Bronwen Konecky

Last updated
Bronwen Konecky
Born
Bronwen Louise Konecky
Alma materPh.D Brown University (2013)

S.c.M. Brown University (2010)

B.A. Barnard College, Columbia University (2005)
AwardsNanne Weber Early Career Award (2019)

NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Scientific career
FieldsPaleoclimatology, Climatology, Hydrogeology
InstitutionsWashington University
University of Colorado Boulder
Thesis Decadal to Orbital Scale Climate Change in the Indian Ocean Region: Precipitation Isotopic Perspectives from East Africa and Indonesia
Website https://blkonecky.wordpress.com/

Bronwen Konecky is a paleoclimatologist [1] and climatologist [2] whose particular area of focus lies in the past and present effect of climate change in the tropics. [3] She is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. [4]

Contents

Education and academic career

In her senior year of high-school, Konecky took an A.P. Environmental Science class which sparked her curiosity into the sciences. [3] Konecky would then go on to receive a B.A. in Environmental Sciences though Barnard College of Columbia University in 2005. In 2010, she graduated with a Sc.M. in Geological Studies from Brown University before receiving a Ph.D. in Geological Studies from the same institution in 2013. At Brown University, Konecky was a student of James M. Russell. [5] Konecky's dissertation “Decadal to Orbital Scale Climate Change in the Indian Ocean Region: Precipitation Isotopic Perspectives from East Africa and Indonesia” focuses on the effects changes in climate have had on rainfall in the Indian Ocean Region through analysis of stable isotopes in lake sediments. [6]

Career and research

After graduating from Barnard College in 2005, Konecky began working with the African Millennium Villages Project as the Environmental Research Coordinator. [7] The project's goal was to assist communities in rural Africa get out of extreme poverty and she stayed with the project until 2008. [8] In 2013, she worked in the Cobb lab as a postdoctoral fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. [9] Between 2014 and 2016, Konecky was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow [10] working closely with Oregon State University and University of Colorado Boulder before becoming a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder. [11] She held this position for a year before becoming an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in 2018, where Konecky works to this day. [4]

Konecky's primary fields of research are Paleoclimateology, [1] Climatology [2] and Hydrogeology. [12] She is known for her work studying ancient and modern rainfall in the tropics, specifically around the Indian Ocean and in Africa.

Awards

Public engagement

In her spare time, Konecky also is a singer-songwriter. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Volcanologist</span> Scientist who studies volcanoes

A volcanologist, or volcano scientist, is a geologist who focuses on understanding the formation and eruptive activity of volcanoes. Volcanologists frequently visit volcanoes, sometimes active ones, to observe and monitor volcanic eruptions, collect eruptive products including tephra, rock and lava samples. One major focus of inquiry in recent times is the prediction of eruptions to alleviate the impact on surrounding populations and monitor natural hazards associated with volcanic activity. Geologists who research volcanic materials that make up the solid Earth are referred to as igneous petrologists.

<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.

James Michael Russell is an American paleoclimatologist and climatologist. He is a professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences and is currently the senior associate dean of dean of faculty at Brown University. Russell researches the climate, paleoclimate, and limnology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gideon Henderson</span> British geologist

Gideon Mark Henderson FRS is a British geochemist whose research focuses on low-temperature geochemistry, the carbon cycle, the oceans, and on understanding the mechanisms driving climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Halliday</span> British geochemist and academic (born 1952)

Sir Alexander Norman Halliday is a British geochemist and academic who is the Founding Dean Emeritus of the Columbia Climate School, and Former Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He joined the Earth Institute in April 2018, after spending more than a decade at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, during which time he was dean of science and engineering. He is also a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Cobb</span> American climate scientist and academic (born 1974)

Kim M. Cobb is an American climate scientist. She is Professor of Environment and Society and Professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences at Brown University, where she directs the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Cobb was previously a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is particularly interested in oceanography, geochemistry and paleoclimate modeling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rengaswamy Ramesh</span> Indian climatologist (1956–2018)

Rengaswamy Ramesh (1956–2018) was an Indian climatologist, oceanographer, a former Prof. Satish Dhawan Professor at the Physical Research Laboratory and a senior professor at the National Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar. He was known for paleo-climatic and paleo-oceanographic studies and was an elected fellow of all the three major Indian science academies viz. Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, India as well as of The World Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards for his contributions to Earth, Atmosphere, Ocean and Planetary Sciences in 1998.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Axel Timmermann</span> German climate physicist and oceanographer

Axel Timmermann is a German climate physicist and oceanographer with an interest in climate dynamics, human migration, dynamical systems' analysis, ice-sheet modeling and sea level. He served a co-author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report and a lead author of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. His research has been cited over 18,000 times and has an h-index of 70 and i10-index of 161. In 2017, he became a Distinguished Professor at Pusan National University and the founding Director of the Institute for Basic Science Center for Climate Physics. In December 2018, the Center began to utilize a 1.43-petaflop Cray XC50 supercomputer, named Aleph, for climate physics research.

