Aradhna Tripati

Last updated
Aradhna Tripati
Alma mater California State University, Los Angeles
University of California, Santa Cruz, PhD, 2002
Awards Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
Scientific career
Fields Paleoceanography, Climate Change, Geochemistry
Institutions University of California, Los Angeles
Thesis  (2002)
Doctoral advisor James Zachos
Website Research site

Aradhna Tripati is an American geoscientist, climate scientist, and advocate for diversity. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she is part of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the California Nanosystems Institute. She is also the director of the Center for Diverse Leadership in Science. Her research includes advancing new chemical tracers for the study of environmental processes and studying the history of climate change and Earth systems. She is recognized for her research on climate change and clumped isotope geochemistry. She studies the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the impacts on temperature, the water cycle, glaciers and ice sheets, and ocean acidity.

Contents

Early life and education

Born in Texas, Tripati moved to California at age three with her parents, who had emigrated to the United States from the Fiji Islands. [1] She was raised largely by her mother, a nurse, whom she credits with giving her the support and access to opportunities that have since ensured her success. Tripati went to elementary school and junior high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. At age 12 she enrolled at California State University, Los Angeles as a full-time student through their Early Entrance Program. [2]

Tripati holds a B.S. in geology from California State University, Los Angeles where she received several awards, including the Aaron Waters Award for outstanding senior in 1996. [3] She received her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2002 where she worked under the supervision of doctoral advisor James Zachos.

Tripati began her postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge with a Marshall Sherfield Postdoctoral Fellowship. Over the next eight years as an independent researcher, Tripati received several fellowships: the Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship, the Thomas Neville Research Fellowship in Natural Science at Magdalene College, and a UK National Environmental Research Council (NERC) Fellowship.

Career and Research

Aradhna Tripati and a group of community college students in one of her research laboratories. Dr. Aradhna Tripati in her UCLA research lab.jpg
Aradhna Tripati and a group of community college students in one of her research laboratories.

In 2009, Tripati became an assistant professor at UCLA and was subsequently promoted to associate professor in 2014, where she continues to teach full-time. She has joint appointments in the Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences and Earth, Planetary, & Space Sciences departments and the Institutes of Geophysics & Planetary Physics and Environment & Sustainability.

Since she was an undergraduate student, Tripati has been working on advancing and utilizing state-of-the-art geochemical methods to understand Earth's climate evolution. Over the course of her career, she has applied these methods to better understand the history and patterns of changes in Earth's temperature, carbon cycling, pH, ice volume, and hydrology.

Tripati's laboratory leverages clumped isotope geochemistry as a tool to reconstruct climate norms from the distant past in order to understand the dynamics of climate change over a range of timescales. [4] The primary geochemical method she works with is clumped isotope thermometry, which has led to advancements of its use in the field. She helped develop a technique known as a "paleothermometer," which allows scientists to measure past temperatures by analyzing the chemical ratios of specimens from different time periods. [5] The chemical composition of a particular specimen reflects the composition of the Earth's atmosphere at a given point in time, allowing scientists to understand what the atmosphere was like in the past. Using these techniques in a 2009 study, Tripati and her team were able to find that the last time carbon dioxide levels reached their current level was between 10 and 15 million years ago when the average global temperature was 10˚F warmer than it is today. [6] In a later study published in 2016, Tripati and her colleagues from around the world demonstrated that an ice sheet collapse that took place 14,000 years ago caused the Earth's entire jet stream to shift within a single century. [7] [8] Their results were based on analysis of an ANDRILL-2 drill core that was extracted near the U.S. Antarctic base McMurdo Station. The study suggested that the Antarctic ice sheet may be sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that are not far from where they currently reside.

Tripati has also applied her expertise in clumped isotope geochemistry towards determining the body temperatures of dinosaurs that have long been extinct. As a visiting professor at California Institute of Technology, she collaborated on a 2011 study that analyzed the composition of fossilized teeth of Jurassic sauropods to find that their internal body temperature was close to that of most modern mammals, resting somewhere between 36 and 38˚C. [9] [10] Scientists had previously hypothesized that sauropod body temperature was warmer, but their study suggested that these dinosaurs stayed cool by using internal air sacs for ventilation. In a later 2015 study, she and her colleagues analyzed the chemical composition of ancient eggshells to estimate the maternal body temperature of a number of different dinosaurs. [11] [12] [13] Their results, combined with other studies, suggested that dinosaurs aren't simply cold-blooded or warm-blooded, but were somewhere in between.

In 2014, Tripati received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to leverage clumped isotopes as a tool to reconstruct terrestrial climates during the Last Glacial Maximum, as well as to support her work recruiting and retaining a diverse research workforce. [14]

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

Tripati engages in activism to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the sciences and in the workforce, with a particular focus on addressing the underrepresentation of women, people of color, and other minorities in geoscience, environmental science, and other STEM fields. In July 2017, she launched the UCLA Center for Diverse Leadership in Science, which focuses on the intersection between race and environmental science. [1] [15] [16] The center aims to develop a cohort of community-minded scientists with expertise in climate, environmental science, green chemistry, and green engineering who will become leaders.

