Remembering Sarah White, Postdoctoral Researcher
It is with sadness that we convey that Dr. Sarah White has died from complications associated with Covid. Sarah was in important member of the Nile research team a warm and generous colleague and friend to those of us who knew here. She is survived by her husband, Tristan, and two young children, Helen & Martin.
A gofundme site (https://www.gofundme.com/f/memorial-fund-for-sarah-white) has been set up to help their family with medical expenses and a fund for her children. Please consider donating.
Sarah was a pioneering scholar in understanding the climate of the Pleistocene. During her doctoral studies, she brought together advanced statistical tools and cutting edge palaeoceanographic methods to developed new methods for quantifying how El Niño varied in the past. Using these tools, she made the first estimate of El Niño variability during the Pleistocene. She later turned to the problem of how Pleistocene paleoclimate variability affected the climate of North America, synthesizing the diverse terrestrial climate proxies from this period.
As part a Postdoctoral Researcher at San Francisco State and member of the Yale Nile Initiative team, Sarah’s work centered on the hydroclimate of East Africa over the last 2,500 years. This work draws on the wealth of Egyptian historical sources that contain information about Nile conditions. Sarah’s research focused on the relationship between Nile flood conditions and how long records of Nile flood conditions constrain the history of global climate. Sarah also worked closely with Yale historians, drawing on the rich documentary collections preserved in Egypt in order to produce a reconstruction of annual Nile conditions throughout the Hellenistic Period.
Sarah left a deep impression on us all. She had an intellectual curiosity and focus that made her company a pleasure. She was always ready to talk about her research and to dive into ideas. We will miss her greatly.
We are really happy to report that Jamie Flynn, a graduate student in the Ancient History program at Yale has joined the project. He will be working this summer on South Asia and evidence of the impact of climatic change here in antiquity. Already, has has found some very important evidence. Stay tuned for more soon.
We are really happy to report that our modeling team at Columbia/NASA-GISS , led by Ram Singh, has submitted a paper on our decadal scale work to the Special Issue of Climate of the Past. Much will follow from this work.
A nice story in Inside Science featuring Ram Singh’s (NASA GISS) exciting modeling work for the project.
Heavy rains in Sudan flooded the White Nile between August 3-11, 2003. These images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra and Aqua satellites show the river on June 19 and August 1, swollen from rains. The area between the White Nile and the Blue Nile to the east is dotted with pools of standing water as well. In the false-color images, water is blue, vegetation is bright green, naturally bare soil and low vegetation are tan and drab green, and clouds are light blue and white. The flooding has displaced 13,000 people, leaving more than 3,000 homeless, and destroying crops. Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC
PI Joe Manning and the Yale Nile Initiative is featured this week in YaleEnvironment360, the online environment/climate news site of the Yale School of the Environment.
New pre-print in Climate of the Past has appeared on the Mt Churchill eruption (852/3 CE) and its impact on climate and society:
“The 852/3 CE Mount Churchill eruption: examining the potential climatic and societal impacts and the timing of the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the North Atlantic Region, Clim. Past Discuss.”
Mackay, H., Plunkett, G., Jensen, B., Aubry, T., Corona, C., Kim, W. M., Toohey, M., Sigl, M., Stoffel, M., Anchukaitis, K., Raible, C., Bolton, M., Manning, J., Newfield, T., Di Cosmo, N., Ludlow, F., Kostick, C., Yang, Z., Coyle McClung, L., Amesbury, M., Monteath, A., Hughes, P., Langdon, P., Charman, D., Booth, R., Davies, K., Blundell, A., and Swindles, G.: [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-2021-170, in review, 2021.
UPDATE: The Mt Churchill study has now appeared in its final published form!
We are thrilled to welcome a new Member of the team, Dr Selga Medenieks, Trinity College Dublin.
Selga is an Australian Classicist whose research focuses on intersections of the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds, with a special interest in the political uses of religion, religious institutions, and ritual. She has held several interdisciplinary research posts and currently manages the production of Hermathena, the Trinity College Dublin journal of Classics, Theology, and Philosophy (1873-). She collects university qualifications (journalism, law, ancient history, archaeology) and vintage prints from Latvia, but travel is her greatest passion."
