Science elevator pitch

My hope is to intersperse nuggets of the underlying science along with our adventures from the field so that those of you who don't really know what I'm working on can get the general picture in digestible doses.  Here is what I might tell you if you asked what my research is while trapped with me in a room without hope of escape for 90 seconds.

My research uses paleoclimate archives, including tree rings, cave formations, and lake sediments, to find the frequency of 10-50 year megadroughts in the Indian monsoon region.  This is particularly important because climate models tend to underestimate the occurrence of megadroughts compared to both historical and paleoclimate records.  For instance, they tend to project relatively smooth changes in precipitation with future warming even though we know the monsoon system has substantial decadal variability.  In order for climate models to produce realistic probabilities of megadroughts for the future, we need to make sure they are capable of reconstructing them in simulations of the recent past. All paleoclimate records, including tree rings, cave formations, and lake sediments, have issues with what scales of variability they preserve (seasonal, yearly, decadal...).  This summer we will collect high-resolution sediment records from lakes across Nepal.  My hope is that by comparing lake level data with existing tree ring and cave data sets I will be able to accurately reconstruct the history of megadrought in Nepal and northern India.  Results from this work could be used to help develop climate models that better capture the long-period (10-100 year) variability of the monsoon and may be used to help the governments of India and Nepal assess the risks of megadrought allowing them to make appropriate preparations.