Research Videos

The Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2022. Director Paul Mayewski talks about the Center’s history and mission and how it has evolved in the past five decades.

What is the legacy and future of the Climate Change Institute?

The nation’s first multi- and inter-disciplinary research institute to study Earth’s recent and long-term climate variability was founded in 1972 at the University of Maine. That institute, now known as the 

• Climate Change Institute, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, a milestone that honors the many groundbreaking discoveries its scientists have made in the field of climate science. 
• CCI have scientists first mapped the difference between climate during the Ice Age and today in the 1970s; discovered the importance of marine-based ice sheets in the 1980s; connected acid rain to human causes in the mid-1980s; uncovered the concept of abrupt climate change through studying ice cores in Greenland in the mid-1990s; and led expeditions traversing Antarctica to determine the impact of human-sourced pollutants into the 2010s. 
• In this week’s episode of “The Maine Question,” CCI director Paul Andrew Mayewski and researchers Daniel Sandweiss and Cynthia Isenhour discuss the legacy of the institute and its future of discoveries and contributions that will help tackle the all-encompassing challenge of global warming worldwide. 

Maine Question podcast link

50th CCI Anniversary Alumni Video

PBS – The End of the Romans – Secrets of the Dead – Documentary

2022 South Greenland Expedition – Arctic Research & Field Training

2021 Ice Age Breaker Session – Oct. 6, 2021

University of Maine’s Role in the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition – Panel Discussion –  Nov. 15, 2019

2015 Westwind Ice Coring Expedition to South Georgia

Science Nation – Alaska Mountain Glaciers Retreating due to Climate Change

Denali Ice Core 2013

Kuli South Georgia Expedition 2012

Greenland Ice Sheet Melting – Gordon Hamilton

2012 AGU “Lights, Camera, Science!” Student Video Competition Winner: Bess Koffman

2011 Garrand-Andes Expedition

How do ice cores allow researchers to look at global climate change?