• For Advance Drought Warning, Look to the Plants

    Among the extreme weather impacts resulting from climate change, drought is a growing problem around the globe, leading to frequent wildfires, threats to water resources, and greater food insecurity. Researchers find signals in vegetation can help forecast devastating ‘flash’ droughts.

  • Climate Change Is Making Flooding Worse: 3 Reasons the World Is Seeing More Record-Breaking Deluges and Flash Floods

    Although floods are a natural occurrence, human-caused climate change is making severe flooding events more common. I study how climate change affects hydrology and flooding. In mountainous regions, three effects of climate change in particular are creating higher flood risks: more intense precipitation, shifting snow, and rain patterns and the effects of wildfires on the landscape.

  • Using Historical Weather Data to Optimize Power Grid

    With the record-breaking heat and drought conditions states across the U.S. are currently facing, finding a solution to the growing need for reliable power from the electric grid is at an all-time high. Information about past outlier conditions could provide valuable context to help operators better manage the grid during extreme weather.

  • U.S. Senate Approves Bill Containing Texas’ “Ike Dike” Coastal Protection Project

    The U.S. Senate voted to authorize the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin planning for a massive coastal barrier project in Galveston Bay meant to protect against hurricanes’ storm surge. Funding is not yet secured.

  • Europe’s Energy Choice

    Russia’s war in Ukraine and the disruption of Russian gas exports to Europe has triggered an energy crunch, with price spikes unlike anything seen since 1973. And the situation will get worse before it gets better. Responding to the immediate energy crisis in the right way will help to address the broader climate challenge. Authorities must both buffer the shock of the gas crunch in the short term, and accelerate the transition to clean energy in the long -term.

  • New Flood Maps Clarify the Risk Homeowners Face

    Flooding in urban areas cost Americans more than $106 billion between 1960 and 2016, damaging property, disrupting businesses and claiming lives in the process. Determining which areas are most likely to flood amid ever-changing land use and shifting rainfall and climate patterns can be expensive and complicated. New maps more realistically depict flood zones with less effort, lower costs.

  • U.S. Launches Heat.gov with Tools for Communities Facing Extreme Heat

    The administration launched Heat.gov, a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat. Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.

  • Extreme Heat Causes Record Wildfires, Acres Burned

    In 2022, 38,046 wildfires have burned 5,571,855 acres. This is the most acres burned-to-date in the past 10 years. Both numbers are well above the 10-year average of 32,286 wildfires and 3,328,244 acres burned. Temperatures will rise to 10- 15oF above normal across the Pacific Northwest and 5-10oF above normal in northern California and portions of the Great Basin.

  • Amid Climate Change and Conflict, More Resilient Food Systems a Must: Report

    Increased demand for water will be the No. 1 threat to food security in the next 20 years, followed closely by heat waves, droughts, income inequality and political instability.

  • Why UK Railways Can’t Deal with Heatwaves – and What Might Help

    Like most construction materials, steel, which rails are made from, expands when air temperature increases. When this movement is restrained by the anchorage, which holds the rail and the sleeper (the rectangular supports for the rails) in place, internal stresses build up, and compression buckles or kinks the rail. Trains cannot travel over rail lines with kinks. In the US, kinks caused by the sun caused over 2,100 train derailments in the past 40 years, equivalent to around 50 derailments per year.

  • Climate Change, Land-Use Changes Increase Likelihood of Flood Events

    The German government estimates the total losses resulting from the disastrous floods in July 2021 at 32 billion euros. To improve future preparedness for such extreme events, researchers advise that risk assessments take greater account of the landscape and river courses, how they change, and how sediments are transported. In addition, projections show an increase in the spatial extent and frequency of such extreme events, as well as higher amounts of precipitation.

  • How Not to Solve the Climate Change Problem

    When politicians talk about reaching “net zero” emissions, they’re often counting on trees or technology that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air. What they don’t mention is just how much these proposals or geoengineering would cost to allow the world to continue burning fossil fuels. I’ve been working on climate change for over four decades. Let’s take a minute to come to grips with some of the rhetoric around climate change and clear the air, so to speak.

  • Europe Heat Wave: U.K. Records Hottest-Ever Temperature

    Western Europe continues to bake in extreme heat, with the UK recording a temperature over 40 degrees Celsius for the first time, and wildfires burning through French forests. Relief is expected later in the week.

  • Britain Isn’t Built to Withstand 40°C – Here Is Where Infrastructure Is Most Likely to Fail

    Climate change is intensifying heatwaves in the UK, an affluent country with the capacity and resources to adapt to warmer temperatures. Still, very little has been done over the past ten years to address overheating in buildings and the rising risk to critical infrastructure. The country is unprepared to handle temperatures of more than 38°C consistently for long periods, which is more common in Mediterranean countries.

  • Water Resources to Become Less Predictable with Climate Change

    Many regions of Earth rely on the accumulation of snow during the winter and subsequent melting in the spring and summer for regulating runoff and streamflow. Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more and more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the Northern Hemisphere.