Nicola Jones

La Nina has brought a particularly cool and wet early summer to my part of the world this year; the west coast of Canada has hardly seen summer yet. Looks like La Nina may be sticking around, unusually, for a third year running. More importantly, some researchers are forecasting a lot more La-Nina-like conditions in the future, thanks to climate change impacts in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. That could mean more floods in Australia, more drought in the southern US, and more cool temps for me. My story in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01668-1  

Is it a good idea to capture emissions and lock them up underground? Carbon capture and storage is a vital part of most IPCC scenarios that get us to "net zero" emissions, and there are new customers from hard-to-abate industries like cement production getting on board. But it has some people worried it will just prolong our addiction to fossil fuels. https://e360.yale.edu/features/solution-or-band-aid-carbon-capture-projects-are-moving-ahead

There's a debate over whether giraffes evolved long necks to reach high-up leaves, or as a display of sexiness for the ladies (like a peacock's tail). Now a new fossil of an ancient giraffe ancestor (from 17 million years ago in China) could help to shed some light on this puzzle. My story in Nature! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01565-7

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed for a new French fashion/beauty/writing magazine (thankfully, in English) about the practice of science journalism. http://subtitle-magazine.com/issue-n2/ The full text isn't online, but the magazine gave me permission to publish it here: STORYTELLERS - NICOLA JONES Interview by Jessica Gordon Braye As published in Sub(ti)tle Magazine, issue 2 After graduating highschool, Nicola Jones studied for a major in chemistry and physics, however, she soon found herself swapping physics for oceanography so that she would have to live near the ocean for the rest of her life. A fact that’s ironic now that she lives in the mountains… Eventually, though, and in a typically non-linear fashion, oceanography would lead her to journalism. After spending time on a research ship as an undergraduate (a rare opportunity for someone at her level), working alongside scientists, sharing the excitement of scientific exploration, Nicola found herself back...