Tripati organized and wrote a grant proposal that funded a career development workshop for women and minorities at American Geophysical Union (AGU) [17] and served as faculty lead for a program aimed at increasing transfers from community colleges to UCLA. She is involved in the Minorities Striving and Pursuing Higher Education Degrees in Earth System Science group, was a Goldschmidt Geochemistry Society Mentor, is on the advisory board for 500 Women Scientists, and has established two peer mentoring groups on Facebook: Equity and Inclusion in Geoscience and Environmental Science, and the Society for Difficult Women.

Tripati engages youth in the sciences with K-12 outreach programs. She works with high school students and teachers on research projects and she implements an annual project in her UCLA general education oceanography class where students must create educational content for K-12 science teachers. She appeared in a sketch on Jimmy Kimmel that discussed the consensus on human-induced climate change arising from greenhouse gas emissions and in an interview on KCRW's Press Play with Madeleine Brand to answer questions about the realities of climate change. [18] [19]

Awards and honors

Tripati has received a number of awards and recognition for her contributions to research, teaching, and service, including the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering, the highest honor bestowed by the United States Government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their research careers, [20] and the Ambassador Award which is one of the most prestigious Union level awards of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) that recognizes individuals whose excellence and leadership in research, education and innovation have significantly advanced Earth and space science. A partial list includes the following;

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Geophysical Union</span> Nonprofit organization of geophysicists

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of Earth, atmospheric, ocean, hydrologic, space, and planetary scientists and enthusiasts that according to their website includes 130,000 people. AGU's activities are focused on the organization and dissemination of scientific information in the interdisciplinary and international fields within the Earth and space sciences. The geophysical sciences involve four fundamental areas: atmospheric and ocean sciences; solid-Earth sciences; hydrologic sciences; and space sciences. The organization's headquarters is located on Florida Avenue in Washington, D.C.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandra Navrotsky</span> Physical chemist in the field of nanogeoscience

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maureen Raymo</span> American climate scientist and marine geologist

Maureen E. "Mo" Raymo is an American paleoclimatologist and marine geologist. She is the Co-Founding Dean Emerita of the Columbia Climate School and the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. From 2011 to 2022 she was also the Director of the LDEO Core Repository and until 2024 was the Founding Director of the LDEO Hudson River Field Station. From 2020 to 2023 she was first Interim Director then Director of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, the first climate scientist and first female scientist to head the institution.

Isabel Patricia Montañez is a paleoclimatologist specializing in geochemical records of ancient climate change. She is a distinguished professor and a Chancellor's Leadership Professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences at University of California, Davis. As of 2021, Montañez is the director of the UC Davis Institute of the Environment.

Clumped isotopes are heavy isotopes that are bonded to other heavy isotopes. The relative abundance of clumped isotopes (and multiply-substituted isotopologues) in molecules such as methane, nitrous oxide, and carbonate is an area of active investigation. The carbonate clumped-isotope thermometer, or "13C–18O order/disorder carbonate thermometer", is a new approach for paleoclimate reconstruction, based on the temperature dependence of the clumping of 13C and 18O into bonds within the carbonate mineral lattice. This approach has the advantage that the 18O ratio in water is not necessary (different from the δ18O approach), but for precise paleotemperature estimation, it also needs very large and uncontaminated samples, long analytical runs, and extensive replication. Commonly used sample sources for paleoclimatological work include corals, otoliths, gastropods, tufa, bivalves, and foraminifera. Results are usually expressed as Δ47 (said as "cap 47"), which is the deviation of the ratio of isotopologues of CO2 with a molecular weight of 47 to those with a weight of 44 from the ratio expected if they were randomly distributed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janne Blichert-Toft</span> Danish geochemist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marilyn Fogel</span> American geo-ecologist (1952–2022)

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Joel D. Blum is a scientist who specializes in isotope geochemistry and environmental geochemistry. He is currently a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. Blum has several named professorships including the John D. MacArthur, Arthur F. Thurnau and Gerald J. Keeler Distinguished Professorship. Blum is a past Co-Editor- in-Chief of Chemical Geology and Elementa, and is the current Editor-in-Chief of the American Chemical Society journal Earth and Space Chemistry.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dawn Sumner</span> American geologist, planetary scientist, and astrobiologist

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Adina Paytan is a research professor at the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz. known for research into biogeochemical cycling in the present and the past. She has over 270 scientific publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Geophysical Research Letters.

