Aradhna Tripati

She studies the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and the impacts on temperature, the water cycle, glaciers and ice sheets, and ocean acidity.

Over the course of her career, she has applied these methods to better understand the history and patterns of changes in Earth's temperature, carbon cycling, pH, ice volume, and hydrology.

She helped develop a technique known as a "paleothermometer," which allows scientists to measure past temperatures by analyzing the chemical ratios of specimens from different time periods.

[6] In a later study published in 2016, Tripati and her colleagues from around the world demonstrated that an ice sheet collapse that took place 14,000 years ago caused the Earth's entire jet stream to shift within a single century.

As a visiting professor at California Institute of Technology, she collaborated on a 2011 study that analyzed the composition of fossilized teeth of Jurassic sauropods to find that their internal body temperature was close to that of most modern mammals, resting somewhere between 36 and 38˚C.

[9][10] Scientists had previously hypothesized that sauropod body temperature was warmer, but their study suggested that these dinosaurs stayed cool by using internal air sacs for ventilation.

In 2014, Tripati received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to leverage clumped isotopes as a tool to reconstruct terrestrial climates during the Last Glacial Maximum, as well as to support her work recruiting and retaining a diverse research workforce.

Tripati organized and wrote a grant proposal that funded a career development workshop for women and minorities at American Geophysical Union (AGU)[17] and served as faculty lead for a program aimed at increasing transfers from community colleges to UCLA.