Trumbore was elected as a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2005.[7][8] She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010.[9] Trumbore was recognized with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2018 for "her pioneering use of radiocarbon measurements in forests and soils to assess the flow of carbon between the biosphere and atmosphere, with implications for the understanding of future climate change."[4] In 2020 she received the Balzan Prize for Earth System Dynamics.[10]