News
The Smerdon PaleoDynamics Lab is happy to welcome Dr. Gijs De Cort as a new member. Gijs joins us as Belgian American Educational Foundation postdoctoral fellow. His work focuses on reconstructing past hydroclimate changes in Africa, mainly based on evidence from lake deposits and focusing on multiple time scales throughout the Holocene. He is originally from Belgium, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Geology from Ghent University in June 2016. Prior to joining our lab, Gijs worked at the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium) and was a visiting researcher at the University of Reading (UK).
Columbia University Press will release the second edition of Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future by Ed Mathez and Jason Smerdon in September 2018.
From the publisher: This second edition of Climate Change is an accessible and comprehensive guide to the science behind global warming. Exquisitely illustrated, the text is geared toward students at a variety of levels. Edmond A. Mathez and Jason E. Smerdon provide a broad, informative introduction to the science that underlies our understanding of the climate system and the effects of human activity on the warming of our planet. Read More
Understanding the past could help us unravel what could happen in the future—and that includes pinpointing the odds of a megadrought. Water management during droughts in the western and southwestern U.S. is already a top concern. Should a megadrought occur, understanding how many states it could spread across is a key factor in preparation. Read More
Join us at the Climate of the Common Era Session at this year's Fall AGU Meeting. Read more
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is pleased to announce 14 new Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) awards, totaling more than $66 million over the next five years.
The awards will fund 14 lead U.S. institutions and U.S. partner institutions for collaborative projects involving international partners in 24 countries: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Read More University of Albany Press Release
Let’s say Earth’s orbit moved closer to the sun. How small a change would be disastrous? Read more
In Trump's America, more CO2 in the atmosphere is actually good. Read more
Google Earth Timelapse just got a makeover and it is showing users exactly how humans are slowly, but steadily, killing the planet. With the upgrade — additional data from the past and more high-resolution images from two new satellites were added to the interactive — the new and improved zoomable video shows how Earth's landscape has changed from 1984 to 2016 and spotlights the effects of climate change in several parts of the world over the past three decades, Popular Science reported. Read More
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, has called climate change a “Chinese hoax,” so it’s no wonder climate scientists are freaking out about what will happen to the environment in the years to come. Read More
A recent study shows megadroughts could become more common throughout the Southwest. The study suggests droughts lasting at least 35 years will become longer and dryer as temperatures continue to rise. Read More
Between 1545 and 1548, an epidemic swept through the indigenous people of Mexico that is unlike anything else described in the medical literature. People bled from their face while suffering high fevers, black tongue, vertigo, and severe abdominal pain. Large nodules sometimes appeared behind their ears, which then spread to cover the rest of their face. After several days of hemorrhage, most who had been infected died. Read More
The U.S. Southwest could face destructive mega-droughts unless dramatic action is taken to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, according to new research. Read More
Scientists have projected that the chances of a decades-long mega-drought in the Southwest are increasing dramatically as humanity pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Read More
You know that drought California has been in for six years? Well, it could be just a taste of what's to come. Read More
As the American Southwest grows hotter, the risk of severe, long-lasting megadroughts rises, passing 90 percent likelihood by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, a new study says. If we aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions, however, we can cut that risk substantially, the authors write. Read more