Here's an essay-length review of 4 new books on the history of #ClimateChange, with my thoughts on how the scale of our analyses and the depth of our engagement with global warming alters the kinds of stories we can tell about history (and their accuracy). #EnvHst online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article...

it's really hard to see all of the space cheerleading right now when this admin sees the moon missions as a stepping stone for space colonization while at the same time it's doing it's best to gut everything that makes the Earth habitable

I’m particularly pleased with this second photo, showing the upper edges of Patriarch Grove. Here the forest transitions from living trees to dead ones. Bare tree trunks become increasingly noticeable as the tree line fades from view. March of the Patriarchs at Twilight, White Mountains

🔥 'It is striking that the authors’ assertion about the ‘Areani’, as well as other assertions which are supported neither by historical evidence nor by scholarship, does appear on the relevant English-language Wikipedia page discussing the ‘barbarian conspiracy' link.springer.com/article/10.1...

⚒️ Article: Dryland vegetation productivity showed a negligible increase from 1982–2000 to 2001–2022, whereas humid-region vegetation productivity exhibited a nearly constant increase www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An article last year claimed that tree-ring data shows a link between drought and late Roman conflicts such as the "Barbarian Conspiracy" of 367. We show problems with such claims and appeal for interdisciplinary palaeoclimatic research to respect historical method. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

For #NSF and #NIH watchers, Grant Witness now has interactive data on numbers of grants and total funding obligations, broken down by institute and directorate, new awards and non-competitive renewals. The stranglehold on new awards is still a disaster. grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

I know everyone is very excited, but

This looks useful: 'Emulating Natural Climate Variability With InVERT (Internal Variability Emulator for Regional Temperature)' agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

As @triptychphrases.bsky.social showed, these summer temperatures on the California margin can have important implications for summer precipitation (extremes) in the south/west US iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

When every university follows the same bad advice from the same consultants with agendas separate from their institutional mission ... they lose their identity as well as their independence. They lose the ability to play to their own strengths when the consultants' agenda causes systemic failure.

The Env Sci dept at WWU (my department!) is hiring a TT forest systems scientist. jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/677245/a...

It is really weird that 'global monsoon' papers tend to define a (north) American Monsoon region that ... excludes the North American Monsoon region (and don't get me started on calling the rainy season in Central America a 'monsoon'!)

I have read countless studies on lake sediment cores from the Holocene and Pleistocene. Here's one from the late Cretaceous! The Lac de Gras kimberlite pipes have a wondrous record of deep past climatic conditions, including one that preserves unfossilized Paleogene aged wood doi.org/10.1139/cjes...

"We look ahead to March & April as the time when big storms are possible and the deficits can be made up. Unfortunately, this year has been just the opposite: Instead of much-needed snowstorms, we’re in an unprecedented March heat wave that is accelerating the melting of what little snow is there."

It is important to remember that the 'Breakthough Institute' is run by terrible people with bad ideas and even worse opinions

😢 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/c...

Payment-based open access is biasing scientific participation from the Global South in ecology nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.

I wonder what it would be like to have a government that functioned.

Record heat is colliding with a snow drought across the Western United States, where snowpack accounts for much of the water supply 🎁 www.nytimes.com/interactive/... w/ @byscottdance.com & @sachimulkey.bsky.social

I'm sure cutting off energy supplies to actual humans in favor of powering the burgeoning chatbot sector will be a very popular decision with no downside

Postdoc position in Oceanography and Paleoclimatology at the University of Oxford - shorturl.at/yTblW The role involves exploring the role of ocean circulation in setting and responding to equator-pole temperature gradients over the Phanerozoic. Deadline is 17 April 2026.

March 20, 1962, died on this day American astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglas. Recognizing the influence of the sun on tree growth, he uses ancient wood samples to date two archaeological sites. Dendrochronology or or tree-ring dating is nowadays often used in Quaternary geology 🌳

Palo Alto? The “average house price is $3.6M” Palo Alto? Who’s the audience for this?

