A new technique for measuring past topography shows the Himalayas were more than halfway to their summit before a continental collision made them the highest range in the world. “Experts have long thought that it takes a massive tectonic collision, on the order of continent-to-continent scale, to produce the sort of uplift required to produce Himalaya-scale elevations,” said DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra. “This study disproves that and sends the field in some interesting new directions.”

DEEPS PhD student Peter Van Katwyk and Assistant Professor Karianne Bergen are coauthors on a new Nature Review article exploring the ways AI can contribute to scientific discovery.

From lake sediments to post-fire landscapes, many DEEPS undergraduate students are engaged in groundbreaking research throughout the summer break. We are proud to showcase some of these research projects with this photo series.

This summer, an article was published in AGU's Geophysical Research Letters representing work from former Ph.D. graduate Aron Buffen, Professor Meredith Hastings, and other colleagues using a model to better understand how sunlight changes snow nitrate. The work was featured as the cover art for the June issue of AGU's Geophysical Research Letters.

Assistant Professor Mara Freilich and graduate student Élise Beaudin embarked on the Submesoscale-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) mission this past April to study the role of surface layer submesoscale eddies on climate and biological elements in the upper ocean.

This past spring, Voss Postdocs Jayson Maurice Porter and Lina C. Pérez-Angel worked together to develop a four-class learning module for the fifth graders of SouthSide Elementary Charter School.

Non-native English speakers reported having their papers rejected specifically because of writing issues 2.5 times as often as native speakers. Lina Pérez-Angel, a Colombian palaeoclimatologist and DEEPS Voss Postdoctoral Research Associate, says “I have had reviewers that explicitly said that my English puts in doubt the quality of the research, or mostly gave me feedback on my English in a harsh way that made me think it was based on my Latinx/Hispanic-sounding last name.”

F. Scott Anderson ‘90 of the Southwest Research Institute is the Principle Investigator on the mission Dating an Irregular Mare Patch with a Lunar Explorer (DIMPLE), which will investigate the Ina Irregular Mare Patch, discovered in 1971 by Apollo 15 orbital images. "Our mission," said Professor Jim Head, "is designed to land, explore, and date in situ, the enigmatic Ina D-shaped pit crater, a volcanic features whose impact crater-count age is interpreted to be an astoundingly young ~33 million years, but whose geological context suggests could be over 3 billion years."

Get ready for a journey across the rivers of our Solar System in this week's Planetary Radio. Sam Birch, an assistant professor at Brown University, explores what we know about the alluvial rivers of Earth, Mars, and Saturn’s moon Titan.

In late June, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson traveled to the Ocean State for a firsthand look at the research and technology that Rhode Island colleges, universities and businesses are producing to support the space agency’s mission.

$1.5 million worth of repairs for hurricane barriers in Fox Point will start in July, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley announced on the wettest July 10 on record in the last century. Rain, and with it flooding, are only expected to increase in Providence in the future, according to Professor Baylor Fox-Kemper.

Steven Clemens speaks with Srijana Mitra Das at Times of India about the factors that make the Indian monsoon.

In addition to the grueling heat of the past few weeks, wildfire smoke, the early arrival of El Niño, and shrinking Antarctic sea ice are also indicators of a global environmental crisis. "Heat sets the pace of our climate in so many ways," IBES Director and DEEPS Professor Kim Cobb commented for the Associated Press. "It’s never just the heat."

Over the 14 years since its launch, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has produced images and data proven that have transformed our understanding of Earth's celestial neighbor. Professor and noted lunar researcher Carle Pieters spoke with Space.com about the importance of future orbital observations of the moon.

Jim Russell, Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, has been elected as a Geological Society of America Fellow. Society Fellowship is an honor in recognition of a sustained record of distinguished contributions to the geosciences.

Kim Cobb, DEEPS Professor and Director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, said the week’s events embodied the “multiple stressors linked to man-made climate change” that the United Nations has warned about through its scientific panel on global warming.

Laura Lark and her team discover potential carbon enrichment in impact basins on Mercury's surface, shedding light on volatile-driven processes and the formation of dark low-reflectance material.

For the past two years, paleoclimatologist Natasha Sekhon has enriched IBES & DEEPS with her collaborative work. In a recent IBES article, Natasha discussed the connections she's made by teaching at Brown & conducting cave research in the Philippines.

On 31st May, DEEPS Professor and Chair of the WMO Research Board Amanda Lynch invited the Nineteenth World Meteorological Congress to adopt eight recommendations developed by her Board to advance key elements of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) mission.