News

A new study finds that, by mid-century, nearly half the global population could live in areas where groundwater

groundwater

Water that occurs below Earth's surface. When rain falls to the ground, a portion percolates (sinks) into the ground and collects in spaces in the underground rocks.

Source: A student's guide to Global Climate Change Source

will become so costly as to raise regional food prices and significantly alter the geography of trade and crop production. Nine percent of the world’s water basins appear to have already reached such a state of near depletion. New research from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory indicates that an additional 11.5% could reach this point by 2030, with another 22% joining by mid-century.

Floating offshore wind energy has huge energy potential—2.8 terawatts in the United States, to be exact. That is more than double current U.S. electricity consumption. The White House aims to begin tapping that potential with its current goal of deploying 15 gigawatts of floating offshore wind capacity by 2035. In order to meet that goal, developers will need large turbines that can float over high-wind areas of the ocean that are too deep for today’s fixed bottom offshore wind turbines.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing batteries to combat climate change

climate change

A change in the average conditions — such as temperature and rainfall — in a region over a long period of time.

Source: NASA Climate Kids Source

by expanding renewable energy

renewable energy

Renewable energy comes from unlimited, naturally replenished resources, such as the sun, tides, and wind. Renewable energy can be used for electricity generation, space and water heating and cooling, and transportation.

Source: U.S Department of Energy Source

use and capturing carbon dioxide. This type of battery stores the renewable energy generated by solar panels or wind turbines. Utilizing this energy when wind and sunlight are unavailable requires an electrochemical

electrochemical

A discipline of chemistry concerned with the interconversion of electrical and chemical energy.

Source: Source

reaction that, in ORNL’s new battery formulation, captures carbon dioxide from industrial emissions and converts it to value-added products.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Aurora supercomputer has officially broken the exascale barrier. Today at the 2024 ISC High Performance conference in Hamburg, Germany, the 63rd edition of the high performance computing

high-performance computing (HPC)

High-performance computing – the most powerful and largest scale computing systems – enables researchers to study systems that would otherwise be impractical, or impossible, to investigate in the real world due to their complexity or the danger they pose

Source: DOE Office of Science Source

Top500 list announced that DOE holds the #1 and #2 positions for most powerful supercomputers in the world. The Top500’s benchmark has long been the world’s measuring stick for large scale supercomputing performance.

The American Geophysical Union is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) by showcasing some of the highest-achieving papers that have been published over the past 50 years. A paper by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists is one of the winners. The paper "Causes of Higher Climate Sensitivity in CMIP6 Models" by LLNL scientists and collaborators from University of Leeds and Imperial College London was chosen as the "Editor’s Choice Paper."

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is both an essential resource for life on Earth and a greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. Today, scientists are investigating CO2 as a promising resource that can be utilized to create renewable low-carbon fuels and high-value chemical products. The challenge for researchers has been to identify efficient and cost-effective CO2 conversion pathways to premium carbon intermediates, such as carbon monoxide, methanol, or formic acid.