Abrupt Climate Change:
Past and Present
Ice cores and permafrost.
Dr. Tyler R. Jones
Assistant Research Professor
Fellow, INSTAAR
JEDI Task Force
SIL Leadership Team
tyler.jones@colorado.edu
I am really passionate about understanding abrupt climate change and other mechanisms of the climate system that relate to society. I am a polar scientist focusing on ice sheets and permafrost. I have spent over a year of my life living at remote field camps on the Greenland ice sheet, on sailboats in the Arctic Ocean near Spitsbergen, in cabins in Alaskan permafrost-areas, or in other glaciated and high-alpine places.
I love to mix science with outreach. I spent 10 years at an Emmy-award winning documentary film company learning the importance of storytelling. I feel like everything humanity is based on stems from storytelling, and science is no different. A good story can change the world. Recently, I have taken part in artist residency programs, given public lectures about "the entire climate history of Earth", or volunteered in climate-policy positions.
My favorite quote: "Greatness is not what you have. It’s what you give. It’s what you leave behind."
Favorite food: A tie between sushi, ramen, and pho.
If I wasn't a scientist, I would be a pottery maker down a long dirt road in the Lofoten Islands, right next to the sea.
My research group studies abrupt climate change (or the potential for it) through the lens of science, society, and culture. Our current focus areas are Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica.
In Alaska, we study the changing landscape and hotspot-methane emissions in permafrost-thaw regions. We work with Indigenous communities in the Yukon River Watershed to better understand how to 'navigate the new Arctic', or in other words, to be prepared for the future ahead.
In Greenland and Antarctica, we recover ice cores from remote field camps to reconstruct past climates extending back 100s of thousands of years. Our ice core records span the last glacial-interglacial cycle. We are particularly interested in understanding abrupt climate changes of the past, that is, climate change that occurred within years to decades and had a substantial impact regionally or globally.
Our team is actively involved in science communication through film, photography, art, and public speaking, or through task forces or environmental-policy boards.
Prospective Graduate Students: I am always excited to chat with prospective students - please get in touch. I am currently accepting students (M.Sc. or Ph.D.) who have their own funding source, and I am always happy to talk about ways to obtain funding or about my current funding outlook for future work.
Don't forget, if you want to go to grad school, even if you have identified other funding sources, you should apply for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support inclusive of an annual stipend of $37,000.
Nord Is: Official Selection of the Polar Film Fest 2020 at the Explorer's Club in New York City, and featured at the Re/Call art exhibit at the Rocky Mountain Land Library. The film was edited by CU students and produced and filmed by me!
EGRIP ice core camp, Greenland
Our team has spent 4 summers at the EGRIP ice core camp in northeast Greenland. We used a field deployable cavity ring-down spectroscopy instrument with continuous flow capabilities to analyze water isotopes of ice for the last 125,000 years. The water isotopes are a proxy for local temperature and regional atmospheric circulation. We are investigating how high-frequency climate signals (interannual to decadal scales) change across Dansgaard-Oeschger (D-O) Cycles. D-O Events are the term used for very large, abrupt warming events in Greenland during the last glacial period.
Goldstream Valley, Alaska
Our team deployed to Alaska in 2022 and 2023 to measure permafrost methane emissions in the area of Big Trail Lake, north of Fairbanks. This is an intensive study site, and we are bringing new landscape-scale measurement techniques to reconcile bottom-up and top-down estimates of methane flux to better understand radiative forcing. We use two new technologies: a fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial System with a custom methane sensor fitted into the nose cone, and a dual-comb spectroscopy instrument capable of multi-kilometer open-path measurements of methane. We are also measuring carbon isotopes of methane and performing incubation experiments of soil in conjunction with Sandia Labs to improve biogeochemical modeling frameworks.
INSTAAR Drone Program
Our team has flown drones over the Greenland Ice Sheet and over permafrost regions of Alaska. Our goal is to understand boundary layer processes and interactions with the free troposphere for research focused on the hydrologic and carbon cycles. Our Unmanned Aerial System includes custom sampling pods that fit within the nose cone of a fixed-wing drone. We are constantly developing new capabilities and methodologies through collaborations with academic groups, private industry, non-profits, and government labs.
NEEM ice core camp, northwest Greenland. The black geodesic dome sits on skis, and can by pulled across the ice sheet to each new ice-core project location. Currently, the dome sits in northeast Greenland at the EGRIP camp. Flags line the "main street", representing each nation that has a scientist or technician in camp.
An international team of ice core scientists - including three people from INSTAAR (Tyler Jones; Will Skorski, prior M.Sc. student; Abby Hughes, prior Ph.D. student) - celebrating the discovery of an ancient volcanic ash layer from the last glacial period in the EGRIP ice core.
The INSTAAR drone team has flown custom fixed-wing drones over permafrost in Alaska (pictured) and snow on the Greenland Ice Sheet. Our goal is to understand boundary layer processes (in the lower few kilometers of the atmosphere) and interactions with the free troposphere for research focused on the hydrologic and carbon cycles. L to R: Bruce Vaughn, Tyler Jones, Kevin Rozmiarek (current Ph.D. student), Eli Miller (current Ph.D. student), and Valerie Morris.
Pulling a custom-made laser spectroscopy instrument across the surface of Big Trail Lake, Alaska in March 2023. The instrument was used to measure methane concentrations, and we identified a number of hotspot emission locations where large methane plumes (invisible to the naked eye) had found a pathway out of the snow and ice. L to R: Chloe Brashear (prior M.Sc. student), Tyler Jones