., heavy rain episodes of short duration, can lead to severe or even catastrophic social and economic impacts, as seen recently in different flooding and landslide incidents throughout the world. One of the drivers behind these events is the occurrence of atmospheric rivers (ARs), a mechanism that transports great amounts of water vapour across the globe, and signi ...[Read More]