Climate Change Institute

Alessandro Mereghetti has 59 time capsules from Siberia that will give insights into which animals lived there more than 20,000 years ago, as well as what plants they ate and how they interacted with the landscape over millennia. These time capsules from the Siberian permafrost are coprolites. Also called fossilized feces. “Poop is a time […]

The Bangor Daily News noted that Ivan Fernandez was one of the recipients of the Natural Resources Council of Maine’s 2021 Conservation Leadership Awards. The award recognizes Fernandez, a University of Maine professor of soil science and forest resources, “for his leadership as one of Maine’s top climate scientists, providing policy-makers and the public with […]

As the United Nations prepares to kick off its annual Climate Change Conference of the Parties next week, students in a political science class at the University of Maine will debate international climate action tomorrow as part of a semester-long simulation of U.N. negotiations. Their debate on international climate action will be held at 3:30 […]

Interdisciplinary research is the heart of CCI.  We have to know what each other is doing in order to build new collaborations. The CCI Ice-Age Breaker is one of two annual events designed to bring us together to share our interests and strengths. This event features CCI faculty flash talks about what they do, so […]

The 2019 National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition that six Climate Change Institute explorers participated in set three Guinness World Records. The three records, featured in the latest edition of the Guinness World Records book: Highest altitude Ice core taken: 8,020 meters (26,312 feet), extracted from the South Col glacier. The complex operation […]

Rising Tides: Changes in Sea Level along the Maine Coast  video (13 min) [YouTube] Dr. Joseph Kelley is a marine geologist who studies the sea floor, coastlines, and sea level. In this video, Dr. Kelley explains how we know that ocean levels are rising, and explores evidence for past and present changes in sea level […]

The Hindu Kush Himalaya: An endangered “water tower” in a warming world Mountain systems, such as the Hindu Kush Himalaya, European Alps and the Andes, play a critical role for the 1.3 billion people who live either within or downstream from their ranges, but also half the Earth’s biodiversity. This is a consequence of the […]

Sean Birkel, a research assistant professor at the University of Maine and Maine’s state climatologist, talked with USA Today Network News about the evidence and impacts of climate change in Maine. Birkel noted that changing precipitation patterns and temperatures that are increasing more quickly than in the rest of the U.S. could exacerbate climate change […]

Maine International Trade Center talked with Paul Mayewski, director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, about the growing role Maine has in Arctic research and leading critical research about global climate change.