News

When it comes to global warming trends, the Arctic is a troubling outlier. The Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the global average, and aerosols

aerosols

Small particles or droplets, such as wildfire smoke, volcanic gases, or salty sea spray, that float in the air. They are emitted by both natural events and human activities.

Source: NASA Global Climate Change Source

play an important role in that warming. Scientists have long known that pollutants from other regions can accumulate in the Arctic atmosphere, where they alter atmospheric chemistry, absorb sunlight, and affect local weather patterns.

Mountainous watersheds

watershed

An area of land that channels rainfall and snowmelt to creeks, streams, and rivers, and eventually flows to the lowest point in a basin.

Source: USGS Source

provide most of the world’s freshwater, but they are complex, under-measured systems that have proven difficult to understand and model. New approaches to data collection and scientific research in high-altitude complex terrain are needed to better understand and predict how the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface interact and affect mountain hydroclimates.

As part of the newly-funded projects through the DOE’s Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) Initiative, Environmental Science Division scientists put together a one-day virtual workshop for students and faculty of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), including three professors, six undergraduates and two graduate students.

By 2030, more than 60% of the world’s population will live in cities. 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

is one of the major looming concerns for urban areas worldwide, in part because of the ways in which climate change compounds vulnerabilities related to poverty, a lack of natural resources, pollution and the fast pace of urbanization

urbanization

Concentrations of human populations into discrete areas. This concentration leads to the transformation of land for residential, commercial, industrial and transportation purposes.

Source: EPA Environmental Protection Agency Source

itself.

DOE announced $13.1 million in funding for 17 ESS projects to universities, academic institutions, federal research labs, and nonprofits. Awards focus on measurements, experiments, field data, modeling, and synthesis

synthesis

The process of combining a number of things into a coherent whole to form a theory or system.

Source: National Library of Medicine Source

to provide improved understanding and representation of ecosystems

ecosystem

A natural community of plants, animals, and other living organisms and the physical environment in which they live and interact.

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

and watersheds.

The SCGSR program provides supplemental awards to outstanding U.S. graduate students to conduct part of their graduate thesis research at a DOE national laboratory or facility in collaboration with a DOE laboratory scientist — with the goal of preparing graduate students for scientific and technical careers critically important to the DOE Office of Science mission.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $37 million in funding for 52 projects to 44 institutions to build research capacity, infrastructure, and expertise at institutions historically underrepresented in DOE’s Office of Science portfolio, including Minority Serving Institutions

minority Serving Institution (MSI)

A term used to describe colleges and universities that primarily enroll and serve minority populations. These groups can include African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Asian Americans.

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior Source

(MSIs) and Emerging Research Institutions (ERIs).

The RENEW Initiative Will Support 40 Minority-Serving Institutions, Including HBCUs and Hispanic-Serving Institutions, to Build a Diverse STEM Workforce The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced $70 million in funding to support research by historically underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to diversify leadership in the physical sciences.

Guaranteeing reliability enhances hydrogen’s role in energy transition. Mathematical modeling can show how to safely blend hydrogen with natural gas for transport in existing pipeline systems. A secure and reliable transition to hydrogen is one of the proposed solutions for the shift to a net-zero-carbon economy.

New observations of mud cracks made by the Curiosity rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments, indicating that the red planet may have once seen seasonal weather patterns or even flash floods. The presence of long-term wet environments, such as evidence of ancient lakes on Mars, is well-documented, but far less is known about short-term climate fluctuations.

The Stellar Occultation Hypertemporal Imaging Payload (SOHIP) prototype telescope uses LLNL-patented monolithic-optics technology on a gimbal to detect and characterize gravity waves and high-altitude atmospheric properties such as temperature, pressure and air-density profiles at altitudes of up to 50 kilometers (or about 31 miles).

Capturing carbon dioxide

carbon dioxide (CO2)

An important heat-trapping gas, also known as a greenhouse gas, that comes from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and natural gas), from wildfires, and natural processes like volcanic eruptions.

Source: NASA Source

and pumping it deep underground could be an important part of mitigating the effects of climate change. However, ensuring the carbon dioxide stays trapped away from the atmosphere, where it serves as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, is critical.