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

Dawn Yvonne Sumner is an American geologist, planetary scientist, and astrobiologist. She is a professor at the University of California, Davis. Sumner's research includes evaluating microbial communities in Antarctic lakes, exploration of Mars via the Curiosity rover, and characterization of microbial communities in the lab and from ancient geologic samples. She is an investigator on the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and was Chair of the UC Davis Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences from 2014 to 2016. She is Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Caroline Masiello is a biogeochemist who develops tools to better understand the cycling and fate of globally relevant elemental cycles. She is a professor at Rice University in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and holds joint appointments in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Departments. Masiello was elected as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America in 2017. She currently leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists who are developing microbial sensors for earth system science.

Jessica E. Tierney (born 1982) is an American paleoclimatologist who has worked with geochemical proxies such as marine sediments, mud, and TEX86, to study past climate in East Africa. Her papers 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. Tierney is currently a professor of geosciences and the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair in Integrative Science at the University of Arizona and faculty affiliate in the University of Arizona School of Geography, Development and Environment Tierney is the first climatologist to win NSF's Alan T Waterman Award (2022) since its inception in 1975.

Natalya Gomez is a professor, researcher, cryosphere and sea level expert whose research primarily centers around the interactions between ice sheets, sea level, and earth in the past, present and future. Gomez is a professor at McGill University, a Canada Research Chair in Geodynamics of Ice sheet - Sea level interactions, and received the AGU Cryosphere Early Career Award in 2019.

Meredith G. Hastings is an American atmospheric chemist and associate professor of earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown University. Her research focuses on the reactive nitrogen cycle and how atmospheric chemistry affects climate. She is also the founder and president of the Earth Science Women's Network (ESWN).

Ocean dynamical thermostat is a physical mechanism through which changes in the mean radiative forcing influence the gradients of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and the strength of the Walker circulation. Increased radiative forcing (warming) is more effective in the western Pacific than in the eastern where the upwelling of cold water masses damps the temperature change. This increases the east-west temperature gradient and strengthens the Walker circulation. Decreased radiative forcing (cooling) has the opposite effect.

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz is a paleoceanographer known for her research on reconstructing changes in ocean circulation over the last 100,000 years.

Catherine Chauvel is a geochemist at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris known for her research on the impact of volcanic activity on the chemistry of the mantle, continental crust, and island arc geochemistry.

Delia Wanda Oppo is an American scientist who works on paleoceanography where she focuses on past variations in water circulation and the subsequent impact on Earth's climate system. She was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2014.

Aster Afwork GebrekirstosFAASTWAS is an Ethiopian scientist and a professor of agroforestry at World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

References

  1. 1 2 "2019 AGU Section Awardees and Named Lecturers". Eos. 31 July 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  2. 1 2 Society, National Geographic. "Learn more about Bronwen L. Konecky". www.nationalgeographic.org. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  3. 1 2 "Bronwen Konecky – Progress". Archived from the original on 2019-09-23. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  4. 1 2 "Details inside raindrops hint at future water sources". Futurity. 2019-02-11. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  5. "Alumni of the Climate & Environment Group at Brown | Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences". www.brown.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-09-23. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  6. Konecky, Bronwen L. (2014). Decadal to Orbital Scale Climate Change in the Indian Ocean Region: Precipitation Isotopic Perspectives from East Africa and Indonesia (Thesis). Brown University. doi:10.7301/Z0DJ5D05.
  7. Zamba, Colleen; Wangila, Justine; Wang, Karen; Teklehaimanot, Awash; Siriri, David; Said, Amir; Sachs, Sonia Ehrlich; Place, Frank; Okoth, Herine (2007-10-23). "The African Millennium Villages". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (43): 16775–16780. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0700423104 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   2040451 . PMID   17942701.
  8. "Millennium Villages – The Earth Institute – Columbia University". www.earth.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  9. "Cobb Lab Alumni". shadow.eas.gatech.edu. Archived from the original on 2019-09-05. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  10. "NSF Award Search: Award#1433408 - AGS-PRF: Indo-Pacific Hydrology in a Warming World: Modeled and Observed Responses to Climate Forcings from the Little Ice Age to Present". www.nsf.gov. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  11. "Bronwyn Konecky". CIRES. 2016-04-15. Retrieved 2019-09-23.
  12. Konecky, B. L.; Noone, D. C.; Cobb, K. M. (2019). "The Influence of Competing Hydroclimate Processes on Stable Isotope Ratios in Tropical Rainfall". Geophysical Research Letters. 46 (3): 1622–1633. Bibcode:2019GeoRL..46.1622K. doi: 10.1029/2018GL080188 . ISSN   1944-8007.
  13. "AGU - American Geophysical Union". www.agu.org. Retrieved 2024-02-10.
  14. "Bronwen Konecky". The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Retrieved 2024-02-10.
  15. Dacey, James (27 January 2016). "Rocking the status quo in science". Physics World . Institute of Physics. Retrieved 9 October 2019.