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Climate System
Research Center

UMass Amherst
Department of
Geosciences,
134 Morrill Science Center II
Amherst, MA,
01003 - USA
ph: 413.545.0659
fx: 413.545.1200
paleoclimate.org

 
Through research and outreach acitivities, the Climate System Research Center helps to reduce uncertainties about human impacts on the climate system and to improve our understanding of climate variability over a range of timescales. With this knowledge, better decisions can be made in public policy, in commerce, and by individual citizens.
 
2017
  • Ray Bradley was recently selected to the European Academy, Academia Europaea, joining 21 other U.S. members in its Earth and Cosmic Sciences section. read more in the UMass news release. (01/13)
  • Ambarish Karmalkar and Ray Bradley have published a study in PLOS ONE which describes how temperatures across the northeastern United States will increase much faster than the global average. The study also shows that the fastest warming region in the contiguous U.S. is the Northeast, which is projected to warm by 3 degrees C when global warming reaches 2 degrees C. The UMass news release. (01/11)
 
2016
  • In a ceremony on December 3 Ray Bradley received the 2016 Doctor honoris causa Universitatis Bernensis degree from the University of Bern, Switzerland, at its annual Foundation Ceremony. UMass news release. (09/19)
  • Rob DeConto was a coauthor on a paper which described how the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may again add to significant worldwide sea level rise with continued global warming. Read the UMass news release. (09/19)
  • Mike Rawlins, Ray Bradley and colleagues have published a study examing projections for the decline in annual freezing days by mid-century across North America. They estimated that by mid-century around 1 million square kilometers of North America will no longer see sub-freezing winter temperatures, approximately 6 percent of the region that now experiences freezing weather. Read the UMass news release. (09/14)
  • Julie Brigham-Grette has been selected as a Fellow in the American Geophysical Union. This is "an honor given to individual AGU members who have made exceptional scientific contributions and gained prominence in their respective fields of Earth and space sciences." Read the AGU announcement. (07/26)
  • Rob DeConto is the 2016 recipient of the Tinker-Muse Prize for Antarctic Science and Policy, the top international award for Antarctic science. The $100,000 award recognizes demonstrated potential for sustained and significant contributions that will enhance the understanding and/or preservation of Antarctica. Rob has also been selected to serve on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. (06/22)
  • The National Science Foundation has awarded $348,218 to Ray Bradley and Isla Castañeda for their proposal, "Reconstruction of climate at the Norse Settlements of Greenland over the last two millennia using organic biomarkers in lake sediments". The project will include development of a project web site with explanatory material about changes in North Atlantic climate and the history of human migration across the region, to connect the general public with different aspects of the scientific research. The project will also contribute to the Girls Inc. Eureka! program, which is being run in collaboration with Girls Inc. and the College of Natural Sciences. Eureka! is a nationally recognized program designed to engage girls aged 12-18, in the exploration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, and to address the gender gap in those key disciplines. (04/05)
  • Rob DeConto and colleague Dave Pollard applied a newly improved numerical ice-sheet model calibrated to Pliocene and Last Interglacial sea-level estimates to develop projections of how Antarctica's ice sheets may respond to warming, and what the rates of sea-level change might be. The study, published in the journal Nature, suggests that Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100. (03/30)
  • Ed Gasson, Rob DeConto and colleagues have published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which examines advance and retreat of the Antarctic ice sheet during the Miocene. (02/22)
  • Julie Brigham-Grette served as co-master of ceremonies for a free public program, "Arctic Matters Day," at NAS headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Jan. 14. She also delivered the inaugural public webinar in an Arctic research seminar series hosted by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) on Friday, Jan. 15. UMass news release (01/15)
  • Ph.D. student Greg de Wet and Geosciences colleagues Isla Castañeda, Rob DeConto, and Julie Brigham-Grette have published a study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters describing a new mid-Pleistocene temperature record from Lake El'gygytgyn. See the paper here. (01/08)
 
