News Archive

  • In ancient boulders, new clues about the story of human migration to the Americas
    5/11/23
    05/30/2018: When and how did the first people come to the Americas? The conventional story says that the earliest settlers came via Siberia, crossing the now-defunct Bering land bridge on foot and trekking through Canada when an ice-free corridor opened up between massive ice sheets toward the end of the last ice age.
  • Study probes history of famed lake effect snow
    5/11/23
    01/22/2018: Lake effect snowfall is one of nature’s greatest snow machines: It happens when cold winds flow over warmer water, giving rise to intense bands of precipitation that can dump several feet of snow on a single location in hours or days. A new UB study aims to learn more about this phenomenon, which has sired some of the Great Lakes region’s most epic weather events — including a 2014 storm that buried parts of Western New York under 7 feet of snow.
  • College Matters: On the Rocks
    5/11/23
    01/2018
  • Scientists get early look at hurricane damage to Caribbean coral reefs
    5/11/23
    12/26/2017: Coral reefs off St. John, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, suffered severe injury during the storms, say scientists from the University at Buffalo and California State University, Northridge who traveled there in late November to assess the damage — the first step in understanding the reefs’ recovery.
  • Volcanoes past behavior key to predicting eruptions
    5/11/23
    11/29/2017: Mount Agung in Bali has been thrusting ash thousands of feet into the sky for almost two weeks. Lava is burbling at the volcano’s peak. Indonesian authorities have ordered evacuations around Agung, while tourists are stranded at the closed airport. The volcano’s flanks are bulging from magma trying to push its way out, and earthquake frequency has been increasing. Heat from the magma has melted snow and ice at Agung’s summit, causing volcanic mudflows called lahars. It’s looking like an eruption is imminent. But how do volcanologists know for sure what’s to come?
  • Studying effects on coral change
    5/11/23
    11/07/2017: Professor Howard Lasker will journey to the Caribbean island of St. John this month to study the impact of hurricanes Irma and Maria on coral reefs in the region.
  • Expanding focus on climate science
    5/11/23
    10/17/2017: The department would like to welcome Kristin Poinar, a NASA climate scientist whose study on giant cracks in the Greenland Ice Sheet made headlines worldwide in early 2017.
  • Top climate scientists meet at UB to discuss Arctic ice loss
    5/11/23
    9/15/2017: Among other presenters, UB Geologist Jason Briner led an NSF workshop entitled: "How Stable is the Greenland Ice Sheet?"
  • Monitoring underground water reserves – from space
    5/11/23
    09/25/2017: Underground stockpiles of water — housed in layers of porous rock called aquifers — are one of the world’s most important sources of drinking water.
  • Crowdsourcing 7-day forecast
    5/11/23
    9/5/2017: Fishermen, boaters and other outdoor enthusiasts text data on river levels and temperature to scientists. Then, the project team feeds this and other information into a computer model that generates a 7-day forecast of water conditions.