In a study published in Communications Earth & Environment, Ray Bradley and colleagues, including former CSRC postdoctoral researcher William D’Andrea at Columbia University, suggest that an unknown band of humans settled there around A.D. 500 — some 350 years before the Vikings, who until recently were thought to be the first human inhabitants. The study is supported by lake sediment samples containing signs that domestic sheep suddenly appeared around 500, well before the Viking occupation.

Francois Lapointe and Ray Bradley have published a study in Science Advances that reveals that the Little Ice Age, one of the coldest periods of the past 10,000 years, was triggered by the transfer of warm Atlantic Ocean water from the tropics. The warming occurred during a time of high solar activity and few volcanic eruptions. Read more in the UMass news release and journal article.

December 8, 2021
Climate System Research Center
Climate analysis for autumn and summer-autumn 2021.

Meteorological autumn (Sep-Nov) was the fourth warmest on record for the Northeast U.S. Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island saw their third warmest autumn. A record warm October paced the autumn anomaly.

It was the third warmest autumn for the contiguous U.S.

Four of the five warmest autumns over the Northeast have occurred in the last 11 years (2011, 2015, 2021, 2016). The season is warming at a rate of 0.2 ^oF per decade since 1895.

For minimum temperature, the Northeast experienced the highest average on record for both autumn and the summer-autumn period (Jun-Nov). Minimum temperatures for summer-fall were record warm at most sites in New England, including Boston, Providence, Worcester, and a majority of locations in Maine and New Hampshire. This year Boston had its warmest summer on record, and its year-to-date average temperature is on pace to be warmest ever recorded.

Autumn was wetter than normal across most of the region. Massachusetts received 16.5 inches of rain, the most of any state in the Northeast. This is 3.5 inches above normal, making for the 12th wettest autumn on record.

Information accessed from the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information and the Northeast Regional Climate Center. Period of record is 127 years since 1895.

In a new study in AGU Advances, Matthew Winnick describes how runoff laden with nitrogen from fertilizer is leading to increased nitrous oxide emissions in river systems. Read more in the UMass news release.

In a pair of new papers, Michael Rawlins and colleagues describe new numerical model simulations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) loaded to rivers throughout the western Arctic and how flows of water and DOC are increasing in northwest Alaska. Read more in the UMass news release and the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences and Environmental Research Letters journal articles.

CSRC Director Raymond Bradley will lead a team of researchers to Peary Land, Greenland’s northernmost region to document past changes in the climate and environment of the area. This project is supported by a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Read more here.

Ph.D. candidate Ruthie Halberstadt has been awarded a highly competitive NSF Post Doctoral Research Fellowship: “High-resolution Nested Antarctic Ice Sheet Modeling to Reconcile Marine and Terrestrial Geologic Data”. Her research project includes ongoing collaborations with professors Rob DeConto, her advisor, and Greg Balco at UC Berkeley.