• Geoengineering versus a Volcano

    Major volcanic eruptions spew ash particles into the atmosphere, which reflect some of the Sun’s radiation back into space and cool the planet. But could this effect be intentionally recreated to fight climate change? Solar geoengineering is a theoretical approach to curbing the effects of climate change by seeding the atmosphere with a regularly replenished layer of intentionally released aerosol particles. Proponents sometimes describe it as being like a “human-made” volcano.

  • Preparing for the Unexpected Disaster

    When thinking of earthquakes in the U.S., California often comes to mind. But what if a massive earthquake suddenly struck Middle America? Would first responders and emergency managers have the tools to swiftly secure infrastructure and ensure public safety? Would every level of government, as well as stakeholders at non-governmental organizations or in the private sector, know how to properly communicate and share resources? DHS S&T asked itself these questions, and they were the driving force behind S&T joining FEMA and others for FEMA’s 2019 Shaken Fury exercise.

  • Helping an Iowa Town Recover from Tornado Through Research, Outreach

    In the months following the tornado which hit Marshalltown, Iowa, faculty and students in Iowa State University’s sustainable environments interdisciplinary graduate program examined the housing recovery experience of different groups of Marshalltown residents. The goal is to finalize a toolkit that communities can use to examine social and economic challenges that exacerbate a disaster’s damage and slow recovery efforts.

  • Trump Pushed Staff to Deal with NOAA Tweet that Contradicted His Inaccurate Alabama Hurricane Claim, Officials Say

    President Trump told his staff that the nation’s leading weather forecasting agency – the National Weather Service (NWS), which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — needed to take back a statement NWS made on 1 September, correcting a tweet the president had sent wrongly claiming that Hurricane Dorian threatened Alabama. Trump’s demand was conveyed by White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (NOAA is part of the Commerce Department). Ross then threatened to fire the acting NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs unless NOAA issued a statement backing Trump’s false claim about Alabama, and admonishing the NWS’s scientists for correcting Trump’s wrong and misleading claim. Jacobs issued the statement Trump demanded in an unsigned press release on 6 September (NOAA chief scientist has now launched an investigation of Jacobs’s misleading press release, which was issued without consulting any scientists or meteorologists). Trump, talking with reporters on Wednesday, then falsely asserted that he did not direct NOAA to issue such a statement. “No, I never did that,” he said. “I never did that. It’s a hoax by the media. That’s just fake news.”

  • Climate Change Influences Magnitude of River Floods

    Overflowing rivers can cause enormous damage: Worldwide, the annual damage caused by river floods is estimated at over 100 billion dollars - and it continues to rise. So far it has not been clear how climate change influences the magnitude of river floods. Until now: an large international study involving a total of 35 research groups provides clear evidence that changes in the magnitude of flood events observed in recent decades can be attributed to climate change.

  • These Dams Needed Replacing 15 Years Ago. Now Texas Will Drain Four Lakes Instead — Causing Other Problems.

    Texas officials will start draining four lakes next week in Guadalupe County in Central Texas without a plan in place for when the lakes, and the 90-year-old dams that support them, will be rebuilt. Area homeowners, who got barely a month’s notice, said they felt blindsided by the plan, and they say it will slash their property values, kill their beloved century-old cypress trees and render the lakes — which have hosted water skiing tournaments for decades — unusable.

  • Leak Suggests UN Agency Self-Censors on Climate Crisis after U.S. Pressure

    Leaked communications suggest that the UN’s migration agency is censoring itself on the climate crisis and the global compact on migration, following pressure from the U.S. government. an email sent by a U.S.-based official of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on 28 August to colleagues around the world relayed that the U.S. state department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) told the agency documents related to program activities it funds “must not be in conflict with current [U.S. government] political sensitivities.” These sensitivities include mentioning climate change and the UN sustainable development goals. 

