Brown University is getting ready to kick off the spring semester this Wednesday, January 25th, and everyone in DEEPS is excited for the new semester. We asked a number of the DEEPS community what they were looking forward to in the upcoming semester, and this is what they had to say:

In a WFLA interview, IBES Director & DEEPS Professor Kim Cobb discusses marine limestone as a climate proxy. “The corals that I work with in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are as good, if not better than the temperature records from satellites.”

In his interview with Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong, Professor Laurence Smith argues that implementing new approaches to managing rivers is essential for healthier waterways and sustaining the communities that depend on them. Moreover, strategic management today is the way to a better, climate-adapted future.

This week, eleven Brown University students attended a special United Nations conference supporting Pakistan’s post-flood rebuilding efforts.

The Office of Sustainability and The Climate Solutions Initiative have announced the recipients for the Fall 2022 Seed Grants for Sustainability. Recipients include the research project, "Quantifying Carbon Dioxide and Methane Concentrations in Providence, RI," led by Professor Meredith Hastings, and "Detection and Measurement of Methane Gas Leaks on Brown’s College Hill Campus" led by Caitlyn Carpenter ‘25 and advised by Hastings.

Seven Brown University undergrads and five of the undergrads from the 2022 DEEPS-Leadership Alliance REU are presenting research posters at this year's AGU Fall Meeting. We'd like to congratulate all of these students on their research, and if you are attending the AGU conference we encourage you to see their poster in person. 

Professor Baylor Fox-Kemper explains the effects of different emissions scenarios on our ocean & frozen parts of our planet. Fox-Kemper was one of the Coordinating Lead Authors for the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Chapter 9: "Ocean, Cryosphere and Sea Level Change."

A vital part of future planetary science missions will be the development of more inclusive teams. As NASA’s InSight mission comes to its end on Mars, Professor Ingrid J. Daubar and the team share strategies that have helped them to work toward this goal in a new Nature Astronomy article.

NASA has built a new rocket and spacecraft to get astronauts to Earth's nearest neighbor, and it's developing a new toolkit for them to use on the lunar surface as well. Professor James Head reflects on Apollo tool handling with Space.com

Two Brown researchers are part of an international science expedition currently off the coast of Portugal. DEEPS graduate student Bryce Mitsunaga and professor Tim Herbert are at sea onboard the JOIDES Resolution, part of a team that wants to learn more about the past and help us plan for, and possibly avert, the worst impacts of climate change.

Assistant Professor (Research) Christopher Horvat and colleagues, using underwater instruments and a NASA satellite, have found evidence of potentially significant blooms beneath the sea ice encircling Antarctica.

Panelists, including DEEPS professor James Head, discuss the year in space from China’s space station to hidden galaxies.

Professor Laurence Smith reflects on the impact of drought and climate change on “economic powerhouse rivers” and offers ideas to reimagine their use, such as diverting rivers to deposit sediment on fragile coastline or removing structures to restore rivers to a free-flowing state. “Radical new thinking is the only way to make sure our rivers endure,” he said. “There are no new rivers left to tap.”

To better understand the local distribution of air quality, University researchers (including professor Meredith Hastings) are setting up air pollution monitors across Providence in a study called Breathe Providence. Funded by the Clean Air Fund, the study aims to provide communities — especially those of lower socioeconomic status — with data to inform pollution reduction initiatives.

The NASA Rhode Island Space Grant Consortium has opened applications for 2023 scholarships.

DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra shared his thoughts with the Brown Daily Herald in their recent story about Brown's Southeast Asian Studies Initiative: "It’s a way for the students to push the faculty and the upper administration to think: How can we not just be a local university, but how can we expand our global impact?”

DEEPS alumnus David Grinspoon ’82, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, has been selected by NASA to participate in its independent study team on unidentified aerial phenomena, aka UFOs. The first of its kind at NASA, the team will analyze unclassified data on documented UFO sightings with the aim to shed light on the potential nature of the recorded encounters.

“All bets are off” when it comes to how climate systems will respond to more warming, warned DEEPS Professor Kim Cobb. This story is part of an ongoing series answering some of the most fundamental questions around climate change, the science behind it, the effects of a warming planet, and how the world is addressing it.

A special review of the DEEPS Mass Spectrometer Naming Contest taking place on Instagram and Twitter.

Kristin Kimble, PhD Candidate in Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, describes how she uses marine sediment from the tropical Pacific Ocean to reconstruct how Earth’s climate has changed from three million years ago to the present. This talk was part of Research Matters, featuring short talks about research by Brown University Graduate Students on April 21, 2022.

Ethan Kyzivat, PhD candidate in Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, discusses the challenges in making maps of wetlands and their importance to climate change. This talk was part of Research Matters, featuring short talks about research by Brown University Graduate Students on April 21, 2022.

NASA’s InSight lander recorded a magnitude 4 marsquake caused by a massive meteoroid strike. “It’s unprecedented to find a fresh impact of this size,” said Assistant Professor (Research) Ingrid Daubar, who leads InSight’s Impact Science Working Group. “It’s an exciting moment in geologic history, and we got to witness it.”