Prof Trevor Porter's research program studies past climate and environmental change, primarily in sub-Arctic and Arctic regions of N.W. Canada and Alaska. His research takes advantage of natural indicators of climate and environmental change, such as tree rings, relict ground ice, pyrogenic compounds (PAHs) and fossil lipids that are well preserved in the geologic record. Data generated from this type of work help to fill spatial and temporal gaps in our knowledge of the Arctic system, which, today, is largely informed by a sparse network of instrumental climate stations spanning the last ~100 years. There are no analogues in the historic era for where the Arctic system is going and, therefore, we must look to proxy-based records of past climate variability to better understand what a future, warmer Arctic may look like.

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