Legendary fluvial geomorphologist Reds Wolman once said “Floods come from too much water,” and that’s the phenomenon distilled to its core essence. But this bit of wisdom doesn’t give us much to go on if we want to understand what creates floods or why some areas are more flood-prone than …
August 30th: Harvey reminds us that we should treat climate change as we treat other public health threats. That’s the argument in this New York Times op-ed: Harvey, the storm that humans helped cause. August 29th: The most sobering hot-take on Harvey is by Eric Holthaus: Harvey is what climate …
In January, I launched the #365climateimpacts project, in which I’ll spend a year tweeting stories of the many ways climate change is impacting people, ecosystems, and the earth; ideas for how to communicate about climate change more effectively; and analyses of technologies and policy proposals that show promise for combatting …
Our changing climate is already affecting lives in a multitude of ways, and the impacts of climate change will only increase as the world continues to heat up. But because climate operates in the background, it’s easy to ignore the magnitude of the changes happening around us, as we are …
Back in mid-April, I was invited to do an AGU-facilitated Ask Me Anything on r/AskScienceDiscussion/ along with Dr. Kim Cobb. Here’s how we introduced ourselves: AGU AMA: I’m Dr. Kim Cobb, and I’m here to talk about the science of climate change, El Niño, and the reconstruction of past climate. …
This position has been filled. Thanks for your interest. Post-doctoral Associate in Watershed Modeling A post-doctoral position focusing on hydrologic modeling of urban watersheds is available in the Department of Geology, Kent State University, in the lab of Anne Jefferson (https://all-geo.org/jefferson/research/). The successful candidate will have experience using RHESSys or …
This semester, students in Environmental Earth Science are sharing news stories that they find that are relevant to our class.
Jefferson, A. 2011. Seasonal versus transient snow and the elevation dependence of climate sensitivity in maritime mountainous regions, Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L16402, doi:10.1029/2011GL048346. Abstract: In maritime mountainous regions, the phase of winter precipitation is elevation dependent, and in watersheds receiving both rain and snow, hydrologic impacts of climate change …
A Geophysical Research Letters paper concludes the 2010 Pakistan floods were predictable, but not predicted. Other reporting suggests they were predicted, but the warning was ignored. Either way, things should have been done differently.
Cross-posted at Highly Allochthonous Here in Charlotte we had a hot summer. We barely escaped the dubious distinction of hottest summer on record, with an average temperature of 81.1° F (27.3 ° C) between 1 June and 31 August. The record had been set in 1993, when Charlotte recorded an …