The future climate of the Americas is uncertain and presents a challenge as countries strive to prepare for droughts, floods, or wildfires. Future preparation may be guided by a better understanding of how climate varied naturally over the past millennium - preceding the start of the industrial revolution and significant human impact on the environment. Our PIRE brings together a team of international experts from five research institutions in the United States, Brazil and Argentina. By improving our understanding of past climate variations over North and South America, we will place future climate projections within a longer-term framework to better inform international policymakers and stakeholders. PIRE researchers will investigate the nature of extreme events over the two continents during the last one thousand years by merging data from the two largest tree-ring and cave sediment (stalagmite) archives in South America with new, unpublished records. Our research will enlarge our understanding of the underlying causes of past climate perturbations, many of which were associated with large societal impacts (famine, disease and warfare). We will prepare a new generation of students and postdoctoral scholars through the interdisciplinary research training. Results will be translated into visualization models and toolkits of policy-relevant climate information for the scientific community, government and civil society. The international partners are from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. This award is co-funded by the Paleoclimate program. NSF Press Release University of Albany Press Release
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