Dr. Pete Akers

• Pete D. Akers, George A. Brook, L. Bruce Railsback, Fuyuan Liang, Gyles Iannone, James W. Webster, Philip P. Reeder, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, An extended and higher-resolution record of climate and land use from stalagmite MC01 from Macal Chasm, Belize, revealing connections between major dry events, overall climate variability, and Maya sociopolitical changes, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 459, 2016, p268--288Journal Article, 2016, DOI
• L. Bruce Railsback, Honglin Xiao, Fuyuan Liang, Pete D. Akers, George A. Brook, William M. Dennis, Thomas E. Lanier, Ming Tan, Hai Cheng, R. Lawrence Edwards, A stalagmite record of abrupt climate change and possible Westerlies-derived atmospheric precipitation during the Penultimate Glacial Maximum in northern China, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 393, 2014, p30--44Journal Article, 2014, DOI
• L. Bruce Railsback, Pete Akers, Lixin Wang, Genevieve Holdridge, Ny Riavo Voarintsoa, Layer-bounding surfaces in stalagmites as keys to better paleoclimatological histories and chronologies, International Journal of Speleology, 42, (3), 2013, p167--180Journal Article, 2013, DOI
• Andrew J. Grundstein, Craig Ramseyer, Fang Zhao, Jordan L. Pesses, Pete Akers, Aneela Qureshi, Laura Becker, John A. Knox, Myron Petro, A retrospective analysis of American football hyperthermia deaths in the United States, International Journal of Biometeorology, 56, (1), 2010, p11--20Journal Article, 2010, DOI
• Hannah Bailey, Alun Hubbard, Eric S. Klein, Kaisa-Riikka Mustonen, Pete D. Akers, Hannu Marttila, Jeffrey M. Welker, Arctic sea-ice loss fuels extreme European snowfall, Nature Geoscience, 14, (5), 2021, p283--288Journal Article, 2021, DOI
• Pete D. Akers, Ben G. Kopec, Kyle S. Mattingly, Eric S. Klein, Douglas Causey, Jeffrey M. Welker, Baffin Bay sea ice extent and synoptic moisture transport drive water vapor isotope (δ18O, δ2H, and deuterium excess) variability in coastal northwest Greenland, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 20, (22), 2020, p13929--13955Journal Article, 2020, DOI
• Pete D Akers, George A Brook, L Bruce Railsback, Alex Cherkinksy, Fuyuan Liang, Claire E Ebert, Julie A Hoggarth, Jaime J Awe, Hai Cheng, R Lawrence Edwards, Integrating U-Th, 14C, and 210Pb methods to produce a chronologically reliable isotope record for the Belize River Valley Maya from a low-uranium stalagmite, The Holocene, 29, (7), 2019, p1234--1248Journal Article, 2019, DOI
• Pete D. Akers, Jeffrey M. Welker, George A. Brook, Reassessing the role of temperature in precipitation oxygen isotopes across the eastern and central U nited S tates through weekly precipitation"day data, Water Resources Research, 53, (9), 2017, p7644--7661Journal Article, 2017, DOI
• Pete D. Akers, Joël Savarino, Nicolas Caillon, Aymeric P. M. Servettaz, Emmanuel Le Meur, Olivier Magand, Jean Martins, et. al, Sunlight-driven nitrate loss records Antarctic surface mass balance, Nature Communications, 13, (1), 2022Journal Article, 2022, DOI
• Akers, Pete D., Savarino, Joël, Caillon, Nicolas, Magand, Olivier, Le Meur, Emmanuel, Photolytic modification of seasonal nitrate isotope cycles in East Antarctica, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 22, (24), 2022, p15637-15657Journal Article, 2022, DOI
• Lamothe, Alexis, Savarino, Joel, Ginot, Patrick, Soussaintjean, Lison, Gautier, Elsa, Akers, Pete D., Caillon, Nicolas, Erbland, Joseph, An extraction method for nitrogen isotope measurement of ammonium in a low-concentration environment, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 16, (17), 2023, p4015-4030Journal Article, 2023, DOI

• Pete D. Akers, pete-d-akers/chictaba-nitrate: CHICTABA transect, Antarctica, snow nitrate analysis (v1.1), Zenodo, 2022Dataset, DOI
• Akers, Pete D; Savarino, Joël; Caillon, Nicolas; Magand, Olivier; Le Meur, Emmanuel, Nitrate isotopic data from snow collected along the CHICTABA traverse, East Antarctica, 2013-2014, PANGAEA, 2022Dataset, DOI
• Pete D. Akers, pete-d-akers/scadi-d15N-SMB: SCADI nitrate and surface mass balance analysis, 1.1, Zenodo, 2022Dataset, DOI
• Baptiste Vandecrux, Charles Amory, Andreas P Ahlstrøm, Pete D Akers, Mary Albert, Richard B Alley, Laurent Arnaud, Roger Bales, Carl Benson, Jason E Box, Christo Buizert, Charalampos Charalampidis, Nicole Clerx, Jack E Dibb, Federico Covi, Gilles Denis, Minghu Ding, Olaf Eisen, Robert Fausto, Francisco Fernandoy, Joannes Freitag, Sebastian Gerland, Joel Harper, Robert L Hawley, Regine Hock, Penelope How, Bryn Hubbard, Niel Humphrey, Yoshinori Iizuka, Elisabeth Isaksson, Takao Kameda, Nanna B Karlsson, Kaoru Kawakami, Helle Astrid Kjær, Peter Kuipers Munneke, Gabriel Lewis, Michael MacFerrin, Horst Machguth, Kenneth D Mankoff, Joseph R McConnell, Brooke Medley, Elizabeth Morris, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, Robert Mulvaney, Masashi Niwano, Erich Osterberg, Inès Otosaka, Ghislain Picard, Chris Polashenski, Asa Rennermalm, Anja Rutishauser, Sebastian B Simonsen, Andrew Smith, Anne Solgaard, Matthew Spencer, Hans Christian Steen-Larsen, C Max Stevens, Shin Sugiyama, Marco Tedesco, Megan Thompson-Munson, Shun Tsutaki, Dirk van As, Michiel R Van den Broeke, Frank Wilhelms, Jing Xiao, Cunde Xiao, The SUMup collaborative database: Surface mass balance, subsurface temperature and density measurements from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (1912 - 2023), 1.0, Arctic Data Center, 2023Dataset, DOI

