'The NSF has only committed $500 million of the $8 billion it was appropriated for the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1. The NSF will lose the billions of remaining funding if it does not spend it by Sept. 30.' thehill.com/homenews/adm...
Learn climate physics in Paris! Apply to the ACDC Summer School on Warm Climates of the Cenozoic. I'm giving the opening lectures on the key role of CO2. www.uib.no/en/rs/acdc/1...
A friend in tech, when asked why tech firms are firing engineers in favor of AI, suffering calamities when AI does something crazy that's not caught by engineers, then rehiring the engineers:
"Managements reason in much the same way AI's do. They don't think, just complete thoughts plausibly."
📄🔥 New study on Spatially compounding fire danger in Europe, led by E. Gauthier.
We often view extreme fire weather locally—but what if multiple European countries face it simultaneously, potentially overwhelming shared firefighting resources via widespread fires?
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
NOAA's July-September outlook favors above-normal precipitation in the Four Corners region
@noaa.gov predicts a "robust monsoon"
Warm water in the Gulf of California may prime an active monsoon. However, monsoon onset also depends on ocean currents and atmospheric wind patterns that cannot be predicted this far in advance, said David Mitchell of @driscience.bsky.social
Trees in Puerto Rico, after Hurricane María. CREDIT: Kevin Krajick (photographer).
Trees are tougher than experts once thought. Trees that sustain crown damage in hurricanes typically resume growing at the same rate they grew before the storm, according to LiDAR data of forest in Puerto Rico hit by Hurricane María in 2017. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/Ktxb50YLeVt
The Platonic Ideal of an Earth Scientist Dad Joke! Well done
When historical/archaeological oak samples can't be dendrochronologically dated against the regional reference chronologies in the UK, it might be as a result of timber imports into Britain and Ireland from the eastern US www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Nope, absolutely definitely not adopting this nomenclature
The Colorado River meanders through the Grand Canyon under a full moon.
The Colorado River—which did not always flow through the Grand Canyon region—may have begun to carve its path through it after an ancient lake overflowed roughly 5.6 million years ago.
Learn more this week in Science: https://scim.ag/3QbdtrE
I am hiring a new postdoc to work on an ecosystem modeling project with colleagues in hydrology, computer science, and the social sciences, including @mojisadegh.bsky.social
If you want to do impactful work to understand the forest-water relationship, apply:
www.hurteaulab.org/blog/ecosyst...
My big takeaway from reporting this story is that it's not JUST about the Forest Service.
The closure of these stations threatens to upend a delicate system of mutually beneficial collaboration and resource sharing, and the impacts will ripple out far beyond the Forest Service itself.
⚒️ Article: Atmospheric circulation patterns and mean climate conditions lead to heterogeneity in water isotope-temperature relationships across Antarctica, accounting for which allows more robust interpretation of temperature proxy records from ice cores
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Something like this will have to happen in this country once Trumpism is defeated. In the absence of accountability, the world will rightly assume that it will happen again.
Time series showing Southwest U.S. maximum temperatures from 1895 to 2026, which is a long-term warming trend and record for 2026.
Sooooo, the Southwest U.S. was more than 5°F warmer than the previous March record high for maximum (daytime) temperatures.... 🫠
Graphic from www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monit...
Trump administration shutting down dozens of U.S. Forest Service research stations, because who needs to know more about wildfires, drought and pests? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/c...
Two postdoc fellowships now open at @brown.edu Dept of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences. One in ocean sciences (apply.interfolio.com/183855) and one in any field of geoscience (apply.interfolio.com/183852). Deadline May 1.
Very cool @nationalacademies.org report release webinar relevant to the Palcolimate community on "Functions and Criteria for a New Center for Paleoenvironmental Records of Extreme Events". April 29. Sign up! www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DEL...
Always love the free book/office clean out table at work
No more modes for you
definitely one of my formative moments as a young climate scientist was witnessing Alexey telling a guest speaker it wasn't
I'm a PDV fan myself
The debate continues: Multidecadal variability in the Atlantic mostly forced, multidecadal variability in the Pacific mostly internal agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
Quite the lede
. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/u...
“If you read that New York Times article on my resignation, some guy I’ve never met who’s calling me “Kate” — I guess we’re on first-name terms, guy I’ve never met — he’s saying it’s all the scientists’ fault.“ 😂
There is a new spiffier interface for xDateR. Since I'm teaching shiny apps this quarter I used it as an excuse to learn new UI and UX stuff. And I'm doing some more work on more graceful error handling that will come soon.
viz.datascience.arizona.edu/xDateR/
Graph showing the NOAA Colorado Basin River Forecast Center's forecasts of April to July inflows to Lake Powell from 1991 to 2026, with colored lines showing how each season's forecast evolved from January through July. The latest Forecast, April 2026, is the lowest outlook for this time of year since at least 1991, at 22% of average inflows.
March was...not helpful.
NOAA CBRFC's April 1st (50% exceedance) forecast now has Lake Powell April-July inflows at 1400 KAF, 22% of average.
Only 2002 (963 KAF) and 1977 (1208 KAF) ended up with lower inflows than that. If dry conditions continue through spring, 2026 could drop below 2002.
The biggest story in the world right now is that the president of the United States is a demented old man who takes pleasure in torturing and killing people and is committing crimes with impunity. And yet most legacy media outlets are too cowardly to tell it like it is.
