My current research focuses on some of the most important questions at the forefront of the field of climate science. I seek to understand the response of key components of the Earth system to changes in natural (e.g., changes in the Earth's orbit) and anthropogenic forcing (e.g., emission of greenhouse gases), the mechanisms and rate of change that characterized Earth's past climate variability, and the influence of large-scale coupled ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) on East African monsoon rainfall.