About

Yige Zhang is a geochemist interested in understanding how the Earth evolved chemically, and using various geochemical tools to study climate change of the geological past. He earned his BS in geochemistry at Nanjing University, China, in 2007, and an MS in marine sciences from the University of Georgia in 2009. His MPhil (2011) and PhD (2014) in geology and geophysics are from Yale University. During his PhD, his research focused on climate reconstructions and modeling of the Cenozoic greenhouse–icehouse transition, including the Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene epochs. He used geochemical proxies from marine sediments to understand ocean temperatures, atmospheric CO2 levels, and continental ice volume over a series of global climate change events. As an Environmental Fellow, Yige worked with Ann Pearson from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, developing improved atmospheric CO2 estimates in the Miocene using organic geochemistry methodologies and novel isotope-ratio mass spectrometry approaches. He contributed to resolving the Miocene CO2 climate sensitivity 'paradox,' which involves the relationship between CO2 concentrations and surface seawater cooling during that period, addressing whether CO2 played a minor role or if proxy measurement methods are flawed.

Research topics

• Geology
• Environmental science
• Paleontology
• Oceanography
• Computer Science
• Chemistry
• Ecology
• Biology
• Earth science
• Geography
• Environmental resource management
• Database
• Business
• Organic chemistry
• Philosophy
• Environmental chemistry
• Atmospheric sciences
• Physical geography
• Meteorology
• Astrobiology
• World Wide Web
• Climatology
• Materials science

Selected publications

• Toward a Cenozoic history of atmospheric CO ₂

  Science · 2023 · 186 citations

  • Environmental science
  • Astrobiology
  • Geology

  thresholds in biological and cryosphere evolution.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Neogene burial of organic carbon in the global ocean

  Nature · 2023 · 79 citations

  • Geology
  • Paleontology
  • Environmental chemistry
  DOI

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

  Scientific Data · 2022 · 40 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Geology
  • Database

  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 metadata fields, including information about the location, age, and taxonomy of the organism from which the data derive. To promote transparency and reproducibility, we include all available published data, regardless of interpreted preservation state or vital effects. However, we also provide expert-assigned diagenetic assessments, ecological and environmental flags, and other proxy-specific fields, which facilitate informed and responsible reuse of the database. The data are quality control checked and the foraminiferal taxonomy has been updated. PhanSST will serve as a valuable resource to the paleoclimate community and has myriad applications, including evolutionary, geochemical, diagenetic, and proxy calibration studies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Archaeal lipids trace ecology and evolution of marine ammonia-oxidizing archaea

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 71 citations

  • Ecology
  • Environmental science
  • Biology

  . We then used Gaussian mixture models to statistically characterize these diagnostic patterns of modern AOA ecology from paleo-GDGT records to infer the evolution of marine AOA from the Mid-Mesozoic to the present. Long-term GDGT-2/GDGT-3 trends suggest a suppression of today's deep water marine AOA during the Mesozoic-early Cenozoic greenhouse climates. Our analysis provides invaluable insights into the evolutionary timeline and the expansion of AOA niches associated with major oceanographic and climate changes.

  DOI

• Atmospheric CO₂ over the Past 66 Million Years from Marine Archives

  Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences · 2021 · 395 citations

  • Geology
  • Oceanography
  • Earth science

  Throughout Earth's history, CO 2 is thought to have exerted a fundamental control on environmental change. Here we review and revise CO 2 reconstructions from boron isotopes in carbonates and carbon isotopes in organic matter over the Cenozoic—the past 66 million years. We find close coupling between CO 2 and climate throughout the Cenozoic, with peak CO 2 levels of ∼1,500 ppm in the Eocene greenhouse, decreasing to ∼500 ppm in the Miocene, and falling further into the ice age world of the Plio–Pleistocene. Around two-thirds of Cenozoic CO 2 drawdown is explained by an increase in the ratio of ocean alkalinity to dissolved inorganic carbon, likely linked to a change in the balance of weathering to outgassing, with the remaining one-third due to changing ocean temperature and major ion composition. Earth system climate sensitivity is explored and may vary between different time intervals. The Cenozoic CO 2 record highlights the truly geological scale of anthropogenic CO 2 change: Current CO 2 levels were last seen around 3 million years ago, and major cuts in emissions are required to prevent a return to the CO 2 levels of the Miocene or Eocene in the coming century. ▪ CO 2 reconstructions over the past 66 Myr from boron isotopes and alkenones are reviewed and re-evaluated. ▪ CO 2 estimates from the different proxies show close agreement, yielding a consistent picture of the evolution of the ocean-atmosphere CO 2 system over the Cenozoic. ▪ CO 2 and climate are coupled throughout the past 66 Myr, providing broad constraints on Earth system climate sensitivity. ▪ Twenty-first-century carbon emissions have the potential to return CO 2 to levels not seen since the much warmer climates of Earth's distant past.

  DOI

• Past climates inform our future

  Science · 2020 · 643 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Environmental science
  • Climatology

  As the world warms, there is a profound need to improve projections of climate change. Although the latest Earth system models offer an unprecedented number of features, fundamental uncertainties continue to cloud our view of the future. Past climates provide the only opportunity to observe how the Earth system responds to high carbon dioxide, underlining a fundamental role for paleoclimatology in constraining future climate change. Here, we review the relevancy of paleoclimate information for climate prediction and discuss the prospects for emerging methodologies to further insights gained from past climates. Advances in proxy methods and interpretations pave the way for the use of past climates for model evaluation-a practice that we argue should be widely adopted.

  DOI

Recent grants

• P2C2: Collaborative Research: The consumption rate of a CO2 pulse: Lessons from the middle Miocene

  NSF · $311k · 2018–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Tiegang Li

  First Institute of Oceanography

  96 shared

• Paul N. Pearson

  University College London

  88 shared

• Tom Dunkley Jones

  University of Birmingham

  88 shared

• Masanobu Yamamoto

  Hokkaido University

  86 shared

• Haowen Dang

  85 shared

• Germain Bayon

  Ifremer

  85 shared

• Yuho Kumagai

  85 shared

• Ann Holbourn

  Kiel University

  85 shared

Labs

• Harvard University Center for the EnvironmentPI

Education

• Ph.D., Geology and Geophysics

  Yale University

• M.S., Marine Sciences

  University not specified

• B.S., Geochemistry

  Nanjing University, China

  2007

Awards & honors

• Ziff Environmental Fellow: 2014-2016

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