Unlocking Secrets of Climate Evolution at a Russian Arctic Lake

Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, a climate scientist speaking about the Lake E project at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow

On March 23, 2009, Dr. Julie Brigham-Grette, a climate scientist from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, came to Embassy Moscow to brief a group of 30 individuals from academia, the private sector, governmental and non-government institutions, and members of the diplomatic community on her climate change research in the Arctic.

Brigham-Grette is the lead American scientist on a drilling project at Lake El’gygytgyn in the eastern Siberian Chukotka region, a crater lake created 3.6 million years ago by a meteor impact.

A small group of American, Russian, German, and Austrian scientists is conducting climate modeling studies based on core samples obtained by drilling several hundred meters underneath the lake bed. Ultimately, this research will allow scientists to create a detailed history of climate changes at the lake over the entire span of its history.

Ambassador Beyrle gave short remarks at the briefing and called the project “a tremendous example of science cooperation, not just between the U.S. and Russia, but also with Germany and Austria.”

(Read more: Blog on latest El’gygytgyn developments: http://www.polartrec.com/resources/web-link/7353.)