CIERA REU 2021

About

I'm a rising senior attending Lewis University in Romeoville, IL with a major in Physics and minor in Mathematics. The Physics concepts taught by the program at Lewis have been mentoring me to eventually become the climate scientist I've always known I'd become. Delving into climate change and its effects on people is a continuous everyday motivator for me to rise out of bed. As the next generation of scientists the world is on our hands, but we only get one world so we have to do our best to preserve the pieces we can. It is never too late to start building a better tomorrow but we must start today.

REU Project 2021

The effect of climate change on regional weather patterns and hydrological outcomes remains uncertain. For example, it is uncertain if recent dramatic changes in Laurentian Great Lake water levels are driven by anthropogenic forcing or are the result of natural variability. Each of the individual Great Lakes has recently reached record high levels, and in some cases record highs have followed recent record lows, suggesting a potential shift in hydrologic variability.To assess this potential we investigate the hydrology of the Laurentian Great Lakes system over the past century-plus (1900-2020) using lake water levels compiled by the Great Lakes Coordinating Committee. These data are aggregated from 87 gauges across the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin operated by NOAA and the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS). Rolling averages of surface elevation for each of the Great Lakes reveal changing standard deviations between the first and second half of the century, which is notably accompanied by recent maxima in standard deviation for all lakes in the basin and statistically significant long-term trends in variability for Lakes Ontario and Superior. These trends are further demonstrated by comparing kernel density on the first and latter halves of lake level data (i.e. 1900- 1959, 1960-2020).
To determine the role of specific hydrologic components in Great Lake levels, we also incorporate similar analysis of precipitation and evapotranspiration data from the gridded Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) and Livneh Daily Observational Hydrometeorology datasets. We investigate the relative importance of precipitation and evapotranspiration, including changes in their annual variability for each catchment basin. Ultimately, our results help to increase understanding of Laurentian Great Lake level variability (and the components thereof) and will prove important in efforts to mitigate increased risk for coastline flooding, shoreline erosion, and transportation and trade impacts. In addition, these findings allow for a historical comparison against predicted regional changes in the hydrologic cycle caused by anthropogenic climate change and may indicate a shifting regime in Great Lake water levels. For further details please visit the poster link on the left.

Past Works

A. Moreen, R. Adams, D. Blanco, Development of a Low-cost Arduino-based Radiation Sensor, Poster presented at Celebration of Scholarship, Lewis University (2019)
D. Blanco, Adverse Impacts of Climate Change and Pollution on Communities of Color in Chicago, Poster presented at Celebration of Scholarship, Lewis University (2021)

Contact

You can reach me at my LinkdIn profile through the icon on the left or by clicking on my name in the header.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST- 1757792. Thank you so much to Northwestern University's CIERA REU program and to NSF for this amazing oppurtunity. A special thank you to Dr. Ryan Harp and Pr. Daniel Horton for advising me on this project. A special nod to Dr. Aaron Geller and Cliff Johnson for their guidance and leadership of the program.