Grant Category:	Fulbright-Nehru Senior Researcher
Field of Specialization:	Energy, Sustainable Development and Climate Change
Name:	Dr. Maureen A. Raymo
Official Address:	Department of Earth Scienc College of Arts and Science Boston University Boston, Massachusetts
Indian Host Institution:	National Institute of Oceanography Goa
Duration of Grant & Start Date :	Duration: 6 months November 2011

Brief Bio:

Professor Maureen Raymo  is  a  paleo-climatologist  and  marine  geologist  who  works  at  the  Lamont-­Doherty  Earth  Observatory  of  Columbia  University  where  she  is  also  Director  of the  Lamont  Deep  Sea  Sample  Repository.  She  studies  the  history  and  causes  of  climate  change  in  Earth's  past. In  1988  she  proposed  the  uplift-weathering  hypothesis  that  tied  global  cooling  and  the  onset  of  polar glaciation  in  the  late  Cenozoic  to  a  drawdown  in  atmospheric  CO2  caused  by  the  uplift  of  the  Himalayas  and  Tibetan  Plateau.  In  addition  to  publishing  fundamental  work  on  the  stratigraphy  and  chronology  of  the  late  Neogene,  Professor Raymo  has  also  proposed  hypotheses  explaining  why  ice  sheets  appear  to  wax  and  wane  primarily  at  the  Earth's  obliquity  frequency  over  much  of  the  Plio-Pleistocene. In 2002, she was awarded the Robert L. and Bettie P.  Cody  Award  in  Ocean  Sciences  from  the  Scripps  Institution  of Oceanography.    She  is  a  fellow  of  both  the  American  Geophysical  Union  and  the  American  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science. Accurate estimates of past sea levels are necessary to constrain Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet stability in a warmer world. As scientists we use climate models to assess likely future warming scenarios and thus gauge what a safe level of greenhouse gases may be. However, results of climate models can vary greatly between groups. To address the problem of knowing which models are best, the scientific community puts significant effort into calibrating models against known past climate changes. The aim of Professor Raymo's Fulbright-Nehru research project is to identify and date paleo-shoreline features in the circum-Indian Ocean region with goal of providing firm estimates of past ice volume.