News & Events
INSTAAR News
Alaska is getting wetter. That’s bad news for permafrost and the climate.
July 24th, 2020Alaska is getting wetter. A new study spells out what that means for the permafrost that underlies about 85% of the state, and the consequences for Earth’s global climate.
Researchers find that heavy snowmelt plus usually warm temperatures amped up Oroville Dam incident
July 23rd, 2020In February 2017, failures in the spillways of Oroville Dam forced the evacuation of 188,000 people and caused $1 billion in damage repairs. According to scientists, including INSTAARs Keith Musselman, Leanne Lestak, and Noah Molotch, a warmer climate might create more dangerous events like this.
A message for our International Students from CIRES, INSTAAR, Geology leadership
July 13th, 2020Statement in support of international students and against the recent ICE guidance barring students from the U.S. who take online-only classes.
The South Pole feels Pacific heat
June 29th, 2020In a "news and views" piece in Nature Climate Change, INSTAAR Sharon Stammerjohn and CIRES researcher Ted Scambos spell out the evidence and consequences of rapid warming at the South Pole and call for action to “flatten the curve” of global carbon emissions.
INSTAAR statement on systemic racism
June 19th, 2020We recognize that Black Lives Matter and stand with the protesters demonstrating against injustice. We are also reckoning with the overdue realization that we are part of the same systems that led to that violence. We commit to doing our part to dismantle implicit, systemic racism in our own spaces and list specific actions we will take within INSTAAR.
Tracking fossil fuel emissions with carbon-14
June 1st, 2020Researchers from NOAA and the University of Colorado have devised a breakthrough method for estimating national emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels using ambient air samples and a well-known isotope of carbon scientists have relied on for decades to date archaeological sites. In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report the first-ever national scale estimate of fossil-fuel derived carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions obtained by observing CO2 and its naturally occurring radioisotope, carbon-14, from air samples collected by NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.