Environment

  • A record: half of U.S. land area is in various stages of drought

    Analysis of the latest drought monitor data revealed that 46.84 percent of the U.S. land area is in various stages of drought, up from 42.8 percent a week ago; previous records were 45.87 percent in drought on 26 August 2003, and 45.64 percent on 10 September 2002; looking only at the forty-eight contiguous states, 55.96 percent of the country’s land area is in moderate drought or worse — also the highest percentage on record

  • Students and scientists gather in Singapore to discuss water problem

    International university students and water experts have converged at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to foster an intellectual and research community on a scarce natural resource — water

  • Just-the-facts climate change Web site wins World Bank award

    The World Bank award a prize to a Web site built to be the antidote to the many myths circulating online about climate change, myths which cause misplaced apathy or alarm; the site also reveals how responding to climate change presents a world of opportunities for individuals and entrepreneurs

  • U.K. potential food crisis

    Many climate experts believe a slight rise in U.K. temperatures would be beneficial for the farming industry as  yields could increase; as temperatures continue to rise, however, farmers would need to use more and more fertilizer on their crops and some livestock would not be as productive; consumers could thus face reduced food choices

  • B612 Foundation unveils first privately funded deep space mission

    A private group plans to launch its own space telescope and place it in orbit around the sun; the mission will collect information about Earth-threatening asteroids, but also look for asteroids that may contain valuable raw materials for mining

  • First-of-its-kind CO2 sensor network deployed in Oakland

    The City of Oakland will be ground zero for the first urban sensor network to provide real-time, neighborhood-by-neighborhood measurements of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants; the prototype network, being installed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, will employ forty sensors spread over a twenty-seven square-mile grid

  • Predicting wave power helps double marine energy

    The energy generated from the oceans could be doubled using new methods for predicting wave power; researchers have devised a means of accurately predicting the power of the next wave in order to make the technology far more efficient, extracting twice as much energy as is currently possible

  • Growing interest in prairie cordgrassas a biofuel source

    Until recently, prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) has received comparatively little attention because, unlike the other types of switchgrass, it is not a good forage crop; as interest in energy crops and in feedstock production for cellulosic biofuels increases, however, prairie cordgrass is receiving more attention because it grows well on marginal land

  • Loo turns poo into power

    Researchers have invented a new toilet system that will turn human waste into electricity and fertilizers and also reduce the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90 percent compared to current toilet systems

  • Significant sea-level rise in a 2-degree warming world

    Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several meters in coming centuries, if global warming carries on; even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, global-mean sea level could continue to rise, reaching between 1.5 and 4 meters above present-day levels by the year 2300

  • Greater L.A. to heat up an average 4 to 5 degrees by mid-century

    A groundbreaking new study shows that temperatures in the Los Angeles region to rise by an average of 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of this century, tripling the number of extremely hot days in the downtown area and quadrupling the number in the valleys and at high elevations

  • Finding the best ways to protect infrastructure, recover from disasters

    Researchers at Sandia National Lab bring the quantitative methods they have developed to the analysis of disasters and how best to recover from them; the researchers look at interdependencies among systems and supply chains, the resilience of various systems, how infrastructure systems fail, cascading effects, and how results might differ if a series of disasters hits instead of just one; the Sandia researchers say they can better quantify the results of such resiliency studies by taking a mathematically rigorous approach to objective assessments

  • California coastal infrastructure at risk from rising sea levels

    An exhaustive study by the National research Council finds projects that the sea level off most of California is likely to rise about one meter over the next century, an amount slightly higher than projected for global sea levels; this will place much of the state coastal infrastructure at risk, because significant development along the coast — such as airports, naval air stations, freeways, sports stadiums, and housing developments — has been built only a few feet above the highest tides; for example, the San Francisco International Airport could flood with as little as 40 centimeters of sea-level rise

  • Seeping Arctic methane to pose serious problems for Florida coastline

    Large quantities of methane gas are buried under the Arctic permafrost; the melting of ice caps in the Arctic causes this gas to escape into the atmosphere through vents; until recently, cryosphere (frozen soil and ice) has served to plug or block these vents, but thawing conditions have allowed the conduits to open, and deep geologic methane now escapes; methane is a very strong greenhouse gas, and its presence in the atmosphere has grown three times faster than carbon dioxide since the industrial era

  • Larger role for renewable energy in U.S. future than previously thought

    Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country; new study finds that renewable generation could play a more significant role in the U.S. electricity system than previously thought