In a new study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, CSRC Ph.D candidate Anna Ruth Halberstadt and an international team used numerical models and geologic datasets to reconstruct Antarctic climate during the the mid-Miocene. Read more in the UMass press release and journal article.
Author Archives: Climate System Research Center
Research reveals more than a third of U.S. Corn Belt farmland has lost a carbon-rich topsoil
Research conducted by UMass Amherst Geosciences graduate student Evan Thaler, along with professors Isaac Larsen and Qian Yu, developed a method using satellite imagery to map areas in agricultural fields in the Corn Belt of the Midwestern U.S. that have no remaining A-horizon soil. Read the UMass news release and see the journal article for more information.
Study using lake sediments reveals Atlantic sea-surface temperatures are warming
A study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Francois Lapointe, Raymond Bradley and colleagues documents how Atlantic sea-surface temperatures in the recent decade are warmest as compared to their estimates spanning the past 3,000 years. Read the press release here.
Julie Brigham-Grette and Steve Petsch publish article in The Conversation
In an article published in The Conversation, CSRC members Julie Brigham-Grette and Steve Petsch write about how recent Arctic warming foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet. Click here to read the article.
New paper on Future climate response to Antarctic Ice Sheet melt caused by anthropogenic warming
In a new paper published in Science Advances, CSRC PhD student Shaina Sadai and Rob DeConto along with Alan Condron (Woods Hole) and Davis Pollard (Penn State) examined impacts of accelerated ice melt from the Antarctic Ice Sheet on future climate. Read the press release here.
Julie Brigham-Grette awarded Geological Society of America (GSA) Continental Scientific Drilling Division (CSD) Distinguished Lecturer 2020
The Geological Society of America’s (GSA) Continental Scientific Drilling Division (CSD) Geosciences Professor Julie Brigham-Grette as one of its two Distinguished Lecturers for 2020, which means she will be available to give online seminars on her Arctic drilling research to geologists anywhere in the world by request this fall and into spring 2021. Read more in the UMass news release.
New National Science Foundation project to drill through the Greenland Ice Sheet
Rob DeConto and teams from Columbia, Penn State and the University at Buffalo will receive $3 million in research funds and $4 million for field operations to drill through the Greenland Ice Sheet and into the bedrock below, where they will be able to evaluate how long it has been since the last ice sheet retreated from the continent. Read the news release here.
NOAA Report on U.S. High Tide Flooding
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released a report on coastal flooding in the U.S. caused by rising seas due to the warming climate. The CSRC’s Rob DeConto commented in an article in the Boston Globe on high tide flooding and the report. “This problem isn’t going away …. the combination of ongoing sea-level rise and increasing tidal range in the 2030s will conspire to really increase the number of these nuisance flood events.”
Northeast America’s Fastest Warming Region
An article in Inside Climate News includes quotes by Ambarish Karmalkar. ““If you look at the spatial pattern of warming, then what you find is that you see much higher warming in the coastal areas in New England,” he says. Click here to read the article.
Huge Stores of Arctic Sea Ice Likely Contributed to Past Climate Cooling
In a new paper, Alan Condron (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), CSRC Director Ray Bradley, and graduate student Anthony Joyce propose that massive amounts of melting sea ice in the Arctic drained into the North Atlantic and disrupted climate-steering currents, thus playing an important role in causing past abrupt climate change after the last Ice Age. See the full press release and the paper published in Geology.