Welcome. - Yarrow Axford - Climate Scientist, Writer

Yarrow Axford, PhD

About

Earth is endlessly fascinating – and we all live here.

My writing and lectures draw on 15 years as a professor investigating our planet’s climate history. I’m best known for my research in the Arctic, especially Greenland.

As an endowed professor at Northwestern, I directed a busy research group and taught fundamental science and science communication. In 2025, I left academia to focus on my family and health. Now I’m working to share the magic and adventure of science, and its urgent lessons from Earth’s deep past.

Photo of Yarrow Axford giving instructions to a helicopter pilot in a red Air Greenland helicopter.

Photo of Yarrow Axford in her lab at Northwestern. Courtesy Eileen Molony.

Media
Writing
Speaking

The world needs insights from Earth science, now more than ever.

Overview of Public Engagement

In 2024, the national organization of Graduate Women in Science honored me with their highest award for science communication. My opinion pieces have appeared in outlets ranging from Science and American Scientist to U.S. News & World Report and Huffington Post. I have delivered talks on climate science at venues from corporate events to libraries and pubs to a professional dance performance, and have given live radio and TV interviews on topics from collapsing Antarctic ice shelves to survival in cold Chicago weather. Outlets including the New York Times, CNN, The Independent, New Scientist, and Bloomberg News have featured my lab’s research.

Writing for Public Audiences

Some favorites:

–When scientific research is snuffed out, so are cures. Portland Press Herald.
–Climate change is here. What now? American Scientist
–Thanks to the glass ceiling breakers. Science.
–No, global warming isn’t suddenly a myth because it’s really cold out. U.S. News & World Report.

Television Interviews

Some diverse examples:

-Inevitable sea level rise? Inside Story.
–These scientists study the Arctic. What’s their take on Chiberia? WTTW Chicago Tonight (live).
–Extreme flooding in Midwest expected to get worse. ABC Nightly News Chicago.
–Extreme science in the Arctic. A Northwestern promo video.

Media Coverage

A few examples of news stories about my team’s research from:
New York Times , CNN, and CNN again.

GALLERY 1

Photo of geologiy team's camp at the ice sheet edge, northwest Greenland. A yellow tent in teh foreground and a red helicopter in the background of a rocky landscape.

Members of Axford's team explore the northwest edge of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Two people hike on the ice near a small meltwater rivulet.

Laura Larocca leads a research team coring a lake at Quvnerit, south Greenland, for her PhD. Three scientists are pictured in this photo with a red coring raft on a glacier-fed lake, with rocky mountains in the background.

Screen shot of New Scientist coverage of Laura Larocca's paper documenting rapid decline of Greenland's glaciers since the year 2000 AD.

Three members of Axford's team stand on a coring platform in warm clothing, working on a turquoise colored Greenland lake.

Yarrow Axford appears on WTTW Chicago Tonight to give a live interview about the breakup of Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf.

Yarrow Axford and a Northwestern student use a microscope to identify ancient insect remains in lake sediments.

Photo of Dundas Mountain, northwest Greenland, with sea ice in the foreground.

BIO/CV

Photo of earth scientist Yarrow Axford triumphantly showing off a tiny bottle of water sampled from a Greenland stream, with a big smile on her face — Triumph! Sampling water at Pituffik Space Base, Greenland.

Professional Background

For 15 years, I taught courses on Quaternary geology, paleoclimate, energy and climate change, Earth surface processes, polar environments, and science communication at Northwestern University, where I was William Deering Professor. I directed a research group focused on past climate change. Our work was motivated by the question: “What can we learn from Earth’s past that will shed light on the future?”

I have led, planned, or joined research expeditions in the Arctic (from Alaska to Iceland) and U.S. “lower 48” for about 25 years. Recently I have focused on Kalaallit Nunaat (known in English as Greenland), where the Northern Hemisphere’s only continent-scale ice sheet is beginning to alter global sea level.

Now I’ve relocated to Boston, to return to my New England roots, and I am Adjunct Professor at Northwestern. My latest adventures focus on writing and speaking about science and our shared climate future.

An abbreviated CV [pdf] shares some specifics.

Degrees & Selected Awards

-PhD in Geological Sciences, Univ. of Colorado
-MSc in Geology, Utah State Univ.
-AB in Geology, Mt. Holyoke College

-Endowed chair, Northwestern Univ.
-Lifetime honorary membership, national award for science communication, Graduate Women in Science
-Faculty honor roll for undergraduate research, Northwestern Univ.
-U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award
-Finalist, AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science
-Gary S. Comer Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Iceland
-J. Hoover Mackin Graduate Research award, Geological Society of America
-Arthur D. Howard Graduate Research award, Geological Society of America
-Elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi
-Graduated summa cum laude

Scientific Publications

Access my work via my Google Scholar profile.

I have authored or coauthored >65 peer-reviewed journal articles and >150 conference presentations. Most describe innovations in methods for decoding past climates, or they present climate reconstructions from Iceland, Greenland, Arctic Canada, Alaska, the U.S. Midwest, or New England. In nerd terms, I am a Quaternary geologist and paleolimnologist with a focus on late glacial and Holocene paleoecology and stable isotope geochemistry. Bottom line: I love playing detective and finding clues in old mud. And those clues illuminate the path ahead, in our rapidly warming modern world.

Gratitude

The people of the Arctic, especially Kalaallit Nunaat (aka Greenland), have generously welcomed my team to their homelands to conduct research. From the bottom of my heart: thank you! And you have my profound respect.

Students and staff at Northwestern make the research happen. Thirty talented undergraduates did great work in my lab and simultaneously gave me great hope for the future. Current and past graduate students – Jamie McFarlin, Everett Lasher, Laura Larocca, Pete Puleo, Bailey Nash, Mia Tuccillo, Aidan Burdick – you are amazing.

And a huge thank you to our funders, for supporting fundamental science: the U.S. National Science Foundation, Northwestern, and the National Geographic Society.