COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers are beginning their analysis of what are probably the first successful ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps. (more…)
A new study provides a composite picture of the environmental distribution of oil and gas from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It amasses a vast collection of available atmospheric, surface and subsurface chemical data to assemble a “mass balance” of how much oil and gas was released, where it went and the chemical makeup of the compounds that remained in the air, on the surface, and in the deep water.
The study, “Chemical data quantify Deepwater Horizon hydrocarbon flow rate and environmental distribution,” is published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. (more…)
Missoula, MT – Climate change in the form of reduced snowfall in mountains is causing powerful and cascading shifts in mountainous plant and bird communities through the increased ability of elk to stay at high elevations over winter and consume plants, according to a groundbreaking study in Nature Climate Change. (more…)
The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, but we will have some earthquakes,” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Anne Sheehan, also a fellow at CIRES. The study also involved collaborators from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University and the Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO. The Rio Grande Rift follows the path of the Rio Grande River from central Colorado roughly to El Paso before turning southeast toward the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)
UA alumnus Paul Nosa travels with his solar powered sewing machine, stitching patches of the thoughts people choose to share with him
Paul Nosa is a perfectionist – well, a reformed perfectionist. (more…)
Summertime hail could all but disappear from the eastern flank of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains by 2070, says a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Less hail damage could be good news for gardeners and farmers, said lead author Kelly Mahoney, a research scientist at CIRES, but a shift from hail to rain can also mean more runoff, which could raise the risk of flash floods. “In this region of elevated terrain, hail may lessen the risk of flooding because it takes awhile to melt,” Mahoney said. “Decision makers may not want to count on that in the future.” (more…)
Decades of wild swings in crab populations – some natural, some human-caused – dramatize the myriad issues surrounding questions about sustainable fisheries and the ecosystems that support them.
So said David Armstrong, professor and director of aquatic and fishery sciences, in his Jan. 5 talk “Claws, causes, climate and corps: A cavalcade of true crab sagas.” (more…)
The world is sailing into some killer storms and its leaders have done almost nothing to protect its boat. That’s the view of UW Professor Steve Gardiner, who likens climate change to a perfect storm — a convergence of three difficult problems that so far we’ve found ourselves unable to face, much less solve. (more…)
