Climate Change Institute

Melting glaciers in the American West are releasing chemicals that cause ecosystem changes in alpine lakes, including large quantities of nitrogen that reduces biodiversity, according to an international research team led by University of Maine paleoecologist Jasmine Saros. The study, funded by a $509,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, determined that glaciers in alpine […]

An international science journal this week published a paper, authored by a UMaine Ph.D. candidate, which claims to resolve a long-standing debate about the end of the last ice age in New Zealand. Aaron Putnam, a glacial geologist in UMaine’s Department of Earth Sciences and Climate Change Institute, was the primary author of the paper […]

UMaine Climate Change Institute glaciologist Gordon Hamilton is featured in a Rolling Stone Magazine story about the accelerated melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.  Writer Ben Wallace-Wells spent time with Hamilton and his colleagues during an expedition to Greenland.  The story also makes reference to the work of Hamilton’s UMaine graduate student Leigh […]

Millennial-scale cold reversals in the high latitudes of both hemispheres interrupted the last transition from full glacial to interglacialclimate conditions. The presence of the Younger Dryas stadial (12.9 to 11.7 kyr ago) is established throughout muchof the Northern Hemisphere, but the global timing, nature and extent of the event are not well established. Evidence in […]

University of Maine anthropologist Kristin Sobolik argues that you are what you eat — and what your ancestors ate, and what their ancestors ate, and so on, for millennia. For that reason, today’s human diet is in a sad state of affairs and, quite frankly, our bodies weren’t designed for this. Problem is, it could […]

The snow-free landscape of Allan Hills has been a scientific destination for decades. Explorers have made the hour-long plane ride from McMurdo Station, the primary base of U.S. operations in Antarctica, to look for evidence of prehistoric and extraterrestrial remains in the form of dinosaur bones and meteorites. Paleoclimate scientist Andrei Kurbatov comes for some […]

Discovery of a nanodiamond-rich layer in the Greenland ice sheet  Andrei V. KURBATOV, Paul A. MAYEWSKI, Jorgen P. STEFFENSEN, Allen WEST, Douglas J. KENNETT, James P. KENNETT, Ted E. BUNCH, Mike HANDLEY, Douglas S. INTRONE, Shane S. QUE HEE, Christopher MERCER, Marilee SELLERS, Feng SHEN, Sharon B. SNEED, James C.WEAVER, James H. WITTKE, Thomas W. […]

When the oceanic phenomenon El Niño strikes every four to seven years, it wreaks havoc on the world’s weather patterns, fishing and agriculture. University of Maine anthropologist Dan Sandweiss wants to know how ancient civilizations coped with these blows to their way of life.  For the past five years, Sandweiss has been collaborating with researchers […]

Water, sometimes plentiful, other times scarce, is a vital resource to humans and the environment, but finding a balance that keeps the needs of both fulfilled is complicated, especially when combined with climate change concerns. A University of Maine research team studying how shifting climate conditions are affecting water supplies in Maine also is looking […]

Rapid warming and consequent ice-shelf collapse have focused attention on the glacial record of the Antarctic Peninsula. Here, we present the first record of terrestrial organic material exposed by recently retreating ice that bears on past glacier extent and climate in this sensitive region. Radiocarbon dates show that ice on Anvers Island was at or […]