Scientific Discoveries by CIRES Researchers

In 2004, CIRES Fellows Craig Jones Craig Jones and Anne Sheehan published a study with doctoral student Oliver Boyd in Science magazine that shows how a massive body of rock sank into the Earth's mantle setting off the rise of the southern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The researchers used innovative measurement and image processing techniques allowing them to create an underground image of the Sierras. For more information, see the Team Traces Origins, Uplift of California's Highest Mountains.

John Birks, CIRES Fellow and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, with Paul Crutzen is credited with developing the "nuclear winter" theory, 1981-1982.

Susan Solomon, CIRES Fellow and NOAA Aeronomy Lab Scientist, played a leading role in the international effort to discover the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole. Her research has included evaluations of the environmental impacts of substitutes for the ozone-depleting compounds that are now-banned.

In 2002, CIRES researcher Ted Scambos was part of a team that discovered warmer summer surface temperatures on Antarctic ice shelves have in recent years caused more ice to melt into standing water ponds, leaking into cracks and speeding up ice shelf disintegration. Surface water filling cracks and crevasses can break away ice shelves, causing portions to float away and eventually melt. For more information, see the Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses in Largest Event of Last 30 Years.