The ‘Game of Life’- alternate method to Earth’s climate modeling

by Paulina Ćwik With all the technological advancements of the 21st century, unveiling the future of climate change and its impacts on societies and the environment remains difficult. This is especially true because anthropogenic climate change involves a multitude of complex interactions and feedback between climate system components, such as atmosphere, land, surface, sea-ice, etc., …

A primer on climate modeling

by Paulina Cwik “All models are wrong, but some are useful” (George E. P. Box). Scientific models predict the behavior of a certain process or a mechanism under investigation. Inevitably, models are too simplified to capture the real state of a system. For example, scientists use climate models, idealized mathematical representations of climate system components …

An Abbreviated Journal of a Postdoc

Dr. Clay Tucker Clay, hard at work coring a bald cypress My graduate school advisor once told me, “a master’s degree is learning how science is done, and a PhD is proving that you can do science.” After obtaining a PhD, many are expected to produce scientific products (e.g., publications, grant proposals, teaching) without much …

What is the future of Tornado Outbreaks?

by Paulina Ćwik “I saw devastation. The town was just destroyed. This was the end of Brandenburg (Kentucky) as I knew it” recalls Jane Willis after a violent tornado ravaged her hometown during a Super Tornado Outbreak of 1974 (“When Weather Changed History – Super Outbreak”). In the United States, stories like Jane’s echo almost …

Ranching in a Warming World – How climate change will affect cattle production in the U.S. Great Plains (and some solutions)

OCT. 22, 2020 by TONI KLEMM All photos: Toni Klemm The U.S. Great Plains, the vast agricultural flatlands between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, are renowned for producing most of the country’s corn, wheat, and soybeans. But they are also home to 16 million beef cows, half of the U.S. beef herd. Ranching …

Getting the Most Bang For Your Conservation Buck

OCT. 15, 2020 by TINA MOZELEWSKI Editor's Note: This is a guest post from Tina Mozelewski, a Ph.D. student in North Carolina State University's (NCSU) Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources and 2018-2019 Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Global Change Research Fellow. This blog is reposted with permission from the Climate Impacts Blog hosted by …

Reflecting on the 23rd Conference of Parties

FEB 5, 2018     EMMA KUSTER The unofficial U.S. presence at COP23 was certainly not small! They had their own space and named it the U.S. Climate Action Center. Photo: Emma Kuster If you had told me in January of 2017 that I’d be traveling to Bonn, Germany later in the year to witness world discussions on …

What do fish and flowers have in common?

DEC 18, 2017     REBECCA DALTON A) A photo of my field site in Gothic, CO, where flowers begin blooming early each spring. B) Fish ladder in Parker River, MA where fish are counted each spring. C) A photo of Claytonia lanceoloata (spring beauty), which is one of my study species for my dissertation. D) A photo …

The winds of change? Extreme weather events and public opinion on climate change

SEP 18, 2017     MEAGHAN GUCKIAN Photo: NOAA-NASA GOES Project World renowned climate scientist, Michael E. Mann, recently co-authored a Washington Post article titled, ‘Harvey and Irma should kill any doubt that climate change is real.’ This is a sentiment likely shared amongst those most familiar with the influence of rising sea and air temperatures on extreme …

Talking climate change to middle-schoolers

JUN 26, 2017    by TONI KLEMM 7th-graders learning about climate change. Photo: Toni Klemm We’ve all heard the phrase that science should be explained on the level of sixth- to eighth-graders to be understandable for a general audience, right? But who has ever tried to explain science to actual sixth- to eighth-graders? I can now proudly say …