Tag: Climate

Melissa Kenney’s recent research has centered on how to make scientific information more accessible to decision-makers in the public. In September, the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) assistant research professor visited the White House as an invited guest of the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team to attend a meeting about potential applications of behavioral science in the policy realm – the topic of President Obama’s executive order …

ESSIC’s Michael Evans, co-author of a recent study published in Nature Geosciences, was featured in a recent Diamondback article highlighting the same research.    Evans, along with a team of international researchers, analyzed the effects of industrialization on the global ocean cooling trend that spanned the 16^th – 18^th centuries. ESSIC Director Antonio Busalacchi was also quoted in the piece, noting the study’s significance with respect to providing a …

Prior to the advent of human-caused global warming in the 19^th century, the surface layer of Earth’s oceans had undergone 1,800 years of a steady cooling trend, according to a new study. During the latter half of this cooling period, the trend was most likely driven by large and frequent volcanic eruptions. An international team of researchers reported these findings in the August 17, 2015 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The study also indicates that the …

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned for more than a decade that rising air pollution levels pose a serious threat to human health worldwide, especially in developing countries, and high levels of pollution in the urban centers of China and India are now responsible for the premature deaths of more than 2 million people every year. As if this news were not bad enough, my colleagues and I have found that pollution and dust particles blanketing that region are responsible for a …

A new study published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides a link to CO₂ warming with broadening areas of droughts. In his paper, lead author Dr. William K. M. Lau, a University of Maryland senior research scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), examined changes in the Hadley Circulation (HC), the tropical atmospheric circulation cell closest to the equator. Lau explained he was originally interested in the …

Slow changes are the bane of humanity. The metaphor of a frog in a pot being warmed slowly seems quite apt for the way humanity is struggling with global warming. 2014 is now the warmest year in the instrumental record. Even as the global warming hiatus continues and its causes continue to be debated — record temperature years have occurred during the hiatus, even though globally averaged surface temperatures have shown little change — the pause is not really a benign blessing to continue …

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Gabriele Rausse tends to grape vines that are thriving on the same high slope where Thomas Jefferson tried, and failed, to launch a Virginia wine industry more than 200 years ago.   As one of the newest of the New World wine regions, Virginia also may be one of the best places to witness the impact of climate change on the wine industry.   Rausse is widely hailed as the father of Virginia winemaking, having spent the past 38 years …

In a bid to return to his research and student mentoring roots, newly appointed ESSIC Senior Research Scientist Dr. William K.M. Lau, recently stepped away from a 34 year career at NASA to spread his knowledge to the next generation of young scientists.

With more than three decades of experience at NASA, Lau felt he’d reached his peak as the Deputy Director for Atmospheres–a component of NASA Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate–and was eager to reconnect with his