Over the past 150 years, global warming has more than undone the global cooling that occurred over the past six millennia, according to a major study published June 30 in Nature Research’s Scientific Data, “Holocene global mean surface temperature, a multi-method reconstruction approach.” The findings show that the millennial-scale global cooling began approximately 6,500 years ago when the long-term average global… Read more
School of Earth & Sustainability
Given the tremendous ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, some governments are counting on planted forests as offsets for greenhouse gas emissions—a sort of climate investment. As with any investment, however, it’s important to understand the risks. If a forest goes bust—through severe droughts or wildfires, researchers say—much of that stored carbon could go up in smoke.
Professor Scott Goetz of Northern Arizona University’s Read more
As the climate changes, extreme weather and flooding are intensifying and occurring more frequently worldwide. Scientists believe that by studying warming events in Earth’s past, they can better understand how the current warming trend is triggering other changes to the environment.
As part of a large, multidisciplinary study involving eight institutions and a multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation… Read more
An extremely explosive volcanic eruption on the Italian peninsula 39,000 years ago is the subject of a new study by professor Michael Ort of Northern Arizona University’s School of Earth and Sustainability. The National Science Foundation recently awarded Ort $290,000 for the three-year project.
Through careful fieldwork and advanced geochemical analysis, Ort will unlock the secrets of the Campanian Ignimbrite super-eruption. Ort, who’s been studying this volcanic event for… Read more
Three Northern Arizona University professors are among the leaders of an international team to assemble and make available the most complete dataset looking at how temperatures on Earth have changed from 1 AD to the present.
This collection is significant because it allows climate scientists to study the patterns and causes of surface temperature more accurately than was previously possible, said Darrell Kaufman,… Read more
According to a new study, global warming began in the Arctic and tropical oceans before thermometers were widespread enough to record the early signal.
Northern Arizona University’s Darrell Kaufman, Regents’ professor, and Nicholas McKay, assistant professor, along with scientists from around the world, recently discovered that human-caused global warming began in the mid-1800s.
Unlike the previous research that relied mostly on instrumental temperature records, McKay and Kaufman,… Read more