ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today presented a 12-member team with the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling. The award recognizes innovative parallel computing contributions toward solving the global climate crisis.

A new study in the journal Nature shows that the oceans were less cold in the early 20th century (1900–1930) than previously thought. During this period the ocean appears too cold due to the way some measurements were taken. This makes global ocean surface temperature measurements during this period inconsistent with both land air temperatures and palaeoclimatic data and the differences between land and ocean are larger than shown in climate models.

Using satellite imagery, Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researchers comprehensively analyzed drought dynamics over five years to reveal short and long-term climate trends in Arkansas. The Delta, a regional powerhouse for Arkansas agriculture built by river flows, is showing a trend of increasing droughts.

Hamdi Zurqani, an assistant professor of geospatial science for the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Arkansas Forest Resources Center at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, developed the Arkansas Vegetation Drought Explorer v.2.0 as part of a drought mapping study. The user-friendly web app gives users access to maps showing drought levels in Arkansas by county, year and month.

A new study published in Nature Climate Change estimates that a 1-meter sea level rise by 2100 would affect over 14 million people and $1 trillion worth of property along the Southeast Atlantic coast.

Sustainable rates of groundwater withdrawal in Oregon’s Harney Basin were surpassed 20 years prior to the time declining groundwater levels were generally recognized, a new analysis found.

In “The Miraculous from the Material,” MIT professor of the practice Alan Lightman offers 35 essays about scientific understanding, each corresponding to photos of spectacular natural phenomena, from spider webs to sunsets and from galaxies to hummingbirds.