Research
Understanding climate and environmental systems through space and time
My research interests have led me to pursue work focused on paleoenvironmental and climate topics that range from evaluating modern extreme events, to understanding landscape-scale change over millennia. Broadly speaking, my research can be divided into the following themes:
Extreme climate events: Modern climate change is making extreme floods, droughts, and heatwaves more frequent and intense. How can we leverage paleoenvironmental archives to contextualize these extremes? How can stakeholders in land management and industry use this long-term perspective to inform their work?
Holocene climate and environmental change: How have atmospheric & oceanic circulation patterns, precipitaiton, and temperature changed over the last ~12,000 years, since continental ice sheets last retreated from the Northern Hemisphere?
Landscape evolution: How can we leverage the sediment record to learn about Earth surface processes, both related and unrelated to climate?
Publications:
Revisiting the Holocene global temperature conundrum
Recent enhanced hydroclimate variability in California
Early Holocene carbonate deposition in the Kenai lowlands, Alaska
Reconstructing Holocene hydrologic balance in the Kenai lowlands, Alaska
Holocene Arctic sea ice and Pacific circulation
Holocene Aleutian Low and precipitation variability in southern Alaska
Late Holocene human-environment interactions in Morro Bay, CA
Data descriptor of environmental monitoring at Lake Peters, Alaska
In review and preparation:
1) Using tree rings to study variability in the polar jet stream
Xu et al., 2022 (EGU Abstract) - the North Atlantic jet influences climate and societal extremes
Broadman et al., 2022 (AGU Abstract) - summertime Rossby wavenumber5 influenced by ENSO events
2) Analyzing eruption frequency in the Alaska-Aleutian arc using lacustrine tephra deposits
Bolton et al., 2021 (AGU Abstract)
3) Contextualizing the current Arizona "megadrought" and low river flows
Broadman et al., in prep: A multi-century perspective on the response of streamflow in Arizona’s Salt River basin to 21st century megadrought.
Broadman et al., in prep: Spatial heterogeneity in the response of trees to the 21st century megadrought in the southwestern United States.
4) Using quantitative wood anatomy to study the impact of heatwaves on trees
Broadman et al., in prep: Multi-proxy analysis of tree rings from Jasper National Park reveals complex response to 2021 heat dome.