DEEPS PhD student Peter Van Kawtyk, with co-authors Professor Baylor Fox-Kemper, Assistant Professor Karianne Bergen, and Dr. Helene Hewitt (UK Met Office), have published a new perspective paper that discusses emerging research on machine learning-based "emulators" in climate science. They argue that "the next phase of climate modeling hinges on closer collaboration between simulator and emulator communities."

NASA’s Artemis II mission will be taking astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen to the vicinity of the moon for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972. DEEPS Professor commented on the mission's parallels with the Apollo 8 mission, noting, "Here are these four brave astronauts making observations of the moon and looking back at the Earth after over 50 years. It’s going to be new. With all the confusion that’s going on on Earth today, it could even be a force for bringing people together..."

A new series of workshops hosted by Climate Ready Together shares general information about how Providence is impacted by climate change and how residents can get involved in addressing it on a macro level. The most effective method for combating climate change relies on coordinated state-level strategy, notes DEEPS Professor and IBES Director Kim Cobb, citing the importance of “real awareness and education across many different channels and many different avenues,” including in classrooms and town councils. The story is published as part of a collaboration between ecoRI News and students in Brown University’s Science Journalism class.

Celebrate the 2025 Friend of Darwin and Friend of the Planet awardees in this recording of our virtual celebration. Hear from the winners, including DEEPS Professor and IBES Director Kim Cobb.

Increasingly severe rain storms are straining an aging city and campus infrastructure. Beneath the recently renovated Ruth J. Simmons Quadrangle, Brown installed water storage tanks “that will accept the high volume” of rainwater produced during high-intensity storms. “There’s not a single campus across the country that is immune to climate-related impacts and threats to its infrastructure,” commented DEEPS Professor and IBES Director Kim Cobb. “You often do need to wait to see those impacts on the ground before you make the deep investments.”

Professor Baylor Fox-Kemper is leading Brown’s team in the SIMCoast initiative modeling microplastics in the Narragansett Bay.

As Project Scientist for NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, Associate Professor Ingrid Daubar is at the forefront of efforts to explore Jupiter's icy and intriguing moon Europa. In this article, she shares insights into the mission’s objectives, the challenges of deep space exploration, and the quest to determine whether Europa could support life.

This new policy brief, co-authored by Professor Amanda Lynch, situates the algorithmic transformation of Arctic WWC services within its broader legal and security context. It concludes by outlining three domains for policy intervention: international organisations, international law and international security.

As we prepare for the Spring 2026 semester, DEEPS is proud to announce our upcoming course options.

A recent paper co-authored by Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra supports the hypothesis of a negative feedback that limits atmospheric carbon dioxide decline during glacial periods.

DEEPS PhD student Alejandra Lopez describes her research on the Salton Sea alongside community volunteers. Through rigorous science and community engagement, Alejandra's work on the Salton Sea Project is demonstrating what environmental research can accomplish when it centers the needs and knowledge of those most impacted.

The Brown Daily Herald highlighted this semester's Thomas A. Mutch Lecture, featuring Benjamin Weiss, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who spoke about his recent research on the lunar dynamo. Weiss argued the magnetic field dissipated as recently as 800 million years ago, which is over one billion years later than previous hypotheses. Attendee Nandita Kumari, a postdoctoral research associate conducting planetary and lunar research at Brown, said these findings can improve the understanding of lunar properties.

This new work combines experimental petrology and modeling to understand the conditions of sedimentary diapir formation occurring in subduction zones. Led by collaborators at University of Arizona along with DEEPS Assistant Professor Emily Cooperdock, the authors find that subducted sediments are unlikely to form diapirs except in warm, slow subducting systems. Sedimentary diapirs may contribute to arc magmatic geochemical signatures under these specific conditions.

DEEPS PhD candidate Hannah Shabtian and Professor Greg Hirth have published a new paper in Geophysics Research Letters. "The paper describes novel characterization of talc rheology and some cool applications of our flow law for understanding strength of earth's crust in subduction zones," Shabtian shared.

Assistant Professor Dan Ibarra, undergraduate alumnus Jonah Bernstein-Schalet, former Postdoctoral Researcher Evan Ramos, and graduate student Sebastian Munoz are coauthors on a recent publication in JGR Biogeosciences. Their research looks into CO2 emissions from headwater streams, comparing chemical signatures of river water samples taken from an Oregon watershed with both very steep and very shallow-sloping rivers. "Results from this study may impact our estimates of how rivers move carbon across the earth's surface and exchange carbon dioxide with the atmosphere."

DEEPS Chair, Professor Meredith Hastings discussed the air quality in Providence, as monitored through her Breathe Providence project.

Last week, DEEPS scientists came together for the Department Poster Session! This annual event allows students, postdocs, faculty, and research groups to introduce their recent work, explore the wide variety of research happening in the department, and meet new additions to the the DEEPS community.

Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra is co-author of this study, which provides a new framework for examining how organisms have fundamentally altered ecosystems on a global scale across hundreds, thousands, or millions of years.