Boston College: Global Warming
BC geologist Amy Frappier looks to the past to find answers about climate's future - 02/01/07
When it comes to the weather, Asst. Prof. Amy Frappier (Geology and Geophysics) tends to have a different perspective. While most people concern themselves with what the weather is going to do on a daily basis, Frappier, a paleoclimatologist, is far more interested in what the weather did - thousands of years ago.
"We have only a relatively short recorded history, but we can take a look back at old clues and try to use them to see what's coming," said Frappier, who joined the Boston College faculty last semester after completing her doctorate at the University of New Hampshire.
As a public debate about global warming continues and the chorus demanding legislative, political and industrial changes reaches a crescendo, it is researchers like Frappier who are working to provide empirical guidance about the planet's always-shifting climate.
As a public debate about global warming continues and the chorus demanding legislative, political and industrial changes reaches a crescendo, it is researchers like Frappier who are working to provide empirical guidance about the planet's always-shifting climate.
For her part, the Rhode Island native is one of a small but growing contingent of scientists in her field - paleotempestology, the study of ancient storms - who are seeking clues about the history of Earth's changing climate as found in certain natural "archives" such as tree rings, sea shells, polar ice cores and other places.
Frappier is credited with developing a method for decoding the record of hurricane rainfall preserved in tropical cave formations such as stalagmites. The details of Frappier's methodology and its results will appear in a paper published in this month's issue of Geology.
