Climate Change Institute

February 24, 2011 How severe can climate change become in a warming world? Worse than anything we’ve seen in written history, according to results of a study appearing this week in the journal Science. An international team of scientists led by Curt Stager of Paul Smith’s College, New York, has compiled four dozen paleoclimate records from […]

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide Ice Core Project, an Oregon State-based effort in which UMaine is taking part, was the subject of a story in the Corvallis Gazette-Times of Oregon. Researchers have drilled an ice core with ice that 05 be up to 100,000 years old in search of new clues about climate change.

Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, was quoted in a CBSNews.com story about links between global warming and extreme weather incidents. Mayewski said humans 05 be changing weather patterns such as El Nino and La Nina, which could mean less stable weather patterns in the future.

The salt-water tidal marshes along Maine’s coast are part of an intricate network of waterways along the eastern North American coast that are unique globally. Yet the marshes are disappearing due to rising sea water levels and the development of inland and coastal areas. University of Maine bird biologist Brian Olsen is part of a […]

A University of Maine graduate student has discovered evidence of the oldest identifiable domestic dog in the Americas. Samuel Belknap III, a graduate research assistant working under the direction of Kristin Sobolik in UMaine’s Department of Anthropology and Climate Change Institute, found a 9,400-year-old skull fragment of a domestic dog during analysis of an intact […]

The Lewiston Sun Journal noted a talk being given by George Jacobson, UMaine professor emeritus of biology, ecology and climate change, on “Influences of Climate Variability on Maine’s Forests — Past and Future” at 6:30 p.m. on February 3, at the Farmington Town Office. Jacobson was the director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute for nearly a […]

Melting glaciers in the American West are releasing chemicals that cause ecosystem changes in alpine lakes, including large quantities of nitrogen that reduce 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 […]

A Science Now online news story describes a new measurement technique developed by scientists using seismometers to monitor icequakes, seismic activity caused by calving and other physical changes in glaciers.  Gordon Hamilton of the UMaine Climate Change Institute comments in the story, which describes the data collection method and its potential impact on climate and […]

Comments from Brian Robinson of the UMaine anthropology story are included in a Monday Boston Globe story about research looking at the impact of climate change on prehistoric New England-area culture.  New data are available to scientists, allowing them to build on a 2005 report looking carefully at a 1,300 “mini ice age” reflecting significant […]

Comments from Gordon Hamilton, a professor in UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, are included in a front-page Sunday New York Times story detailing scientific research related to changes in Greenland’s glaciers.  The story says that Hamilton and others are working “to answer one of the most urgent – and most widely debated – questions facing humanity: […]