Climate Change Institute

The Bangor Daily News spoke with Sean Birkel, Maine’s state climatologist and a research assistant professor at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, for the article, “How Maine can be in a drought, even during record rainfall.” Birkel said drought conditions can spring up relatively quickly, whereas the trend of increasing precipitation is borne […]

Jill Pelto, a graduate student in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine, was included in an Outside Magazine article that featured 10 artists who are turning climate change data into paintings, sculptures and illustrations. Pelto, who is 24 years old, knows that her generation and those that follow are […]

Maine’s coastline is dotted with more than 2,000 archaeologically documented shell middens and virtually all of them are eroding into the ocean, some quite rapidly, which is putting valuable records of Maine’s cultural and environmental history at risk, says Alice Kelley, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Maine. It is a trend that is likely […]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced on July 19 nine grants totaling more than $8 million to study and develop new approaches for the agriculture sector to adapt to and mitigate the effects of changing environmental conditions. The funding is made possible through NIFA’s Agriculture and Food […]

A research team crossing an ice plateau in the Indian Himalayas faced risks of hidden crevasses, storms, avalanches and earthquakes. You might say Paul Mayewski has been around the block. He’s a climate researcher who’s led more than 50 expeditions to such places as the Antarctic, Greenland, the Himalayas, the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes and […]

Gordon Bromley, a research assistant professor at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, spoke with WABI (Channel 5) about an ice shelf weighing more than one trillion metric tons and measuring about the size of Delaware that recently broke off from Antarctica. Bromley, who has taken multiple research trips to the continent, said a […]

Sean Birkel, Maine’s state climatologist and a research assistant professor at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, was interviewed by the Bangor Daily News for the article, “Lots of rain, above average temperatures recorded in June in northern, eastern Maine.” Above average precipitation throughout the state over the winter and spring helped ease the […]

Maine’s wet 2017 winter and spring eased the 2016 drought conditions, says Sean Birkel, University of Maine research assistant professor and Maine State Climatologist. Winter precipitation was 2.3 inches more than normal on a statewide average, he says, totaling 11.7 inches water equivalent. And spring precipitation was 2.5 inches above normal, totaling 12.3 inches water […]

Carl Tugend | University of MaineGlacier National Park, Montana By Abigail Curtis, BDN Staff June 26, 2017, Posted 6:33 a.m. at Last modified June 27, 2017, at 5:51 a.m. Three years ago, Gardiner native Walter Beckwith was working at a dig at a very old, very high altitude archaeological site in southern Peru, searching for […]

The Free Press reported on an exhibit at the University of Maine Hutchinson Center in Belfast that features photography and artwork illustrating the diverse research activities of students, faculty and staff of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute. About two-thirds of the art exhibitors are current or former CCI students, including Jill Pelto, whose watercolors have been […]