Mathew Barlow
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mathewabarlow.bsky.social
Mathew Barlow
@mathewabarlow.bsky.social
3.4K followers 2.8K following 260 posts
Climate scientist at UMass Lowell: droughts, floods, extreme events, & climate change. IPCC WG1 AR6 lead author. Skunk cabbage fan. he/him/his. Shocked but not awed.

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=qWV-WIQAAAAJ&hl=e
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mathewabarlow.bsky.social
Mathew Barlow @mathewabarlow.bsky.social · Dec 4

The Climate Change Initiative (CCI) is the hub for all things climate at UMass Lowell:

www.uml.edu/research/cli...

To keep current on all our work across 20 different departments and all five colleges, you can sign up for our newsletter at:

signup.e2ma.net/signup/19761...
Climate Change Initiative
www.uml.edu
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
veni.dev
So execs are the ones replaceable by AI? 🙃

www.businessinsider.com/executives-a...
Execs are embracing AI more than their employees are, new research suggests
Research from HR software company Dayforce suggests that executives are leaning into AI far more than their employees.
www.businessinsider.com
November 29, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
ryankatzrosene.bsky.social
From Copernicus: This shows how the expected date for breaching 1.5C has been creeping ever closer in recent years. The orange date shows the baseline for the extrapolation; the red date shows when 1.5C is breached based on the trend...
November 30, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
kellyhereid.bsky.social
A reminder, in light of that NYT story today, about skill and spread across climate analytics providers:

Getting good climate info in the hands of individuals would be highly valuable. Just not convinced we're actually there yet.
kellyhereid.bsky.social Kelly Hereid @kellyhereid.bsky.social · Oct 24
Absolutely fantastic study comparing anonymized outputs of climate analytics models.

Everyone loves to bag on flood (rightly so), but can we talk about how the spread here is "30mph breeze to Cat 5 hurricane" www.fca.org.uk/publication/... HT @ruarirhodes.bsky.social
Assessing future cyclone speeds at the same location across climate analytics vendors. For the same spot, high risk properties range from sub-tropical storm to Cat 5.
November 30, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
rosemarymosco.com
If you're looking for gifts for family and friends, I have a lot of stuff on my Topatoco shop, including a Blöödchëëp Shirt and many prints of comics!
topatoco.com/collections/...
Bird and Moon
Laugh while you learn with Bird and Moon!
topatoco.com
November 30, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
climateofgavin.bsky.social
Some more thoughts on the Zillow/FirstStreet/Realtors story.

RealClimate: Who should pay? www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...
RealClimate: Who should pay?
RealClimate: Climate risk scores on real estate listings are having an impact on prices and realtors are complaining. But who should pay for these losses? If you have been browsing Zillow or Redfin in...
www.realclimate.org
November 30, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
celestelabedz.bsky.social
Doing some holiday shopping? Want opinions from a random geophysics nerd on the internet about some books to buy and who to buy them for?

Here are my 2025 fiction reading highlights! I'll add my nonfiction list later.
Cover images of: Chemistry - Weike Wang Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler Parable of the Talents - Octavia Butler The Berry Pickers - Amanda Peters Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo My Documents - Kevin Nguyen Troubled Waters - Mary Annaïse Heglar Death of the Author - Nnedi Okorafor
November 30, 2025 at 5:16 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
gravelinfluencer.bsky.social
The Boston Globe identified the companies in Massachusetts that employ the most SNAP recipients. A key stat: "In Massachusetts, 74% of working-age recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are employed, half of them full-time."

Full article: www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/28/m...
Number of SNAP recipients Amazon 2,456 Walmart 2,318 Uber 1,799 DoorDash 1,462 Tempus Unlimited 1,425 Stop & Shop 989 Mass General Brigham 956 Dollar Tree 952 Albertsons Companies, Inc. 896 Bayada Home Health 887
November 29, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
aaronputnam.bsky.social
Mendenhall Glacier has now officially receded from Mendenhall Lake. www.ktoo.org/2025/11/25/m...
Mendenhall Glacier has officially receded from Mendenhall Lake
Scientists say that means the glacier has entered a new phase of its retreat.
www.ktoo.org
November 28, 2025 at 6:49 PM
mathewabarlow.bsky.social
Stretching that high PV stratospheric air down over the Great Lakes.
map of current dynamic tropopause over US cross section of tropopause over Great Lakes
November 26, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
mdettinger.bsky.social
@cw3eScripps is now accepting applications for its Summer 2026 undergraduate internship program! Paid & lodging provided, to work with world class weather, water, climate scientists in La Jolla, CA!

cw3e.ucsd.edu/cw3e-interns...
November 26, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
simonleewx.com
Brief note regarding potential major SSW in the forecast: the formal definition requires the *daily-mean* 10 hPa 60°N U wind to turn negative. A sub-daily reversal wouldn’t qualify as a major event using the most widely established criteria.
November 25, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
maibached.bsky.social
Irrational exuberance meets irresponsible accounting?
justinhendrix.bsky.social Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 6d
"It seems like a marvel of financial engineering: Meta is building a $27 billion data center in Louisiana, financed with debt, and neither the data center nor the debt will be on its own balance sheet."
AI Meets Aggressive Accounting at Meta’s Gigantic New Data Center
Favorable treatment off the balance sheet hinges on some convenient assumptions.
www.wsj.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:45 PM
mathewabarlow.bsky.social
Tehran is having an historic drought due to a combination of factors, including climate change.

