Climate Change Institute

  Endothermy, or the ability to maintain body temperature at a constant and elevated level, is a signature mammalian characteristic. But global climate change is affecting mammalian temperature regulation in a variety of ways as it reshapes natural habitats. Understanding the impact of temperature fluctuations on mammals that inhabit diverse environments is critical to identifying […]

Next April, Václava “Vendy” Hazuková will go to an arid, treeless area in West Greenland to solve a puzzle. It’s not known how lakes there contribute to Arctic carbon cycling — the process in which carbon atoms move from the atmosphere to the Earth and back. Where carbon is — including in the atmosphere, oceans, […]

Alice Kelley, undergraduate coordinator in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine, and UMaine graduate Jackie Bellefontaine spoke with CNN for a story about the importance of understanding climate change in finding solutions. Bellefontaine is a weather observer and educational specialist at the weather observatory on Mt. Washington; Kelley was […]

Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, talked with Maine Public about a United Nations climate change report that highlights the urgency of the problem and reduces the timeline for meaningful response to global change from 2050 to 2030.

Alessandro Mereghetti, PhD student at the Climate Change Institute, has been awarded a Charles A. and June R.P. Ross Research Grant from the Geological Society of America for the project “Megaherbivores niche partitioning in Pleistocene Beringia”. The project aims at reconstructing the community structure of extinct Arctic herbivores by analyzing a set of 60 coprolites […]

Bradfield Lyon, an associate research professor in climate analysis at the University of Maine, spoke with The Guardian for a story about the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. “By mid-century, the spatial size of heatwaves in the U.S. are expected to increase between about 50% to 80% from what they are in the current […]

Research Learning Experiences This fall we have big plans for you, our students. We think it is important to provide experiences that give you the chance to open your mind to different ways of learning and to unlock doors to many different horizons. We are kicking off a new tradition for incoming first-year students as […]

The Impact of a Six-Year Climate Anomaly on the “Spanish Flu” Pandemic and WWI Alexander F. More, Christopher P. Loveluck, Heather Clifford, Michael J. Handley, Elena V. Korotkikh, Andrei V. Kurbatov, Michael McCormick, Paul A. Mayewski First published: 15 September 2020 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GH000277 Citations: 1 Abstract The H1N1 “Spanish influenza” pandemic of 1918–1919 caused the highest […]

Examining history can reveal some of the same problems faced today, along with how to cope with them. On the northern coast of Peru, a hot spot for El Niño events, Andean indigenous groups adapted for thousands of years through methods like cycling farming to higher ground. Some of these agricultural methods were previously revealed […]

The Bangor Daily News spoke with Ellen Mallory, a University of Maine professor of sustainable agriculture, and Sean Birkel, a research assistant professor with the Climate Change Institute, about the impact of changing weather patterns on the growing season in Maine. Mallory noted that it is likely the U.S. Department of Agriculture will adjust Maine’s […]