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.

$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."

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.

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.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently released its latest findings on the human and economic impact of weather-related disasters during the quadrennial World Meteorological Congress in Geneva. The congress is centered around the implementation of the UN's Early Warnings for All initiative. Professor Amanda Lynch, as the Chair of the WMO Research Board, plays a vital role in guiding the objectives and execution of this significant initiative.

Baylor Fox-Kemper, alongside Katelyn Moretti, Charles Lawrence, and John Nicklas, has received a 2023 Seed Award for his project, "Bayesian Modeling of Climate-Dependent Mortality Risk among US Residents from 1989 to 2020." This project builds toward a complete, transparent estimation of mortality from the latest generation of climate model projections to 2100.

A trek through tropical forest, mud fields, and scree reveals the last remnants of the once-sprawling ice fields in Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains. “The loss of these glaciers is the loss of a critical component of a system, and it isn’t going to come back any time in the foreseeable future,” said James Russell, who has led expeditions to the Rwenzoris almost every year since 2006.

12 News Meteorologist Steven Matregrano speaks with Professor Baylor Fox-Kemper about what weather could be in store for Rhode Island.

In honor and celebration of World History Month, NASA's Center for Climate Simulation spotlights the career of DEEPS alumn Dr. Chelsea Parker. In her own words, Dr. Parker shares the story of her unique career journey and current role at NCCS.

A new study shows vascular plants may have contributed to shaping Earth’s atmosphere long before trees evolved. DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra, who was not involved in the study, is quoted saying “It would be interesting to see this method applied to the whole time series from the Devonian to our time.”

A new U.S. Geological Survey reports that the world has enough rare earth minerals and other critical raw materials to switch from fossil fuels. “There are enough materials in reserves. The analysis is robust and this study debunks those (running out of minerals) concerns,” said DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra, who wasn’t part of the study but looks at lithium shortages.

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.

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."

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

One of the newest DEEPS faculty members, Assistant Professor Harriet Lau, has received the prestigious Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. This is in recognition of Harriet's outstanding work to understand the relationships between Earth's deformation and climate.

This year, DEEPS graduate student Bryce Mitsunaga and Professor Tim Herbert are participating in the International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 397: Iberian Margin Paleoclimate.

A new paper published by Frontiers, led by Assistant Professor (Research) Christopher Horvat, challenges our current understanding of the Antarctic ecology and the lifecycles of growth that happen under the ice. 

A recent article by DEEPS Professor Amanda H. Lynch and Maine Law Professor Charles Norchi which appeared in the journal International Law Studies has been awarded the 2022 Myres S. McDougal Prize for International Law. The article is titled "Arctic Navigation and Climate Change: Projections from Science for the Law of the Sea", and is available to read online.

DEEPS Professor Steven Clemens joined Dr. Farah Naureen, Country Director for Pakistan, and Joshua Johnson, host of NBC NOW Tonight, to discuss how low-income countries bear the brunt of climate change.

An interview with the four Brown University undergraduate researchers who worked on Breath Providence this summer, a research study led by IBES and DEEPS Professor Meredith Hastings.

Sometimes learning about the past to figure out the future requires crawling beneath tons of rock. Prof. Kim Cobb, Prof. Dan Ibarra, Postdoc Natasha Sekhon, and Grad Cathy Gagnon, and their collaborative fieldwork with partners at Vanderbilt are highlighted in this long-form article in High Country News, exploring Titan Cave (Wyoming). 

"We're going to see almost a foot – somewhere between nine and 11 inches – of sea level rise by 2050 – a generation and a half, we see that amount," Fox-Kemper explained while standing at the waters’ edge. "And the 2050 numbers are already baked in. So even if we were to cut all of our emissions today, we still are going to see sea level rise."

Why was the long-term global cooling trend of the Cenozoic interrupted by a several-million-year interval of warming during the middle of the Miocene? Herbert et al. present a reconstruction of global ocean crustal production to show that tectonic degassing of carbon can account for most of the long-term ice sheet and global temperature evolution for the past 20 million years (see the Perspective by von der Heydt). These results provide further support for the idea that sea floor spreading rates can control global changes in climate.

Muskrats have been considered so prevalent and unremarkable that even people in tune with environmental goings-on have been unaware of the species’ 50-year decline. Biologists noted the nationwide trend early through trappers’ harvest data, but earnest study is a recent phenomenon.

Sharp fronts and eddies that are ubiquitous in the world ocean, as well as features such as shelf seas and under-ice-shelf cavities, are not captured in climate projections. Such small-scale processes can play a key role in how the large-scale ocean and cryosphere evolve under climate change, posing a challenge to climate models.

Between 26-15 My ago, forests covering west-central North America gave way to open, grassy habitats. Now, oxygen isotope records suggest this shift is owed to drier winters and increased aridity.

Composition of air bubbles can help scientists date Antarctica’s ice caps

As various forces in Rhode Island work toward a more sustainable future, two environmental organizations in the Ocean State have focused on making labor a key player in the transition. Baylor Fox-Kemper explained that both Renew R.I. and Climate Jobs R.I. share goals of “transitioning away from fossil fuels towards carbon-neutral sources like solar,” as well as reducing carbon emissions from transportation, heating, and food production.

A new study led by Prof. Steve Clemens proves that monsoons will become more destructive

JB Novak '20 came up with a more accurate way to figure out past ocean temperatures.