Freshman class

Storm tracking

Amy Frappier, assistant professor of geology

Ph.D. University of New Hampshire

Specialization: Climate change

Representative publication: “El Nino Events Recorded by Stalagmite Carbon Isotopes,” Science

I have always been interested in how people and nature interact, and the problem of climate change has fascinated me since my first year of college. Stories in stone can provide deep hindsight that help us judge whether current trends or events are unusual. As the planet continues to warm up, I wonder how extreme weather events—droughts and hurricanes—will change in response.

Most people today live in the tropics, so that is where my field research is centered. My primary specialty is a new field called paleotempestology, the study of ancient storms. In graduate school, I developed a method to decode the record of hurricane rainfall preserved in tropical cave formations such as stalagmites. I am exploring new Caribbean cave records of pre-historic hurricane activity to illuminate how global climate change is likely to affect hurricanes and vulnerable coastal populations in the future.