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Welcome! I'm Dr. Jessica Tierney, an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona. I study past climate change (paleoclimatology) to learn about how the Earth system works and what's in store for the future. My research group focuses on studying past climates over a variety of timescales, using organic geochemical techniques and statistical climate reconstruction. I'm proud to be a Packard Foundation Fellow, an American Geophysical Union Fellow, and a lead author on the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report.Show Less
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Courses
- OSOcean Sciences
- THECThe History of Earth's Climate
- OGOrganic Geochemistry
Grants
- 2022 Waterman Award
Principal Investigator (PI)
2022
$1.0M
Active - A Paleoclimate Reanalysis of the Coupled Greenland Ice Sheet--Climate Evolution During the Last Interglacial
Principal Investigator (PI)
2022
$387.5K
Active - Collaborative Research: P2C2-- Constraining Cloud and Convective Parameterizations Using Paleoclimate Data Assimilation
Principal Investigator (PI)
2022
$260.3K
Active - paleoCAMP: A Multidisciplinary Summer School For Graduate Students In Paleoclimatology
Principal Investigator (PI)
2021
$425.2K
Active - Collaborative Research: Quantifying the Sea-Surface Temperature Pattern Effect for LGM and Pliocene Constraints on Climate Sensitivity
Principal Investigator (PI)
2020
$122.8K
Active - Collaborative Research: Anatomy of a Greenhouse World: The Early Eocene in the Green River Basin, Wyoming
Principal Investigator (PI)
2018
$203.5K
Active - Molecular Views Of Past Changes in the North American Monsoon
Principal Investigator (PI)
2017
$505.0K
Active - Packard Foundation Fellowship
Principal Investigator (PI)
2015
$875.0K
Active - Determination Of Ancient Depositional Environments Via Mulitvariate Analyses Of Glycerol Ether Lipids
Principal Investigator (PI)
2020
$110.0K
- Collaborative Research: A Paleoclimate Perspective on the Response of Southwest North American Rainfall to Elevated Greenhouse Gases
Principal Investigator (PI)
2019
$62.9K
News
- College of Science to host myth-busting lecture series
2023
- UArizona climate adaptation experts contribute to latest IPCC climate report
2022
- Women in climate change: Jessica Tierney
2022
- UArizona paleoclimatologist to receive NSF's highest early-career honor
2022
- UArizona Paleoclimatologist Weighs in on 'Hot Drought' as a Lead Author on IPCC Climate Report
2021
- Global Temperatures Over Last 24,000 Years Show Today's Warming 'Unprecedented'
2021
- Community Climate Change Course Brings Faculty Expertise to Public
2020
- Past is Key to Predicting Future Climate, Scientists Say
2020
- How Cold Was the Ice Age? Researchers Now Know
2020
- Study of Ancient Climate Suggests Warming Could Accelerate as CO2 Levels Rise
2019
- Ancient Plankton Help Researchers Predict Near-Future Climate
2019
- Mud from the Deep Sea Reveals Clues about Ancient Monsoon
2018
- UA Scientists Selected as Authors for International Climate Report
2018
- UA Science Café Series Kicks Off New Season
2017
- Ancient Humans Left Africa to Escape Drying Climate
2017
- Green Sahara's Ancient Rainfall Regime Revealed by Scientists
2017
- Horn of Africa Drying Ever Faster as Climate Warms
2015
- UA Geoscientist Awarded Packard Fellowship
2015
- Twentieth-Century Warming in Lake Tanganyika is Unprecedented
2010
Publications (78)
Recent
- DeepMIP: model intercomparison of early Eocene climatic optimum (EECO) large-scale climate features and comparison with proxy data
2021
- Identifying plant wax inputs in lake sediments using machine learning
2021
- Reflections on weather and climate research
2021
- Glacial-Interglacial Shifts Dominate Tropical Indo-Pacific Hydroclimate During the Late Pleistocene
2021
- Assessment of equilibrium climate sensitivity of the Community Earth System Model version 2 through simulation of the Last Glacial Maximum
2021
- Late Eocene record of hydrology and temperature from Prydz Bay, East Antarctica
2021
- Climatic Drivers of Deglacial SST Variability in the Eastern Pacific
2021
- Subseafloor Archaea reflect 139 kyrs of paleodepositional changes in the northern Red Sea
2021
- A global Bayesian temperature calibration for lacustrine brGDGTs
2021
- Water Cycle Changes
2021
- A data assimilation approach to last millennium temperature field reconstruction using a limited high-sensitivity proxy network
2021
- Globally resolved surface temperatures since the Last Glacial Maximum
2021
- The PMIP4 Last Glacial Maximum experiments: preliminary results and comparison with the PMIP3 simulations
2021
- Temperature and water depth effects on brGDGT distributions in sub-alpine lakes of mid-latitude North America
2021
- Unraveling Glacial Hydroclimate in the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool: Perspectives From Water Isotopes
2020
- Controlled lacustrine microcosms show a brGDGT response to environmental perturbations
2020
- Glacial cooling and climate sensitivity revisited
2020
- Lessons from a high-CO$_2$ world: an ocean view from $\sim$3 million years ago
2020
- Miocene C4 grassland expansion as recorded by the Indus Fan
2020
- Past climates inform our future
2020
- BayMBT: A Bayesian calibration model for branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers in soils and peats
2020
- A global database of Holocene paleotemperature records
2020
- Lipid biomarker record documents hydroclimatic variability of the Mississippi River basin during the Common Era
2020
- Revised chronology of the ICDP Dead Sea deep drill core relates drier-wetter-drier climate cycles to insolation over the past 220 kyr
2020
- Emergence of an equatorial mode of climate variability in the Indian Ocean
2020
- Global mean surface temperature and climate sensitivity of the early Eocene Climatic Optimum (EECO), Paleocene--Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), and latest Paleocene
2020
- Temperature changes across the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum--a new high-resolution TEX86 temperature record from the Eastern North Sea Basin
2020
- Simulation of Eocene extreme warmth and high climate sensitivity through cloud feedbacks
2019
- Global Core Top Calibration of $\delta^18$O in Planktic Foraminifera to Sea Surface Temperature
2019
- Bayesian calibration of the Mg/Ca paleothermometer in planktic foraminifera
2019
- Shelf exposure influence on Indo-Pacific Warm Pool climate for the last 450,000 years
2019
- The DeepMIP contribution to PMIP4: methodologies for selection, compilation and analysis of latest Paleocene and early Eocene climate proxy data, incorporating version 0.1 of the DeepMIP database
2019
- Lacustrine brGDGT response to microcosm and mesocosm incubations
2019
- Biomarkers reveal abrupt switches in hydroclimate during the last glacial in southern California
2019
- An El Ni\~no Mode in the Glacial Indian Ocean?
