Putnam Co-Authors PNAS Journal Article on Climate Change

Aaron Putnam, a research associate at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, is a co-author of a journal article for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Geology at Columbia University’s The Earth Institute, is the lead author of the article titled “Hydrologic impacts of past shifts of Earth’s thermal equator offer insight into those to be produced by fossil fuel CO2.” As fossil fuel CO2 warms the planet, the researchers expect Northern Hemisphere continents to warm faster than the Southern Hemisphere oceans. The researchers predict a northward shift of Earth’s thermal equator, sparked by the temperature contrast, may produce hydrologic changes and warm periods causing the American West, Middle East and southern Amazonia to become drier, and Asia, Venezuela and Africa to become wetter, the article states.