2015
  • CSRC postdoc Molly Patterson and recent PhD graduate student Chris Lowery have been selected for the UNOLS Chief Scientist Training Cruise on the RV Thompson, to be held in 2016. (12/31)
  • Ray Bradley and former CSRC postdocs Nick Balascio and Billy D'Andrea, writing in the journal Climates of the Past, found that glaciers in Greenland have been retreating quickly, at a rate at least twice as fast as any other time in the past 9,500 years. (12/04)
  • Ed Gasson and colleagues published a model study in the journal Nature which examines the vulnerability of Antarctica's ice shelves. (10/14)
  • Doug Hardy was profiled in a video clip on The Guardian website in which he described the satellite-linked weather station on top of the Quelccaya ice cap that he has operated since 2003. (10/12)
  • Ray Bradley gave an invited talk "Elevation-dependent warming: evidence, mechanisms and research needs" at the recent conference Mountains of Our Future Earth, held at The University of the Highlands and Islands, Perth, Scotland. (10/8)
  • Mike Rawlins and an international team published a study in the journal Biogeosciences which found that most of the nine climate models examined strongly disagree on land-atmosphere sink of CO2 across northern Eurasia. They also concluded that models likely underestimate the region's sink, and that soil carbon residence time is decreasing. See the UMass news release. (7/28)
  • Doug Hardy, Steve Burns and colleagues used snow δO18 records from the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru to analyze linkages between snowfall and the South American summer monsoon. Their study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. (7/15)
  • Rob DeConto and a group of climate scientists say we are on the verge of understanding how quickly the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets may respond to warming, and what the rates of sea-level change might be. Their study was published in the journal Science. See the UMass news release. (7/9)
  • PhD student Greg de Wet has been awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) award from the GEOGRAPHY program at NSF for his proposal "Reconstruction of Climate and Human Occupancy at the Eastern Settlement of the Norse in Greenland Over the Last Two Millennia". (6/1)
  • Julie Brigham-Grette has accepted an invitation by the AGU's Global Environmental Change (GEC) Focus Group to give the Tyndall Lecture at the Fall Meeting in December in San Francisco. (4/23)
  • Liang Ning and Ray Bradley have published a study which examines projections of extreme climate events across the Northeast US. See the article here. (04/20)
  • Paleoclimatology 3rd edition, authored by Ray Bradley, has been awarded among the 2015 Textbook Excellence Award Winners (College) by The Text and Academic Authors Association. It was one of seven textbooks receiving the 2015 Textbook Excellence Award which recognizes excellence in current textbook and learning materials in their 2nd edition or later. See the announcement here. (2/24)
  • Rob DeConto and collaborators Dave Pollard and Richard Alley at Penn State University have published results from a model study which suggests that oceanic melting, hydrofracturing, and related mechanisms operating across the East Antarctic Ice Sheet can explain past global sea-level rises. The paper in Earth and Planetary Science Letters can be accessed here. (1/8)
 
