Vaughn

Drone experiment reveals how Greenland ice sheet is changing (91�� Today)

Gabe Allen — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:38:25 +0000

Drone experiment reveals how Greenland ice sheet is changing (91�� Today) Gabe Allen Thu, 03/27/2025 - 14:38

An INSTAAR-led study measured water vapor in Greenland’s air, collecting data crucial for improving climate models and forecasting Arctic changes.

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Thawing the mysteries of ancient climate changes

Gabe Allen — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 19:00:00 +0000

Thawing the mysteries of ancient climate changes Gabe Allen Wed, 03/26/2025 - 13:00

Gabe Allen

A new study from Chloe Brashear, Tyler Jones and others suggests abrupt warming events were preceded by periods of unusually stable temperatures during the last ice age. The researchers point toward shifting sea ice as a potential driver of the phenomenon.

On July 21, 2019, Chloe Brashear carried another disc of ice through the underground ice cave at the East Greenland Ice-Core project. The cave lay a few meters below the surface of the sprawling Greenland ice sheet, more than 200 miles inland from the coast. Brashear loaded the disc onto a hot aluminum plate and then stepped into the sampling room, where the melt water was pumped through an array of equipment that would filter it, vaporize it and produce a readout of its chemical contents.

Despite the sub-freezing temperatures in the cave, space heaters and an array of whirring instruments kept the sampling room hot. Brashear cast off her parka and got to work.

In most ways, it was a typical day of late-summer field work, but this day was also special. Brashear and her colleagues were analyzing samples extracted from deep within the ice sheet—more than 2,000 meters below the surface. The scientists estimated that the ice was more than 40,000 years old. Later that night, they would celebrate over drinks and grub.

Chloe Brashear poses in the drill trench at the East Greenland Ice-Core Project. Photo courtesy of Chloe Brashear.

New Insights

Five years later, Brashear—now a PhD candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands—has teamed up with her former mentor, INSTAAR fellow Tyler Jones, and others to publish new insights from their 2019 expedition. Their new study takes a fresh look at some of the most dramatic climate upheavals in Earth’s history: abrupt warming events that punctuated the last ice age, between 11,000 and 50,000 years ago.

The data revealed something unexpected. On average, the colder periods between warming events displayed variable temperatures—it might be very cold one decade and much warmer the next. But, during the few hundred years before an abrupt warming event, this volatility flattened out. Each rapid warm-up was preceded by centuries of unusually stable temperatures.

“Variability would start to decrease first at decadal and multi-year scales,” Jones said. “Then, a few hundred years later, on average, there would be an abrupt warming event.”

It was as if the climate system was holding its breath before suddenly exhaling in a burst of warmth. But why?

The new paper proposes that shifting sea ice conditions in the North Atlantic may be the missing puzzle piece. If their hypothesis is correct, it could reshape our understanding of Earth's climate system—especially in times of abrupt change.

Ice age heat

If the phrase "abrupt warming event" makes you think of modern climate change, you're not wrong. But, the events that Brashear and Jones focused on in their latest paper, known as Dansgaard–Oeschger events, were actually much more intense. Researchers estimate that, in the most extreme version of their projections, temperatures in Greenland may have risen by as much as 29 degrees Fahrenheit in less than a decade.

“As an analogy, imagine you live in Northern Maine when you start college, and by the time you finish college it feels like you’re living in Southern Arizona,” Jones said.

Climatic variability—basically the volatility of temperature fluctuations—has already been a focus of researchers hoping to understand the last glacial period. But, previous research lacked the precision needed to parse out the timing between changes in variability and these extreme warming events.

Freshly-drilled ice cores are stored in the ice cave, where they await processing and analysis. Photo courtesy of Tyler Jones.

That changed when Jones and his colleagues, including INSTAAR faculty Bruce Vaughn, Valerie Morris and James White, developed a new methodology for analyzing ice cores: continuous flow analysis. Instead of chopping an ice core into chunks and analyzing each separately, continuous flow analysis melts the core tip to tail, extracting a near-unbroken record of past temperatures. This allows scientists to study changes in climate on a millimeter-by-millimeter scale. In the case of this project, continuous flow analysis allowed Brashear to interpret temperature data for distinct intervals of 7 to 15 years of ancient history.

“If you continuously sample the ice core, you capture all this detail that you are losing with discrete sampling,” she said.

