Author: Travis Swaim

A recently published study by the World Bank reports that climate-driven water scarcity could impact the economic growth of many regions by as much as 6 percent.  The report entitled,” High and Dry: Climate Change, Water and the Economy,” was written by a team led by the World Bank’s Lead Economist, Richard Damania.  The authors acknowledge that the report drew on the background papers and research of a World Bank-funded University of Maryland-centric …

ESSIC Assistant Research Scientist Ariana Sutton-Grier was a co-author of a guest editorial in the Ecological Society of America journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment; (Vol 14, Issue 4, May 2016, Pg 175).  The article entitled, "Making ecosystem services part of business as usual in federal governance," revisits the Executive Branch memo from the fall of 2015, which emphasized the inclusion of ecosystem services in the decision making processes of federal agencies….

ESSIC / AOSC Professor Raghu Murtugudde was cited in a recent India Climate Dialogue article.  The piece entitled, "Researchers identify leading monsoon indicators," discusses how the analysis of air temperatures and relative humidity within key areas–rather than aggregate rainfall–may better predict the arrival and departure of the country's monsoon season….

ESSIC Research Assistant Professor Melissa Kenney was a co-author of a newly published study in Environmental Modelling &Software.  The paper entitled, “Methods for translating narrative scenarios into quantitative assessments of land use change,” summarizes the group’s collaborative land use findings into a decision matrix that can be utilized by decision makers and modelers in choosing translation methodologies for given scenarios.   …

CICS-MD high school intern Kayla Brown was selected as one of five presenters at the 32nd Annual Research Practicum Symposium at the Eleanor Roosevelt High School Science and Technology Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.  Brown led off the well-attended event with a presentation entitled, “Comparison of Ground Based Lightning Detection Systems.” A video of Brown’s presentation can be viewed at the following link. Brown, who’s CICS-MD internship is mentored by …

A recent proposal by ESSIC researcher Kimberly Casey was selected for the 2016 Polar High-Performance Distributed Computing Research Coordination Network award.  Entitled "Quantifying aerosol presence and composition over Earth’s ice sheets and glaciers – mapping anthropogenic and natural aerosol patterns and estimating changes over time,   the proposed work will improve understanding of the type of aerosols present over Earth's glaciers and ice sheets, changes …

ESSIC researcher Ryan Walker was recently cited in several NASA web articles relating to his Antarctic field work.  The most recent  feature in Earth Observatory was entitled, "Antarctic Ice Shelf Sheds Bergs." The piece referenced Walker's December 2015 field study and flight along a large crack in the Nansen Ice Shelf, which recently resulted in two large icebergs being released into the Southern Ocean.  An earlier Earth Observatory article entitled, …

ESSIC researcher Ariana Sutton-Grier is an invited participant at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) work group next week (May 3-5).  Sutton-Grier's associated project is called “Aligning Coastal Restoration with Ecological and Societal Needs."    According to Sutton-Grier, the event marks the  first meeting of the working group, which is expected to …

ESSIC scientists Dr. Sinéad Farrell and Dr. Thomas Newman are participating in the NASA Operation IceBridge Arctic Spring 2016 mission. Operation IceBridge completed its first science mission of the season on Tuesday 19 April, 2016, surveying shore-fast ice in Eureka Fjord, Ellesmere Island, Canada. The IceBridge mission conducted flights over the field site, carrying a suite of remote sensing instrumentation on-board a P-3 aircraft to measure snow depth, ice thickness and ice …