News Archive

2/6/2020: In a two-part series, local news station investigative reporting includes an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Thomas about the impacts of climate change on western New York. The coverage includes Dr. Thomas’ research on changes in precipitation through time, one potential impact among many in our region

09/25/2019: In gold mines near Fairbanks, Alaska, scientists are hunting for something precious — and it’s not metal. he ongoing project, funded by a grant from the National Geographic Society, could help researchers and policymakers understand how Alaska might respond in coming years as the planet heats up again.

01/08/2019: UB College of Arts and Sciences researchers are brewing their own lava in order to understand the reaction that happens when lava meets water.

01/07/2019: A study on Antarctic ice loss — co-authored by UB geologists — ranked No. 26 on Altmetric’s list of the 100 most-mentioned scholarly articles of 2018. The paper, “Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017,” was published in Nature in June 2018 by an international consortium of researchers known as the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE).

12/6/2018: For more than 15 years, UB geologist Margarete Jadamec has studied the Alaskan subduction zone, where two huge pieces of the Earth’s rigid outer layer — the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate — are converging. In this region, the Pacific Plate is being forced under the North American Plate.

08/31/20108: In the morning, under a big Arctic sky, in a wild part of the world with no paved roads or electric lines, UB geologist Elizabeth Thomas would board a small pontoon and motor out onto a lake. Beside her, on a typical day, would be a team of three UB students: undergraduate Kayla Hollister, master’s student Megan Corcoran and PhD candidate Allison Cluett.

08/29/2018: As the Sept. 15 launch date for NASA’s new ice-monitoring satellite approaches, UB scientists are among many worldwide who are counting down the days.

07/30/2018: Six explosions detonated in quick succession, throwing plumes of sand and crushed limestone into the air. Applause broke out. Then, about 50 people, mostly scientists interested in volcanoes, dispersed from their perch on a nearby slope to check on research equipment and scrutinize the crater left behind by the blasts. Welcome to the Field-Scale Experimental Volcanology Workshop run by the UB Center for Geohazards Studies. Taking place from July 24-27, the event drew participants from as far away as Italy and Japan.

06/14/2018: How is the Antarctic ice sheet changing in a warming world? A new study that answers this question is significant in part because it represents many of the leading scientists in the field speaking with one voice on this important issue, says UB ice sheet researcher Beata Csatho.

05/30/2018: An international conference on glaciers and ice sheets will bring about 80 climate researchers from around the world to Buffalo this June. The event — the International Glaciological Society (IGS) Symposium on Timescales, Processes and Glacier Dynamics — will feature presentations by some of the leading climate researchers of our time. The aim is to advance scientific knowledge of how ice sheets and glaciers respond to climate change, which could lead to improved predictions of how quickly sea levels will rise over the next century and beyond.