2019
- Pliocene warmth consistent with greenhouse gas forcing
2019
- BAYSPLINE: A New Calibration for the Alkenone Paleothermometer
2018
- Ice sheet modulation of deglacial North American monsoon intensification
2018
- Glacial changes in tropical climate amplified by the Indian Ocean
2018
- Comparing proxy and model estimates of hydroclimate variability and change over the Common Era
2017
- The DeepMIP contribution to PMIP4: experimental design for model simulations of the EECO, PETM, and pre-PETM (version 1.0)
2017
- Eocene temperature gradients
2017
- A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era
2017
- Extremes in East African hydroclimate and links to Indo-Pacific variability on interannual to decadal timescales
2017
- Glacial reduction of the North American Monsoon via surface cooling and atmospheric ventilation
2017
- Rainfall regimes of the Green Sahara
2017
- Comparison of three methods for the methylation of aliphatic and aromatic compounds
2017
- A climatic context for the out-of-Africa migration
2017
- The climate response of the Indo-Pacific warm pool to glacial sea level
2016
- South Pacific hydrologic and cyclone variability during the last 3,000 years
2016
- Early onset of industrial–era warming across the oceans and continents
2016
- An automated method for the determination of the TEX86 and U-37(K ') paleotemperature indices
2016
- Changes in northeast African hydrology and vegetation associated with Pliocene-Pleistocene sapropel cycles
2016
- GDGT and alkenone flux in the northern Gulf of Mexico: Implications for the TEX86 and UK′37 paleothermometers
2016
- Cooling and drying in northeast Africa across the Pliocene
2016
- Deglacial Indian monsoon failure and North Atlantic stadials linked by Indian Ocean surface cooling
2016
- Past and future rainfall in the Horn of Africa
2015
- Tropical sea surface temperatures for the past four centuries reconstructed from coral archives
2015
- A TEX86 surface sediment database and extended Bayesian calibration
2015
- A Bayesian, spatially-varying calibration model for the TEX86 proxy
2014
- Indonesian vegetation response to changes in rainfall seasonality over the past 25,000 years
2014
- Multidecadal variability in East African hydroclimate controlled by the Indian Ocean
2013
- The effect of sea level on glacial Indo-Pacific climate
2013
- Identifying coherent spatiotemporal modes in time-uncertain proxy paleoclimate records
2013
- Abrupt Shifts in Horn of Africa Hydroclimate Since the Last Glacial Maximum
2013
- The influence of Indian Ocean circulation on Warm Pool hydroclimate during the Holocene epoch
2012
- Core and intact polar glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) in Sand Pond, Warwick, Rhode Island (USA): Insights into the origin of lacustrine GDGTs
2012
- Green Sahara: African Humid Periods paced by Earth’s orbital changes
2012
- Late Quaternary behavior of the East African monsoon and the importance of the Congo Air Boundary
2011
- Model, proxy and isotopic perspectives on the East African Humid Period
2011
- A molecular perspective on Late Quaternary climate and vegetation change in the Lake Tanganyika basin, East Africa
2010
- Late-twentieth-century warming in Lake Tanganyika unprecedented since AD 500
2010
- Environmental controls on branched tetraether lipid distributions in tropical East African lake sediments
2010
- Coordinated hydrological regimes in the Indo-Pacific region during the past two millennia
2010
- Distributions of branched GDGTs in a tropical lake system: Implications for lacustrine application of the MBT/CBT paleoproxy
2009
- Northern hemisphere controls on tropical southeast African climate during the past 60,000 years
2008
- Subdecadally resolved paleoceanography of the Peru margin during the last two millennia
2008
- Abrupt climate change in southeast tropical Africa influenced by Indian monsoon variability and ITCZ migration
2007