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Wintertime Weather-Climate Variability And Its Links To Early Spring Ice-Out In Maine Lakes, Mussie Beyene, Shaleen Jain

Publications

In recent decades, Maine lakes have recorded their earliest ice-out dates in over a century. In temperate regions, seasonal lake ice-cover is a critical phenomenon linking climate, aquatic ecosystem and society. And the lengthening of the ice-free period due to warmer climate has been linked to increased algal growth and declining lake water quality, warming of water temperatures leading to alterations in aquatic biodiversity, and the shortening of ice-fishing period and other traditional winter activities over lakes. In this study, historical record of eight lakes and six benchmarked meteorological stations in Maine for the period 1950–2010 were analyzed to (1) …

Putting The West Antarctic Ice Sheet Into Context, George H. Denton, Brenda L. Hall

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to develop new insights into the cause and pattern of events during the last glacial termination in South America and Antarctica. One emerging view is that a warming Southern Ocean (SO), driven by a chain of events initiated in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and tied to the interhemispheric climate seesaw of the last termination, was the underlying mechanism that drove the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) from its Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) position back to present-day grounding lines. This ocean thermal forcing would have impacted WAIS by accelerating basal melt rates on fringing floating ice …

Nonstationarity In Seasonality Of Extreme Precipitation: A Nonparametric Circular Statistical Approach And Its Application., Nirajan Dhakal, Shaleen Jain, Alexander Gray, Michael Dandy, Esperanza Stancioff

Publications

Changes in seasonality of extreme storms have important implications for public safety, storm water infrastructure, and, in general, adaptation strategies in a changing climate. While past research on this topic offers some approaches to characterize seasonality, the methods are somewhat limited in their ability to discern the diversity of distributional types for extreme precipitation dates. Herein, we present a comprehensive approach for assessment of temporal changes in the calendar dates for extreme precipitation within a circular statistics framework which entails: (a) three measures to summarize circular random variables (traditional approach), (b) four nonparametric statistical tests, and (c) a new nonparametric …

Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution Project (Rice): Us Deep Ice Core Glaciochemistry Contribution (2011- 2014), Paul Andrew Mayewski, Karl J. Kreutz, Andrei V. Kurbatov

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to analyze a deep ice core which will be drilled by a New Zealand research team at Roosevelt Island. The objectives are to process the ice core at very high resolution to (a) better understand phasing sequences in Arctic/Antarctic abrupt climate change, even at the level of individual storm events; (b) determine the impact of changes in the Westerlies and the Amundsen Sea Low on past/present/future climate change; (c) determine how sea ice extent has varied in the area; (d) compare the response of West Antarctica climate to other regions during glacial/interglacial cycles; and (e) …

Collaborative Research: Byrd Glacier Flow Dynamics, Gordon S. Hamilton

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to understand the flow dynamics of large, fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The project includes an integrated field, remote sensing and modeling study of Byrd Glacier which is a major pathway for the discharge of mass from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) to the ocean. Recent work has shown that the glacier can undergo short-lived but significant changes in flow speed in response to perturbations in its boundary conditions. Because outlet glacier speeds exert a major control on ice sheet mass balance and modulate the ice sheet contribution to …

Collaborative Research: Glacier-Ocean Coupling In A Large East Greenland Fjord, Gordon S. Hamilton

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award will support a study of glacier-fjord interactions in east Greenland. The 'Intellectual Merit' of the proposed study lies in the current understanding that the contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea level rise more than doubled in the last seven years, mostly because of a widespread and nearly simultaneous acceleration of many glaciers that terminate at tidewater in deep fjords. Understanding the causes of changes in glacier dynamics, and predicting their future trajectories is a topic of enormous scientific and societal importance. The Greenland fjords provide an intimate connection between the ice sheet and the ocean and, …

Promotingclimate Change Awareness And Adaptive Planning In Atlantic Fisheries Communities Using Dialogue-Based Participatory Vulnerability Analysis, Mapping, And Collaborative Systems Dynamic Modeling, Thomas Webler, Seth Tuler, Esperanza Stancioff, Elizabeth Fly

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The goals for the proposed project are twofold:

• First, the project will improve understandings of how a changing climate will affect fishing communities’ abilities to maintain marine fisheries and the local economies historically dependent upon them.

• Second, the project will investigate the role of a structured dialogue and participatory modeling process to support decision makers in fishing communities addressing consequences, vulnerabilities, and adaptive strategies in a context of climate stressors.