  • Bill Gates Is Funding a Chemical Cloud That Could Put an End to Global Warming

    Whether you agree or not, global warming is happening. As reported by the minds at NASA, human activity continues to exacerbate the problem. Currently, there is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than in all of human history. Two-thirds of extreme weather events from the past 20 years can be tied back to human activity, while both our summers and winters are getting much warmer. Bill Gates is currently backing a potential solution to global warming that centers around the technology of solar geoengineering.

  • NOAA’s Chief Scientist Will Investigate Why Agency Backed Trump over Its Experts on Dorian, Email Shows

    NOAA acting chief scientist said he was investigating whether the agency’s response to President Trump’s incorrect claims about the risk Hurricane Dorian posed to Alabama constituted a violation of NOAA policies and ethics. Forecasters in the Birmingham, Alabama office of the National Weather Service (NWS) immediately corrected Trump’s initial (1 September) false claims, but five days later (6 September), two NOAA administrators issued an unsigned press release which appeared to lend support to Trump’s claims. “The NWS Forecaster(s) corrected any public misunderstanding in an expert and timely way, as they should,” the chief scientist, Craig McLean, wrote to NOAA employees. “There followed, last Friday, an unsigned press release from ‘NOAA’ that inappropriately and incorrectly contradicted the NWS forecaster. My understanding is that this intervention to contradict the forecaster was not based on science but on external factors including reputation and appearance, or simply put, political.” Scientists and experts in emergency response harshly criticized NOAA officials for bowing to political pressures and conceding to Trump’s false claims during a weather emergency, when accuracy, messaging, and trust in public safety agencies are vital to keep the public safe.

  • Britain Plans Mass Mobile Phone Alerts to Protect Public from Terrorism, Major Floods and Nuclear Attack

    Britain is planning to introduce US-style mass mobile phone alerts to protect the public against terrorism, major floods and nuclear attack. Supporters of so-called ‘cell broadcasting’ claim the message alerts could have saved lives during major incidents including the London Bridge terrorist attack and Grenfell Tower fire. Senior figures have raised concerns, however, that the messages could be hijacked by hackers or malicious foreign powers to induce mass panic.

  • Even for Non-Believers, These Are the Next Steps on Climate Change

    Research indicates that we need to go beyond observing the wreckage of major storms and pondering trillion-dollar plans to attempt to mitigate carbon. Businesses, homeowners, and local governments must focus on what can be done today to address these direct threats to people and property. There are three major tools in the “what to do next” approach: probability, selection, and migration.

  • Dorian Lashes U.S. Carolinas after Pounding Bahamas, Weakens to Category 1 Storm

    Hurricane Dorian weakened into a Category 1 hurricane Friday, after generating tornadoes and flooding roads in North and South Carolina. Dorian is moving with maximum sustained winds of 150 kilometers per hour. Dorian will remain a potent storm straight into the weekend, however, with tropical storm warnings posted as far north as Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, according to the National Hurricane Center.

  • Damage Estimates for Hurricanes Like Dorian Don’t Capture the Full Cost of Climate Change-Fueled Disasters

    Scientists say climate change is causing powerful hurricanes like Dorian to increasingly stall over coastal areas, which leads to heavy flooding. The U.S. government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment offered a range of climate change-induced losses of U.S. GDP which range from as low as 6 percent to as high as 14 percent by 2090. Aa more meaningful assessment of the costs of climate change – using basic economic principles I teach to undergrads – is a hell of a lot scarier.

  • Boosting Energy Security: Lessons from Post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico

    It took nearly a year for the government-run Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), which is the only power company in Puerto Rico, to restore electricity throughout the island. This was the biggest and longest power outage in U.S. history.As scientists suggest that weather will probably become more extreme and weather-related natural disasters are likely to intensify in the coming decades,we can learn some valuable lessons from what Puerto Rico has gone through in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

  • “100-year” Floods Will Happen Every 1 to 30 Years: Study

    A 100-year flood is supposed to be just that: a flood that occurs once every 100 years, or a flood that has a one-percent chance of happening every year. But researchers have developed new maps that predict coastal flooding for every county on the Eastern and Gulf Coasts and find 100-year floods could become annual occurrences in New England; and happen every one to 30 years along the southeast Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shorelines.