Explorers Club Honors UMaine Professor
Contact: Paul Andrew Mayewski (207) 581-3091; Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO, Maine — Paul Andrew Mayewski, UMaine professor and director of the Climate Change Institute (CCI), has been selected to receive the prestigious 2007 Lowell Thomas Award by The Explorers Club. The medal recognizes those who have excelled in communicating the importance of exploration and the field sciences and have pushed the limits of discovery.
The Explorers Club is an international society dedicated to the advancement of field research. Founded in 1904, the society works to preserve the instinct to explore by promoting all areas of exploration and encouraging collaboration and cooperation between its members. The club’s members include some of the most accomplished explorers of our time.
Mayewski was a keynote speaker at the club’s annual dinner in New York City. He became an Explorers Club Fellow in 1979 and was given the organization’s Citation for Merit in 1995.
Mayewski holds a duel appointment with the CCI and the Department of Earth Sciences at UMaine. He is also a cooperating professor in the School of Marine Sciences. As an explorer, professor and scientist, he has led 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 leadership of 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.
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, the SCAR Medal for Excellence in Antarctic Research, 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/
The Explorers Club