• Deep Learning Underlies Geographic Dataset Used in Hurricane Response

    Extreme weather and natural disasters are happening with increasing frequency across the United States and its territories. Accurate and detailed maps are critical in emergency response and recovery. ORNL’s has mapped and characterized all structures within the United States and its territories to aid FEMA in its response to disasters.

  • Texas’ Plan to Provide Water for a Growing Population Ignores Climate Change

    Texas’ biggest single solution to providing enough water for its soaring population in the coming decades is using more surface water, including about two dozen new large reservoirs. But climate change has made damming rivers a riskier bet.

  • Climate Change-Driven Heat Waves Have Cost Global Economy Trillions Since the 1990s

    Massive economic losses due to sweltering temperatures brought on by human-caused climate change are not just a problem for the distant future. A new study has found that more severe heat waves resulting from global warming have already cost the world economy trillions of dollars since the early 1990s. The study says that measures protecting people on hottest days are needed now.

  • Hydropower Delivers Electricity, Even During Lengthy Droughts

    The megadrought in the Southwestern United States is the driest—and longest—in the last 1,200 years, depleting water reservoir levels to critically low levels over the past 22 years. Droughts particularly impact hydroelectric power dams as well as some thermoelectric power plants that require large amounts of water for cooling. But a new report suggests that the relationship between drought and hydroelectric power is more nuanced than it might seem. Drought-strained hydropower sustains 80 percent average power generation capacity.

  • Monitoring Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Asteroids

    An enormous number of near-Earth asteroids are posing a potential hazard to our planet. Faced with potential threats of to Earth by asteroid impact, researchers have been focusing on asteroid defense. Monitoring of and early warning about near-Earth asteroids is the premise of planetary defense.

  • Western Wildfires Spark Stronger Storms in Downwind States

    When wildfires burn in the west, their heat and airborne particles inflict stronger rain and larger hail upon central states. In some cases, the heavier rains have causes flash flooding in states like Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas.

  • It Is Double Trouble When Two Disasters Strike the Electrical Transmission Infrastructure

    One natural disaster can knock out electric service to millions. A new study suggests that back-to-back disasters could cause catastrophic damage, but the research also identifies new ways to monitor and maintain power grids. The study, using AI, highlights the fragility of power grid networks.

  • The “Cassandra of the Subways” on Hurricane Sandy, Ten Years Later

    Starting in the 1990s, geophysicist Klaus Jacob started warning publicly that New York could eventually see a catastrophic storm abetted by climate change. From 2008 to 2019, he served on the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a scientific body that informs the city’s efforts to adapt infrastructure to changing climate. Most famously, he produced eearily precise projectionof where the subways would flood. 

  • Faster-Developing, Wetter Hurricanes to Come

    Climate change sets the stage for hurricanes to rapidly intensify faster, bringing wetter storms to the U.S. Atlantic Coast and other coastlines. A warmer world heightens the risk of flooding.

  • Assessment of Ocean Warming Highlights Future Climate Risks

    More than 90 percent of heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the oceans, and the Atlantic Ocean and southern oceans are warming much faster than the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. A warmer ocean leads to more intense storms, more deadly rainfall and flooding, and more powerful typhoons and hurricanes.

  • Why Not Use Space Mirrors for Reflecting Sunlight to Cool the Planet?

    Given the potential consequences of climate change and a danger of reaching irreversible “tipping points,” there is an argument to be made that all options should be carefully considered. Sending giant mirrors into space to reflect solar radiation away from the Earth is one such option. The problem is that the many such geoengineering approaches have been so taboo that there is not enough information from researchers to definitively decide what options are still viable.

  • What We Know About Giant Storms Since Sandy

    “A central story of my book about Sandy [Storm Surge: Hurricane Sandy, Our Changing Climate, and Extreme Weather of the Past and Future] was that New York City’s emergency management actually did quite well. This was in large part due to planning efforts going back decades that focused on a possible Sandy-like event. That saved many lives. The exception was recommendations to flood-proof infrastructure, which ended up being almost entirely ignored,” says Adam Sobel of Columbia University.

  • Method for Decoding Asteroid Interiors Could Help Aim Asteroid-Deflecting Missions

    Knowing how the density is distributed inside an asteroid could help scientists plan the most effective defense. For instance, if an asteroid were made of relatively light and uniform matter, a DART-like spacecraft could be aimed differently than if it were deflecting an asteroid with a denser, less balanced interior. Astronomers have found a way to determine an asteroid’s interior structure based on how its spin changes during a close encounter with Earth.

  • Seismic Sensing Reveals Flood Damage Potential

    Rapidly evolving floods are a major and growing hazard worldwide. Currently, their onset and evolution are hard to identify using existing systems. Seismic sensors already in place to detect earthquakes could be a solution to this problem.

  • Q&A with the Experts: Puerto Rico

    In 2018, as part of an effort to improve Puerto Rico’s resilience in the face of repeated, and devastating, natural disasters, RAND experts offered 270 specific courses of action needed across infrastructure, communities, and natural systems. Four years later, some of these experts reflect on the progress made – and not made – in shoring up the island’s resilience.