This technique provided the new paper’s biggest insight: the stable temperatures that preceded each of the Dansgaard–Oeschger events. It also provided Brashear with a powerful dataset to compare to sea ice models.

The comparison once again produced an intriguing result. The changes in temperature variability were highly correlated with modeled changes in sea ice variability. In the new paper, Brashear provides a hypothesis: the leading edge of North Atlantic sea ice may have become more stable, which would have decreased its influence on short-term temperature fluctuations in Greenland.

If true, the finding could influence scientists seeking to refine models of Earth’s climate and gain insights into the modern era.

“This result doesn’t directly apply to the modern changes we’re seeing, because they are unprecedented,” Jones said. “But, our hope is that we can shed light on the mechanisms that gave rise to this lead-lag relationship in variability and temperature, and then pass those results on to the modeling community.”

The next chapter

The researchers are cautious to not overstate their results. After all, the sea ice hypothesis is just one of several possible explanations. More evidence is needed.

Some of that evidence may come soon. Jones’ lab has secured funding to reanalyze an ice core extracted in the late 1980s and early 1990s from a site 200 miles south of the East Greenland Ice-Core Project. Using continuous flow analysis, they hope to confirm the patterns Brashear identified and gain further insight into these ancient climate shifts.

“We’re hoping we can replicate the result and push further into modeling,” he said.

The final chapter of Brashear’s research at INSTAAR is now over, but the experience of working in the remote scientific encampment atop the Greenland ice sheet remains vivid. She looks back with fondness on long days in the underground lab, neverending Arctic sun and nights spent celebrating new discoveries with international collaborators.

“It’s awesome to be able to look at a dataset and then have these memories associated with it,” she said. “It helps you stay motivated… I’m still pursuing a career in science, so you could say it had a positive impact.”

A line of national flags waves in the arctic wind. 15 Institutes from 14 different countries participate in research at the East Greenland Ice-Core project. Photo courtesy of Tyler Jones.

If you have questions about this story, or would like to reach out to INSTAAR for further comment, you can contact Senior Communications Specialist Gabe Allen at gabriel.allen@colorado.edu.

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Winterized tents house researchers atop the Greenland Ice Sheet at the East Greenland Ice-Core Project. The centerpiece of the camp, a black geodesic dome, and the red mechanic’s garage can be seen in the distance. Photo courtesy of Tyler Jones.

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Cover photo: Winterized tents house researchers atop the Greenland Ice Sheet at the East Greenland Ice-Core Project. A black geodesic dome and a red mechanic’s garage can be seen in the distance. Photo courtesy of Tyler Jones.

Local middle schoolers visit INSTAAR to make movies about Earth science

Gabe Allen — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 16:30:00 +0000

Local middle schoolers visit INSTAAR to make movies about Earth science Gabe Allen Thu, 03/13/2025 - 10:30

Gabe Allen

The ‘Dream Team’ checks out increment borers, used to gather tree core samples in the field, in the Ecohydrology lab at INSTAAR. All photos by Gabe Allen.

Since October, students at Westview Middle School in Longmont have met with INSTAAR scientists nearly every month through the Earth Explorers program. The goal of the program is to connect local kids with scientists doing impactful work. Holly Barnard, an INSTAAR faculty fellow and Earth Explorers participant, looks forward to the visits for months ahead.

“When I was in middle school, I didn’t even know that earth science was a career path that I could take,” she said. “I really like sharing my research and the story of how I became a scientist.”

INSTAAR faculty fellow Holly Barnard takes Earth Explorers participants on a tour of the Ecohydrology Lab.

This year, Barnard is sharing her science with the self-described “Dream Team” — Adriel, Everett, Noah and Ben. Each member of the quartet took part in conducting interviews, filming lab spaces and script writing for a video that they are now editing.

The Dream Team met with Barnard for the first time over Zoom back in October. A couple of weeks later they brainstormed video ideas over lunch with Barnard at the 91�� Center for Community. Then, in November, they toured her lab and filmed an interview.

Noah was apprehensive about the program at first, but ended up appreciating his time at INSTAAR.

“Originally I didn’t want to do Earth Explorers, but then I found out it was about science. I was like ‘yeah, I could try that,” he said. “All the stuff we’ve done, like walking around campus and learning about trees, has been fun.”

Before leaving for the day, the Dream Team toured INSTAAR’s Stable Isotope Lab, where lab manager Bruce Vaughn showed them an ice core that traveled all the way from Greenland to Colorado. For Ben, it was a highlight.