2014
  • Ray Bradley and postdoctoral scholar Liang Ning, along with colleague and lead author Henry Diaz, described in the most recent edition of Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research a suite of recent changes in the climate of mountain regions in the western hemisphere. They suggest that future climatic warming will result in an enhancement of the recent observed changes. See the article here. (10/24)
  • Alan Condron and colleague Jenna Hill (Coastal Carolina University) have published a study which suggests that icebergs and meltwater from the North American ice sheet would have regularly reached South Carolina and even southern Florida during the last ice age about 21,000 year ago. The research applied a high-resolution numerical model and images of the sea floor from Cape Hatteras to Florida and shows that icebergs drifting to southern Florida were at least 1,000 feet, or 300 meters thick. See the article here and UMass press release here. (10/14)
  • Ray Bradley and colleagues recently published a paper in the Journal of Paleolimnology that describes a new method to derive time markers from volcanic ash (tephra) deposits. They concluded that a well-developed image library would make the new method most effective. See the article here. (09/23)
  • Rob DeConto presented the S.T. Lee Lecture in Antarctic Studies on Sept. 3 at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. The meeting was endowed by Seng Tee Lee, a Singapore businessman and philanthropist, to provide a platform for prominent scholars to discuss important issues. See the full UMass news release here. (09/04)
  • Liang Ning and Ray Bradley published a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research that describes their study which links precipitation variability across the Northeast US with several modes of climate variability. They found that both the drought of the 1960s and the positive precipitation anomalies in 2009/2010 had links to El Nino and La Nina conditions. See the article here. (07/30)
  • Rob DeConto and Ray Bradley have received an award from the UMass president's Science and Technology Initiatives Fund to develop a Center for Computational Climatology & Paleoclimatology. The Center will bring together academic scientists and engineers, industrial researchers, and users of high-performance computing resources to the issue of climate change. The grant will help develop climate-related computation and numerical modeling of value to the Commonwealth, and contribute to the field of climate science by applying big-data computational analysis, modeling, data mining, and visualization to climate-change research. Read the UMass announcement here. (07/17)
  • Alan Condron and Ray Bradley have received a grant award from the National Science Foundation for a project "Paleocrystic Arctic sea ice export and its relationship to abrupt climate change". The project will support a PhD student over the 3 year project period. (07/13)
  • Dr. Toni Lyn Morelli, Program Manager of the Northeast Climate Science Center, facilitated 4 days of discussions among scientists and NPS and USFS resource managers on the topic of climate change refugia. These workshops were part of a larger effort to develop the refugia concept into a tool for climate adaptation and were supported by a grant from the California Landscape Conservation Cooperative. (06/04)
  • PhD student Greg de Wet has been awarded a Fulbright research scholarship to spend January to June of 2015 studying with Dr. Jostein Bakke at the University of Bergen, Norway. Greg is a paleoclimatologist who specializes in Arctic lake sediments. He will be working with Dr. Bakke on lake sediment cores from Svalbard to reconstruct climate change over the Holocene. (05/22)
  • Ray Bradley and Mike Rawlins have been interviewed by several media organizations following the release of the National Climate Assessment report on 6 May. Mike was interviewed for a segment which aired on the university's NPR station WFCR. Ray was quoted in a story on the report in the Boston Globe. Mike also appeared on the WGBY program Connecting Point. (05/19)
  • The University of Massachusetts has announced Ray Bradley as the next Zuckerberg Leadership Chair. This award is given to one faculty member every 2 years for demonstrated leadership impact in research, teaching or service and the potential for broader leadership impact. More details can be found here (05/05)
  • M.S./Ph.D. student Ben Keisling has been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The nationally competitive fellowship will provide three years of full financial support over a five-year fellowship period. Ben's proposal focused on using organic biomarkers from Lake El'gygytgyn and isotope-enabled climate models to explore how the Arctic environment changed at the onset of the earth's first "ice ages," 2.7 million years ago. (03/20)
  • Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick has announced a new climate change initiative for the state and proposed that a state climatologist be funded and housed on the UMass-Amherst campus. UMass News & Media Relations (01/16)
 
2013
  • Honorary degrees were conferred on three of the world's leading climate scientists in ceremonies on the UMass campus. The Climate Science Symposium and Convocation took place October 18th and 19th. Over the same weekend the Geosciences Department opened a lush new display of minerals in Morrill Science Center. UMass News Release (10/19)
  • Ray Bradley has received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. The award cited Professor Bradley's "outstanding contributions to the studies of climate variability and environmental evolution". More information is available in the UMass News Release (6/12)
  • Julie Brigham-Grette and colleagues described in a paper in the journal Science their analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the Arctic. Their results show that with estimated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) similar to today's levels, the Arctic was very warm, with no ice sheets. Here is a UMass News Release and a video interview with Dr. Brigham-Grette (5/9)
  • Researchers and students from Norway, Japan, Korea, England, Canada and the U.S. met in Amherst for the 43rd annual International Arctic Workshop hosted recently by UMass Amherst. A number of Geosciences students and faculty presented their research at the meeting. The Arctic Workshop website and a UMass Video. (3/11)
 
