• Whole-House Fire Blanket Protects Buildings from Short Wildfires

    Wrapping a building in a fire-protective blanket is a viable way of protecting it against wildfires, finds the first study to scientifically assesses this method of defense. Existing blanket technology can protect an isolated building from a short wildfire attack, but technological advancements are needed for severe fire situations.

  • With Coastal Waters Rising: First-Ever National Assessment of FEMA Buyouts

    The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been offering voluntary buyout programs to homeowners in flood-prone neighborhoods since the 1980s. And with increasingly powerful storms battering coastlines and flooding becoming more ubiquitous after heavy rains, these programs and the idea of managed coastal retreat have continued to garner more and more attention. A new study is the first to examine nationwide data on FEMA’s buyout program.

  • Mass Migration from Africa Likely as U.K. Government Invests in Satellite Monitoring of Vulnerable Countries

    Climate change could bring mass migration from Africa and diseases, the U.K. Space Agency’s Chief Scientist has warned, as he said foreign aid was now being used to fund satellites which monitor vulnerable countries.

    Dr Chris Lee said global warming could lead to water shortages, droughts and famine, which could push vast numbers from their homes. In an effort to help countries prepare for climate change, the government has invested £150 million over five years to set up programs, under the name International Partnership Program (IPP) —  which can monitor sea-level rise, crop failure, natural disasters, deforestation, coastal erosion, oil spillages, water shortages, and predict tsunamis and storm surge flooding.

  • Saving Sinking Cities, Bleaching Corals: Dual Approach

    Local conservation can boost the climate resilience of coastal ecosystems, species and cities, and buy precious time in their fight against sea level rise, ocean acidification and warming temperatures, a new study suggests.

  • Socioeconomic Effects of Coastal Flooding in California

    Researchers are studying the impact of coastal flooding on disadvantaged communities in California. The effort, launched with funding from the National Science Foundation’s Coastlines & People initiative, will employ advanced simulation systems to deepen understanding of increasing flood risks within the state’s two most imperiled areas: Greater Los Angeles and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

  • Supporting Coastal Communities Facing Changing Sea Levels, Coastal Flooding

    Coastal communities and the surrounding ecosystems are threatened by rising seas and coastal flooding that alter shorelines making people, homes and businesses more vulnerable to coastal storms. Rising sea levels can also change how ecosystems work, especially when combined with inundation from tides and storms. With increasing threats to our coasts, enhancing resilience to sea level rise and flooding has become a national priority.

  • Bomb Cyclones and Breadbaskets: How Climate, Food, and Political Unrest Intersect

    As climate change continues to increase both the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events, extreme consequences can emerge across and downstream from these supply chains. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report discusses at length the challenges that increasing global population and climatic volatility pose to food and water scarcity—and, consequently, to social and economic systems. As a result, weather and climate forecasting— coupled with the computer-aided modeling of economic and political resilience to such events—could help improve predictions of political flashpoints greatly at a time of unprecedented environmental change.

  • Past California Wildfire Activity Suggests Climate Change Will Worsen Future Fires

    In the wake of recent wildfires that have ravaged northern and central California, a new study finds that the severity of fire activity in the Sierra Nevada region has been sensitive to changes in climate over the past 1,400 years. The findings suggest that future climate change is likely to drive increased fire activity in the Sierras.

  • An Umbrella to Combat Warming

    Research examines the possibility of spraying tiny particles into the stratosphere to block the sun a bit and cool the planet. Shielding the Earth with a mist of tiny particles sounds like the stuff of sci-fi movies, but since it was first proposed in the 1950s the idea has gained traction among scientists around the world to shield us not from extraterrestrials, as Hollywood might have it, but from the sun. Known as solar geoengineering, the concept is to send planes into the stratosphere — 6 to 31 miles above the Earth — to spray particles that can reflect sunlight back into space and cool the planet.

  • Climate Change Could Cause Drought in Wheat-Growing Areas

    In a new study, researchers found that unless steps are taken to mitigate climate change, up to 60 percent of current wheat-growing areas worldwide could see simultaneous, severe and prolonged droughts by the end of the century. Wheat is the world’s largest rain-fed crop in terms of harvested area and supplies about 20 percent of all calories consumed by humans.

  • Less Fuel, More People: Most California Wildfires in Wildland-Urban Interface Areas

    In California, the state with more building destruction by wildfire than all of the other states combined, new research found something surprising. Over nearly three decades, half of all buildings destroyed by wildfire in California were located in an area that is described as having less of the grasses, bushes and trees that are thought to fuel fire in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI.

  • Designing the Coastal City of the Future

    Boston is situated along the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99 percent of the ocean due, in part, to changing sea patterns from melting ice in Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. Coupled with increased heat and precipitation, the rising sea level is threatening the low-lying city, much of which was built on landfill over the past 300 years along a 50-square-mile harbor. To save the 685,000-person city, the local government is calling on architects to help implement one of the most ambitious municipal resiliency plans in the United States: Climate Ready Boston. Launched in 2016 by Mayor Martin J. Walsh, Climate Ready Boston is an initiative to prepare the city for the long-term impacts of climate change.

  • Arctic Ice Is Melting Faster Than Expected. These Scientists Have a Radical Idea to Save It.

    glaciers, polar land, and sea ice are rapidly melting, much faster than many scientists expected, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report on oceans and the cryosphere released Wednesday reiterated. During a five-day heat wave this summer, Greenland lost more than 60 billion tons of ice, including the biggest loss in a 24-hour period since record-keeping began. Recent projections warn that Arctic summers could be nearly ice-free in 10 to 40 years. These grim warnings have prompted more researchers to apply technological solutions that intervene in the earth’s climate systems to slow the impacts of global warming, also known as “geoengineering.”

  • Ecosystem Investments Could Minimize Storm Damage

    A new study provides information on how to invest in natural coastal ecosystems that the Bahamian government, community leaders and development banks are applying in post-disaster recovery and future storm preparation in the Bahamas.

  • 250,000 Cubic Meters of Ice in Danger of Breaking Off Europe's Mont Blanc

    Highlighting concerns about global warming, Italian authorities now fear that part of the glacier on Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain, is at risk of collapse. Experts have been monitoring the Planpicieux glacier on Mont Blanc for some time and concerns have been mounting in Italy that a section of the glacier is at risk of collapsing. Mayors of the picturesque ski towns in the area have been taking civil defense measures, including plans for evacuation on a short notice.