Environment

Biden Administration Places Climate Change at the Center of U.S. Security Planning
The administration on Thursday has released a series of reports addressing the increasingly severe impact of climate change on U.S. national security – an impact which is only going to grow in severity and scope. Taken together, the reports signal a new stage in U.S. policy, one which places climate change at the center of the U.S. security planning.
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Rising Temperatures Reshaping, Exacerbating Global Security Landscape
More than just altering the environment, climate change is threatening to permanently and dangerously reshape the global security landscape. These are the conclusions of a series of new assessments by U.S. military, intelligence, and security officials. “As climate change converges with other drivers — especially geostrategic competition, emerging technology and global-demographic trends — it is reshaping the risk landscape,” DHS said in its assessment. “The corrosive impact of these trends will make nations increasingly vulnerable to domestic instability, with sweeping implications for regional and border security and core national security interests.”.
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Urbanites Face Heightened Flood Risk as a Result of Forest Loss
The devastating impact of flooding in Queensland’s north, exacerbated by forest loss, is badly affecting urban areas. Researchers found that deforestation near urban areas exposes these areas to much larger amounts of water flowing on the soil surface soon after a rainfall.
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Cities Worldwide Aren’t Adapting to Climate Change Quickly Enough
Climate change is magnifying threats such as flooding, wildfires, tropical storms and drought. cities are quickly becoming more vulnerable to extreme weather events and permanent shifts in their climate zones. The problem is that the pace of climate change is accelerating much more rapidly than urban areas are taking steps to adapt to it.
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Nuclear War's Smoke Would Cause Climate Change, Threatening Global Food Supplies
Nuclear war would cause many immediate fatalities, but smoke and soot from the resulting fires would also cause climate change lasting up to fifteen years, threatening worldwide food production and human health, according to a new study.
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How Marsh Grass Protects Shorelines
As climate change brings greater threats to coastal ecosystems, new research can help planners leverage the wave-damping benefits of marsh plants.
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U.S. Hit with $18 Billion Weather and Climate Disasters So Far This Year
The United States saw an unprecedented eighteen separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the first nine months of the year, September 2021 was the 5th-warmest September on record.
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Urban Areas More Likely to Have Precipitation-Triggered Landslides
Urban areas may be at greater risk for precipitation-triggered landslides than rural areas, according to a new study that could help improve landslide predictions and hazard and risk assessments. Researchers found that urban landslide hazard was up to 10 times more sensitive to variations in precipitation than in rural areas.
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Assessing Global Electricity Generation Potential from Rooftop Solar Photovoltaics
The first detailed global assessment of the electricity generation potential of rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) technology has important implications for sustainable development and climate change mitigations efforts.
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Nuclear Physics Used to probe Floridan Aquifer Threatened by Climate Change
Florida is known for water. Between its beaches, swamps, storms and humidity, the state is soaked. And below its entire surface lies the largest freshwater aquifer in the nation. As rising sea levels threaten coastal areas, scientists are using an emerging nuclear dating technique to track the ins and outs of water flow.
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Record-Breaking Texas Drought More Severe Than Previously Thought
In 2011, Texas experienced one of its worst droughts ever, with the dry, parched conditions causing more than $7 billion in crop and livestock losses, sparking wildfires, pushing power grids to the limit, and reducing reservoirs to dangerously low levels. A new study finds that the drought was worse than previously thought.
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New Tool Mappin Floods Since 1985 Will Aid Disaster Planning
Free online World Flood Mapping Tool will help plan urban and agricultural development, effective flood defenses, disaster readiness, and identify supply chain vulnerabilities
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Little Difference between Managed, Unmanaged Flows of Urban Stormwater
A new study suggests that expensive efforts to control urban stormwater by investing heavily in green infrastructure — such as water-quality ponds, infiltration basins, porous pavement and riparian plantings — may not have much of an impact.
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Current Southwest Drought Is a Preview of Things to Come
Scientists found that the record-low precipitation that kicked off the unprecedented drought parching the U.S. Southwest since 2020 could have been a fluke—just the rare bad luck of natural variability. But the drought would not have reached its current punishing intensity without the extremely high temperatures brought by human-caused global warming.
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Small Increases in Greenhouse Gases Will Lead to Decades-Long “Megadroughts” in U.S. Southwest
Recent NOAA-funded research found that even small additional increases in greenhouse gas emissions will make decades-long “megadroughts” – similar to the drought which has descended on the U.S. southwest nearly twenty years ago — more common.
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