2012
  • In the current issue of Nature Geoscience, Alan Condron and colleague Ian Renfrew published a study describing the influence of small powerful extratropical cyclones on the underlying ocean. "The impact of polar mesoscale storms on northeast Atlantic circulation" (12/18)
  • Rob D'Anjou, Ray Bradley, Nick Balascio, and Dave Finklestein published a study in which they used biomarkers from prehistoric human feces to track settlement and other migration dynamics across Norway. "Climate impacts on human settlement and agricultural activities in northern Norway revealed through sediment biogeochemistry" (12/17)
  • Mike Rawlins, Ray Bradley, and colleague Henry Diaz published a study characterizing projections for changes in climate across the Northeast US by mid-century. Their investigation leveraged a suite of regional climate model data. "Assessment of regional climate model simulation estimates over the northeast United States" (12/12)
  • Alan Condron and colleague Pete Windsor published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reporting the first conclusive evidence that meltwater flooding from glacial Lake Agassiz must have flowed north into the Arctic first down the Mackenzie River valley before ending up in the North Atlantic Ocean. The event in believed to have ushered in the last major cold episode on Earth about 12,900 years ago. Read the paper here. (11/5)
  • Ray Bradley, Nick Balascio and colleagues published a paper in the journal Geology which documents how summers on the archipelago of Svalbard are now warmer than at any other time in the last 1,800 years. Lead author Billy D'Andrea, formerly a post-doc with the Climate System Research Center, is a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Read more in the press release and the journal article.
  • Ray Bradley gave the keynote address at the International Conference on Culture, Climate Change and Politics at the University of Colorado on September 14th. The meeting brought together social scientists, journalists, economists and political scientists from more than 20 countries to examine issues of communication, the role of the media, and politics, in relation to the problem of global warming. Dr. Bradley's book Global Warming and Political Intimidation, (Umass Press, 2011) has just been released in a Japanese translation by Kagaku Dojin, Tokyo.
  • Rob D'Anjou received the best student poster award at the Organic Geochemistry Gordon Research Conference (July 28-29) for his presentation "Biogeochemical insights on Holocene Environmental change: connecting climate, settlement, and early agriculture in northern Norway".
  • Julie Brigham-Grette, Rob DeConto, Tim Cook, Anthony Coletti, and several colleague have published a study of a high-resolution record from a sediment core from Lake El'gygytgyn (NE Russia) that spans the past 2.8 Ma. The article appears in the journal Science. It describes numerous "super interglacials" during the Quaternary period and suggests strong climate connectivity between the northern and southern hemispheres. Read the online paper here or get the PDF here.
  • Faculty members Julie Brigham-Grette and Isla Castañeda, along with graduate students Sam Davin, Greg DeWet, and Jeremy Wei presented research results at the American Quaternary Association (AMQUA) meeting in Duluth, Minnesota, June 21-24.
  • Addie Holland was featured in an article in the Greenfield Recorder which described her research and outreach work along with the connections between climate change and small businesses.
  • Nick Balascio and Ray Bradley published a paper in the Journal of Paleolimnology that describes Holocene climate changes in the North Atlantic through analysis of sediment cores from two lakes in the Lofoten Islands, Norway. Read the paper here.
  • Mike Rawlins was interviewed by several television (WGGB, WWLP), radio (WFCR, NPR Boston, WGBH, Northeast Public Radio, WAMC), and print (Daily Hampshire Gazette) outlets about the record warm spring temperatures across the region.
  • Rob DeConto and colleagues published a paper in the journal Nature that suggests thawing permafrost and subsequent releases of carbon dioxide fed a series of extreme warming events on Earth, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, about 50 million years ago. Read the paper here.
  • Lisa Kanner, Stephen Burns and colleagues published a paper in the journal Science which describes evidence that warm-cold climate oscillations well known in the Northern Hemisphere over the most recent glacial period also appear as tropical rainfall variations in the Amazon Basin of South America. Read the paper here.
 
