• What Will Communities Do When the Water Runs Dry?

    Earlier this summer, the sixth-largest city in India, Chennai, ran out of water. Water crises are now global. Cape Town, South Africa, narrowly escaped Day Zero last year, but it’s still at risk, as are Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Iraq, Morocco and Spain also face water shortages. “What we are seeing in Chennai right now is a devastating illustration of human-driven climate disruption,” says an expert. “It is hard for me to picture a near future where access to clean, fresh water continues in as plentiful a way as it is in most of our country at this moment.”

  • Worst Rainfall in 150 Years Damages Pennsylvania Homes, Roads

    According to the 150 years of data used by the National Weather Service, 2018 was the wettest year in the Berks region of Pennsylvania, with 68.08 inches of precipitation measured at Reading Regional Airport. This year is ahead of last year’s pace, with 38.21 inches already, far above the normal rate of 24.18 inches. Records for the wettest 12-month period are being set each month, according to the weather service. Some municipal officials say their infrastructure and stormwater management systems can’t handle the amount of rain we’re now receiving, and they are trying to figure out what type of improvements they can afford.

  • Jakarta’s Giant Sea Wall Is Useless If the City Keeps Sinking

    Late last week, president Joko Widodo of Indonesia told the AP that he’s fast-tracking a decade-in-the-making plan for a giant sea wall around Jakarta, a city that’s sinking as much as 8 inches a year in places—and as seas rise, no less. Models predict that by 2050, a third of the city could be submerged. It’s an urban existential crisis the likes of which the modern world has never seen.

  • Innovative Approach to Flood Mapping Supports Emergency Management, Water Officials

    Dependable, detailed inundation estimates are vital for emergency managers to have enough situational awareness to quickly get the right resources and information to flood-impacted communities. In 2007, severe flooding in southeastern Kansas put a spotlight on the lack of timely, reliable projections for floodwater spread.

  • Climate Change, Population Growth Worsen North Carolina Coastal Flooding

    A historic 120-year-old data set is allowing researchers to confirm what data modeling systems have been predicting: climate change is increasing precipitation events like hurricanes, tropical storms and floods. Researchers found that six of the seven highest precipitation events in the record have occurred within the last 20 years, according to the study.

     

  • Texas might spend up to $20 billion to protect Houston from hurricanes. Rice University says it can do it for a fraction of that.

    A government plan to guard the Houston-Galveston region from deadly storm surge could cost as much as $20 billion and isn’t expected to become reality for at least 15 years. Rice University says it has a plan that could be completed faster for a fraction of the cost.

  • Hackers’ Latest Target: School Districts

    Some hackers demand ransom; others sweep up personal data for sale to identity thieves. But whatever hackers’ motives, school systems around the country have been the targets of their cyberattacks. Nearly two-thirds of school districts in the United States serve fewer than 2,500 students, and many do not have a staff member dedicated solely to cybersecurity.

  • Upholding Scientific Integrity at Federal Agencies

    Republicans and Democrats on a House subcommittee on Thursday agreed that science-related policy decisions should be based on facts, but differed on how to protect the federal scientists who gather and analyze those facts from undue influence. 

  • U.S. and Australia Team Up against China's Dominance in Rare Earths

    An Australian rare-earth producer has enlisted an American partner to help it chip away at China’s dominance in supplying minerals that are crucial to making smartphones, missiles, batteries for electric vehicles and a long list of high-tech products. China has used its rare-earth dominance as a weapon in previous trade disputes and has signaled that it could do so again in its current fight with the U.S.

  • Coping with Climate Change with Forecast-Based Aid

    Traditionally, disaster victims have received assistance after trouble hits. If a region is flooded, say, people in the area may get aid to rebuild. But a new approach to humanitarian giving is flipping the script and offering help in advance of disaster, using in-depth weather forecasting and risk analysis to predict future victims.

  • Glaciers May Be Melting Faster Than We Expected

    From Alaska to Antarctica, thousands of glaciers flow over the land and out to the ocean. These tidewater glaciers are rapidly retreating and melting, like much of Earth’s ice, continually adding to rising sea levels. But to date, scientists have struggled to pinpoint where on the face of a glacier’s terminus the most intense melting occurs—and exactly how fast it is happening. Until now.

  • What Dragonflies Can Teach Us about Missile Defense

    Dragonfly brains might be wired to be extremely efficient at calculating complex trajectories: Dragonflies catch 95 percent of their prey, crowning them one of the top predators int he world. Sandia Lab scientists are is examining whether dragonfly-inspired computing could improve missile defense systems, which have the similar task of intercepting an object in flight, by making on-board computers smaller without sacrificing speed or accuracy.

  • Keeping First Responders Safe

    When two powerful earthquakes rocked southern California earlier this month, officials’ attention focused, understandably, on safety. How many people were injured? Were buildings up to code? How good are we at predicting earthquakes? Not a lot of people were thinking about urine, blood, and spit. But those substances are key to a PNNL effort to learn more about the health and safety of first responders.

  • Machine-learning Competition Improves Earthquake Prediction Capabilities

    Current scientific studies related to earthquake forecasting focus on three key points: when the event will occur, where it will occur, and how large it will be. The Kaggle competition, hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory, provided a challenging dataset that was based on previously published laboratory analysis, to give the competitors a taxing project to explore. Competitors’ success predicting quake timing in the online Kaggle competition could help save lives, infrastructure.

  • Epigenetic Tool for Detecting Exposure to WMD

    With a $38.8 million award from DARPA, researchers are working on developing a field-deployable, point-of-care device that will determine in 30 minutes or less whether a person has been exposed to weapons of mass destruction or their precursors. The device will be capable of detecting the health effects of a number of substances associated with weapons of mass destruction, including biological agents, radiation, chemicals and explosives. The detection devices will scan potential exposure victims for epigenetic changes, that is, chemical modifications that affect genes, altering their expression while leaving the genetic code intact.