News – Page 4

UCI, UC Merced: California forest die-off caused by depletion of deep-soil water

Written on July 1, 2019.

Study warns of threats from future concurrent drought and heat events Irvine, Calif., July 1, 2019 – A catastrophic forest die-off in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range in 2015-2016 was caused by the inability of trees to reach diminishing supplies of subsurface water following years of severe drought and abnormally warm temperatures. That’s the conclusion by researchers from the University of California, Irvine and UC Merced outlined in a study published today in Nature Geoscience. “In...

Patagonia ice sheets thicker than previously thought, study finds

Written on June 3, 2019.

UCI, South American glaciologists characterize protected region with new methods Irvine, Calif., June 3, 2019 – After conducting a comprehensive, seven-year survey of Patagonia, glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine and partner institutions in Argentina and Chile have concluded that the ice sheets in this vast region of South America are considerably more massive than expected. Through a combination of ground observations and airborne gravity and radar sounding methods,...

Combination of water scarcity and inflexible demand puts world’s river basins at risk

Written on June 3, 2019.

Data science will help identify best practices to preserve California’s forests, wildlands Irvine, Calif., June 3, 2019 – Nearly one-fifth of the world’s population lives in a stressed water basin where the next climate change-driven incident could threaten access to an essential resource for agriculture, industry and life itself, according to a paper by University of California, Irvine researchers and others, published today in Nature Sustainability. The study’s authors analyzed trends...

Improved land management project co-led by UCI gets $4.6 million in state funding

Written on February 6, 2019.

Data science will help identify best practices to preserve California’s forests, wildlands Irvine, Calif., Feb. 6, 2019 – California’s Strategic Growth Council recently approved $4.6 million for a project led by the University of California, Irvine and the University of California, Merced to develop new tools and methods for better managing the state’s forests and wildlands. The Innovation Center for Advancing Ecosystem Climate Solutions is a three-year project with the goals of improving...

UCI/JPL: Antarctica losing six times more ice mass annually now than 40 years ago

Written on January 14, 2019.

Climate change-induced melting will raise global sea levels for decades to come Irvine, Calif., Monday, Jan. 14, 2019 – Antarctica experienced a sixfold increase in yearly ice mass loss between 1979 and 2017, according to a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Netherlands’ Utrecht University additionally found that the accelerated melting caused global sea...

2 UCI studies ranked among the 10 most popular climate research papers of 2018

Written on January 9, 2019.

Carbon Brief, a website devoted to the analysis of energy policy and climate change science, has published a list of the 10 climate research papers in 2018 that received the most global media attention, and two originated at UCI. The rankings are based on scores tabulated by Altmetric, which tracks and measures exposure of academic papers appearing in top journals. Placing third on the list is a study by Steven Davis, UCI associate professor of Earth system science, and Nathan Mueller, UCI assistant...

UCI Study: Reduced Sierra Nevada Snowmelt Runoff to Threaten California Agriculture

Written on October 8, 2018.

One-degree rise in global winter temps to cause less high country snow accumulation October 8, 2018 – An estimated three-quarters of the water used by farms, ranches and dairies in California originates as snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, but the future viability of that resource is projected to be at heightened risk due to global climate change. In a study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of California, Irvine researchers...

Shipping in ice-free Arctic Ocean could have cooling effect on climate, simulations show

Written on September 25, 2018.

Sea ice is melting due to global warming, enabling greater maritime access to the Arctic Ocean. Emissions from transoceanic cargo ships taking advantage of this could either warm the climate further by darkening snow and ice surfaces or cool it by enhancing cloud reflectance. In a study published recently in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from UCI, the University of Connecticut and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory describe using a fully...

UCI Joins in Launch of New NSF-funded Data Science and Climate Initiative

Written on September 11, 2018.

September 11, 2018 – Investigators from UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering, Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Science, and School of Physical Sciences will work together in a new initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation, to perfect the use of data science in climate studies. The Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science plus Climate project includes collaborators from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Chicago. The TRIPODS+X research...

Advanced Power and Energy Program Receives CEC Grant for California Renewable Hydrogen Deployment Roadmap

Written on September 5, 2018.

Roadmap to provide significant detail through 2025, higher level outlook through 2050 Sep. 5, 2018 – The Advanced Power and Energy Program (APEP) has been awarded a grant by the California Energy Commission to develop a deployment roadmap for renewable hydrogen production in California through 2050. The effort will initially focus on extracting insights from the first set of renewable hydrogen production facilities under development in California, and developing a roadmap...