2011
  • Following the recent historic October snowstorm, Mike Rawlins discussed the Nor'easter and climate change impacts to New England in an interview with WGBY's Carrie Saldo on the PBS program Connecting Point. He also spoke with WFCR's Carrie Healy about the snowstorm and other recent extreme weather events. The interviews came on the heels of a UMass news release which summarized the records set during the rare October snowstorm which impacted New England.
  • The University of Massachusetts Amherst has been chosen to lead a consortium of seven universities and host a major new center, the Northeast Climate Science Center. With the five-year, $7.5 million grant the new science center will support federal, state and other agencies by studying the effects of climate change on ecosystems, wildlife, water and other resources in the region. See the press release here.
  • Ray Bradley spoke with WAMC's Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill to discuss global warming and politics. Listen here.
  • Ray Bradley, Director of the Climate System Research Center, writes a description of his new book, "Global Warning and Political Intimidation: How Politicians Cracked Down on Scientists as the Earth Heated Up," published by UMass Press. Bradley discusses how conservative and pro-business members of Congress, supported by the fossil fuel industry, have sought to discredit scientists who say the global climate is warming and is caused in part by human activity. (Washington Post, 6/21/11)
  • Billy D'Andrea and colleagues at Brown University published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which suggests that variations in the earth's climate cooled Greenland significantly and likely doomed Norse populations around AD 1500. Using data derived from algal fat stored in lake sediments, he and his colleagues found evidence showing that significant shifts in average temperatures correlate with the rise and fall of Greenland cultures. Read the paper here.
  • Sebastian Koenig and Rob DeConto, in collaboration with Dave Pollard from Penn State University, published a paper in the journal Climate Dynamics which described their use of a coupled GCM - ice sheet model to quantify thresholds for glaciation on ice-free Greenland. They find that ice sheet growth is highly dependent on orbital forcing, internal feedbacks (such as vegetation) and background CO2 levels. Results imply that re-growth of a present-day Greenland ice sheet may not be possible given current atmospheric CO2 levels. Read the paper here.
  • Alan Condron and colleagues reported in Geophysical Research Letters that meltwater discharged from glacial Lake Agassiz, previously assumed to have flooded over the entire northern North Atlantic 8,200 years ago, would have flowed thousands of miles further south. Their findings challenge conceptual ideas of possible triggers for abrupt climate change. Read the paper here and see the press release here.
  • Mike Rawlins was interviewed by several media organizations about the record January snowfall and the cold winter conditions in the eastern US and Europe. Read the UMass press release here. A list of the media articles and interviews is here.
  • Nick Balascio, Ray Bradley, and colleagues published an approach to assessing isolation basin stratigraphy from the Lofoten Islands, Norway. The paper appeared in the journal Quaternary Research. Read the article here. In another paper, also published this month, they presented an application of tephrochronology to an archaeological site in the Lofoten Islands in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Read it here.
  • Rob DeConto was interviewed and featured in a PBS NOVA special on the ANDRILL project in Antarctica. Watch the program here.
  • Kaitlyn Weider and David Boutt published a study of water table response to the last 60 years of climate in New England. The work appeared in Geophysical Research Letters. Read the article here.
 
2010
  • Geosciences doctoral candidate Beth Caissie has been selected for the 2010 Denise Gaudreau Award for Excellence in Quaternary Studies. More on the award and Beth's research can be found here.
  • The research of Julie Brigham-Grette and colleagues has been described in a feature article in the online magazine 'Earth'. The article discusses the drilling project that took place in Lake El'gygytgyn in Siberia in 2009. It can be found here.
  • PhD candidate Sebastian Koenig was awarded the University of Massachusetts Eugene M. Isenberg Scholar Award for the 2010/2011 academic year. The fellowship was established to support University of Massachusetts graduate students who demonstrate academic merit and a commitment to the integration of science, engineering and management. More on the Isenberg awards here.
  • Mike Rawlins and colleagues from the United States, Norway and Finland have found that the Arctic's freshwater cycle is intensifying, consistent with model projections. The finding are to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Climate. The analysis involved a synthesis of data for the terrestrial Arctic and the Arctic Ocean. See the full story here.
  • In May, Doug Hardy and colleague Carsten Braun conducted fieldwork at their automated weather station (AWS) on Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru. Doug and Carsten spent 5 days at the summit, upgrading and servicing the AWS and making glaciological measurements. In a cooperative venture with NOAA's Climate Reference Network Program (CRN), additional instrumentation was added for highly-accurate measurements of humidity and radiation. Previously installed CRN temperature sensors continue to function perfectly. A highlight of the field effort was their discovery of a weather station that had been installed on the glacier in June 1978 and buried just a few months later. Doug suspects that the station emerged due to anomalously warm conditions during the 2009 El Nino episode. Images of the discovery can be seen here.
 
