Monday Morning Coffee Break: September 12

(Credit: Andrew Williams) 

#climatechange #photography #environmentalchange #NOAA

Monday Morning Coffee Break: August 22

(Credit: Jim Kinsey) 

#climatedata #datasets #environmentalmodel #wildfire #environmentalchange #climatechange

Monday Morning Coffee Break: March 7

(Credit: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg) 

#foodsecurity #climatechange #environmentalchange #climatemodel #data

Ice Cores and the Ancient Man

Fig.1. AWI Core Repository (Credit: Hannes Grobe/AWI, CC-BY-SA-2.5)

In 2003, paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman at the University of Virginia hypothesized that early humans significantly altered the climate by burning large areas of forests to clear land for farming and grazing. The greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere - mainly carbon dioxide and methane - halted a natural cooling cycle and possibly prevented another ice age.

In the News: Mammoths and Men

Fig.1. Mammoth skeleton at the George C. Page Museum
(Credit: Russ via Flickr, 2014)

Artifacts, sediment cores, and mammoth bones all connect us to ancient history, either through culture or the natural world. This week in the news, we read about how to examine the past using old collections in new ways:

Change in the Delta

Fig.1: An aerial view of the Copper River Delta in Alaska. (Credit: Andrew Morin)

After years of working at the Northwest Fishery Science Center as a project manager, focusing her work on salmon, Carmella Vizza felt she needed a change.

“I decided it was time for me to go back to grad school to be more involved in conducting my own research,” Vizza said.

The Fall of a Civilization

Fig.1. Bronze head of a king, most likely Sargon of Akkad. 

(Credit: Iraqi Directorate General of Antiquities)

Around 4,300 years ago, Sargon of Akkad ruled what was considered to be the world’s first empire. The prosperity of the Akkadian Empire, which relied on the fertile soils between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, collapsed abruptly almost 200 years later. Scientists now hypothesize that Sargon’s empire fell to a dramatic shift in the climate, which dried up Akkadian's rain-dependent agricultural systems. A recent study published in the journal Quaternary Science argues that this Mesopotamian empire was only one of several ancient civilizations affected by sudden climate variability.

Teaching old data new tricks

Fig.1. Rock core samples, pictured, stored at the U.S. Geological Survey's Core Research Center. Data derived from core samples, among other types of samples, are useful in testing climate models. (Credit: USGS, 2012)

There’s an old saying that history repeats itself. But in the case of Carrie Morrill’s research, she’s looking to history to prepare for the future.

Monday Morning Coffee Break: April 20

(Credit: iStockPhoto) 

#climatechange #parasites #emergingdiseases #infectiousdiseases

Monday Morning Coffee Break: April 13

(Credit: iStockPhoto) 

#climatechange #emergingdiseases #diseaseoutbreak

Monday Morning Coffee Break: April 6

(Credit: Dominique Denoue, INRA Lusignan) 

#biodiversity #climatechange #environmentalchange #climateresistant #crops #agriculture