Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Dr. Richard Seager

Palisades Geophysical Institute/Lamont Research Professor
Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University Palisades, NY 10964

The Dust Bowl and Other Great North American Droughts of the Past, Present, and Future

About the Lecturer
Richard Seager is the Palisades Geophysical Institute/Lamont Research Professor at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in Palisades, New York.  After undergraduate studies at Liverpool University in England he came to the United States in 1983 as a graduate student at Columbia.  In his Ph. D work, completed in 1990, he used tropical atmosphere and ocean models to understand key features of the tropical climate.  In 1991-92 he completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Washington before returning to Lamont, this time to stay. Professor Seager studies climate variability and change on seasonal to glacial-interglacial timescales.  In recent years his work has focused on semi-arid areas such as the western U.S., Mexico and the Mediterranean region.  He has studied the causes of droughts, floods and pluvials in recent decades and throughout the past millennium, the physical processes that couple the atmosphere to the ocean and land surface and the impact of agricultural practices on climate.  His work uses climate models, instrumental records and proxy records such as tree rings and corals.  Much of his current work aims to determine how hydroclimate will change in the near term future across the planet, but with a special focus on dry regions such as southwest North America, as a consequence of rising greenhouse gases. 

More Information
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/user/seager

Watch the lecture
http://cirescolorado.adobeconnect.com/p7uwseo50tt/

Dr. Richard Seager