2009
  • Doug Hardy and colleagues from Ohio State University are reporting in the November 2 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) that glaciers, which have existed on Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro for 11,700 years, are continuing to shrink, and predict they will disappear within decades. See the full story here.
  • Beth Caissie, a doctoral candidate here in geosciences, spent most of her summer on the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia as a member of an international team of scientists researching historial weather patterns. See the full story here.
  • Doug Hardy has been researching and reporting about the changes that are occuring on Kilimanjaro. And a blog has now been set-up to discuss these changes. Check it out here.
  • Ray Bradley and colleagues from 6 other institutions as well as the Arctic Lakes 2k team members are reporting in the September 4 issue of Science that a new reconstruction of Arctic climate compiled from temperature indicators over the past 2000 years shows persuasive evidence that until about 1950, the Arctic had been naturally cooling over the previous 1900 years. The trend reversed about 50 years ago. See the full story here.
  • Dave Vaillencourt, an undergraduate in the Department of Geosciences, along with Al Werner (Mt. Holyoke) and Steve Roof (Hampshire) have been in Svalbard (Norway) this summer as part of the Keck Geology Consortium. And while there, Dave has been blogging about his experience, Check it out here.
  • A team of scientists from the U.S., Germany, Russia, and Austria returned in late May from a six-month drilling expedition to a frozen lake in Siberia: Lake El'gygytgyn. The lead U.S. scientist on the project was Julie Brigham-Grette, who was supported by graduate students Kenna Wilkie and Addie Holland. See the full story here.
  • Mark Besonen has been offered a tenure-track Assistant Professor position at Texas A & M, Corpus Christi!
  • UMass Geology senior Carrie Petrik has received a Climate Fellowship from the non-profit Clean Air-Cool Planet. Climate Fellowships pair outstanding students with challenging projects aimed at moving the US towards a low-carbon future. Carrie will work with Sustainable Nantucket's Volunteer Green Council, and various town agencies and departments to draft a Climate Protection Action Plan for Nantucket.
  • PhD candidate Nicholas Balascio was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to spend a year at the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research at the University of Bergen in Norway. While there, he will be continuing his research reconstructing climate over the past 14,000 years utilizing lake sediment cores from the Lofoten Islands in northwestern Norway.
  • Rob DeConto and climate scientists elsewhere are reporting in two papers in the March 19 issue of Nature that a slight rise in past ocean temperatures has affected the stability of Antarctic ice. This ice traps one of the largest supplies of fresh water on Earth. See the full story here.
  • An international research team led by Julie Brigham-Grette, along with graduate students Kenna Wilkie and Addie Holland, began drilling a sediment core under frozen Lake El'gygytgyn in Siberia. The core, 1.5 times longer than the Empire State Building, will provide the longest time-continuous climate record ever collected in the Arctic. This story also appeared in the March 16 edition of The Boston Globe. See the full story here.
  • Doug Hardy was interviewed on "The Take Away", a national morning news program, about the retreat of the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro and the relationship of this retreat with global climate change. Listen to the full interview here.
  • Rob DeConto, Mark Leckie, and colleagues at four institutions are reporting in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal Science that current climate models do not match the level of warmth in the polar region prior to the southern hemisphere ice expansion 34 million years ago. These findings contradict the long-held idea that global temperatures remained steady over that transition period. Their research has implications for the evaluation of global climate change. See the full story here.
  • Steve Burns, Francisco Cruz (University of Sao Paolo), Mathias Vuille (the State University of New York, Albany) (both formerly of the Department of Geosciences), and colleagues from 3 other institutions are reporting in the Feb. 22 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience that the widely-known climate anomaly in Brazil's dry Nordeste region can be explained by a surprising air circulation pattern. See the full story here.
  • Mark Leckie is currently assessing the readiness of the research vessel Joides Resolution (JR) in the western equatorial Pacific. The ship is designed to explore and monitor the sub-seafloor. See the full story here. The vessel will be part of a science program known as the Pacific Equatorial Age Transect (PEAT), with the results leading to a clearer understanding of Earth's climate over the past 55 million years. See more on this expedition here.
 