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Penelope King uses geochemistry and cosmochemistry to study planetary processes to better understand past and future planetary environments, and what this information may tells us about climate change. She is a professor at the Australian National University (ANU) in the Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES). King holds many awards, including Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Mineralogical Society of America in 2019, and winning the AGU Joanne Simpson Medal for Mid-Career Scientists the same year. She currently leads a research group examining surface and interior processes on planetary bodies.

Celina A. Suarez is an American geologist. She is known for her research on using trace element and stable isotope geochemistry of fossil vertebrates and invertebrates to understand paleoecology, paleoclimatology, and taphonomy of ancient terrestrial ecosystems. She is an associate profession in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas. The dinosaur Geminiraptor suarezarum is named after Suarez and her twin sister, Marnia Suarez, co-discovers of the site on which it was found.

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References

  1. 1 2 Funes, Yessenia (2018-02-15). "Green science's white people problem". Grist. Archived from the original on 2018-02-15. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  2. ↑ "UCLA – Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences | List of Prizes, Awards, and Honors to EPSS Faculty, by Name". epss.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  3. ↑ "Scholarships". Cal State LA. 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  4. ↑ Blakemore, Erin (March 9, 2017). "How we know that climate change is happening—and that humans are causing it". Popular Science. Archived from the original on 2017-03-11. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  5. ↑ "What are 'clumped isotopes'? | Carbonate Research". www.carbonateresearch.com. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  6. ↑ Guilford, Gwynn (30 April 2014). "The last time CO2 levels were this high, this much water covered what's now Brussels". Quartz. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  7. ↑ Mooney, Chris (February 22, 2016). "Antarctica could be much more vulnerable to melting than we thought". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  8. ↑ Colgan, David (November 29, 2016). "Study shows major changes in ice and temperatures could cause abrupt effects farther away". phys.org. Archived from the original on 2016-11-30. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  9. ↑ Witze, Alexandra (2011-06-23). "Big dinosaurs kept their cool". Science News. Archived from the original on 2019-10-19. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  10. ↑ Andrei, Mihai (2011-06-26). "Dinosaurs were as warm blooded as today's mammals". ZME Science. Archived from the original on 2011-06-30. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  11. ↑ Feltman, Rachel (October 13, 2015). "Were dinosaurs warm or cold blooded? Ancient eggshells could reveal the truth". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  12. ↑ Michelson, Molly (October 13, 2015). "How to Measure a Dinosaur's Temperature". California Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on 2015-10-31. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  13. ↑ "Were dinosaurs hot or not? Fossil eggs shed light on mystery". ABC News. 2015-10-14. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  14. 1 2 "NSF Award Search: Award#1352212 - CAREER: CLUMPMAP - Glacial Climate from Clumped Isotope Thermometry". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  15. ↑ "Student group raises awareness for environmental racism with forum". dailybruin.com. 2018-05-10. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  16. ↑ "New center at UCLA raises everyone's voices for environmental science". UCLA. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  17. ↑ AGUvideos. "AGUniverse - 2015, 26 March, Volume 6, Issue 6 - Aradhna Tripati." YouTube. YouTube, 27 Mar. 2015. Web. 20 June 2017
  18. ↑ "This Jimmy Kimmel Segment Featured More Scientists Discussing Climate Change Than ABC's Top News Shows Did In An Entire Year". Media Matters for America. 3 May 2016. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  19. ↑ "We answer your climate change questions". KCRW. 23 September 2019. Retrieved 2019-10-19.
  20. 1 2 "President Obama Honors Federally-Funded Early-Career Scientists". whitehouse.gov. 2017-01-09. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  21. ↑ "Ambassador Award | AGU". www.agu.org. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  22. ↑ "Willi Dansgaard Award | AGU". www.agu.org. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  23. ↑ "Union Fellows". AGU. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  24. ↑ "Academy Fellows". California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  25. ↑ Asli (13 January 2022). "'We are all born scientists': Professor Aradhna Tripati on diversity in the sciences and her climate priorities". Alumni Blog. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
  26. ↑ "Geochemistry Fellowship: Aradhna Tripati | Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences". 22 February 2021. Retrieved 2021-04-14.
  27. ↑ "Aradhna Tripati named Geological Society of America fellow". Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. 2018-05-14. Retrieved 2019-10-17.
  28. ↑ "Geological Society of America – 2017 Bromery Award – Aradhna Tripati". www.geosociety.org. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  29. ↑ Pleistocene-to-modern Records of Climate Change – Aradhna Tripati, University of California, Los Angeles, 2015-09-09, retrieved 2017-12-07
  30. ↑ "Renowned Climate Scientist Aradhna Tripati Honored With E.O. Wilson Award". www.biologicaldiversity.org. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  31. ↑ "UCLA – Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences | News – Professors Mitchell and Tripati ..." epss.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  32. ↑ "Dr Aradhna Tripati - Marshall Scholarships". www.marshallscholarship.org. Retrieved 2022-12-15.
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