News | Research

INSTAAR research is featured in thousands of news stories and more than 10,000 social media posts per year. Outlets include the New York Times, Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and as well as more regional news outlets like High Country News, 9News, and the Denver Post. Selected highlights are listed below. Additional stories are noted @INSTAAR on Twitter.

Researcher Chad Wolak prepares NOAA air samples for carbon-14 measurement. Photo by Scott Lehman.

Climatologist Pieter Tans joins INSTAAR

Dec. 1, 2022

Renowned climatologist Pieter Tans has joined INSTAAR as a Fellow Emeritus. Tans will be working with colleagues at INSTAAR to continue investigations of atmospheric carbon and climate change.

Smoke from a wildfire is visible behind a permafrost monitoring tower at the Scotty Creek Research Station in Canada's Northwest Territories in September. The tower burned down in October from unusual wildfire activity. Photo by Joëlle Voglimacci-Stephanopoli.

Belching lakes, mystery craters, ‘zombie fires’: How the climate crisis is transforming the Arctic permafrost (CNN)

Nov. 14, 2022

Thawing permafrost—the frozen layer of soil that has underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia—is upending the lives of people living in the Arctic and dramatically transforming the polar landscape. The vast amount of carbon stored in the permafrost is an overlooked and underestimated driver of climate crisis. Permafrost thaw needs to get more attention—fast.

  An iceberg in Ilulissat, Greenland. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting rapidly, and that melt will accelerate as the Earth heats up. Ryan Kellman/NPR

Climate tipping points and the damage that could follow (NPR)

Nov. 11, 2022

If Earth heats up beyond 1.5 degrees C, the impacts don't get just slightly worse--scientists warn that abrupt changes could be triggered, with devastating impacts. As the 27th annual climate negotiations are underway in Egypt and the world is set to blow past that 1.5°C warming threshold, NPR asks climate scientists including Merritt Turetsky about three climate tipping points--points of no return that could cause big changes to the Earth's ecosystems.

A black-capped chickadee perches on a snowy tree branch. Photo by Amanda Frank via Unsplash.

The chickadee you see sitting on a tree? It might be a hybrid (CU Boulder Today)

Nov. 1, 2022

Hybrids of two common North American songbirds, the black-capped and mountain chickadee, are more likely to be found in places where humans have altered the landscape, finds new research by a team including INSTAAR Scott Taylor. The study is the first to positively correlate hybridization in any species with human-caused landscape changes. It also contradicts a long-standing assumption that these two birds rarely hybridize.

Warren Sconiers at one of his research sites on Niwot Ridge.

Warren Sconiers: A winding path of discovery through research and teaching (British Ecological Society)

Oct. 25, 2022

Warren Sconiers—an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder interested in plant-insect interactions, insect ecology, and climate change—shares his story as part of Black History Month.

Adelie penguins hunt for fish in the cold waters of the Southern Ocean. Photo by John Weller.

Scientists call for setting limits, possible moratorium on fishing in Antarctica's Southern Ocean (Phys.org)

Oct. 21, 2022

An international group of 10 scientists, including Cassandra Brooks, is calling for protective limits on fishing in Antarctica's Southern Ocean. They report in the journal Science that current levels of fishing, combined with climate change, are taking a concerning toll on a diverse ecosystem of global importance.

Color coded US map of how rain-on-snow events can create potential nitrogen sources. Northern areas of the northeast, midwest, and northwest coast have high potential.

As winters warm, nutrient pollution threatens 40% of U.S. (U Vermont)

Oct. 10, 2022

As climate changes, previously frozen chemical runoff from farms and fields puts water quality at risk in over 40 states, research says. Keith Musselman part of team looking at winter nutrient pollution, a new problem caused by climate change.

Miles Moore and Jimmy Howe toss black sand onto a test plot on Niwot Ridge. Photo by Kelsey Simpkins, CU Boulder.

To study impacts of longer, hotter summers, ecologists haul 5,000 pounds of sand up a mountain (CU Boulder Today)

Sept. 12, 2022

For the past five years, a team of research assistants and volunteers have hiked up Niwot Ridge in late May to set the stage for a unique experiment in which they spread 5,000 pounds of black sand across portions of the remaining snowpack. Their goal is to simulate the near-future effects of a warming planet on alpine ecosystems.

Pika on a talus slope, by Derek Ryder via Unsplash

CU Boulder study finds climate change impacts in mountain microclimates (Broomfield Leader on Wayback Machine)

Sept. 7, 2022

Some effects of climate change are dramatic and visible, like wildfires and extreme weather, but a new study led by Chris Ray found that climate change can impact even hidden places and some of the state’s smallest residents: pikas.

Stone globes outside the entrance to the Benson Geological Sciences building on CU Boulder campus

CU’s Earth, atmospheric sciences rank No. 1 and No. 2 in world, along with other high standings (CU Boulder Today)

Aug. 11, 2022

CU Boulder's earth sciences and atmospheric science disciplines ranked No. 1 and No. 2 globally in the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS). The annual ranking includes over 1,800 universities from 96 countries scored across 54 academic subject categories.

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