2008
  • Doug Hardy and his son Spencer, 14, recently reported in the September issue of the Wilson Journal of Ornithology what is believed to be the first well documented evidence of a bird other than a penguin nesting directly on ice, in the Andes Mountains. Hardy found evidence over the past four seasons of studying climate on the Quelccaya Ice Cap high above Cuzco, Peru that a bird species was nesting on the glacier.See the full story here.
  • Rob DeConto and colleagues at four institutions are reporting in the Oct. 2 issue of the journal Nature that their latest climate model of the Northern Hemisphere suggests conditions would have allowed ice sheets to form there for the last 25 million years, or about 22 million years earlier than generally assumed. Their research has implications for the evaluation of global climate change. See the full story here.
  • Newly published research by Mark Besonen shows the frequency of hurricanes striking the Boston area has varied widely over the last millennium, with periods of lowest activity corresponding to cooler surface temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic Ocean. See the full story here.
  • PhD candidate Kinuyo Kanamaru was invited to attend the 6th Annual NCAR Early Career Scientist Assembly (ECSA) Junior Faculty Forum, in Boulder, Colorado, from 8-10 July 2008, and was awarded a full grant from the assembly organizer to attend the forum.
  • PhD candidate Kinuyo Kanamaru was invited to attend a workshop on "Reducing and Representing Uncertainties in High-Resolution Proxy Data" in Trieste, Italy, from June 9 to 11, 2008, and was awarded a full grant from the National Science Foundation to attend the workshop.
  • PhD candidate Kinuyo Kanamaru was invited by Drilling, Observation and Sampling of the Earths Continental Crust (DOSECC) to present results from her internship during the 12th annual workshop in Salt Lake City, UT, from 2 to 5 June 2008.
  • Steven Petsch and graduate student Sarah Schillawski have added a new source of carbon dioxide to the complex climate change puzzle by showing that ancient rocks can release substantial amounts of organic matter into Earth's rivers and oceans, and that this organic matter is easily converted by bacteria to carbon dioxide, which enters the atmosphere and contributes to climate change. See the full story here.
  • PhD candidate Sebastian Koenig was awarded a scholarship by the ANtarctic DRILLing program (ANDRILL) and the Antarctic Climate Evolution project (ACE), to attend at the 5th Urbino Summer School in Paleoclimatology on "Past Climate Reconstruction and Modelling Techniques."
  • El 17 de junio, Dr. R.S. Bradley dio una conferencia en el Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru en Lima ("Cambio climático en los Andes: pasado, presente y futuro"). Un versión espagñol se puede ver aqui.
  • Ray Bradley has been elected an External (Foreign) Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Membership in the academy is granted by invitation only to meritorious scholars. The academy is the largest scientific and academic society in Finland, and is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
  • PhD candidate Sebastian Koenig was host of the "ThinkSwiss Climate Trail", which formed part of the Cambridge Science Festival held in Cambridge, MA April 26-May 4, 2008.
  • PhD candidate Nicholas Balascio was awarded a student scholarship from the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS) to attend and present his research at their 20th Annual Meeting and Arctic Forum in Washington, D.C. entitled "Tipping Points - The Arctic and Global Change".
  • POLAR-PALOOZA is a public education and outreach project supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA to bring information and insights about the Poles to large public audiences across America. Julie Brigham-Grette of UMass is a member of the science team for shows at The Salt Lake City Library Auditorium in Salt Lake and at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History in Norman, OK.
  • Kate Zalzal was named a Summer Synthesis Scholar and will participate in the 2008 Summer Synthesis Institute. The Institute is sponsored by the Northeast Consortium for Hydrologic Synthesis and the central question for this year's Institute is: What was the nature of hydro-systems across the Northeastern U.S. from pre-European settlement through the colonial period (1600-1776), and what were the relative roles of humans and the natural environment in defining those systems?
  • Frank Keimig presented talks on global warming and climate change at the Sunderland Public Library and the Sturbridge Senior Center.
  • Ray Bradley appeared on "Watercooler" on WGBY (Springfield, MA PBS station) discussing global warming on April 16.
  • Ray Bradley was interviewed on past climate change by Laurie Sanders of WFCR for her weekly program "Field Notes". Listen here to the April 7 broadcast and here to the April 14 broadcast.
  • Julie Brigham-Grette and Robert DeConto have been invited to host one of 11 exhibits at the National Science Foundation Open House on Feb. 4 in Arlington, Va. The team will represent an international group of scientists recovering a complete 3.6 million-year record of the arctic climate from a remote Siberian lake. Read more here.
  • Steve Petsch was interviewed by WFCR concerning his research on natural gas formed by bacteria in rock. Listen to the interview here and see a description of Steve's research here.
  • Julie Brigham-Grette was interviewed on climate change by Laurie Sanders of WFCR (local public radio station) for her weekly program "Field Notes". Listen here to the January 21 broadcast.
 