• Title

  ISO-TAISE: Isotopic Tracing of Atmospheric Rivers and Irish Storm Extremes
  Summary

  Atmospheric rivers are narrow bands of intense atmospheric moisture transport that fuel extreme precipitation events, destructive flooding, and powerful storms. Global climate models suggest that anthropogenic climate change will strengthen atmospheric rivers in the future, but despite this threat, relatively limited research has been published on Irish-impacting atmospheric river events. Project ISOTAISE will work to address this oversight with a four-year program dedicated to improving our understanding of Irish atmospheric rivers through stable isotopic monitoring and synoptic climate reanalysis. Through four work packages, ISO-TAISE will markedly advance Irish climate science through the production and open access publishing of isotopic climate data collected at resolutions unprecedented for Ireland. In the first work package, a state of the art laser isotope spectrometer will be installed to continuously analyse ambient water vapor in Dublin for the full project duration. The resulting dataset will offer 5 isotopic parameters (including the rare 17O and 17O-excess) at resolutions as fine as 5 min. Next, a review of severe atmospheric rivers affecting Ireland from 1981-2019 will identify their moisture sourcing and transport through Irish and European reanalysis climate data in order to link historical climatology of atmospheric rivers to climate projection output. The third work package complements the first by providing isotopic composition records of ~daily precipitation samples and weekly River Dodder samples from near the water vapor monitoring station. These samples, analysed on a second laser spectrometer dedicated to liquid water isotope analysis, will allow the creation of an isotopic climatology for Dublin and Ireland focused on three components of the water cycle (atmospheric water vapor, precipitation, and stream flow). For the ambitious fourth work package, the second spectrometer will be deployed in the field directly in the path of an intense atmospheric river making landfall in Ireland. This deployment will be made 1-2 days prior to a forecasted landfall, and the spectrometer will be used in conjunction with precipitation sampling to capture the full isotopic evolution of an atmospheric river in both water vapor and precipitation. This isotopic case study will provide valuable insight to meteorologists around the world regarding the moisture transport and cloud microphysics occurring during atmospheric river passage. Finally, to fully translate the findings of ISOTAISE into climate change impact, the project will produce a policy advisement document targeting policymakers that highlights actionable items learned about present and future atmospheric river risk from ISO-TAISE.
  Funding Agency

  EPA
  Date From

  01-03-2024
  Date To

  28-02-2028
• Title

  DRYPEAT: Deuterium-excess Reconstruction to Yield Peatland Evaporation, Aridity, and Transpiration
  Summary

  Blanket bog carbon storage and biodiversity are critical components of a sustainable Ireland, but a warming and drying climate may push blanket bogs beyond a tipping point into ecological collapse. Worryingly, the exact environmental conditions that lead to this threshold are unknown. We could constrain uncertainty about blanket bog resilience by knowing the maximum aridity levels that blanket bogs have survived in the past, but reconstructing long histories of bog aridity is challenged by the lack of a peat-sourced proxy for water lost to evapotranspiration (ET). In project DRYPEAT, we will develop a new ET proxy using deuterium-excess (dxs), a second-order stable isotopic parameter, of bog plant cellulose. In a key innovation, DRYPEAT will use the differences in cellulose dxs between non-vascular Sphagnum and other vascular bog plants to directly capture the previously unquantified transpiration component of ET. Our proxy development will be achieved through sustained monitoring of bog precipitation, surface waters, and vegetation in the Wicklow Mountains and then applied to multiple peat cores to compare past high ET periods when the bogs survived with predicted future ET extremes. DRYPEAT will thus aid Irish climate mitigation planning while also expanding the technical capacity of Irish geoscience research.
  Funding Agency

  SFI
  Date From

  01-04-2024
  Date To

  31-03-2028

History and Archaeology, Biodiversity, Environmental Sciences including Marine, Ecology and Marine Biology, Soils and Land Use, Physical Geography and geosciences, Water Quality and the Aquatic Environment, Climate Research including Marine Climate Change & Oceanography,

• Environmental Science Teaching Excellence, University of Iowa 2016
• Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, European Commission 2021-2022
• Doctoral Dissertation Grant, National Science Foundation 2014-2016

• Carottes de Glace France 2022
• Ice Core Young Scientists (ICYS) 2022
• Irish Quaternary Association (IQUA) present
• European Geophysical Union present
• American Geophysical Union 2021