Cody Routson

About

Dr. Cody Routson is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Earth and Sustainability, where he has been a faculty member since 2017. He is part of NAU’s paleoclimate research group, working closely with colleagues in the Past & Present Climate Change theme.

Research

Dr. Routson studies how and why climate varies naturally over decades to millennia, with a particular focus on drought and hydroclimate in western North America. His approach is synthetic: assembling and analyzing large networks of proxy records (tree rings, lake sediments, ice cores, and more) to map patterns of temperature and moisture change through the Holocene, and comparing them with climate model simulations. Understanding the range and causes of past variability sharpens projections of future change, which will be shaped by both human influences and the natural variability his work quantifies.

He was a contributing author to international efforts compiling global paleoclimate databases, including the multi-proxy synthesis of the past 12,000 years assembled by dozens of collaborators worldwide, and his research contributes to the evidence base used in major climate assessments.