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El Niño and the Earth’s climate : from decades to Ice Ages. Julien Emile-Geay Verlag Dr Müller 2008 Acknowledgements There are many people who generously contributed their time, ideas and encouragement to this work, and to whom I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks. First of all my advisor Mark Cane, for his support, patience, wisdom, thoughtful guidance, his love of science and his love for talking, sometimes, about everything else but science. If it were not for his invitation, I would not have come to the United States for my PhD - I would have stayed in Paris and my life would have taken a very, very different turn. Richard Seager, for being always available for sassy, ironic, and sometimes scientific comments, for his precious and inoxidizable enthusiasm, for his diligence at reading and editing my non-native prose, for his patience at correcting my mistakes and for (exceptionally) wearing pink socks with a pink hawaiian shirt. Peter deMenocal, for his support, breadth of knowledge and encouragement throughout my thesis. Ming-Fang Ting, for a patient appraisal of all my mistakes, and for her relentless kindness in answering my questions, which taught me the 2 or 3 things I know about atmospheric Rossby waves. Steve Zebiak , for being such an inspiring model to follow and for his willingness to share ZC black magic. Ed Cook, for being as much at ease with singular-spectrum analysis as with the history of Bhutan. Edwyn Schneider and Adam Sobel, for constructive reviews of the thesis manuscript. Gerald Haug, Bette Otto-Bliesner, Chris Hewitt, for kindly providing access to their data. C.Gao, E. Hendy, R.Stothers, M.Mann, R. Bay, J.Cole-Dai, T. Johnson, T. de Putter, W. Qian, J.Li, M.Evans, R.Villalba, A. Schilla, N. Dunbar, M. Lachniet, Andrew Wittenberg, for some inspiring advice. Everyone in the Lamont Climate Group for making it such a friendly environment to work in. In particular : Bruno Tremblay, for having found put me on the track of the one bug that bugged me most, for uncountable rides home, for his enthusiasm for science, his open mind, his joy and friendship. Alexey Kaplan, for his patience, availability, interest and wit. Naomi Naik, for being such a tech wizard and always tweaking the knobs in the right direction. Gustavo Correa for his incredible patience, kindness and availability ; for educating me somewhat about the strange language of computers ; and giving me unique training in this universal language called Brazilian music. Larry Rosen for the IT, the Bush-bashing, the 800-pound gorilla, and above all for naming my hard drive ”Gonzo” after the death of Hunter S. Thompson. Jennie Velez for all the computer tricks, Ingrid bits, Matlab scripts and freebie candy. Virginia DiBlasi Morris, for fixing all the troubles. Yochanan Kushnir, Nili Harnik for educating me ever-so-slightly about our atmosphere. Doug Martinson for his profound insight on timeseries analysis and his inexhaustible sense of humor. Jason Smerdon, for his good will with Mathematica and his great enthusiasm. Irina Gorodetskaya, my office-mate, for putting up with my desktop sound system for close to 2 years. I am somewhat disappointed that after all that time, she never understood the essential distinction between Deep House and Minimal Techno, but thankfully we got along on Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett and brazilian tunes. More thanks go to : Alexander van Geen, for starting it all. My parents for all their support, though they were dreadfully close to asking the “When are you done with that thesis ?” question one time too many. Marc Spiegelman, for his great teachings and most important of all his good mood at all times. Edward Spiegel, for a very inspiring look at non-linear dynamics, and the memorable story of Voltaire’s sneering at Maupertuis, en français dans le texte. Alex Hall, Dan Schrag, for encouraging me to perseve