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Principal Investigator Cameron C. Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography (within the College of Arts and Sciences) at 91�ֿ�, was recently awarded a three-year, $387,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office and its Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections Program (MAPP). The project is titled “Excess Heat and Excess Cold Factors: Establishing a unified duration-intensity metric for monitoring hazardous temperature conditions in North America”.

Many wonder if climate change is the reason we’ve had 'weather whiplash' or day-to-day dramatic changes from hot to cold or cold to hot. As a climate scientist, Cameron Lee, assistant professor in the Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences at 91�ֿ�, gets asked this question a lot. Looking beyond just the average temperatures and statistical means, he decided to take a more analytical look at weather whiplash and add to a growing body of climate change literature examining temperature variability trends.

Timothy Assal, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography, was awarded a grant as a co-principal investigator on a multi-institutional project, “Vulnerability of lower-ecotone aspen forests to altered fire regimes and climate dynamics in the northern Great Basin” (a three-year $299,842 total award with $89,600 going to 91�ֿ�), which is funded by the . This collaboration includes the United States Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho, Utah State University, and the United States Bureau of Land Management.

Recently, Joseph Ortiz, Ph.D., professor and assistant chair in the Department of Geology in 91�ֿ�’s College of Arts and Science, partnered with Sir Roland Jackson, Ph.D., a historian of science at the Royal Institution and the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London, to co-author a paper assessing the experiments described in Eunice Foote’s papers from a detailed quantitative perspective and to place them in historical context. They point out the differences between her hypothesis and that of the modern greenhouse effect.

Two 91�ֿ� students, in the College of Arts and Sciences, were among 62 students from 50 different U.S. universities recently selected for funding by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program.

Joseph D. Ortiz, Ph.D., professor and assistant chair in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Geology at 91�ֿ�, recently authored a “News and Views” article in Nature Geoscience that discusses research carried out by another research team that reassessed the melt history and timing of the collapse of the Eurasian Ice Sheet Complex during the Last Deglaciation.

Joseph D. Ortiz, Ph.D., professor and assistant chair in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Geology at 91�ֿ�, recently authored a “News and Views” article in Nature Geoscience that discusses research carried out by another research team that reassessed the melt history and timing of the collapse of the Eurasian Ice Sheet Complex during the Last Deglaciation.

In early February, scientists reported the hottest temperature on record in Antarctica: 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Studies show climate change is disproportionately affecting the poles, warming them faster than anywhere else on Earth, and raising questions about what kinds of changes we can expect in arctic ecosystems as temperatures rise. 
A 91�ֿ� biologist has teamed up with some colleagues in an inter-institutional effort to answer some of those questions.