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Paula Gonzalez

Postdoctoral Research Scientist

Near-Term Climate Change, Climate Variability

202B Monell

61 Route 9W

Palisades, New York 10964

Phone: (845) 680-4515

Fax: (845) 680-4865

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Curriculum Vitae
IRI Publications
Profile

Background

Paula Gonzalez is a Postdoctoral Research Scientist working with Lisa Goddard in the Near-Term Climate Change Project. She earned her PhD from the University of Buenos Aires, in Argentina, working on intraseasonal variability of summer precipitation over South Eastern South America. She also contributed to research on climate variability and change over South America. In the present her work mainly contributes to a project titled "Decadal-Scale Climate Variability in Current Generation Coupled Models for Informing Near-Term Climate Change Impacts".

Research Interests

  • Climate variability and change, climate variability and change over South America
  • Decadal variability, decadal prediction, decadal hindcasts
  • Climate Dynamics
  • CGCM/GCM Evaluation
  • Use of multi-scale climate information in decision making and climate risk management

Ongoing Research Projects

  • 2010 - present. Title: "Diagnosing Decadal-Scale Climate Variability in Current Generation Coupled Models for Informing Near-term Climate Change Impacts". NOAA CVP. Lead PI: Lisa Goddard (IRI/Columbia Univeristy)
  • 2011 - present. Title: "Multi-scale Climate Information for Agricultural Planning in Southeastern South America for Coming Decades". NSF EaSM. PIs: Lisa Goddard, Walter Baethgen, Arthur Greene (IRI/Columbia University), Richard Seager (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University).
  • 2011 - present. Title: "Integration of Decadal Climate Predictions, Ecological Models and Human Decision-making Models to Support Climate-resilient Agriculture in the Argentine Pampas". NSF EaSM. Lead PI: Guillermo Podesta (Univ. of Miami)

Past Research Projects

  • 2008-2010. Title: "Study of the Factors Influencing Climate Predictability over the La Plata Basin". University of Buenos Aires (Argentina). PIs: Celeste Saulo, Carolina Vera.
  • 2008-2010. Title: "CLARIS LPB. Hydroclimate and Society in La Plata Basin" - EU FP7 Collaborative Project - Priority Area 1.1.6.3 "Global Change and Ecosystems". Coordination: Jean-Philippe Boulanger (IRD-LOCEAN, France). Participation in Work Package #4: "Hydroclimate past and future low-frequency variability, trends and shifts".
  • 2007-2010. Title: "Intraseasonal Variability of South American Precipitation". NOAA GC07-134. PIs: Carolina Vera.
  • 2006-2009. Title: "Local and Remote Influences over the La Plata Basin summer precipitation and its Hydrological Impacts". ANPCyT (Argentina). PI: Carolina Vera.

Publications

    Gonzalez PLM, Polvani LM, Seager R, Correa GJP. 2012: Stratospheric ozone depletion: a key driver of recent precipitation trends in South Eastern South America. In preparation

    Gonzalez PLM, Vera CS. 2012: Large-scale dynamics associated with intraseasonal variability of summer precipitation over South America in two timescales. In preparation

    Gonzalez PLM, Goddard L, Greene AM. 2012: Twentieth-Century summer precipitation in South Eastern South America: Comparison of gridded and station data. In press. International Journal of Climatology

    Goddard L, Kumar A, Solomon A, Smith D, Boer G, Gonzalez PLM, Kharin V, Merryfield W, Deser C, Mason SJ, Kirtman BP, Msadek R, Sutton R, Hawkins E, Fricker T,Hegerl G, Ferro CAT, Stephenson DB, Meehl GA, Stockdale T, Burgman R, Greene AM, Kushnir Y, Newman M, Carton J, Fukumori I, Delworth T. 2012: A verification framework for interannual-to-decadal predictions experiments. Clim Dyn. doi:DOI 10.1007/s00382-012-1481-2

    Blazquez J, Pessacg NL, Gonzalez PLM. 2012: Simulation of a baroclinic wave with the WRF regional model: sensitivity to the initial conditions in an ideal and a real experiment. Met. Apps. doi: 10.1002/met.1307

    Liebmann, Brant, George N. Kiladis, Dave Allured, Carolina S. Vera, Charles Jones, Leila M. V. Carvalho, Ileana Blade, Paula L. M. Gonzalez, 2011: Mechanisms Associated with Large Daily Rainfall Events in Northeast Brazil. J. Climate, 24, 376-396. doi: 10.1175/2010JCLI3457.1

    Carbajo, AE, Vera CS, Gonzalez PLM. 2009: Hantavirus reservoir Oligoryzomys longicaudatus spatial distribution model under a climate change scenario in Argetinean Patagonia. Int. J Health Geogr.,8:44.

    Gonzalez PLM, Vera CS, Liebmann B, Kiladis G. 2008: Intraseasonal variability in subtropical South America as depicted by precipitation data. Clim. Dyn., 30, 727-744.

    Vera CS, Silvestri G, Liebmann B, Gonzalez PLM. 2006: Climate change scenarios for seasonal precipitation in South America from IPCC-AR4 models. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L13707.

Work in progress

With the collaboration of the Climate & Society Ms student Mike McCormick I am exploring why do state-of-the-art climate models fail to reproduce the long-term precipitation trends observed during the 20th Century in certain regions like the Sahel or Southeastern South America. For that purpose, we want to evaluate how do these climate models partition their precipitation variability - interannual, decadal and long-term trends - and compare it with observations. We are working with CMIP5 historical and piControl experiments.

Implementation of a website on verification metrics as a collaboration with U.S. CLIVAR Decadal Predictability Working Group. Includes the development of MATLAB code and links to IRI's Data Library to facilitate the use of the proposed framework by other institutions. http://clivar-dpwg.iri.columbia.edu/