News | Research

INSTAAR research is featured in thousands of news stories and more than 10,000 social media posts per year. Outlets include the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and as well as more regional news outlets like High Country News, 9News, and the Denver Post. Selected highlights are listed below. Additional stories are noted .

Sea ice in the ocean in northern Baffin Bay, September 2008. Photo by Alex Jahn.

Increasing Arctic freshwater is driven by climate change (CU Boulder Today)

July 29, 2020

New, first-of-its-kind research from Rory Laiho and Alex Jahn shows that climate change is driving increasing amounts of freshwater in the Arctic Ocean, which will lead to increased freshwater moving into the North Atlantic Ocean, which could disrupt ocean currents and affect temperatures in northern Europe.

Carolyn Gibson stands in the middle of a collapse scar representing wet, degrading permafrost in the Arctic

Alaska is getting wetter. That鈥檚 bad news for permafrost and the climate

July 24, 2020

Alaska 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鈥檚 global climate.

Rainbow visible over Lake Oroville from the top of Oroville Dam in Butte County California.

Researchers find that heavy snowmelt plus usually warm temperatures amped up Oroville Dam incident

July 23, 2020

In 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.

Flames burn in the foreground as smoke eddies through treetops in the background during a wildfire in the Irkutsk region of Russia.

Rapid Arctic meltdown in Siberia alarms scientists (Washington Post)

July 3, 2020

Merritt Turetsky is quoted in a Washington Post story on the record-setting heat wave across Siberia that is leading to massive wildfires and permafrost melt.

Penguin on ice floe

The South Pole feels Pacific heat

June 29, 2020

In 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 鈥渇latten the curve鈥 of global carbon emissions.

The American buildings of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station are stark black boxes on a white snowy ground. Photo by Vicki Beaver/Alamy.

Even the South Pole is warming, and quickly, scientists say (New York Times)

June 29, 2020

Surface air temperatures at the bottom of the world have risen three times faster than the global average since the 1990s. Sharon Stammerjohn (INSTAAR) and Ted Scambos (NSIDC) are quoted about their commentary in Nature Climate Change.

Close view of permafrost soil, covered in mosses and puddles.

Why a 鈥榝everish鈥 Arctic will affect everyone on the globe (PBS News Hour)

June 26, 2020

A historic heat wave is occurring in the Arctic, already the fastest-warming place on Earth due to the increasing accumulation of greenhouse gases. Dr. Merritt Turetsky has studied the Arctic for decades. She joins William Brangham on PBS NewsHour to discuss causes and consequences of the Arctic's rising temperatures.

The corner of a Russian apartment building is collapsed from uneven permafrost thaw in Chersky. Photo by Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska Fairbanks

The ticking time bomb of Arctic permafrost (Eos)

June 24, 2020

Arctic infrastructure is under threat from thawing permafrost, explains this story in Eos featuring Merritt Turetsky.

INSTAAR Chad Wolak prepares air samples for carbon-14 measurement. Photo by Scott Lehman.

Radioactive bookkeeping of carbon emissions (Eos)

June 24, 2020

A new sampling method uses carbon-14 to single out which carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere derive from fossil fuels. The method could help track emissions goals for climate mitigation.

Chad Wolak prepares NOAA air samples for carbon-14 measurement.

Tracking fossil fuel emissions with carbon-14

June 1, 2020

Researchers 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鈥檚 Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.

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