ITHACA
a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action

Our Mission.

The ITHACA's (medITerranean HydroclimAte variability over the Common erA) goal is to advance the understanding of paleoclimate over the Mediterranean basin to the point where it can inform policy and decision-making about the risks of climate change from a paleo perspective and place future projections within a broad historical context. This project will investigate the characteristics (frequency, intensity, extent, seasonality) and causes of hydroclimate extremes (droughts and pluvials) during the Common Era (CE, the last two thousand years) over the Mediterranean region by developing a state-of-the-art paleo data assimilation product, which will effectively combine high-resolution paleo proxy-data time series with the physical constraints of an atmosphere-ocean climate model simulation.

Finally, by using this new product the project will address the attribution of anthropogenic activities to current changes in hydroclimatic extremes, and it will provide guidance for process-based risk assessment tools.

Our Team.

Ernesto Tejedor

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow

National Museum of Natural Sciences-Spanish Research Council

Madrid. Spain.

etejedor@albany.edu

He works on understanding past climate variability, particularly that which precedes the pre-industrial era, through the combination of high-resolution proxies, such as tree-ring records or historical documents. His research career has been held in different leading research institutes in Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the US during his predoctoral and postdoctoral stages where he has worked at the frontiers of past climate research.

Gerardo Benito

Research Professor

National Museum of Natural Sciences-Spanish Research Council

Madrid. Spain.

benito@mncn.csic.es

His research interests are within Quaternary Geology, with emphasis in palaeohydrology and geomorphology, and particularly on the study of past and recent floods. Regarding the latter, his works have focused on flood hazards in relation to climate and environmental changes, with field sites in Europe, North and South America, and Africa. Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on "Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" (SREX).

Nathan Steiger

Senior Lecturer/ Associate Research Scientist

Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Israel.

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. USA.

nathan.steiger@mail.huji.ac.il

He works to understand and elucidate a range of climate phenomena: the extent of climate extremes, the physical mechanisms of severe droughts and pluvials, and the nature of climate variability across historic and geologic times. He has developed the Paleo Hydrodynamics Data Assimilation product (PHYDA), which covers the last two millennia.

address

Museo nacional de ciencias naturales-CSIC

C/ Serrano 115bis, 28006 Madrid

EMAIL

ernesto.tejedor@mncn.csic.es

Personal Website