Researchers compared “simulations of the Community Land Model (CLM) to a statistical model built on dendrometer observations, showing that CLM underestimates decreases to growth under elevated VPD by a factor of 2–3” agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

I don't usually post on main, but after ~20 years as an adjunct at @lamont.columbia.edu, where I generated significant value for LDEO by publishing papers, writing grants, & training students for ~zero cost, this morning they cancelled my appointment in a form letter that spelled my name wrong

people are dying from extreme heat but, sure, let's all decide now is the time to offer our weird opinions about the morality of air conditioning

Apropos of something, this is what a recent email from Dean Alexis Abramson at the Columbia Climate School said, wrt funding from fossil fuel sources: "...the Climate School will not impose additional restrictions on the acceptance of research funds beyond those established by the University."

High-severity fire now dominant in California forests www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Anyone going to AGU 2026 - submit to our session! GC036: Data-driven approaches to quantifying climate impacts on human well-being. If your research deals with the causal effects of climate variability + change on people, we want to hear about it. agu.confex.com/agu/agu26/pr...

The one where we apply a moist static energy framework to try to understand ocean and land surface connections to rainfall in southern Africa (w/ A McNally, K Slinski, W Anderson, M Osman) journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

AGU sessions are up! Consider our session, "GC127 - Vegetation dynamics and land–atmosphere interactions" agu.confex.com/agu/agu26/pr...

I'm sure this will be very popular! www.kpbs.org/news/environ...

About to embark on a climate (S2S or longer) prediction problem using AI/ML? Well, you might want to check out this brand new BAMS paper by my colleagues and I on the recommended steps for how to preprocess your dataset before making those predictions. journals.ametsoc.org/view/journal...

One-third of growth-season rainfall in the Amazon comes from evaporation from trees. When forests are cleared for soybeans, rainfall declines, potentially reducing soybean yields and creating a feedback loop that could drive further land clearance. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/2TlF50ZbTqf

A greening Earth is also a more drought-vulnerable Earth: “Spring greening amplifies the risk of summer drought propagation across Northern Hemisphere ecosystems”

Two weeks left to apply!

Decoupled carbon assimilation and growth responses to aridity in temperate deciduous oaks | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... New @ameriflux.bsky.social paper out with @mukund24rao.bsky.social Interesting study on where the C goes

I case you missed it, Jerry O'Connell did an AMA and it is absolutely delightful, especially for those of us fascinated by the deep lore surrounding Kangaroo Jack www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...

Still record breaking, but not as extreme using RONI (which is probably best practice)

Breaking: El Niño is officially here, and it could break records. NOAA is giving it a 63% chance of becoming one of the “largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950.” www.cnn.com/2026/06/11/w...

Red alert: The OMB regulations could disable science permanently open.substack.com/pub/holdenth...

real bad

Global CO2 emissions have plateaued since 2013, leading to a slower growth in atmospheric CO2 than would have otherwise been the case. In a new analysis at The Climate Brink, I've taken look at what would have happened if emissions had continued to grow: www.theclimatebrink....

May 2026 had the second-worst May drought conditions in contiguous U.S. history, with a Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) of -6.93. The only worse May: the Dust Bowl year of 1934 (a PDSI of -7.03). Three of the top-10 months for worst U.S. drought since 1895 have been in 2026:

Nice reminder that the legacy of anthropogenic climate change could be LONG. Notice here temperatures still elevated by 3000 CE even in the optimistic scenario's. From this paper: eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A.... 🧪⚒️

If only freshwater was a resource as plentiful and refreshing as headline wordplay in charts. Smart column updating the dire Colorado River situation, from @markgongloff.bsky.social 🎁🔗 www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

New work led by postdoc @ccivanovich.bsky.social, investigating the distinct seasonality of dry and humid in the North American Monsoon region: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

Me (an idiot) every time I have five minutes without an impending deadline

Hot Take: pages for submitting reviews for journals should have TWO (and ONLY two) elements: (1) A box to paste the text of the review into. (2) A drop down menu to indicate the recommendation.

