• Climate models still struggle with medium- term climate forecasts

    Scientists have evaluated twenty-three climate models and concluded that there is still a long way to go before reliable regional predictions can be made on seasonal to decadal time scales; none of the models evaluated is able today to forecast the weather-determining patterns of high and low pressure areas such that the probability of a cold winter or a dry summer can be reliably predicted

  • Geologists pinpoint powerful-earthquake hot spots

    After studying about 1,500 earthquakes, scientists conclude that the world’s largest earthquakes occur at subduction zones — locations where a tectonic plate slips under another; the scientists have found that regions where “scars” on the seafloor, called fracture zones, meet subduction areas are at higher risk of generating powerful earthquakes

  • U.S. faces more – and more intense – wildfire

    Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades; the researchers calculated results for low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios; in both cases, results suggest more fire seasons that are longer and stronger across all regions of the United States in the next 30-50 years; specifically, high fire years like 2012 would likely occur two to four times per decade by mid-century, instead of once per decade under current climate conditions

  • Geoengineering could disrupt global rainfall patterns

    Tackling climate change by reducing the solar radiation reaching our planet using climate engineering, known also as geoengineering, could result in undesirable effects for the Earth and humankind; in particular, new research shows that disruption of global and regional rainfall patterns is likely in a geoengineered climate

  • TVA considering raising height of dams to prevent future floods

    The dams located on the upper Tennessee River never had flood waters top them, and government officials want to keep it that way, saying that due to recent disasters such as the 2010 Nashville flood and the 2011Fukushima tsunami, they need to prepare the worst possible situation

  • Removing sea defenses may reduce impact of coastal flooding

    Coastal defenses put in place over the last century or so have re-shaped the U.K. coastline, artificially protecting some areas, but at the expense of beaches in adjacent areas; this man-made situation increases the risk of flooding in low lying coastal settlements where beaches act as a natural flood defense; beach levels can be artificially recharged, but maintaining this indefinitely along large stretches of coastline is costly and likely to be unsustainable

  • Pulverized rocks used to strip CO2 from emissions of steel, coal, cement plants

    Researchers in Quebec are developing a process which would see steel, coal, and cement plants as well as oil and gas facilities remove most of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from their emissions through chemical reactions with various types of crushed rocks in the stacks

  • Huawei rejects U.S. “threat to national security” claims

    In October the United States House Intelligence Committee issued a report warning U.S. companies against using two Chinese companies, Huawei and ZTE, for their telecommunication technology needs; the report said that the firms may be too close to China’s Communist Party and its military’ the report also suggested their products and services could pose a threat to the security of the United .States; Huawei vigorously disputes both claims

  • Quantum cryptography may soon go main stream

    Researchers have perfected a technique that offers a less expensive way to ensure the security of high-speed fiber-optic cables, protecting communication networks from unauthorized snooping; this means that existing telecom networks can now be secured with this ultimate form of encryption

  • Andrew Cuomo heads to Washington to push for disaster aid

    Governor Andrew Cuomo says that New York needs $33 billion to cover storm cleanup and another $9 billion for new programs to protect against future storms; Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey says his state will need $36.8 billion to recover from Sandy; it is not clear how Congress and the administration, locked in a tug of war over differing deficit cut plans, will respond

  • Tunnel disaster shows age of Japan’s infrastructure, but there is no money to fix it

    The collapse of hundreds of concrete ceiling slabs in a tunnel just outside Tokyo has focused the attention of the Japanese on the country’s  has citizens calling for Japan to fix its aging infrastructure; the amounts of money needed for this refurbishing are large, and , but signs indicate that Japan may not have the money, as the public debt is already more than 200 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

  • Lloyd’s says countries are under insured against natural disasters

    Lloyd’s of London, the world’s largest insurance company, has warned seventeen countries that a $165 billion global insurance deficit leaves them vulnerable to long-term natural disaster costs; Lloyds says the world may not be able to afford another year like 2011, when natural disasters such as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the floods in Thailand caused $4.6 trillion dollars of damage to infrastructure, homes, and businesses, and which resulted in the largest disaster claims ever

  • Hard choices to be made on adapting infrastructure to climate change

    The costs of adapting to climate change, sea-level, and flooding include the upfront expenses of upgrading infrastructure, installing early-warning systems, and effective organizations, as well as the costs of reducing risk, such as not building on flood plains

  • Scientists identify a human-caused climate change signal in the noise

    By comparing simulations from twenty different computer models to satellite observations, Lawrence Livermore climate scientists and colleagues from sixteen other organizations have found that tropospheric and stratospheric temperature changes are clearly related to human activities; “No known mode of natural climate variability can cause sustained, global-scale warming of the troposphere and cooling of the lower stratosphere,” says Livernore atmospheric scientist Benjamin Santer

  • Innovative method to capture CO2

    The carbonate-looping method for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) could reduce power-plant CO2 emissions by more than 90 percent, while utilizing less energy and incurring less expense than former approaches