UMaine’s Mayewski Honored in Tasmania for Antarctic Research
Contact: Paul Mayewski (207) 581-3091; David Munson (207) 581-3777
The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research has announced that UMaine professor Paul Andrew Mayewski, of Castine, will receive the first ever SCAR Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research. The award will be presented at a ceremony in Hobart, Tasmania on July 12 at the 2006 SCAR Open Science Congress.
SCAR is comprised of 41 nations and is the sole international body representing the sciences working in Antarctica. These sciences include such areas as earth, ocean, atmosphere, biology, medicine, and human behavior. Mayewski’s award represents competition from all of the disciplines.
Mayewski is the Director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, holding a duel appointment with the CCI and the Department of Earth Sciences. He is also a cooperating professor in the School of Marine Sciences. As an explorer, professor and scientist, he has lead more than 45 expeditions to remote regions such as Antarctica, the Arctic, Himalayas, Tibetan Plateau and Tierra del Fuego.
His work in Antarctica has included the International Trans Antarctic Expedition in which Mayewski organized 20 countries and leads the US expeditions. He has served on numerous national and international scientific committees such as the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the International Geosphere Biosphere Project, and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
Mayewski’s research focuses on reconstructing the climates of the past, utilizing ice cores and other methods to determine how the Earth’s climate has changed over time. With the help of his colleagues, he has collected ice cores that establish a year-by-year history of the planet’s climate for the past 110,000 years.
Mayewski’s research has helped to verify the existence of rapid climate change events in which global temperatures are believed to have changed as much as 20 to 30 degrees Celsius over the course of a single decade.
Prior to coming to UMaine, Mayewski spent more than 25 years at the University of New Hampshire, where he helped create and build the Institute of Earth Oceans and Space and oversaw the Climate Change Research Center.
Mayewski began his research in Antarctica as a graduate student in 1968, and calculates that he has spent at least three years of his life living in a tent in some of the coldest and most remote locations on the planet.
Other honors have included the naming of a peak in Antarctica, Mayewski Peak, a Citation by the Explorers Club, a Fellow by the American Geophysical Union, and an Honorary Doctorate by Stockholm University. Mayewski has been featured in more than 300 prominent media venues including a recent interview on CBS 60 Minutes. He co-wrote a popular climate change book entitled “The Ice Chronicles” (P.A. Mayewski and F. White).
LINKS:
UMaine Climate Change Institute
http://www.climatechange.umaine.edu/