The ocean is not helping.

1/3
A chart showing fall precipitation in Tehran from 1950-present, based on ERA5 data. A chart showing precipitation in Tehran for 1 September-18 Sep 2025 compared to average. Shown in terms of accumulated precipitation.
November 24, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
alexrbarron.bsky.social
If you care about politics that works for non-billionaires, I highly encourage you to read this story about the 140-fold (>$1B in a year) increase in political donations from the wealthiest Americans.

wapo.st/4ipXaBd (gift link)
November 22, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
weatherdak.bsky.social
Very cool graphic alert... incredible work by
@jreiterwx.bsky.social.

Props to @ferragamowx.bsky.social for inspiring us to make this!

bsky.app/profile/cira...
cira-csu.bsky.social cira-csu.bsky.social @cira-csu.bsky.social · 9d
Every Category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricane since 2020, all together, in one group photo.

H/t to @ferragamowx.bsky.social for the inspiration.
Details: This imagery showcases a composite of every category 4 and 5 hurricane in the Atlantic ocean since 2020, using the GeoColor product from the GOES-16 and GOES-19 weather satellites. It spans from 22:30 UTC on 2020-08-26 (Hurricane Laura) to 14:00 UTC on 2025-10-28 (Hurricane Melissa).
November 21, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
funeralbeat.bsky.social
👩‍🌾 Grab your tools
An illustration of a young women yanking a weed out of a bed of marigolds. The primary colours of the piece are deep green and a saffron yellow, with some brown and moss green tones as well. The camera is looking up at the young girl with a forced perspective, as she pulls out the weed while leaning back. The text reads: PULL FASCISM UP BY THE ROOT.
November 20, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
zacklabe.com
Take a look at this... Remarkable "warmth" last month across both polar regions when visualizing temperature departures by latitude. The x-axis is quite stretched out here compared to my usual monthly update of this graphic.

GISTEMPv4 using their 1951-1980 baseline (data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/).
Bar graph showing zonal mean surface air temperature anomalies for the period of October 2025. All latitude bands observed above average temperature anomalies relative to 1951-1980.
November 20, 2025 at 9:16 PM
mathewabarlow.bsky.social
What a difference a day makes!

ECMWF forecast from the 18th (left) shows quite a few ensemble members well into negative territory. The forecast from the 19th (right) still shows the ensemble mean nearly making it to zero but not much movement below that.
ECMWF ensemble forecasts of zonal mean zonal wind at 60N, 10 hPa. Starting from 18 Nov on left, 19 Nov on right.
November 20, 2025 at 1:42 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
ipcc.bsky.social
The expert review of the First Order Draft of the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities is now open from 17 Oct - 12 Dec 2025.

Experts who wish to participate in the review can register until midnight CET on November 30, 2025.

Find out more 🔗 www.ipcc.ch/2025/09/17/p...
November 20, 2025 at 11:11 AM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
ddiamond.bsky.social
RFK Jr had committed to Bill Cassidy, as a condition to win his vote, that he would keep website language.

Cassidy in February: “If confirmed… CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.”

Note the language in second photo.
November 20, 2025 at 2:42 AM
mathewabarlow.bsky.social
Shifting more of my graphics work flow over to @blender.org - here's a first cut on the tropopause over North America. 🧪
November 20, 2025 at 2:53 AM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
rsimmon.bsky.social
#30DayMapChallenge Day 19: Projections. A comparison of an ‘orthographic’ projection, which positions the viewer an infinite distance from the Earth and views a full hemisphere, and a ‘vertical perspective’ projection which simulates a view from a specified altitude—in this case geostationary orbit.
Orthographic projection of the Earth centered on the Equator and 75˚ West. South America is centered in the projection. Orthographic projection of the Earth centered on the Equator and 75˚ West. South America is centered in the projection, which bulges slightly towards the viewer.
November 19, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
maibached.bsky.social
Hazzah! Today, my colleagues at @virginiaclimate.bsky.social released the first-ever Virginia Climate Assessment, a "comprehensive, science-based evaluation of how past, current, and anticipated climate conditions have and will impact Virginia and its people." Please join me in thanking them.

1/2
The Virginia Climate Assessment — Virginia Climate Center
www.vaclimate.gmu.edu
November 19, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Mathew Barlow
drkimwood.bsky.social
Though the season doesn't officially end until November 30, here's a look at Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity in 2025 from an accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) perspective.

What stands out to me is the anomalously high August + October activity and the anomalously low September activity.
A three-panel plot showing different perspectives on 2025 Atlantic hurricane season accumulated cyclone energy (ACE), where higher values imply a tropical cyclone (TC) lasted longer and/or attained higher intensities. The top left panel shows the season total compared with the 1988-2024 seasons. The top right panel shows the monthly range of ACE values with 2025 numbers highlighted by orange X symbols. The bottom panel shows daily ACE values accumulated over time, with pale gray lines individual years during 1988-2024, the black line is the 1991-2020 average, and the orange line is 2025. The line extends through November 30 assuming no more TCs form in the North Atlantic.
November 19, 2025 at 3:15 AM