News – Page 10

UCI, NASA reveal new details of Greenland ice loss

Written on February 9, 2017.

Data are dramatically increasing knowledge of how the ocean is melting the ice sheet Irvine, Calif., Feb. 9, 2017 – Less than a year after the first research flight kicked off NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland campaign, data from the new program are providing a dramatic increase in knowledge of how Greenland’s ice sheet is melting from below. Two new research papers in the journal Oceanography, including one by UCI Earth system scientist Mathieu Morlighem, use OMG observations to document how...

UCI Named as Partner in New Clean Manufacturing Institute

Written on February 6, 2017.

$140 million consortium aims to improve competitiveness of US industryFeb. 6, 2017 – The University of California, Irvine, in collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Golisano Institute for Sustainability, has launched the Reducing Embodied-Energy & Decreasing Emissions Institute to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing. The Department of Energy is providing up to $70 million to fund the REMADE Institute through its Manufacturing...

UCI introduces iRain smartphone app

Written on January 5, 2017.

Data used by agencies worldwide is now freely available Irvine, Calif., Jan. 5, 2017 — Climate researchers and weather forecasters get their rain data from a network of precipitation-sensing satellites that orbit Earth. iRain, a new mobile phone app developed by engineers at the University of California, Irvine puts the same precision rainfall information into the pockets of the public. The free app, available for iPhone and Android devices, provides timely satellite rain data via UCI’s...

Greening the grid

Written on January 3, 2017.

UCI tests integration of renewable hydrogen into existing natural gas systems Brian Bell / UCI There are lots of different kinds of laboratories at the University of California, Irvine, but a unique one being used by Advanced Power & Energy Program researchers also happens to generate partly renewable electricity and heat for the campus. UCI’s power plant has been made available to APEP engineers so they can study the safety and effectiveness of power-to-gas, a process in which excess...

Saving Stormwater

Written on December 12, 2016.

Five-campus collaboration seeks to capture urban precipitation to augment water supplies Dec. 12, 2016 – Drought-ravaged California misses out on billions of gallons of freshwater each year, as rain washes into storm drains and out to sea. University of California researchers say it’s time for that to change. Led by UCI civil engineer Stanley Grant, they hope to start a revolution in how urban stormwater is collected and managed. Faculty from the Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside,...

On the Water Front

Written on December 12, 2016.

Renowned hydrologist joins UCI to lead interdisciplinary research efforts Dec. 12, 2016 — Efi Foufoula-Georgiou, an expert in hydrology and water resources, recently joined the University of California, Irvine as a Distinguished Professor of civil & environmental engineering. After nearly three decades at the University of Minnesota, with her research laboratory perched atop a waterfall on the Mississippi River, she moved to a region suffering from a severe drought, but the native...

UCI’s Stanley Grant to lead $1.9 million UC effort to become ‘stormwater-neutral’

Written on December 12, 2016.

Drought-ravaged California misses out on billions of gallons of freshwater each year, as rain washes into storm drains and out to sea. University of California researchers say it’s time for that to change. Led by UCI civil engineer Stanley Grant, they hope to start a revolution in how urban stormwater is collected and managed. Faculty from Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, Santa Barbara and San Diego will use a $1.9 million grant from the UC’s Multicampus Research Programs & Initiatives to...

In a National First, UCI Injects Renewable Hydrogen into Campus Power Supply

Written on December 6, 2016.

Power-to-gas technique offers new way to store and use excess wind and solar energy Dec. 6, 2016 — University of California, Irvine engineers have successfully implemented the first power-to-gas hydrogen pipeline injection project in the United States, demonstrating the use of excess clean electricity that would otherwise go to waste. P2G is a technique for converting surplus sustainable energy from solar panels or wind farms into hydrogen, which can be blended with natural gas and...

Study quantifies global soil carbon loss due to warming

Written on November 30, 2016.

UCI biologists Steven Allison and Kathleen Treseder are part of a Yale-led global study appearing in Nature that says global warming will drive the loss of at least 55 trillion kilograms of carbon from the Earth’s soil by midcentury, or about 17 percent more than the projected emissions due to human-related activities during that period. This would be roughly the equivalent of adding to the planet another industrialized country the size of the United States. For decades, scientists have speculated...

In ocean carbon recycling, size matters

Written on November 15, 2016.

The journal Nature Geoscience published a study today from UCI Earth system scientists on the size-reactivity continuum in the ocean carbon cycle. Detrital (not living) organic matter is a very large reservoir of carbon stored in the world’s oceans; it’s roughly equal in size to the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Marine organic matter spans a spectrum of sizes from whales measuring in tens of meters to small, dissolved molecules measuring 1 nanometer to hundreds of angstroms....