Vatnsdalsfjall, northern Iceland Painted Hills, Oregon central Patagonia, Chile Cove Palisades, Oregon field trip recon, Oregon coast Lago Posadas section, Argentina sunset, central Australia

Postdoctoral fellow - Terrestrial paleoclimate and mountain building

How have mountain ranges, and the climates they are bathed in, changed through time? I study terrestrial paleoenvironments to discover what they have to tell us about climate, tectonics, biology, and human society. I primarily use records of light stable isotopes from sediments, soils, and organic molecules, grounded in a rich context of field observations and data from sedimentology, atmospheric science, and other disciplines.

Contact me

Email david dot colwyn at colorado dot edu
@mountainclimate

Department of Geological Sciences
University of Colorado - Boulder
2200 Colorado Ave., UCB 399
Boulder, CO 80309-0399

Resources

CU Geological Sciences
CUBES-SIL (Snell Lab)
INSTAAR Organic Geochemistry Lab
Periodic Table in the Ocean
Earth Wind Map
NOAA HYSPLIT Trajectory Model
Waterisotopes.org (OIPC)

What's happening?

December 2019: Heading to AGU to present the first results from my postdoctoral work with Katie Snell, Jeff Benowitz, Trevor Porter, and Julio Sepúlveda.

September 2019: Back from the field in Alaska. Collected some new samples that fill a big gap in our developing record of terrestrial paleoclimate in south-central Alaska. And I got to ride in a helicopter!

July 2019: New paper out in American Journal of Science. Our climate change-corrected water isotope record from the downwind side of the Patagonian Andes indicates that the Andes have been a high-standing topographic feature since at least the Paleocene. It was a pleasure to work on this study with scientists from Chile, California, and Yale, including three talented undergraduates. LINK HERE

February 2019: New terrestrial record of the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition (EOT) with Mike Hren is out in EPSL. We found a large temperature drop in the terrestrial Southern Hemisphere followed by a partial rebound during the EOT. These results are the first quantitative record of cooling at the EOT on land in the Southern Hemisphere, and confirm the globally synchronous nature of the EOT. They also agree with previous work that indicates that the primary cause of this major climate transition was likely falling atmospheric pCO2. LINK HERE

September 2018: Back from a great field season in Alaska and settling in at CU-Boulder. Alaska is a special place.

July 2018: Busy getting ready to move to University of Colorado to study high-latitude paleoclimate.

February 2018: Thesis defense is done and dusted. Also very happy to accept an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship for a new research project starting this summer.

March 2017: In Death Valley with undergraduates, looking at Earth history from the Neoproterozoic to the Cenozoic. The rocks are beautiful and the flowers are out in force on the alluvial fans this year.