Who killed the hobbit? 💀🐘🦴⛰️🌧️☀️🪨⛏️ Our new paper out today in Communications Earth and Environment reveals the role of a major drought in the disappearance of the diminutive hominin Homo floresiensis. theconversation.com/the-hobbits-...

NEW – Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time | @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/6eAcjRU

Less than a month left for you to apply Deadline : May 14, 2025 www.speleothemschool.com/apply

Wow! 😲😲

China powers up first Thorium Molten Salt Reactor. Big, exciting step for clean energy with far lower weapons, waste and meltdown potential. futurism.com/china-thoriu...

Big deal going under the news radar: IMO introduces regulation of shipping emissions. International shipping accounts for 3% of emissions yet is not attributable to individual nations and therefore is not part of most legally binding targets. This is a mini-Paris moment. eutoday.net/landmark-dea...

This issue of Quaternary Science Reviews comprises reviews on stable isotopes in different types of records. This is an update of the 2004 issue on “Isotopes in Quaternary Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction (ISOPAL)”, volume 23, issue 7–8, pages 739–992. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Electrification better than insulation? Some interesting thoughts (and studies!) here. cleantechnica.com/2025/03/27/t...

U-Series sampling day. Taking those lovely polished stalagmites from last week and drilling out top and bottom powder samples so that we can date them and understand their growth history. 100mg should do the trick.

New research by @tylerbarrett.bsky.social, @rakramer.bsky.social and colleagues finds that climate change is a significant challenge for farmers in northeast Madagascar, yet adaptation is limited by existing socioeconomic inequalities journals.plos.org/climate/arti...

Stalagmite Polishing Day! Getting these beauties nice and smooth so that we can identify the layering and choose the best locations for u-series sampling next week.

'Here we show that the AMOC is resilient to extreme greenhouse gas and North Atlantic freshwater forcings across 34 climate models.' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Amazing new record. Ireland tops 100% renewable generation for the first time ever. Thanks interconnectors. Thanterconnectors.

The most impressive part of the improvement in weather forecasting was in 1991 when scientists managed to invent a time machine to go back and improve the five day forecast. Either that or someone forgot to sort the columns by date before plotting.

Can we use speleothem growth phases to trace the growth and decay of past ice-sheets? Our compilation of 1020 U-series dates from the UK and Ireland says Yes! Read all about it in our 📣New Paper📣 led by Sina Panitz, feat @speleoseb.bsky.social, myself and others, out now in Climate of the Past.

🎉🎉🎉 Woo hoo! 🎉🎉🎉 Amazing feat by the Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice team! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Smashing the 800,000 year record for a continuous ice core by a country mile back to 1.2 million years ago.

Analysis of speleothems across Asia suggest no coherent 4.2kya event agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Kicking off the new year with a 📣New Paper📣 in Paleoceanography and Palecolimatology, led by Alexander James at USC, with Jun Hu, Julien-Emile Geay and others. In it we explore whether we can find regime changes in the Holocene Asian Summer Monsoons. We can for 8.2, but 4.2 falls short.

Absolutely delighted for Ros! Prof. Rickaby was my MESci thesis supervisor, and I could not have wished for a better start of my research career with Ros as a supervisor and with all those in the group she led. (Even if I did jump ship (haha) to terrestrial paleoclimate)

A very useful dataset that will underpin paleotempestology work for a long while.

Santa won't be leaving coals for anyone this year... It's a week now since Moneypoint was in operation. With the end of the year targetted for shutdown, we suspect the era of coal generation in Ireland quietly ended last week, just a few months after the UK's last coal plant shuttered. 🏭🤞

📢New Paper📢 In our opinion piece "The Hunt for Holocene Abrupt Climate Change" in #PLOSClimate, Nick McKay and myself ask why are ACCs found easily in individual studies but not in compilations? doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Shiny new ocean drilling ship will keep lots of paleoclimatologists knee deep in forams for decades to come. Hooray. But it marks another step along the road of the US abdication of science, as the scientific baton transfers from the Joides Resolution to Meng Xiang. www.science.org/content/arti...

Latest sunset in Ireland was today. What are you going to do with all that extra light tomorrow evening?

Work Update Announcement! After three years at Maynooth University, I'm excited to be starting a new Research Scientist position at University College Dublin working on climate seasonality in Ireland during the late Neolithic, a collaborative project between Earth Sciences and Archaeology. 🌧️🪨🔬🧪👨‍🔬

Fun times at the Royal Mint. Quite impressive.

Science of water in Ireland and management of water in Ireland. In one room! Collaborative vibes at An Fóram Uisce's (Irish Water Forum) conference today.

Ok, definitely on the Bluesky learning curve here! Lists are a thing as well as starter packs, and have the added bonus that you can make them feeds. So for all your stalagmite paleoclimate needs in one place I've made StalPals! As previously, message me for additions. bsky.app/profile/did:...

I've only been on here a day, but I made a starter pack for stalagmite paleoclimatologists. Let me know about others I might have missed, or new arrivals. go.bsky.app/N2DP3qj

Now that I've finally made the move, I'm reposting one of my favourite things I made during my PhD: 1 year of output from a regional simulation of the SW Indian Ocean (colours show SST). We often use neat schematic diagrams to represent ocean currents but in reality, it's a rather turbulent mess!

Excited to share our new paper!!!! 🎉🎉🎉Our publication out today in CEE uses a 20ka long speleothem record from Romania to study the link between 🌧️ variability in CE Europe and atmospheric dynamics. Interested??? Read more here ➡️➡️➡️➡️ 🌬️https://rdcu.be/dZVtJ

Another recent new arrival. Let me get my bearings. In the meantime I have a pretty stalagmite picture for you.