AGU Recap

As usual, I promise to blog actively during AGU and I don't find (make) the time to get it done! It's frustrating, but there's so much going on during the conference (which I want to imbibe) that there is hardly any time to breathe!

First of all, AGU12 was a wonderful conference: jam packed with great science, enlightening conversation with friends (new and old) and most importantly researchers presenting new, exciting (and mostly unpublished) work. For the most part, I hung around the paleoclimatology/paleoceanography and tectonophysics sessions.

The take home message that I got from AGU12 (by attending presentations, asking and answering questions) as a researcher interested in paleoceanography was that I need to spend more time understanding the physics of the interpretation that I choose to make with my data. Further, an understanding of the fidelity of the proxy coupled with a statistically relevant framework is a strong way to draw conclusions with data. Paleoceanographers spend a lot of time generating numbers - geochemistry is a tough, demanding area. This is all the more reason to spend time with physics and statistics to explain the variability in your time series!

In any case, I think my presentations went well: I got good feedback, relevant input and pertinent questions for all three presentations. One cannot hope for anything more. I am excited to get back home and gain speed on publishing my research and getting it out to the community.

Until next time, SanFran and AGU - you have been great!

Some highlights from my side (taken from my twitter stream; #agu12 was a great way to follow interesting talks)*:

• Michael Evans: "Oceans have been cooling for the last 2k yrs" (except in last 200 yr bin) 
• D. S. Kaufman: "Statistics are important but you have to understand the proxy." 
• D. S. Kaufman: "1970-2000 in PAGES2k continental proxy compilation are warmest on record."
• D. S. Kaufman: "No globally synchronous warm or cold intervals that define a worldwide Little Ice Age, Medieval Climate Anomaly."
• S. Breitenbach: "Too few stalagmite records from India."
• R. D'arrigo: "Come to our lab and see for yourself if you can find any rings missing."
• A. Blyth: "In the paleo-application of GDGTs in stalagmites - you lose the LGM! ...errors of 2.73 degC" 
• Richard Alley, open mic: "How many climate deniers does it take to change a lightbulb? Zero, they wait for a natural cycle to do it."
• T. Correge: "No sign of reduced ENSO during the Holocene compared to the modern in western Pacific corals."
• D. Thompson: "Far too few coral records in the key Pacific locations to look at past temp./salinity variability."
• V. J. Anderson: "Significant scatter in brGDGT-Temperature relationship."
• P. DiNezio: "In all models, Changes in ENSO are all over the place."
• Wenju Cai: "SPCZ is biggest rainfall band in S.Hemisphere but we know very little about it."

*I maintain that I may have misheard certain talks and may have mis-attributed these speakers as I probably did not quote them verbatim.