78 news posts in Climate change

Climate action

05 Apr 2016

Networked solutions needed for climate change adaptation

By Michelle Ponto, Science Writer The 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) led to a shift in focus in climate change research towards finding solutions. The hope is that these solutions will prepare society to adapt and mitigate the consequences of a warming planet, but the research shift to finding solutions is not easy. “An important aspect that has made climate change difficult is that energy is an intrinsic component of our lives and our activities – from food production systems to transit systems, to adaptation systems,” said Carlos M. Duarte, Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Marine Science and Tarek Ahmed Juffali Research Chair in Red Sea Ecology at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Because energy affects so many aspects of our lives, Duarte says it’s difficult to address the issues on how to build systems that are both efficient and don’t contribute to the problem of climate change without encompassing a whole array of disciplines. An example he gives is LED technology. While these lights are saving cities money and use less energy, they create light pollution that is drastically greater than traditional light bulbs. According to research, this could disrupt the behavior patterns of nocturnal animals, the […]

Climate action

18 Dec 2015

News from #AGU15: Heat stress in dense populations and impacts of the 2015-16 El Niño

Gearóid Ó Faoleán, Journal Manager of Frontiers in Earth Science, is representing Frontiers at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, the world’s largest earth and space science meeting. Here, in the 1st of a series of posts, he reports on some of the exciting press conferences he attended at the conference. The impacts of heat stress on densely populated regions in the 21st century Monday, 14 December 2015 Ethan Coffel, PhD candidate, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A Radley Horton, Associate Research Scientist, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A. Noah Diffenbaugh, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford, California, U.S.A. The participants spoke of global exposure to heat stress for this coming century and the effects it will have on our health and, linking to that, economic performance; as well as global infrastructure. Ethan Coffel first gave an overview of his research on global wet-bulb temperature, a combined measure of temperature and humidity. It was noted that while recent global heatwaves, in this context, were in the range of 29-31 °C, human tolerance is estimated to be 35 °C maximum. Thus, a global temperature rise could have serious repercussions for humankind. Dr Radley Horton […]

Climate action

14 Dec 2015

VIDEO: Capturing CO2 in hopes of saving the planet

By Jessica Mitchell Save the planet. This is just the motivation that ultimately drives the research of Professor Berend Smit, who says that through his research “in the long term, we may actually save the planet.” Berend Smit is currently Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley and EPFL in Sion, Switzerland. He is also Director of the Energy Centre and Chair of Molecular Simulation at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, as well as Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Energy Research. A computational quest for novel nanopore materials Smit leads a team of researchers who use computational methods to screen novel nanoporous materials, known as metal organic frameworks, for their suitability for various energy-related applications- including capturing CO2 from flue gases and storing methane. These materials are the ideal playgrounds for chemist; by varying the basic chemical constituents we can make millions of different materials, each with its own specific properties. But, as Smit comments, “experimentally, however, because of practical limitations we can only synthesize a small fraction of them.” By adopting computational techniques, Smit and his team are able to explore the properties of these novel nanoporous materials in silico and assess their […]