A look at our changing environment.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority – NYSERDA – recently issued a report on clean energy progress in the state during 2024. The report highlighted continued and increased growth in heat pumps, electric vehicles, and solar energy. Heat pumps, which provide both heating and cooling, have outsold gas furnaces countrywide for three […]
Researchers from the University of Toronto have directly linked the population decline in polar bears living in Canada’s Western Hudson Bay to climate change. Between 1979 and 2021, the polar bear population in this region has declined by nearly 50%. The monitoring data over this period shows that the average size of polar bears has […]
Researchers at Ohio State University have developed a new portable tool that may help firefighters battle blazes more efficiently and with less risk. Traditional firefighting methods include chemical foams – which are toxic – and the use of hydrants, which can strain water resources. The recent fires in Southern California demonstrated the need for efficient […]
There are more than 31,000 dams in the northeastern United States. More than 4,000 of them are in the Hudson River watershed. Most of these dams are quite small and were built in the 19th century to form ponds and to power grist, textile, paper, saw, and other kinds of mills as the region developed […]
Human activity has made rats one of the most prolific mammals on the planet. Our waste, buildings, and ships provide food, shelter, and transport. In the United States alone, rats cost the country approximately $27 billion each year in damage to infrastructure, crops, and contaminated food supplies. Additionally, rats carry and spread over 50 zoonotic […]
Harmful algal blooms – HABs – occur when colonies of algae grow out of control and produce toxic or harmful effects on people, marine life, and birds. HABs occur naturally but their frequency and intensity are often associated with increased nutrient loading (mainly phosphorous and nitrogen) in bodies of water that is the result of […]
Ocean waves form as wind blows over the surface of open water. Globally, waves contain tremendous amounts of energy. Theoretically, the energy generating potential of waves off the coasts of the U.S. would meet more than 60% of the country’s electricity needs. There are a variety of methods and technologies for tapping into this energy […]
Sharks and rays belong to a group of cartilaginous fish called elasmobranchs, which have been swimming in the world’s oceans for 450 million years. The resilient species have survived five mass extinction events, and are older than dinosaurs, trees, and Mount Everest. But despite their resilience, many species of sharks and rays today are threatened […]
Americans experienced unusually cold and wintery weather in January. Places like southern Louisiana and Florida saw appreciable amounts of snow. For those who experienced January’s Arctic blast, it was a cold January. But despite that, January was the world’s warmest on record, extending a run of extraordinary heat in which 18 out of the last […]
Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long and typically far smaller than that. They come from a variety of sources, often from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. There are also microbeads, which are tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added to various health and beauty […]
Hydrogen has great potential for helping society to reach net-zero emissions. The problem is that the most economical and established production methods for hydrogen depend heavily on fossil fuels and result in roughly a dozen kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every kilogram of hydrogen produced. The carbon-free way to produce hydrogen is by splitting […]
Engineers at the University of Michigan and Rice University have developed a new technology for removing boron from seawater, an important step in turning seawater into safe drinking water. Boron is a natural component of seawater that remains a toxic contaminant in drinking water after conventional filters remove salts from seawater. The boron levels in […]
After seven months of waiting following the end of the recent El Niño condition, La Niña finally showed up in the eastern Pacific Ocean in early December. El Niño and La Niña are climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that can affect weather worldwide. Normally, trade winds in the Pacific blow west along the equator, […]
Naysayers about renewable energy often claim that it is unreliable. It is true that the sun sets every night and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. But with the growing use of battery banks to store excess power generated by renewables, the lack of reliability of renewable energy is turning out to be a myth. A […]
A new study by Swiss and Austrian scientists has found that persistent multi-year droughts have become increasingly common since 1980 and will continue to proliferate as the climate warms. There are multiple examples in recent years in places ranging from California to Mongolia to Australia. Fifteen years of persistent megadrought in Chile have nearly dried […]
Plants absorb nutrients and minerals from the soil as they grow and incorporate them into their leaves and stems. Such plants can be used to remove toxic elements from soil. Cleaning soil in this way is called phytoremediation. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are trying to go beyond phytoremediation and do phytomining, in […]
Wholesale coffee prices hit record highs in the midst of the Trump administration’s deportation and tariff dispute with Colombia. But coffee prices have already been trading near 50-year highs for a while as a result of shortages related to extreme weather and increased global demand. In recent years, repeated droughts and flooding have put pressure […]
Nearly all wind turbines in use today are horizonal axis wind turbines. They are a familiar sight with their three giant rotor blades spinning about an axis high above the ground attached to a nacelle containing the gearbox and generator. A vertical-axis wind turbine has its rotor shaft transverse to the wind; that is, the […]
Permafrost covers about a quarter of the landmass in the Northern Hemisphere. It stores vast quantities of organic carbon in the form of dead plant matter. As long as it stays frozen, it is no threat to the climate. But as permafrost thaws, microorganisms start breaking down that plant matter and large amounts of carbon […]
Data centers are dedicated facilities containing computers and their related hardware equipment such as servers, data storage drives, and network equipment; they are the physical facilities that store digital data. Data centers are one of the most energy-intensive building types, consuming 10 to 50 times more energy per floor space than a typical commercial office […]