Vanessa Skiba

I am a doctoral candidate working in a DFG project, where I study abrupt climate transitions which are prominent features of past ice ages. For that, I use cave carbonates, more specifically stalagmites from Swiss caves, to extend our knowledge of abrupt climate events of the last 300,000 years.
During these events potential tipping points of the Earth system likely have been crossed, which resulted in severe changes of different Earth system components, e.g. re-organisation of the atmosphere and ocean circulation. Using new data, I investigate, when and under which circumstances these climate transitions occurred. For that, I closely work together with the EU Horizon 2020 project TiPES, the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), local partners (NeKO) and Universities in Heidelberg and Innsbruck.
Furthermore, I am using proxy system modelling to disentangle incorporated environmental signals and to quantify interpretations derived from stalagmite proxy data.
I am Regional Coordinator for Western Europe in Phase II of PAGES working group SISAL (Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and AnaLysis, https://pastglobalchanges.org/science/wg/sisal/intro).