A collection of news clips, publications, and blog posts adjacent to my professional and academic work.
Peer-reviewed Articles
- Preprint, in review. Omara, M., Gautam, R., O’Brien, M., Himmelberger, A., Franco, A., Meisenhelder, K., Hauser, G., Lyon, D., Chulakadaba, A., Miller, C., Franklin, J., Wofsy, S., and Hamburg, S. (2023). Developing a spatially explicit global oil and gas infrastructure database for characterizing methane emission sources at high resolution, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. doi.org/10.5194/essd-2022-452.
From the abstract: “[W]e develop a spatially explicit database of global oil and gas infrastructure, focusing on the acquisition, curation, and integration of public-domain geospatial datasets reported by official government sources, industry, academic, and other non-government entities.”
- McCann, B. T., Davis, J., Osborne, D., Durham, C., O’Brien, M., and Raymond, N. A. (2021). Quantifying climate change relevant humanitarian programming and spending across five highly disaster vulnerable countries. Disasters. doi.org/10.1111/disa.12453. (View on ReliefWeb)
The statistical findings from this paper were cited in a subsection of UN OCHA’s Global Humanitarian Overview 2020 (find us on page 17!). Yale School of Environment covered the study above on their blog and on Twitter. RedR UK mentioned us in a blog post on HNPW 2020, as well.
Conference Proceedings
- O’Brien, M., Schultz, N. M., and Lee, X. UAV deployment for fine-scale CO2 flux estimation in a mid-size city. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2019 poster and abstract.
- O’Brien, M., Clor, L. E., Vaughan, R. G., and Hurwitz, S. Classifying Historic Images to Quantify Spatial and Temporal Changes in Tree Mortality at Horseshoe Lake (Mammoth Mountain, California). American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2016 poster and abstract.
MethaneSAT
There’s been lots of great news coverage on the MethaneSAT project, but here are a select few:
- 2022 July - Business Insider - ‘Satellites can now find the sources of methane leaks. The tech will reshape global climate accountability.’ - article
- 2022 March - The Guardian - ‘How satellites may hold the key to the methane crisis’ - article
- 2021 November - Washington Post - ‘How satellites could help hold countries to emissions promises made at COP26 summit’ - article
- 2021 September - CBS Mornings - ‘Scientists build satellite to monitor methane leaks that contribute to global warming’ - video
Peabody Science Cafe
I moderated and helped produce panels and talks for the Yale Peabody Museum as a graduate student. When the Museum took its events online during the COVID-19 pandemic, I had the opportunity to moderate some of these talks virtually.
- 2021 January 21 - “A Look Inside the Extraordinary Formation of Connecticut’s Appalachian Mountains” with Duncan Keller (Earth & Planetary Sci.) - video
- 2020 June 29 - “Beauty: Who Decides?” with Richard Prum (Ecology & Evol. Bio) and Byron Kim (Yale School of Art) - video
Other
- 2020 February - Job Tips and Vibe Checks: FES in DC 2020 - Blog post that I wrote about the school’s annual job trek to Washington, DC.
- 2019 Fall - A brief feature on my master’s thesis appears in the Fall 2019 issue of Canopy, the YSE alumni magazine. (Page 10)
- 2019 August - I assisted in authoring and overhauling the MESc-MFS Handbook for students at the Yale School of Environment, a guide for research students in a primarily professional school.
- 2016 March - Wesleyan University’s newsletter documents the senior capstone fieldwork of my graduating class on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Includes photos of the pouring rain we had to endure during data collection day…
(last updated February 4, 2023)