Dr. Gerard Otiniano

Paleoclimatologist · Arctic Climate Change · Biomarker Proxies

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Gerard Otiniano

Current

I am a paleoclimatologist interested in Arctic climate change, biomarker proxies, and climate variability. Currently, I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Université du Québec à Montréal, working with Dr. Anne de Vernal.

Previous Employment

Postdoctoral Researcher with Dr. Elizabeth Thomas - University at Buffalo (2023-2026)

Education

PhD - University of Toronto (Graduated 2023)

MSc - University of Toronto (Graduated 2018)

BSc - University of Alberta (Graduated 2016)

chromatoPy interface

chromatoPy

chromatoPy (Otiniano et al., 2025), is a peak integration tool that enables rapid quantification of compounds measured via chromatography.

macOS install note: After downloading the DMG, open it and drag chromatoPy-desktop.app into your Applications folder. Then open Terminal and run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/chromatoPy-desktop.app

Pysotope

pysotope is a python package for processing isotopic data measured via GC-IRMS (δ2H, δ13C) and EA (δ13C, δ15N). Corrections for drift (time), linearity (amount), methanol (for FAME derivatization), and reference standards (e.g., VSMOW). We incorporate a number of methods for identifying coherent trends in measurement standards, enabling accurate isotopic measurements even at low concentrations.

pysotope workflow

In Review

Mark, S. Z., Prince, K. K., Walcott-George, C. K., Briner, J. P., Jensen, B. J., Topness, R. G., Otiniano, G. A., Thomas, E. K. (2026) Late Pleistocene and Holocene North Pacific Climate Dynamics from a Paleoenvironmental Record, Parrot Lake, Dall Island, Alaska [Submitted to Paleoceanography & Paleoclimatology]

Samuel Z. Mark, Benjamin V. Gaglioti, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Daniel H. Mann, Gerard A. Otiniano, Christopher L. Hancock, Nicholas P. McKay (2026) Evidence from the last deglaciation reveals constraints on the permafrost-carbon feedback [Submitted to AGU Advances]

Joshua K. Cuzzone, Jason P. Briner, Gerard A. Otiniano, Olivia Truax, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Eric J. Steig, Gregory J. Hakim, Joseph P. Tulenko, Mathieu Morlighem, Nicole-Jeanne Schlegel, Sophie Nowicki, Sudip Acharya, Jacob Anderson, Lambert Caron, Anne de Vernal, Jacob Downs, Émilie Folie-Boivin, Ryan M. Fleetwood, Kyeore Han, Jesse Johnson, Eric Larour, Ana Carolina Luzardi, Zilu Meng, Karlee Prince, Joerg Schaefer, Margie Turin, Liza Wilson, Xiner Wu, Nicolás E. Young (2026) On current climate trajectory, Greenland melt will exceed the Holocene maximum by 2300 [Submitted to Nature Communications] (Preprint PDF)

Topness, R. G., Thomas, E. K., Fendrock, M., and Otiniano, G. A. (2026) Calibration guidelines and a runoff-isotope module for lake proxy system modeling (PRYSM v2.0), EGUsphere, 1–31 [Submitted to Climate of the Past] https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-2322. (Preprint PDF)

Peer-Reviewed

Otiniano, G. A., Thomas, E. K., Castañeda, I. S., Acharya, S., Sharma, Y., Mark, S. Z. (2025). chromatoPy: An open-source tool for chromatographic peak deconvolution and integration applied to glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 40 , e2025PA005316. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025PA005316 (PDF)

Trasune, L., Orozco, L. E., Salonen, J. S., Otiniano, G. A., Porter, T. J., Weckström, J., et al. (2026). A comparison of Holocene temperature reconstructions from vegetation proxies and brGDGTs in northern Fennoscandia. Quaternary Science Reviews, 372, 109727. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2025.109727. (PDF)

Otiniano, G. A., Porter, T. J., Phillips, M. A., Juutinen, S., Weckström, J. B., & Heikkilä, M. P. (2024). Reconstructing warm-season temperatures using brGDGTs and assessing biases in Holocene temperature records in northern Fennoscandia. Quaternary Science Reviews, 329, 108555. (PDF)

Otiniano, G. A., Porter, T. J., Buceta, R. E., Bergman, M. E., & Phillips, M. A. (2023). Climatic and environmentally driven variability in lacustrine brGDGT distributions at local to regional scales in Alaska and northwestern Canada. Organic Geochemistry, 181, 104604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orggeochem.2023.104604 (PDF)

Otiniano, G. A., Porter, T. J., Benowitz, J. A., Bindeman, I. N., Froese, D. G., Jensen, B. J. L., et al. (2020). A Late Miocene to Late Pleistocene Reconstruction of Precipitation Isotopes and Climate From Hydrated Volcanic Glass Shards and Biomarkers in Central Alaska and Yukon. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 35(7), e2019PA003791. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019PA003791 (PDF)