• Study links prehistoric climate shift to asteroid or comet impact

    For the first time, a dramatic climate shift which has long fascinated scientists has been linked to the impact in Quebec of an asteroid or comet. The event took place about 12,900 years ago, at the beginning of the Younger Dryas period, and marks an abrupt global change to a colder, dryer climate, with far-reaching effects on both animals and humans.

  • Global warming increasing risk of record heat: scientists

    Drought shriveled crops in the Midwest, massive wildfires raged in the West, and East Coast cities sweltered. The summer of 2012 was a season of epic proportions, especially July, the hottest month in the history of U.S. weather record keeping. As the world warms, it is likely that we will continue to see such calamitous weather. Scientists caution against trying to determine whether global warming caused any individual extreme event, but they say that the observed global warming clearly appears to have affected the likelihood of record heat.

  • High performance concrete to rescue Brittany's lighthouses

    Lighthouses in Brittany, France, have stood at the intersection of violent currents, blinding storms, and breaking surf for over a century. A lighthouse turret off the coast of Lorient in Brittany has been enhanced with technology developed for bridges. This trial run will test the application of Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC).

  • Limestone powder enhances performance of “green” concrete

    Adding limestone powder to “green” concrete mixtures — those containing substantial amounts of fly ash, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants — can significantly improve performance. The promising laboratory results suggest a path to increasing greatly the use of fly ash in concrete, leading to sizable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, construction costs and landfill volumes.

  • Knowing exposure risks crucial to saving structures from wildfires

    A recent study of one of California’s most devastating wildland fires strongly suggests that measures for reducing structural damage and property loss from wildland urban interface (WUI) fires are most effective when they are based on accurate assessments of exposure risks both for individual structures and the community as a whole.

  • U.S. “black budget” reveals unwieldy bureaucracy, misplaced priorities: expert

    Classified budget figures and successes and failures by American intelligence agencies, exposed for the first time this week by the Washington Post, show a massive bureaucracy with misplaced priorities, according to a cybersecurity and privacy expert. “The major failure identified in all of the post-9/11 assessments was a ‘failure to connect the dots,’” the expert said. “Nevertheless, the vast majority of the black budget is being spent on data acquisition — collecting more dots — rather than analysis.”

  • Deflecting asteroids to protect Earth

    Potential asteroid impact on Earth can have disastrous consequences. In order to prevent such collisions, earthbound space objects must be deflected. This can be accomplished using a space probe to impact the asteroid.

  • Sandy Task Force issues sixty-nine rebuilding recommendations

    The Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, appointed by President Obama and chaired by Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan,  last week release its much-anticipated report, in which it  lays out sixty-nine policy recommendations for improving areas affected by Hurricane Sandy last October. The report stressed the importance of investment in new and better construction to withstand increasingly dangerous storms and surges caused by climate change.

  • Jersey shore towns build protection against future storms

    Mantoloking and Brick townships in New Jersey were among the hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy. The storm also destroyed the natural dune barriers which offered a measure of protection. The two cities have decided to take action to minimize the damage of inflicted by a future storm: a $40 million project will see a steel wall —extending sixteen feet above the beach with a depth of thirty-two feet below the ground, and covered in sand to form an artificial dune — will run along the length of the two towns.

  • Understanding the effects of wildfire smoke improves climate change models

    Where there is wildfire, there is smoke — a lot of it. Those vast, carbon-laden clouds released by burning biomass can play a significant role in climate change. Not much is known, however, about the different types of particles in wildfire smoke and how they affect climate. Now researchers have uncovered some of their secrets. In particular, they studied an important component of smoke that has so far been absent from most models of climate change.

  • Beach erosion by Hurricane Sandy leaves coastal communities more exposed to future storms

    Barrier islands provide natural protection against storms, shielding coastlines from rising waves and tides. Beaches and dunes on Fire Island, New York, lost more than half of their pre-storm volume during Hurricane Sandy, and the loss of so much sand increases the vulnerability of this area of coastline to future storms.

  • Remapping coastal areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy

    Hurricane Sandy caused wide-scale landscape-altering destruction, resulting in an estimated damage of $50 billion, making Sandy the second-costliest cyclone to hit the United States since 1900. “Sandy’s most fundamental lesson is that storm vulnerability is a direct consequence of the elevation of coastal communities in relation to storm waves,” says USGS Kevin Gallagher. Three federal agencies are using ships, aircraft, and satellites to measure water depth, look for submerged debris, and record altered shorelines in high priority areas from South Carolina to Maine.

  • Demolition of building allows study of earthquake along Calif. Hayward Fault

    In an effort to track which area of California’s East Bay would suffer the worst shaking in future earthquakes caused by the dangerous Hayward Fault, the U.S Geological Survey (USGS) initiated an artificial earthquake through the densely populated area of valleys and hills across bay from San Francisco.

  • Bay Bridge repairs expensive, slow

    California’s 8-mile San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was designed and built in the 1930s in about 5.5 years at a cost of $78 million, well under budget and ahead of schedule. Presently, the 2-mile eastern span of the bridge needs to be replaced, and it has taken the state five years just to design the replacement. Construction is taking about three times the expected time, and the $6.4 billion budget is almost five times the estimate provided by engineers.

  • Post-Sandy infrastructure must be more resilient: Sandy Task Force

    The task force appointed by President Barack Obama, charged with developing a strategy for rebuilding areas damaged by Superstorm Sandy, has urged coastal communities to recognize that owing to climate change, storms are going to be more frequent and more destructive, and that floods are going to occur more frequently. The best way to prepare for the more extreme weather ahead is to build a more robust and resilient infrastructure that can withstand the more demanding challenges.