Asst/Prof Kanon KINO

Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering

The University of Tokyo

Dr. Kanon Kino was born in Kanagawa, Japan, in 1991. She received BS and MS degrees in science from Waseda University, Japan, and the University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2016 and 2018, respectively. From 2019 to 2021, she was funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. She received a Ph.D. in the Faculty of Science (Earth and Planetary Science) from the University of Tokyo in 2022. In 2022, she joined the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Tokyo, Japan, as an Assistant Professor. Her research interests include climate model simulations of past and future, paleoclimate, and paleoenvironment.

Title of PhD thesis: Study on the determination processes of Antarctic precipitation isotope ratio in the past and present

The glacial-interglacial cycles (a.k.a., Milankovitch cycles) recorded in inland East Antarctica ice cores provided a wealth of information to understand climate systems and past climate changes. While water isotope ratios obtained from the Antarctic ice cores are useful as a first approximation of past temperature variations, they remain and require ongoing investigation of the determination processes of the water isotope signals. The ice core studies have relied on an implicit assumption used for decades––a constant relationship between mean condensation temperatures and surface air temperatures in inland Antarctica. However, recent observations of in-situ and satellites suggested that episodic precipitation events should bias those isotopic signals, suggesting potential uncertainty in SAT reconstructions with the implicit assumption. This study explored the determination processes of Antarctic precipitation water isotopes in the present and past using an isotope-enabled atmospheric general circulation model to reinterpret the water isotope records in ice cores. As a main result, this study suggested that past temperature changes reconstructed from water isotope records in inland Antarctic ice cores should have larger uncertainties than they were expected because the isotope signals would not reflect the annual mean SATs at the sites. The atmospheric circulation dynamics were revealed to play a crucial role in characterizing the episodic precipitation events associated with the warm and humid air intrusion from the Southern Ocean to inland Antarctica