News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Major floods and droughts receive a lot of attention in the context of climate change, but University of Illinois researchers analyzed over five decades of precipitation data from North America to find that changes in nonextreme precipitation are more significant than previously realized and larger than those in extreme precipitation. These changes can have a strong effect on ecosystems, agriculture, infrastructure design and resource management, and point to a need to examine precipitation in a more nuanced, multifaceted way.

Teams of scientists from MIT and elsewhere carried out the most detailed, extended observations of atmospheric chemistry ever attempted in one place, in patch of ponderosa pine forest in Colorado, and found previously unmeasured compounds.

An unprecedented study titled, 'Lifecycle Assessments of Railway Bridge Transitions Exposed to Extreme Events,' published in Frontiers in Built Environment, benchmarks the costs and carbon emissions for the life cycle of eight mitigation measures for maintaining the railroad bridges in the face of climate change and reviews these methods for their effectiveness in three types of extreme environmental conditions.

In a groundbreaking study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, collaborators from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology pooled their scientific and technical expertise to provide some of the first answers to policy questions regarding the use of deep-sea dispersants.

Rising temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions will fundamentally change electricity consumption patterns in Europe. A team of scientists from Germany and the United States now analyzed what unchecked future warming means for Europe's electricity demand: daily peak loads in Southern Europe will likely increase and overall consumption will shift from Northern Europe to the South. Further, the majority of countries will see a shift of temperature-driven annual peak demand from winter to summer by the end of this century.