I am Sidney Hemming’s PhD student. My work has focused on southern Africa and the material retrieved by IODP Expedition 361. Broadly, I’d consider my methodological expertise to be in sedimentary geochemistry. The primary analytical challenge for my thesis is the establishment of Laser Ablation U-Pb Zircon Geochronology techniques at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. But, my expertise extends to include X-ray fluorescence core scanning and data processing and the application of K-Ar dating of sediment, applied as a provenance tracer (Hemming et al., 2018, Marine Geology). I am a near-zealous proponent of data science in python, open-source coding, and scientific reproducibility and transparency. You can find my work on GitHub.
Using southern African marine and river sediment, I apply these tools in concert in a paleoclimatic context, with a special focus on warm periods, in an effort to address the most pressing questions we need answered about the climate system for the coming centuries. For example: How is rainfall in the Southern Hemisphere tropics affected by rapidly warming Northern Hemisphere landmasses and dwindling sea ice? How do lower-latitude oceanographic-atmospheric phenomena like El-Nino, Indian Ocean Dipole, the Indonesian Throughflow, and Agulhas Leakage feedback with global warming or ice sheet growth?
Despite my day-to-day life as a lab-rat and data science dork, I have a profound love and a knack for outcrop geology, particularly sedimentary geology. I take a great joy in teaching introductory geology and leading field trips.
This translates easily to Earth Science and wider science literacy outreach. You can find this in on my Instagram page @geoknowledgy, an outreach platform I’ve been curating for several years. You can also find material on Twitter and YouTube.
Outside of my science work, my main endeavor is musical, as a mandolinist and songwriter in Hot Grandpa. I’m an avid backpacker and rock climber.
Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gjUNwZMAAAAJ&hl=en
GitHub https://github.com/danielbabin
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/geoknowledgy/; https://www.instagram.com/hot_grandpa/
Twitter https://twitter.com/danielpbabin
Personal Website http://danielpbabin.com/