📚 What we're reading: "Things Fall Apart: Lessons from a Defunded Data Repository," by Alex de Sherbinin. Alex shares an account of the data rescue efforts of the NASA SEDAC to offer lessons for other data repositories and to advocate for solidarity in the data community. #datarescue #openscience

UW has a new climate related Postdoc fellowship, application due April 15! Please reach out if you are interested in working with me!

Well, if yesterday's map was ridiculous, I'm running out of superlatives to characterize today's. Countless locations from Pacific Coast to Great Plains are currently experiencing all-time record March warmth, w/ some locations approaching/exceeding April (or even May) records.

Applications are now open for the Agnese Haury Visiting Scholar & Trainee Fellowships at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research - more information here: ltrr.arizona.edu/fellowships

A large high-pressure ridge sets up shop over the Western US, generating record-breaking heat. An atmospheric river follows the path of the ridge, bringing heavy rain to the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.

I know these were incredibly difficult samples to get and measurements to make and correct and I admire many of those involved, but I'm skeptical of the new low Pliocene CO2 values published today, especially in light of the boron CO2 proxy (not to mention a warmer-than-today Pliocene)

Applications are now open for the Agnese Haury Visiting Scholar & Trainee Fellowships at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research - more information here: ltrr.arizona.edu/fellowships

Well, the ridiculous mid-March heat has officially arrived in the Western U.S., with quite a few locations in California already reaching/breaking all-time monthly records today. Believe it or not, the heat will further intensify and become even more widespread later this week.

And if you have not been accepted, understand that this is a VERY weird time for grad admissions. Lack of acceptance may not be due to YOU, but due to uncontrollable factors at the university. Keep trying in the future.

This should be shocking to all Americans. Trump is approximately zeroing out federal funding for all science and engineering. How does that make America great exactly?

SIO faculty position - Paleoclimate/Paleoceanography/Sediment Geochemistry apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04481

Respect the dedication to MS Paint in this PNAS paper:

Lots of previously unreported allegations in the lawsuit, including how NOAA also terminated a cooperative agreement with UCAR at the same time as the NCAR news, and how NSF demanded individual cost accounting for every UCAR employee that attended AMS with only 6 days to turn it around.

The suit also states that NSF put UCAR and NCAR's leadership under a gag order, directing that “UCAR and NCAR may not make any public comment on these restructuring activities.”

Wondering why NIH and NSF aren't making new grants? We explain what's happening at OMB. www.science.org/content/arti...

The whole complaint is worth reading, as there is some truly damning stuff in here. Although perhaps nothing more damning than this: NSF's Nick Anderson telling a large group that the responses to the 'Dear Colleague Letter' would 'not be meaningful to OMB'

Just in: UCAR has filed a lawsuit against NSF, the Commerce Dept, NOAA, and OMB to prevent the dismantling of NCAR, alleging "violations of the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act."

Formally introducing myself here on Bluesky! I’m an ex engineer turned geographer concerned with geospatial data (especially from satellites), environmental justice, and carceral geographies. Follow for more

I and my early career friends all have stories of being told by colleagues that we could get funding if we just tweak the phrasing so we don’t say “climate change,” as if climate change is an aesthetic branding issue instead of the fundamental point of the research. It’s maddening!

can this be a solution

Sometimes fieldwork is the most magical old growth forest you’ve ever seen, bathed in mist and echoing with birdsong … and sometimes it is the steak place near the airport in Zona 10

Note there is nothing in this piece about the benefit to students. "Success" is defined in this piece as capacity to further the program of commercial capture of education & revenue-generation through distance-learning. An example here and then a laughable follow-up in my next post.

There's a laudable effort here collecting responses to the NSF on NCAR, since NSF won't make them public. 24 letters so far, likely only a small fraction of the comments submitted -- and all supportive of NCAR continuing in its existing form.

‼️New paper alert ‼️ We combined 16S amplicon sequencing and brGDGT analysis to look for correlations between microbial communities in water intubations. Our work also takes advantage of the latest studies in brGDGT producers to strengthen our findings using a bit of bioinformatics.