Kevin Anchukaitis

Tree Rings Reveal Origins of Some of the World’s Best Violins

Tree Rings Reveal Origins of Some of the World’s Best Violins www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/s...

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

The amount of misogyny is academia remains horrific -- and even worse, it is not going away with the older generation as one might have hoped. It is being recapitulated in a new generation.

Program on Climate Change (PCC) Postdoctoral Scholar Program 2026 | Program on Climate Change

Postdoc Fellowship opportunity! UW Program on Climate Change has a new for a Postdoctoral Scholar program for fellows to develop and conduct novel climate science research that benefits from collaborations at UW. Apply by April 15th! pcc.uw.edu/research/fun...

A small Connecticut the size of a large Connecticut

Open Postdoctoral Researcher position in our research group at the University of Hawaiʻi (Honolulu). The position focuses on ML/AI model development and analysis for tropical-extratropical weather and climate research. Deadline: March 20. Apply here: tinyurl.com/hrx87fnf

Maya Postclassic persistence in the Birds of Paradise Wetland Fields, Belize | PNAS Rapid decay of organic artifacts obscures our view of ancient tropical settlements. We present a study of architecture and artifact assemblages fro...

Maya Postclassic persistence in the Birds of Paradise Wetland Fields, Belize www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"...a warmer atmosphere pulls more moisture from soils, vegetation and snowpack. Snow melts earlier, soils dry out faster and plants lose water more quickly. In practical terms, precipitation totals alone no longer tell the water story in the Southwest." 🧪

The West has been in a 32-year drought. But it may be worse than that A drought has a beginning and an end. What's happening in the West doesn't seem to have an end, so what is it?

'After 30 years, is the West's drought still a drought?' - Arizona Republic's long piece on aridification and its consequences for Arizona, featuring the LTRR's Dr. Margaret Evans and her research on rising temperatures and changing forest dynamics www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

The Coming AI Cataclysm In the decade since the neural architecture version of Google Translate and the invention of transformer architecture for neural networks, we have experienced the most rapid technological breakthrough...

'As AI might ask: Would you like me to expand on the theme of what happens to social stability when the relationship between social classes changes rapidly and the young find their labor superfluous to the needs of capital?' www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences.

7/10

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025 for the Directorate of Geosciences.

5/10

Biomarker Constraints on Indo‐Pacific Warm Pool Temperature During the Late Pleistocene: The Role of Orbital Forcing Orbital-scale IPWP SST records show a dominant 100 kyr cycle and are in phase with greenhouse gas and ice volume changes U37K′ ${\mathrm{U}}_{37}^{{K}^{\prime }}$ and Mg/Ca records have a seasona...

Congratulations to Trang Tran (from the @leafwax.bsky.social lab along with @paleolipidrr.bsky.social) - Biomarker Constraints on Indo-Pacific Warm Pool Temperature During the Late Pleistocene: The Role of Orbital Forcing agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

In my utopian vision of the future, instead of offloading all the pointless, annoying work tasks (like reports that none one will read and needlessly opaque forms) to robots, we restructure work and society so that the pointless tasks don't happen at all.

Nice piece of the @nytimes.com covering the paper 'Forest-floor burial in 1507 by the largest Mount Rainier lahar of the past millennium' 🌊

Tree rings tell you about the past! 🌲💍

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/s...

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

In our latest coverage of the Trump administration and federal science budgets, @maxkozlov.bsky.social @dangaristo.bsky.social & I wrote about how the White House is stalling the release of monies approved by Congress. TLDR: it's not how things normally work. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

White House stalls release of approved US science budgets The US Congress rejected sweeping cuts to science agencies. But the NIH, the NSF and NASA have had their spending slowed.

Weeks after the US Congress rejected unprecedented cuts to science budgets that the administration of US President Donald Trump had sought for 2026, funding to several agencies that award research grants is still not freely flowing go.nature.com/3OvYRSZ

Early Independence: NERC Independent Research Fellowship 2026 Apply for a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Independent Research Fellowship (IRF) to further your career through an independent research project.

Call for 5-year NERC Independent Research Fellowships is now open. No limit on grant value and open to international applicants. If you're interested in being hosted by Earth Sciences at Oxford, our internal expression of interest deadline is 16th March. Further details: www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

NSF officials break silence on how AI and quantum now drive agency grantmaking Leaders acknowledge White House role in controversial moves

NSF leaders have just acknowledged what many scientists have long suspected: Presidential directives to boost AI and quantum have upended its traditional way of doing business. www.science.org/content/arti...

US Climate Forecaster to Be Absorbed in Weather Agency Reshuffle The US climate forecasting service will be absorbed into other federal departments as part of a re-organization announced to staff Thursday.

Scoop: The Climate Prediction Center is being folded into other agencies overseen by the National Weather Service

The change follows moves by the Trump administration to dismantle climate science programs

By @weathersullivan.bsky.social & @laurenthal.bsky.social

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Dendrochronology has impact across disciplines and all scales! Excited about how we're working at TNC AZ to incorporate more tree-ring studies into our portfolio

Epstein files reveal deeper ties to scientists than previously known Latest batch of documents show researchers consulting the financier and sex offender on publications, visas and more.

My reporting from a few weeks ago:

I still get a kick out of the fact that the 'objective' in 'Objective Analysis' is in contrast to the 'subjective' way in which humans might plot isopleths - the rise of (electronic!) computing in the middle of the 20th century allowing an objective way to interpolate from limited observations

In any case, we can blame the paleoceanographers 😉

I've also heard people say it has to do with translating depth (e.g. with 0 being the 'top') to time - e.g. like this from Emiliani 1966

I've wondered if it is all because of Emiliani - who numbered the Marine Isotope Stages (starting in 1955, without much chronological control beyond extrapolating sedimentation rates) starting with 1 for the most recent stage -

AI Lost Out to Traditional Models in Forecasting NYC's Blizzard Two days before New York's biggest snowstorm in a decade began, forecasters were still unsure how much snow would fall. One traditional US model had consistently predicted a major hit, while newer art...

Will AI weather models lead to better & faster extreme weather warnings? @wxpizza.bsky.social is watching how forecasters prioritize AI predictions before issuing public warnings about incoming storms. More models don't always mean enhanced decision-making. ow.ly/RWMj50YlyfC @bloomberg.com

This still makes me laugh many, many years later @dustybowl.bsky.social

Joint probabilistic estimates of temperature and precipitation from tree ring-based reconstructions of the last millennium Abstract. An understanding of Earth's past climate can help put current and future changes into historical context. Widely used tree ring-based drought atlases generally target the Palmer Drought Seve...

This is very cool - @drkatemarvel.bsky.social et al. 'Joint probabilistic estimates of temperature and precipitation from tree ring-based reconstructions of the last millennium' ascmo.copernicus.org/articles/12/...