JEFFREY SEVERINGHAUS

Research Interests

• Quantification of abrupt temperature changes using measurements of nitrogen and argon isotopes in ice cores
• Mechanisms of millennial-scale climate oscillations and climate bifurcations
• Pleistocene global carbon cycle variations deduced from oxygen and noble gas measurements in ice cores
• Reconstructing changes in atmospheric noble gas composition over the past million years from air trapped in glacial ice
• Radiocarbon of methane in late glacial-age ice as a test of the sedimentary methane clathrate degassing hypothesis.
• Isotopic fractionation of air in polar firn (snow) due to gravitational settling and thermal diffusion, with implications for gas age-ice age differences and leads and lags of climate versus greenhouse gases in ice core records

Degrees

• B.A., Oberlin College, Ohio
• M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara
• PhD, Columbia University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory