About

Julie Brigham-Grette is a professor in the Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she also serves as the Graduate Program Director. Her research focuses on the stratigraphy, sedimentology, and chronology of geologic systems that record the climate evolution and sea level history of the Arctic since the mid-Pliocene. She aims to document the global context of paleoenvironmental change across Beringia, which includes the Bering Land Bridge and the adjacent marginal seas, stretching from Alaska and the Yukon into Northeast Russia. Since beginning her fieldwork over three decades ago, Brigham-Grette has participated in numerous expeditions to remote regions of Arctic Russia and has been involved in significant projects such as the Lake El’gygytgyn Drilling project, where she is the US Chief Scientist. This multinational field program has led to the recovery of a 3.6 million-year record of paleoclimate from the terrestrial Arctic. Her work involves integrating records from marine and lacustrine systems and blending proxy records with modeling efforts. She has also collaborated on developing sea ice proxies and paleoceanography records across the Arctic-Pacific gateway. Her research interests extend to the late Pleistocene paleoclimatic history, the drainage record of Glacial Lake Hitchcock, and the Holocene evolution of the Connecticut River. Future research directions include IODP/ICDP drilling in the Bering Strait and at the margins of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

Research topics

• Engineering
• Paleontology
• Oceanography
• Earth science
• Geology

Selected publications

• Navigating the Ascent

  GEOSTRATA Magazine · 2025-10-01

  article

  Limiting global atmospheric temperature increase will require electricity generation from renewable sources such as offshore wind energy development, which has increased exponentially over the past two decades. An offshore wind farm can exceed 100 individual foundations built across seabed areas of 400 km2 (roughly the size of Philadelphia), each supporting a structure nearly the height of the Eiffel Tower (330 m). In the U.S., geodata (i.e., seabed geology and geotechnical properties) are required at every turbine location per the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management guidelines. To install just one-fifth of the 2,500 GW of renewable energy needed to meet net zero goals by 2050 (a conservative assessment for offshore wind), more than 120,000 km2 of seabed will be needed (roughly the size of Pennsylvania), and over 30,000 turbines built at today’s 15 MW capacity. Site characterization for this planned construction will require more than 1.5 million m of in-situ testing, 500 km of geotechnical borings, and 10 million km of geophysical survey lines.

  PublisherDOI

• Safeguarding the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering: a critical assessment of proposed concepts and future prospects

  Frontiers in Science · 2025-09-09 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  Fossil-fuel burning is heating the planet with catastrophic consequences for its habitability and for the natural world on which our existence depends. Halting global warming requires rapid and deep decarbonization to “net zero” carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, which needs to be achieved by 2050 if warming is to remain within the limits set out by the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, some scientists and engineers claim that a mid-century decarbonization target will not be reached, and they propose that we should focus on technological geoengineering “fixes” or “climate interventions” that could delay or mask some of the impacts of global warming. They often cite the need to slow warming in polar regions because they are experiencing rates of warming higher than the global average, with severe and irreversible projected consequences both locally (e.g., on fragile ecosystems) and globally (e.g., on sea level). Several geoengineering concepts exist for polar regions, but they have not been fully examined by the polar science community, nor integrated with an understanding of polar dynamics and responses. Here, we evaluate five of those polar geoengineering concepts and highlight the significant issues and risks relating to technological availability, logistical feasibility, cost, predictable adverse consequences, environmental damage, scalability (in space and time), governance, and ethics. According to our expert assessment, none of these geoengineering ideas pass scrutiny regarding their use in the coming decades. Instead, we find that the proposed concepts would be environmentally dangerous. It is clear to us that the assessed approaches are not feasible, and that further research into these techniques would not be an effective use of limited time and resources. It is vital that these ideas do not distract from the priority to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or from the critical need to conduct fundamental research in the polar regions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The palaeoclimate potential of continental scientific drilling

  Nature Geoscience · 2024

  • Geology
  • Earth science
  • Oceanography
  PublisherDOI

• Antarctica is headed for a climate tipping point by 2060, with catastrophic melting if carbon emissions aren’t cut quickly

  2021-05-17

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Arctic hasn’t been this warm for 3 million years – and that foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet

  2020-09-30

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• QUA volume 91 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  Quaternary Research · 2019-05-01

  articleOpen access

  Cover photo. Despite a magnitude 6.9 earthquake (2015-07-27, 04:49:46 UTC) ~50 km south-southeast of the Islands of Four Mountains, the steam plume never wavered from the summit of Mt. Cleveland volcano (center). The scanty steaming of fumaroles within the summit caldera of Herbert volcano (left) testifies to its recent dormancy. Distant Carlisle Island is visible beyond the isthmus of Chuginadak Island that separates Cleveland from the slopes of larger Tana volcano (foreground). Later that night and for the next several days, the team of archaeologists, paleoecologists, and geologists felt aftershocks as they pursued the first characterization of this region of the Aleutian archipelago. Photo by K. Nicolaysen.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• QUA volume 89 issue 1 Cover and Front matter

  Quaternary Research · 2018-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Cover photo. Glacial activity in Andean Peru associated with the last ice age formed many lakes, such as Laguna Las Quinuas, which lies at 3467 m elevation in an east-facing valley that receives >3000 mm of Amazonian precipitation each year. Lakes lying at the lowest limit of glacial activity were targeted by Paul Colinvaux in South America and in Africa by Dan Livingstone, as they offered greater palynological sensitivity to climate change than lakes further upslope. Below the lower limit of moraines, ancient lakes are very rare, and especially prized by paleoecologists. During their careers Dan and Paul worked on a number of these rare lowland lakes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• QUA volume 89 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  Quaternary Research · 2018-03-01

  articleOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• QUA volume 89 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  Quaternary Research · 2018-05-01

  articleOpen access

  Cover photo. Aeolian Quaternary loess and Late Miocene-Pliocene Red Clay at Shilou section on the eastern Chinese Loess Plateau, North China. The climate and environment of the Shilou area are dominated by seasonal reversal of Asian winter monsoon (AWM) and Asian summer monsoon (ASM) circulations, with a mean annual temperature of ~9C and mean annual precipitation

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• QUA volume 88 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  Quaternary Research · 2017-08-30

  articleOpen access

  Cover photo. Exit Glacier draining from the Harding icefield on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. The Kenai Peninsula is frequently affected by ash clouds sourced from volcanoes on the Alaska Peninsular, and tephra beds derived from these eruptions

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Derek B. Booth

  University of Washington

  18 shared

• Lewis A. Owen

  18 shared

• Nicholas Lancaster

  18 shared

• Colin V. Murray‐Wallace

  University of Wollongong

  10 shared

• John Dodson

  Environmental Earth Sciences

  10 shared

• Richard G. Klein

  10 shared

• Liping Zhou

  9 shared

• Jay Quade

  8 shared

Labs

• Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate SciencesPI

Awards & honors

• Bromery Fellowships
• Rausch Mineral Gallery
• NSF-URGE (Undoing Racism in the Geosciences)