ENSO APPLICATIONS CENTER - View Program

Researchers at WERI are involved in a cooperative project with the University of Hawaii and the Pacific Basin Development Council (PBDC) to study the effects of a climatic condition called El Niño on the weather of our part of the Western Pacific.

CLIMATE HISTORY PROGRAM - View Program

Stalagmites from tropical caves can reveal clues to the amounts and sources of prehistoric rainfall, especially if the relationship is known between the chemistry of modern calcite layers and the dripwater from which they precipitate. Over the past decade, WERI researchers and collaborators from the Department of Geosciences, Mississippi State University, have identified and mapped a number of accessible caves that contain promising stalagmite records from which the pre-historical climate record of the Western Pacific might be reconstructed Collaborating researchers at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas-Austin, have already measured stable oxygen isotope ratios and trace elements in a stalagmite from northern Guam, for which the geochemical record spans 28,000 years. Patterns in the geochemical parameters are consistent with others found in the Pacific, and suggest a large hydrological change in the Western Pacific during the Early-to-Mid Holocene, about 5,000-9,000 years before present. Additional insights gained from this and related ongoing collaborative projects will enable WERI and its collaborators to continue this line of research to determine more recent as well as longer-term climate patterns with higher resolution.

Constitutive Modeling of Glacial Till -View Program


This is a collaborative project between WERI hydrogeologist Dr. John Jenson, Dr. Chandrakant Desai of University of Arizona’s Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Dr. Anders Carlson of University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Geosciences, and Dr. Peter Clark of Oregon State University’s Department of Geosciences. The objective is to develop and apply the Disturbed State Concept (DSC) model of material deformation and interface behavior, developed by Dr. Desai, to the mechanics of ice sheet movement over layers of “soft” subglacial sediment. This is an interdisciplinary effort that combines elements and insights from hydrogeology, glacial geology, and geotechnical and materials engineering, utilizing innovative techniques in geotechnical testing and finite-element modeling. Design and interpretation of laboratory experiments is constrained by observations from on-site field studies of the tested materials. The ultimate objective is to provide a useful constitutive model of subglacial till for models of ice-sheet behavior that incorporate a layer of unlithified sediment, at high basal water pressure, beneath the ice sheet.