“I thought it was really cool getting to go in the walk-in freezer and getting to see the different ice chunks and learning about how they read those,” Ben said. “It was just really cool getting to see all of the different tools.”

Now that the laboratory tours and field trips are in the rearview, it's time to get to work. This spring, 10 Earth Explorers groups, including the Dream Team, are busy cutting together mini-documentaries for a film screening in May. At the end of it all, scientists, parents, teachers and students will gather at Westview Middle School to learn about INSTAAR’s work through the lens of young minds. With any luck, some of the students might one day look back on this year as the catalyst that began a career in scientific research.

Bruce Vaughn explains how the Stable Isotope Lab processes ice cores from around the world to glean insights into the Earth’s history.

Barnard shows the Dream Team a rain gauge in the Ecohydrology Lab.

Barnard is interviewed by Dream Team member Adriel in her office.

If you have questions about this story, or would like to reach out to INSTAAR for further comment, you can contact Senior Communications Specialist Gabe Allen at gabriel.allen@colorado.edu.

The Earth Explorers program gives local kids a first-hand look at a career in scientific research. After months of lab tours and interviews, participants are editing mini documentaries for a film screening in May.

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Flight Ops supports INSTAAR research in Alaska (91�� Public Safety)

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 23:43:51 +0000

Flight Ops supports INSTAAR research in Alaska (91�� Public Safety) Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/25/2024 - 17:43

For the second summer in a row, the 91�� Division of Public Safety's Flight Operations department is supporting important campus research in Alaska, as part of the Navigating the New Arctic project (principal investigator: Tyler Jones), which is being managed by researchers in the Stable Isotope Lab of INSTAAR.

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The unleashing of urgent optimism (Arctic Arts Project)

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 06:00:00 +0000

The unleashing of urgent optimism (Arctic Arts Project) Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/28/2024 - 00:00

Confronted with ever alarming impacts of climate change, longtime INSTAARite Bruce Vaughn has found hope and inspiration in the many bright minds who are working on solutions. Read his essay for the non-profit Arctic Arts Project, which seeks to educate and inspire through impactful imagery, backed by the most current science.

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Frozen assets—The race against time to protect priceless artifacts (H20 Radio)

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Frozen assets—The race against time to protect priceless artifacts (H20 Radio) Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/03/2024 - 00:00

Listen to a 6-minute tour of the National Science Foundation’s Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF) in Lakewood, Colorado. Facility staff will guide you through the world's largest frozen archive of ice, sharing some stories of ice drilling from the Arctic to Antarctica. Bruce Vaughn, co-founder of INSTAAR's Stable Isotope Lab, will show you how ice cores can record a long history of past climate and put the rapid postindustrial rise of CO2 in perspective.

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The Arctic's permafrost-obsessed methane detectives (Wired)

Anonymous — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 22:00:12 +0000

The Arctic's permafrost-obsessed methane detectives (Wired) Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/07/2023 - 16:00

Matt Simon

The Far North is thawing, unleashing clouds of planet-heating gas. Tyler Jones, Bruce Vaughn, and Kevin Rozmiarek use detectors on drones or carried by hand to measure methane release from permafrost in Alaska.

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Faces of the Front Range: Bruce Vaughn and Bradley Markle look to save the world by understanding it (Denver Post)

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Faces of the Front Range: Bruce Vaughn and Bradley Markle look to save the world by understanding it (Denver Post) Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/11/2021 - 00:00

Denver Post profile of a visit to the Stable Isotope Lab, where Bruce Vaughn and Brad Markle shared ice cores, knowledge, and what keeps them going while researching the climate past and present. To read this article, you may need to enter your email address.

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Xmas Special 2020: Studying Climate Change at the North Pole with Bruce Vaughn (Nice to Know podcast)

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 07:00:00 +0000

Xmas Special 2020: Studying Climate Change at the North Pole with Bruce Vaughn (Nice to Know podcast) Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/22/2020 - 00:00

Climate change - we all know that it's happening, but how do we actually know this scientifically? Bruce Vaughn studies glaciers up at the North Pole, looking at ice cores to study how our climate has changed over the Earth's history. We talk about how this is done, and also how we are now entering uncharted territory of atmospheric CO2, warming, and what we as a species can do about it.

