climate change

Kent State Uses Geospatial Technology to Map Violence

Principal Investigator Cameron C. Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography (within the College of Arts and Sciences) at Kent State University, was recently awarded a three-year, $387,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office and its Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections Program (MAPP). The project is titled “Excess Heat and Excess Cold Factors: Establishing a unified duration-intensity metric for monitoring hazardous temperature conditions in North America”.

Grass after first frost

Many wonder if climate change is the reason we’ve had 'weather whiplash' or day-to-day dramatic changes from hot to cold or cold to hot. As a climate scientist, Cameron Lee, assistant professor in the Department of Geography in the College of Arts and Sciences at Kent State, gets asked this question a lot. Looking beyond just the average temperatures and statistical means, he decided to take a more analytical look at weather whiplash and add to a growing body of climate change literature examining temperature variability trends.

An aspen woodland/sagebrush shrubland ecotone. Photo by Tim Assal

Timothy Assal, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Geography, was awarded a grant as a co-principal investigator on a multi-institutional project, “Vulnerability of lower-ecotone aspen forests to altered fire regimes and climate dynamics in the northern Great Basin” (a three-year $299,842 total award with $89,600 going to Kent State), which is funded by the Northwest Climate Adaption Science Center. This collaboration includes the United States Geological Survey in Boise, Idaho, Utah State University, and the United States Bureau of Land Management.

Eunice Foote's article “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of Sun’s Rays”, in American Journal of Art and Science, 2nd Series, v. XXII/no. LXVI, November 1856, p. 382-383.

Recently, Joseph Ortiz, Ph.D., professor and assistant chair in the Department of Geology in Kent State University’s College of Arts and Science, partnered with Sir Roland Jackson, Ph.D., a historian of science at the Royal Institution and the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London, to co-author a paper assessing the experiments described in Eunice Foote’s papers from a detailed quantitative perspective and to place them in historical context. They point out the differences between her hypothesis and that of the modern greenhouse effect.

Chelsea Smith (left) and Jordyn Stoll (right) were selected for a Department of Energy Graduate Student Research Program

Two Kent State University students, in the College of Arts and Sciences, were among 62 students from 50 different U.S. universities recently selected for funding by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program.

A rift along the Larsen C ice shelf from the vantage point of NASA's DC-8 research aircraft. Image acquired by NASA on November 10, 2016. Photo credit: John Sonntag / NASA

Joseph D. Ortiz, Ph.D., professor and assistant chair in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Geology at Kent State University, recently authored a “News and Views” article in Nature Geoscience that discusses research carried out by another research team that reassessed the melt history and timing of the collapse of the Eurasian Ice Sheet Complex during the Last Deglaciation.

A rift along the Larsen C ice shelf from the vantage point of NASA's DC-8 research aircraft. Image acquired by NASA on November 10, 2016. Photo credit: John Sonntag / NASA

Joseph D. Ortiz, Ph.D., professor and assistant chair in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Geology at Kent State University, recently authored a “News and Views” article in Nature Geoscience that discusses research carried out by another research team that reassessed the melt history and timing of the collapse of the Eurasian Ice Sheet Complex during the Last Deglaciation.

Lauren Kinsman-Costello, assistant professor of biological sciences at Kent State, stands in a field in the arctic circle, in Sweden.

In early February, scientists reported the hottest temperature on record in Antarctica: 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Studies show climate change is disproportionately affecting the poles, warming them faster than anywhere else on Earth, and raising questions about what kinds of changes we can expect in arctic ecosystems as temperatures rise. 
A Kent State University biologist has teamed up with some colleagues in an inter-institutional effort to answer some of those questions.


An image of the globe over North America, showing increased warm weather in a yellow-to-red scale

Research into the air masses that drive changes in our day-to-day weather has been limited by land-based and regional studies, leaving wide gaps in our understanding of these impactful phenomena. A new paper by a Kent State University geographer has just filled in most of those gaps.