Sandra Brugger, a paleoecologist at the Desert Research Institute, found in her recent study that Europe’s past prosperity and failure, driven by climate changes, has been revealed using thousand-year-old pollen, spores and charcoal particles fossilized in glacial ice.
Featured Research: DRI scientists analyze origins of the Saharan dust plume
On June 18, 2020, NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured this visible image of the large light brown plume of Saharan dust over the North Atlantic Ocean. The image showed that the dust from Africa’s west coast extended almost to the Lesser Antilles in the western...
Eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano linked to mysterious period of extreme cold in ancient Rome
Reno, Nev. (June 22, 2020) – An international team of scientists and historians has found evidence connecting an unexplained period of extreme cold in ancient Rome with an unlikely source: a massive eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano, located on the opposite side of...
DRI ice core research makes Discover magazine’s list of top breakthroughs in 2018
Reno, Nev. (Thurs. January 17th) - For the second time, research out of the Ultra-trace Ice Core Chemistry Laboratory at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, Nevada, has been named one of the year’s biggest scientific discoveries by Discover magazine. The...
First non-polar historical iodine record shows impact of fossil fuel emissions
Reno, Nev. (Nov. 13, 2018): A new ice core record from the French Alps shows impacts of fossil fuel emissions in the form of a steep increase in iodine levels during the second half of the 20th century, according to a study released this week by an international team...
Lead pollution in Greenland ice shows rise and fall of ancient European civilizations
In a new study published in PNAS, a team of scientists, archaeologists and economists from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), the University of Oxford, NILU – Norwegian Institute for Air Research and the University of Copenhagen used ice samples from the North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP) to measure, date and analyze European lead emissions.