I graduated from the Physics Department of University of Ioannina, Greece (Bachelor in Physics and MSc in “Atmospheric Sciences and Environment”). I was always  highly interested in acquiring knowledge about natural climate variability and future climatic change. My Masters thesis focused on one of the the most important factors driving the earth’s energy balance. Specifically, I worked on the estimation of a 24-year global climatology of cloud effects on the longwave radiation budget.

After my master degree I realized that the understanding of current climate and the prediction of its future evolution largely depends on the paleoclimate and its understanding.

I am now one of the PhD students within the ARAMACC project. I am based in Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht in the Institute of Coastal Research, supervised by Dr. Eduardo Zorita and Dr. Sebastian Wagner.

 

ARAMACC PhD project:  The use of proxy data from molluscan sclerochronology for model comparison and decadal prediction

My goal is to  develop the use of molluscan-based proxy records as a tool for analyzing the amplitude and structure of decadal and multidecadal climate variability in the North Atlantic region. This will constrain the characteristics of model simulated variability, so that the model processes that drive similarities or discrepancies with the real-world data can be identified, thus enabling more realistic analyses of ocean-atmosphere coupling on these time scales.

The successful simulations are then going to be analysed in more detail with the aim of identifying predictors at decadal timescales that can then be verified in the proxy records and, in a more limited time frame, in recent instrumental measurements.

The proxy records and model simulations would thus contribute to increased understanding of decadal prediction capabilities in the real world, particularly for future climate states that are anomalous with respect to those of the past 50 years.