Lorraine Lisiecki

Lorraine Lisiecki is an American paleoclimatologist. She is a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has proposed a new analysis of the 100,000-year problem in the Milankovitch theory of climate change. She also created the analytical software behind the LR04, a "standard representation of the climate history of the last five million years".

Education Lisiecki graduated in 1995 from the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics. Lisiecki received her B.Sc. in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science in 1999 and also obtained an M.Sc. in Geosystems in 2000 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Geological Sciences, both from Brown University in 2003 and 2005 working with Timothy Herbert. Lisiecki's Ph.D. thesis was titled “Paleoclimate time series: New alignment and compositing techniques, a 5.3-Myr benthic δ18O stack, and analysis of Pliocene-Pleistocene climate transitions”.

Current research Lisiecki's current research focuses on paleoclimatology. Lisiecki's research interest in paleoclimatology arose from the lack of research and current understanding of the glacial cycles. Lisiecki uses various computational and mathematical methods to interpret and compare different paleoclimate records.

Contributions

HMM-Match (Lin et al, 2014) Software designed using a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for probabilistic sequence alignment of stratigraphic records.

Match & Autocomp Software (Lisiecki and Lisiecki, 2002) Paleoceanography software designed to find the optimal alignment of two paleoclimate signals using penalty functions to constrain the rate of accumulation for sediments.

LR04 Benthic Stack (Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005) A Pliocene-Pleistocene stack, spanning 5.3-Myr, demonstrating an average of 57 globally distributed Benthic δ18O records collected from scientific literature, which measure ice volume and deep ocean temperature. The records were placed on a common age model, represented by a graphic correlation algorithm. Lisiecki and Raymo's LR04 Stack contains significantly more variance in benthic δ18O, in comparison to former published stacks of the late Pleistocene epoch. In the LR04, there are higher resolution records, an improved alignment technique, and a higher percentage of records from the Atlantic.

The LR04 Stack is one of the most heavily cited Pliocene-entitled papers for δ18O due to the intensive mathematical meticulousness incorporated into the record, the level of objectivity involved, its use of global distribution and duration. The existence of the LR04 Stack serves as a very important tool in paleoceanography. The history of Earth's climate lies in the composition of ocean sediments as scientists are able to derive millions of years worth of information through the alignment of these sedimentary layers. Through these layers, Lisiecki found a connection between earth's climate cycle and earth's orbital cycle; assuming glaciation and orbital eccentricity are both on 100,000-year cycles, she found that stronger changes in Earth's orbit correlated with weaker changes in glaciation.

Awards Subaru Outstanding Woman in Science Award from the Geological Society of America in 2008.