Forever changes: Climate lessons from ancient Egypt
Recently Yale Professors Nadine Moeller (Yale, NELC) and Joe Manning were featured in a story for Yale News
(Photo by G. Marouard, Yale University, Tell Edfu Project)
Superposition of coral and volcanic data (Dee et al., 2020)
What can we “Sea” From Volcanic Eruptions?
Prof. Manning's The Open Sea explores how the diversity of experiences in the Ancient Mediterranean and the search for an "ancient economy" relates to the inter-connectedness driven by cross-cultural exchange patterns over land and sea. It is exciting to complement the read with this research report by Dee et al., commenting on the weak tendency of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) to fluctuate due to large volcanic eruptions.
Global paleogeography of the Late Ordovician and locations of the two studied successions (Shen et al., 2021)
Global environmental changes Driven by volcanic activities
Shen and colleagues studied how volcanic eruptions in the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction (LOME) provide essential geochemical evidence (e.g. high Hg/TOC and Hg/TS ratios) for a global event that suggests linkage with climatic and environmental disruption, focusing on South China and Western Laurentia.
Cooling induced by most prominent Icelandic eruptions as temperature readings and spatial patterns.
Volcanic Climate Responses by societies
Through the study of eruption of Veiðivötn in 1477 CE, Abbott and colleagues presents effective and quantifiable approaches to studying post-volcanic climate responses, the reconstruction of which is critical in understanding the impacts and projections of climate events in past and present societies.
A beautiful photo of Laki taken by Prof. Joseph Manning (Yale University).
long-Standing impacts of laki
As Alaska's Okmok volcano eruption in 43 BCE was one of the largest at high-altitude in the last 2500 years, Edwards et al. presents parallels with the 1783-1784 CE Laki eruptions that caused dramatic changes in environ- and social climates. Understanding of paleoclimatology has increased importance in precisely quantifying, interpreting, and responding to volcanism and other natural climate forcings.
10-km-diameter caldera of Okmok volcano, formed by paroxysmal eruption in early 43 BCE.
“The Sun of rome is set!”
This commentary by Oppenheimer offers important insights into how a volcano-climate-society connection is important in understanding historical context of the Ancient Meditteranean and beyond.
Flooding in Glauchau, Germany, in 1854, as depicted in a woodcut.
A flood history of Europe
Co-PI Francis Ludlow and colleague Rhonda McGovern discuss how European historical documentation has been used to reconstruct the history of flood events over the last several centuries and implications for future flood-management strategies in this piece in Nature.
July 2008 eruption of Okmok, Aleutian Islands of Alaska.
Ancient Rome Was Teetering. Then a Volcano Erupted 6,000 Miles Away.
The NY Times covers new research identifying a 43 BCE eruption of Alaska’s Okmok volcano. Believed to be one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 2,500 years, this eruption caused global cooling and may have played a role in the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Roman empire. Features an interview with PI Joe Manning.
Climate Changes in the Ancient World: volcanoes, rebellions, and lessons from the distant pass
“In the 14th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde interview Joseph Manning…Professor Manning explains how his team uncovered the influence of climate change in Egyptian history, and what the ancient world has to tell us about our uncertain future.”
Joe Manning describes how ancient papyri reveals societal responses to environmental stressors.
Yale historian’s research, teaching gives students new window to an ancient world
For the Yale News, Bess Connolly describes how Joe Manning teaches a class on environmental history, highlighting his graduate seminar’s trip to Dr. Joe McConnell’s ice core research lab at the Desert Research Institute. Featuring interviews with PI Joe Manning and Project Manager Nadia Grisaru.
A depiction of the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, featured in the “Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society” in 1888. Credit: 71-1250, Houghton Library, Harvard University/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain
The Art and History Shaped by Volcanic Winters
This Science Friday article by Johanna Mayer and Lauren J. Young describe the impact of volcanic eruptions of past civilizations. Featuring an interview with our own Co-PI Jenn Marlon, the article discusses the implications of this team’s research in the context of a full sequence of volcanic eruptions from the past 2,500 years presented by Sigl et al. (2015).