As a follow up to yesterday’s post. This graph uses a different index (rONI) which accounts for the warming climate baseline and the tropical ocean mean outside the El Niño region during each time period. Here we see the 2026 dynamical model forecast is still the highest, but much less so… 1/

And here is their update! www.linkedin.com/posts/extrem...

Ben Cook and the Mystery of Is it Too Early To Each My Lunch

🌐Out now: Version 3 of the improved global land surface atmospheric observations dataset. New release includes 3 billion additional observations, coverage back to 1718 & data through Feb.2026. Supports reanalysis products, gridded products & data services. ⬇️ #CopernicusClimate

NSF Eliminates Geoscience Postdocs eos.org/research-and...

stop writing articles about extreme heat using fun summer imagery challenge: impossible (apparently) apnews.com/article/euro...

Nature research paper: Forest carbon protocols underestimate climate-driven carbon loss risks go.nature.com/42JJOZJ

ICYMI: Application review starts July 1, so there's plenty of time. We have up to three years of funding for a really cool project. The team includes folks at UVM, Bennington College, and the University of Hawaii. If you love mountains and plants, check it out! Please share with your networks.

Looking for a postdoc? My @ucalgaryscience.bsky.social colleague @jedokaplan.bsky.social is hiring a couple, including the below and another on the history of land use in China. Check out his website. Short deadline! 🧪⚒️ #AcademicSky

Guest post: How CMIP7 will shape the next wave of climate science ✍️ written by Beth Dingley, Helene Hewitt, John Dunne and Eleanor O'Rourke Read here ⬇️

If you're a reviewer or an editor for a scientific journal, I urge you to not hop on the "RCP8.5 is dead" train. There are now editors that reject RCP8.5 but are ok with 1pctCO2. 🤯 Both are what-if scenarios, useful to science. Don't let politics influence what we can research and publish! 1/3

"Interestingly, they found that, particularly for Greenland, that none of the models had melt rates as high as observed *even with* RCP 8.5 forcing"

Within, Gavin points out that the new High scenario "gets to 8.5 W/m2 only about 20 years after RCP85"

LBL is hiring, at the Staff Scientist level, an extreme weather researcher to be the new leader of the CASCADE project! phxc1b.rfer.us/LBLDaKGef

New paper out today led by Marcel Kunz - 'Exorcizing Divergence in Tree-Ring Density Along the Rocky Mountains' - tree-ring density remains a strong temperature proxy in the Northern Rockies across all frequencies agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

but wait, a self appointed knowledge broker (an honest one, I was helpfully informed) once told me this was the greatest scandal in climate science since all the other scandals

I'm hiring a postdoc to join my group at Harvard, focused on land-atmosphere interactions and land climate, and would appreciate your help in sharing this with good candidates. academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16303

The article misses a key point which is that, now that the identity of these designer particles is public, it's clear they don't make much sense as an SAI material.

Rainfall intensity matters as much as how much rain falls. New in Nature: Corey Lesk and I show that daily-scale concentration of precipitation dries the land over the long-run, an effect as strong as total precipitation is climatological wetting. Paper here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

"A super El Niño wiped out millions of people in 1877. Are we better prepared now?" With comments from former Lamont postdoc, Deep Singh archive.is/u0N6y

New US Collaboration Research Chairs - Helios Foundation (Three Full and One Part time Positions) www.vub.be/en/our-resea...

Brooklyn tomorrow! www.bklynlibrary.org/calendar/cbh...

Find out how ENSO variability is affecting GHG forced fire trends in Australia and North America in new work by our amazing postdoc, Tess Jacobson iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

I'm hiring a postdoc to lead sedimentary aDNA reconstructions of alpine plant biodiversity as part of a broader project exploring the mechanisms of alpine plant resilience. Come join a collaborative team working in beautiful places! Bonus: postdocs at UMaine are unionized!