User:Margaret.k325

= Jessica E. Tierney = Jessica E. Tierney (born 1982) was born in San Francisco, California and grew up in Marin County. Tierney is a renounced paleoclimatologist who made significant contributions to the paleoclimate field through her work with organic proxies, such as marine sediments, mud , and TEX86 , to study past climate. Her works have been cited more than 2,500 times; her most cited work is Northern Hemisphere Controls on Tropical Southeast African Climate During the Past 60,000 Years.

Education and Career
Tierney completed her bachelor degree and masters degree from Brown University. She completed her postdoctoral work at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and has worked at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Tierney is currently an associate professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona.

Research
Tierney is notable in paleoclimatology for her climate research using organic biomarkers. Her career studying past climate change was driven by her passion for both history and science. Tierney, along with Peter deMenocal and Paul Zander, studied the past climate of the Horn of Africa. They took cores of marine sediment, testing for alkenones, and concluded that about 70,000 years ago this region experienced a change from a wet climate to a dry, cold climate. Tierney and the co-authors determine this climate shift, which coincides with climate change and human activity ,to be the force behind human migration. Tierney also uses mud and leaf wax to learn about precipitation and the evolution of monsoons. Another type of biomarker used in Tierney's research is Tex86. Tierney uses this temperature proxy to understand climate in the tropics.

Awards

 * Selected to be a lead author for the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2018


 * Packard Science and Engineering Fellowship (2015-2020)
 * Pieter Schenk Award (2015)
 * James B. Macelwane Medal (2014)

Most Cited Publications

 * Northern hemisphere controls on tropical southeast African climate during the past 60,000 years, 2008
 * Distributions of branched GDGTs in a tropical lake system: implications for lacustrine application of the MBT/CBT paleoproxy, 2009
 * Environmental controls on branched tetraether lipid distributions in tropical East African lake sediments, 2010
 * Multidecadal variability in East African hydroclimate controlled by the Indian Ocean, 2013
 * Late -twenthieth-century warming in Lake Tanganyika unprecedented since AD 500, 2010
 * Late Quaternary behavior of the East African monsoon and the importance of the Congo Air Boundary, 2011
 * Abrupt Shifts in Horn of Africa Hydroclimate Since the Last Glacial Maximum, 2013
 * Coordinated hydrological regimes in the Indo- Pacific region during the past two millennia, 2010
 * A molecular perspective on Late Quaternary climate and vegetation change in the Lake Tanganyika basin, East Africa, 2010