Ethan Grossman

About

Ethan Grossman is a professor and the Michel T. Halbouty Chair at Texas A&M University in the College of Arts and Sciences, specializing in stable isotope geochemistry, clumped isotopes, and global change paleoclimates. His research involves the development and application of geochemical techniques, particularly oxygen and carbon isotope distributions, to address a broad range of geologic and societal problems. These include studying extreme climate events in Earth history, the linkages between the carbon cycle and climate, the thermal history of sedimentary basins, the origin of groundwater methane, and river dynamics in relation to climate change. Grossman's educational background includes a Ph.D. in Geochemistry from the University of Southern California, completed in 1982, and a B.S. in Geology from the State University of New York at Albany, earned in 1976. His contributions to the field have been recognized through numerous awards and honors, such as being elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America, as well as receiving the Michel T. Halbouty Chair in Geology. His research has significantly advanced understanding of ocean temperatures through the Phanerozoic, paleoclimates, and basin thermal histories, among other areas, and he actively collaborates on projects related to isotope geosciences and water research.

Research topics

• Geology
• Oceanography
• Paleontology
• Computer Science
• Chemistry
• Geography
• Business
• Geochemistry
• Environmental resource management
• Database

Selected publications

• Ocean temperatures through the Phanerozoic reassessed

  Scientific Reports · 2022 · 116 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  's role as a climate driver in the Paleozoic.

  DOI

• Oxygen Isotope Stratigraphy

  Elsevier eBooks · 2020 · 73 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• The PhanSST global database of Phanerozoic sea surface temperature proxy data

  Scientific Data · 2022 · 40 citations

  Paleotemperature proxy data form the cornerstone of paleoclimate research and are integral to understanding the evolution of the Earth system across the Phanerozoic Eon. Here, we present PhanSST, a database containing over 150,000 data points from five proxy systems that can be used to estimate past sea surface temperature. The geochemical data have a near-global spatial distribution and temporally span most of the Phanerozoic. Each proxy value is associated with consistent and queryable metadat…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Density functional theory and ab initio molecular dynamics reveal atomistic mechanisms for carbonate clumped isotope reordering

  Science Advances · 2023-06-28 · 19 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Carbon ( 13 C) and oxygen ( 18 O) isotopes in carbonates form clumped isotope species inversely correlated with temperature, providing a valuable paleothermometer for sedimentary carbonates and fossils. However, this signal resets (“reorders”) with increasing temperature after burial. Research on reordering kinetics has characterized reordering rates and hypothesized the effects of impurities and trapped water, but the atomistic mechanism remains obscure. This work studies carbonate-clumped isot…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Clumped isotope reordering kinetics in strontianite and witherite: Experiments and first-principles simulations

  Earth and Planetary Science Letters · 2023-11-10 · 9 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Constraining rates of C-O bond reordering in biogenic calcite: Implications for clumped isotope thermometry

  NSF · $71k · 2012–2015

• Stable Isotope Record for Global and Regional Change in the Late Paleozoic

  NSF · $120k · 1993–1996

• Collaborative Research: Elements of an extinction: Exploring the delayed Caribbean extinction with stable isotopes and trace elements

  NSF · $246k · 2013–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Aaron O’Dea

  21 shared

• Thomas E. Yancey

  Texas A&M University

  21 shared

• William F. Defliese

  University of Queensland

  18 shared

• Horng‐Sheng Mii

  University of Pisa

  12 shared

• Gregory Henkes

  11 shared

• K. Tao

  Texas A&M University

  11 shared

• Zeyang Sun

  Texas A&M University

  11 shared

• Wasif Zaheer

  Texas A&M University

  11 shared

Labs

• Geology & Geophysics Research LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Geological Sciences

  University of Southern California

• B.S., Geology

  University at Albany State University of New York

Awards & honors

• Recognized as a 2021 "Exceptional Reviewer" for the GSA jour…
• Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advanceme…
• Co-author of paper receiving the Smithsonian Secretary's 201…
• 2nd Place, Gordon I. Atwater Award for poster: Hendricks, Ya…
• Awarded Michel T. Halbouty Chair in Geology (2010, renewed i…

Similar researchers at Texas A&M University

• Frederick Chesterh-34
• Peter Knappetth-28
• Mark Everetth-27