Lorraine Lisiecki facts for kids

Lorraine Lisiecki is an American scientist who studies Earth's past climates. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has come up with new ideas about a puzzle called the "100,000-year problem." This problem is part of the Milankovitch cycles theory, which explains how Earth's orbit affects climate. She also helped create important computer programs. One of these programs is used to understand Earth's climate history over the last five million years.

Studying Earth's Past

Lorraine Lisiecki went to the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics. She earned her first degree in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science in 1999. She also got a master's degree in Geosystems in 2000. Both of these were from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Later, she earned another master's degree and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Brown University. She finished these in 2003 and 2005. Her Ph.D. research was about understanding past climate patterns.

What She Studies Now

Lisiecki's main research area is paleoclimatology. This is the study of Earth's climate in the past. She became interested in this field because there wasn't much known about past ice ages. She uses computers and math to understand old climate records.

She especially looks at how the climate changed during the Plio-Pleistocene era. This time is important because of its link to Milankovitch cycles. These cycles explain how Earth's orbit affects climate. She also studies the 100,000-year ice age cycles. She looks at the carbon cycle and how deep ocean currents work.

Currently, Lisiecki creates computer programs. These programs help scientists understand how old different layers of rock and sediment are. She also builds 3D models of ocean currents. This helps her figure out how Earth's orbit affects ocean patterns.

Her Important Work

HMM-Match Software

This computer program was designed in 2014. It uses a special math model called a Hidden Markov model. This model helps scientists line up different records of Earth's past. It helps them see how likely it is that events happened in a certain order.

Match & Autocomp Software

Lisiecki helped create this software in 2002. It is used in Paleoceanography, the study of ancient oceans. This program helps find the best way to match up two different paleoclimate signals. It uses special rules to figure out how fast sediments built up over time.

LR04 Benthic Stack

This is a very important record of Earth's climate history. It covers 5.3 million years, from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene epochs. It combines 57 different records from all over the world. These records measure things like ice volume and deep ocean temperature.

The LR04 Stack is special because it has more detailed information. It also uses better ways to line up the different records. Many scientists use the LR04 Stack. It is a key tool for understanding how Earth's oceans and climate have changed over millions of years.

Earth's Climate Story

Lisiecki studies ocean sediment cores to find patterns in Earth's climate history. Ocean sediments are like layers of history. Scientists can learn about millions of years of climate by studying these layers.

Lisiecki found a link between Earth’s climate cycles and its orbital cycles. She noticed that stronger changes in Earth’s orbit did not always mean stronger changes in ice ages. This connection is complex. It involves three parts of Earth's orbit: its shape (eccentricity), its tilt, and its wobble (precession). All these factors work with Earth's complicated climate system.

The 100,000-Year Puzzle

For a long time, scientists thought that the 100,000-year ice age cycles were caused by changes in Earth's orbit. Specifically, they thought it was due to the Earth's orbital eccentricity.

In 2010, Lisiecki made an interesting discovery. She found that strong ice age cycles did not always happen when Earth's orbit was most eccentric. This was true for the last 1.2 million years. This suggests that Earth's climate might have its own internal changes. These changes could work with the orbital cycles.

Lisiecki thinks that strong changes in Earth's wobble might stop some of these internal climate changes. She also suggested that long-term internal factors could be involved. These might include the carbon cycle or the size of ice sheets. More research is needed to fully understand this puzzle.

Awards and Recognition

• Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award from the Geological Society of America in 2008.
• Editors' Citation for Excellence in Refereeing for Paleoceanography, 2008.
• Joukowsky Outstanding Dissertation Award, 2005.