Last winter’s bitter weather was more than most people cared to tolerate, but Paul Mayewski, of Castine, had no such complaints. Director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine-Orono, Mayewski has made more than 35 expeditions to such unimaginably inhospitable climes as Greenland, the Arctic, the Himalayas and Antarctica documenting changes in climate embedded in ice cores.

His 2002 book, The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change, written with Frank White and illustrated by Mayewski’s wife, Lyn, sums up in a readily understandable way the information he and others have extracted from ice samples that document 100,000 years of climate history. It also tells the story of adventures inherent to exploration and scientific research done under such extreme conditions. He has also been featured in over 200 major newspaper and magazine articles and several Public Television documentaries, and has been invited to speak all over the world.

Castine’s Wilson Museum has asked Prof. Mayewski to speak on his experiences as part of its summer lecture series. The lecture, “Crossing Antarctica in Search of Buried Climate Records,” free to the public, will take place at 3 p.m. on July 19.

To give museum- and lecture-goers a sense of the reality behind the printed and spoken words, the Museum has also mounted a small exhibit of artifacts he donated. It features an ice axe and a hollowed dolerite rock from Antarctica, shaped by some two million years of wind.

“You get used to it,” Mayewski said of his whisker-freezing work. “These expeditions have allowed us to experience what the atmosphere over the planet was like hundreds and thousands of years ago and to develop an understanding of how the global climate system operates.” Information gleaned from this research, he said, will enable him and his colleagues to make predictions about future climates.

Asked what he’ll tell his Castine audience, he replied, “We can say that our research from Greenland points to 20- to 25-year cycles of climate that alternate between dryer and wetter conditions along the East Coast of the United States.” He then added, “They’ll have to come to the lecture to find out which one we’re in.”

“Crossing Antarctica in Search of Buried Climate Records,” a free lecture, is scheduled for 3 p.m. on July 19 at the Wilson Museum, Castine. For further information, see Mayewski’s websites at as well as . See also , or call the Museum at 207-326-9247. Museum hours are 2-5 daily except Mondays.

— Sandy Dinsmore