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Arctic communities planning for abrupt permafrost thaw

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Arctic communities planning for abrupt permafrost thaw Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/21/2020 - 00:00

Shelly Sommer

A view of the Yukon River watershed in Alaska from the U.S. Geological Survey, using Web-Enabled Landsat Data.

The research project brings Alaskan communities together with social and natural scientists to examine changes in permafrost thaw lake environments, including associated effects on villages in the Yukon River watershed.

The combined knowledge will be used to provide forecasts that inform about global climate, landscape change, subsistence activities, food and water security, economy, community planning, and cultural practices.

The Arctic is warming faster than most places on Earth. The permafrost—or frozen soil—that lays under much of its surface is on an inflection point for abrupt thaw. As permafrost thaws, it releases carbon into the atmosphere and alters the landscape. In many places, newly formed lakes dot the land, some emitting bubbles of methane from the underlying lakebed. This creates a feedback loop of even more global warming.

These changes will put local communities at risk, rapidly shifting factors that affect subsistence hunting, drinking water quality, travel, and local economies. Rapid permafrost thaw also has impacts on global climate that climate models do not yet fully take into account.

INSTAAR Research Associate Tyler Jones is the lead investigator on the project, joined by researchers from the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (Science Director Edda Mutter), Northern Social-Environmental Research (Tracie Curry), CIRES (Caroline Alden), CU Mechanical Engineering (Greg Reiker), INSTAAR (Bruce Vaughn), and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Katey Walter Anthony and Tracie Curry).

The study domain and project goals were defined at the outset by the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council and local stakeholders to focus on lake area change, drinking water quality, and frozen transport corridors—topics identified collectively by communities as critically important.

“The council is connected to these communities in a way that we can’t be,” said Jones. “They can help guide our science in a way that is best for each community.”

The project includes connections with five Indigenous villages in the Yukon River watershed and one village with a diverse population just north of Fairbanks. Project scientists and interns and advisors from Yukon villages will collaborate through the framework of the watershed council, and the associated Indigenous Observation Network (ION), to measure lake area change, water chemistry, extent of ground melt, and methane emissions. Interviews and participatory mapping with knowledgeable local residents will provide contextual knowledge to supplement these measurements, all of which will be integrated into a permafrost model to provide forecasts of future change.

“The results of the study will be pertinent to Native, State, and Federal entities,” said Jones. “We are working to contribute to both the understanding of global climate dynamics and local societal needs.”

Other outcomes of the project will include annual town halls with local communities and an expanded permafrost modeling toolkit that includes changing lake environments.

The pandemic has posed several challenges right at the start of the project, said Jones. Colorado-based scientists will potentially need to undergo a fourteen-day quarantine period before visiting field sites in Alaska; and some villages will be off limits indefinitely. “Most or all of the villages aren’t interested in having outside visitors yet—and rightly so—to protect themselves,” said Jones. As a result there will be less field-based research during the first year and parts of the project will be delayed.

Project funding will support young thought leaders and mentors from Yukon River watershed villages, graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Colorado and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the researchers over four or more years.

A new INSTAAR-led project will engage Indigenous and Western knowledge systems to better understand abrupt permafrost change in Alaska. The National Science Foundation selected the project as part of its Navigating the New Arctic funding area, one of ten “Big Ideas” that NSF is investing in as an area of profound national challenge and opportunity. The research project brings Alaskan communities together with social and natural scientists to examine changes in permafrost thaw lake environments, including associated effects on villages in the Yukon River watershed.

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Vaughn

Drone experiment reveals how Greenland ice sheet is changing (91������ Today)

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Thawing the mysteries of ancient climate changes

New Insights

Ice age heat

The next chapter

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Local middle schoolers visit INSTAAR to make movies about Earth science

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Flight Ops supports INSTAAR research in Alaska (91������ Public Safety)

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The unleashing of urgent optimism (Arctic Arts Project)

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Frozen assets—The race against time to protect priceless artifacts (H20 Radio)

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The Arctic's permafrost-obsessed methane detectives (Wired)

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Faces of the Front Range: Bruce Vaughn and Bradley Markle look to save the world by understanding it (Denver Post)

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Xmas Special 2020: Studying Climate Change at the North Pole with Bruce Vaughn (Nice to Know podcast)

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Arctic communities planning for abrupt permafrost thaw

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Drone experiment reveals how Greenland ice sheet is changing (91�� Today)

Flight Ops supports INSTAAR research in Alaska (91�� Public Safety)