San Diego researchers are getting a better understanding of the storm systems that bring the region most of its rain and they are getting that information the old fashion way — from weather balloons. Last March, gray rain-filled skies seemed to dip into the ocean as a storm moved across the region.
On Aug. 3, researchers at the Plumas National Forest in Northern California received a startling result: Sticks and logs they gathered from the forest floor to assess wildfire risk had a moisture level of just 2%. The reading was the lowest ever recorded in 15 years of measurements at a site in the forest’s southwest corner. It also was a warning: The area was tinderbox-dry and primed to burn.
If all you’ve ever seen of the Fresno River is through Madera as you drive over it on Highway 99, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just a weed-infested, shopping cart collector rather than a real river.
Google and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have signed a three-year deal to use the tech giant’s artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance the agency’s environmental monitoring, weather forecasting and climate research, according to a joint announcement released Tuesday.
Hexavalent chromium is a carcinogen that was made famous by the 2000 film “Erin Brockovich,” which dramatized a case of industrial pollution that contaminated water supplies in California. A new study shows that Cr(VI) can slip into drinking water when commonly used chlorine disinfectants corrode cast iron water distribution pipes.
What if I purchase an early season ski pass– will it pay off with good snow this winter? Yoshimitsu Chikamoto, a climate scientist at Utah State University Utah had an idea to use climate modeling to help him decide.
Weather forecasting targets a short term, days to weeks, mostly based on atmospheric conditions. Forecasting climate patterns a year in advance is more complex, said Chikamoto.
“Weather forecasting needs the atmospheric model. In the climate model the atmospheric model is one component of the climate that also needs ocean and sea ice, and the land,” Chikamoto said.
The City of San Diego’s Pure Water Demonstration Facility public tour is now available as a virtual tour. A new video provides an up-close look at the technology behind the water purification plant. In-person tours are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic and will resume once it is safe to do so. Since opening in June 2011, nearly 19,000 people have toured the one-million-gallon-per-day facility in person.
There’s nothing quite like an infrastructure disaster to get the American public’s attention, whether it is the discovery of a drinking water system with dangerous levels of lead in Flint, Michigan, or a near-catastrophic dam failure in Oroville, California.
Twice a week, mathematics professor Andrea Bruder squats in the sewage tunnels below South Hall, a mostly freshman dorm at Colorado College. She wears head-to-toe protective gear and holds a plastic ladle in one hand and a to-go coffee cup in the other. Bruder hovers above an opening in a large metal pipe and patiently waits for a student to flush.
Conceptually it makes a lot of sense to farmers and oil producers alike: Use the latest filtration technology to turn one of Kern’s most troublesome waste streams — oilfield produced water — into a safe irrigation source.
For decades it’s been done on a relatively small scale near Bakersfield, and recent studies confirm it doesn’t threaten crop safety. So why aren’t more local oil producers giving farmers the briny water that comes up from the ground along with oil?
