Report: Wildfires & Air Pollution, A Hidden Hazard
Across the American West, climate change has made snow melt earlier, spring and summers hotter, and fire seasons longer. One result has been a doubling since 1970 of the number of large wildfires raging each year. And depending on the rate of future warming, the number of big wildfires in western states could increase as much as six-fold over the… Read More
Expert Warns We’re Still Unprepared for Sandy-Like Event
When he realized that Hurricane Sandy was on track for a direct hit on the New York metropolitan area, and that the storm would almost certainly be making landfall at high tide, Klaus Jacob went into high gear. “First,” he recalled nearly a year later, sitting in a bright, modern conference room near his office at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth … Read More
Fracking May Be Polluting River with Radioactive Waste
Fracking may be contaminating a Pennsylvania river with radioactive waste, a Duke University study to be published this week shows. Scientists found elevated levels of radioactivity in river water at a site where treated fracking wastewater from oil and gas production sites in western Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale is released into a creek.… Read More
Arresting First Responder Images of Colorado Flooding
After receiving nearly a year's worth of rain in just one week, portions of Colorado are suffering from devastating flooding. In the hardest-hit areas of Colorado's Front Range, including the city of Boulder, the National Guard has been airlifting people who have been cut off from surrounding communities by raging floodwaters.… Read More
Flood-Ravaged Boulder, Colo., Sets Annual Rainfall Record
With 30.12 inches of rain and counting, more than half of which fell since Sept. 9, the city has already eclipsed its previous annual record of 29.93 inches, which was set in 1995. The average yearly precipitation (rain and melted frozen precipitation) in Boulder is 20.68 inches. The annual precipitation record is especially noteworthy since befor… Read More
Colorado’s ‘Biblical’ Flood in Line with Climate Trends
It will take climate scientists many months to complete studies into whether manmade global warming made the Boulder flood more likely to occur, but the amount by which this event has exceeded past events suggests that manmade warming may have played some role by making the event worse than it would have otherwise been.… Read More
Microgrids in NYC & Conn.—A New Kind of Power Struggle
With the ravages and power outages of hurricanes Irene and Sandy seared in recent memory, soon, a public school, a small private grocery store and a gas station in Hartford, Conn., will be linked by a microgrid designed to keep the electricity flowing in those buildings when the next major storm hits. Hartford city officials consider the school, … Read More
West Nile Virus Season to Last Longer as Climate Changes
Warm weather brings ice cream, beach days, and other joys of summer but it also brings the incessant buzz of mosquitoes. While a number of mosquitoes will bite and leave little more than a red welt, others, especially in the southern half of the U.S., can transmit West Nile virus, an uncomfortable and sometimes lethal disease. New research provides… Read More
