Last week, a team from UC Irvine showed up with drones as part of a once-a-month monitoring program that will measure the sand through April. The team sets out GPS markers to take images spanning from Doheny State Beach to Poche Creek. The images are stitched together to makes 3-D models, said Jo Schubert, research specialist for UCI’s department of civil engineering.

You are about to hop on a plane. You want to download a movie quickly. On the current 4GLTE technology, the download would take you a few minutes. But thanks to an invention that is smaller than a penny developed by researchers at University of California Irvine, that download could only take you a few seconds.

"Our own studies suggest that the frequency, intensity and spatial coverage of heavy rainfall events all increase as a consequence of climate warming," said Shao Sun, a [visiting associate] researcher [in engineering] with the University of California, Irvine, who studies China's weather. … Sun and his research team have predicted that the likelihood of extreme precipitation events in northern China will rise by 18%, 20% and 27% under low, medium and high emission scenarios.

UC Irvine environmental engineering [Professor] Brett Sanders said those sand replenishment projects are needed. The drought the past few years is contributing to the area’s lack of sand. With no rain pushing sediment down the nearby creek, sand isn’t being redistributed naturally offshore. “One of the links is, there just hasn’t been enough sand supply from that creek to keep a beach that’s going to defend the rocks and railway from the stress of these waves events,” he said.