2007
  • Several members of the Climate System Research Center were contributors to reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in recent years. The reports earned the panel the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Al Gore, a leading environmentalist and former U.S. vice president. Raymond Bradley, Mathias Vuille and Douglas Hardy were all contributing authors to the IPCC reports. In addition, former Climate Center members Caspar Ammann (now at the National Center for Atmospheric Research) Michael Mann (now at Pennsylvania State University), Mark Serreze (CIRES, University of Colorado) and Pavel Groisman (National Climate Data Center, Asheville, N.C.) also contributed to the reports.
  • PhD student Kinuyo Kanamaru has been awarded a DOSECC (Drilling, Observation and Sampling of the Earths Continental Crust) internship to examine the origin and composition of marine sediments from Saanich Inlet, British Columbia in order to help understand the impact of seismic activity on the long-term sediment flux.
  • PhD student Nicholas Balascio has been awarded the J. Hoover Mackin Research Award from the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of the Geological Society of America for his proposal to study Holocene tsunami deposits in coastal lakes of the Lofoten Islands, Norway. The award supports outstanding Ph.D. student research in Quaternary geology and geomorphology and it will be presented to Mr. Balascio at the Division's awards ceremony during the GSA National Meeting in Denver Colorado on October 30th .
  • Steve Burns receives NOAA research grant for studies of High Resolution Speleothem records of the South American Monsoon over the last 2000 years. Read more.
  • Research Associate Professor Mathias Vuille and Climate Center alumnus Caspar Ammann were hosts of the "ThinkSwiss Climate Trail", which formed part of "The Wonder of Science" street festival held in Boulder Colorado on September 29th. Read more.
  • A three year curriculum development and professional development program entitled "STEM Polar Connections: A three region initiative to integrate the study of Polar Regions and activities associated with the International Polar Year (IPY) into the middle and high school curriculum" has been funded. See the press release.
  • Ray Bradley, Director of the Climate System Research Center has received a three-year, $416,550 award from the National Science Foundation for his project, titled "Volcanoes in the Arctic System: Geochronology and Climate Impacts". See the press release.
  • Ray Bradley, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences, was awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union, for "his contribution to paleoclimate reconstruction from continental archives and for being instrumental in the multi-proxy approach leading to the quantification of climate change over the last millennium". Bradley received the award at a ceremony in Vienna, Austria on April 17th.
  • Ray Bradley briefed Governor Deval Patrick on global warming and climate change on 1/18/2007. Read the briefing here.
 
2006
  • Ray Bradley was on CNN (06/26/2006) discussing issues of greenhouse gases, global warming, and adaptation. (transcript)
  • The National Academy of Sciences released a report on "Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years" on 06/22/2006. Read the reaction of Ray Bradley.
  • Doug Hardy talked about our research activities at the Academy at Charlemont on 05/19/2006.
  • The Climate System Research Center co-sponsored a Public Forum on Climate Change at the UMass Amherst on 04/12/2006.
  • Frank Keimig was part of a panel discussion on Climate Change on 04/03/2006 for the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture of the Massachusetts Legislature.
  • James Bradbury is a contributing member of the Climate Team for the Northeast Climate Impact Assessment (NECIA) project, organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists (reports to be release in the summer/fall of 2006).
  • Frank Keimig presented a talk on Climate Change on 03/23/2006 at the "Massachusetts Envirothon" at Pioneer Regional High School.
  • Carsten Braun gave a talk on Climate Change and Glaciers at a fundraiser in Look Park, Northampton.
  • The Climate System Research Center was well-represented at the 36th International Arctic Workshop in Boulder, Colorado.
  • Carsten Braun talked to students at the Academy at Charlemont on 01/10/2006 about Climate Change and "Global Warming".
 
2005
  • Ray Bradley presented a lecture entitled "An Update on Global Warming" on 12/4/2005 at The First Churches in Northampton, MA.
  • James Bradbury presented two talks on the subjects of "Climate Change and the Hydrologic Cycle" and "The Science of Global Warming and Climate Change" for a Massachusetts Envirothon conference at UMass Amherst in November 2005.
  • Request of Rep. J. Barton and Rep. E. Whitfield for information regarding "Global Warming" studies and response of Ray Bradley and others.
  • Julie Brigham-Grette chairs the Scientific Steering Committee of IGBP PAGES.
  • James Bradbury presented a talk titled "Global Warming and Climate Change" to a dozen public high school teachers (grades 7 to 12) for the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association in July 2005.
 
2004 and before
  • "Paleoclimate, Global Change and the Future" by Alverson, K.D., Bradley, R.S., and Pedersen, T.F. (eds.) has recently been published.


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