• Flood Maps Show U.S. Vastly Underestimates Contamination Risk at Old Industrial Sites

    Floodwaters are a growing risk for many American cities, threatening to displace not only people and housing but also the land-based pollution left behind by earlier industrial activities. For communities near these sites, the flooding of contaminated land is worrisome because it threatens to compromise common pollution containment methods, such as capping contaminated land with clean soil. It can also transport legacy contaminants into surrounding soils and waterways, putting the health and safety of urban ecosystems and residents at risk.

  • Bringing Disaster Risk, Vulnerability Down to Community Level

    A comprehensive update to NOAA’s Billion Dollar Disasters mapping tool now includes U.S. census tract data – providing many users with local community-level awareness of hazard risk, exposure and vulnerability across more than 100 combinations of weather and climate hazards.

  • 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.

  • Tool Estimates Costs of Power Interruptions

    Berkeley Lab-led initiative helps electric companies improve grid reliability and resilience. The initiative aims to update and upgrade the Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator – a publicly available, online tool – which estimates the economic consequences of power interruptions.

  • A Water Strategy for the Parched West: Have Cities Pay Farmers to Install More Efficient Irrigation Systems

    Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate change are causing this crisis across the U.S. Southwest. To achieve a meaningful reduction in water use, states need to focus on the region’s biggest water user: agriculture.

  • 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.

  • Scientists Calculate the Risk of Someone Being Killed by Space Junk

    The chance of someone being killed by space junk falling from the sky may seem ridiculously tiny. Given that we are launching an increasing number of satellites, rockets and probes into space, do we need to start taking the risk more seriously?

  • The World’s Largest Experimental Earthquake Infrastructure Facility

    The National Science Foundation (NSF) promotes research investments and technology that help recognize and mitigate the impacts of natural disasters across the U.S.“The ability to test infrastructure under a full range of motion is critical for unleashing new and pioneering research that can lead to effective, economical and innovative infrastructure designs and retrofitting strategies for existing infrastructure,” said NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan.

  • 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.

  • Local Focus Can Prevent Failures in Large Networks

    We live in an increasingly connected world, a fact underscored by the swift spread of the coronavirus around the globe. Underlying this connectivity are complex networks — global air transportation, the internet, power grids, financial systems and ecological networks, to name just a few. The need to ensure the proper functioning of these systems also is increasing, but control is difficult.