Media Watch
Fossil fuel use leads to worse and longer droughts
Climate News Network -
Greenhouse gas emissions and other atmospheric pollution from human causes tend to increase the frequency of drought, the intensity of drought and the maximum duration of drought worldwide. “There has always been natural variability in drought events around the world, but our research shows the clear human influence on drying, specifically from anthropogenic aerosols, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases,” said Felicia Chiang, of the University of California Irvine, and now at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Read More
How Anthropogenic Drought Plays Out
Eos – Earth and Space Science News -
Amir AghaKouchak, UCI civil & engineering professor writes, “We believe that understanding drought as a multi-dimensional, multi-scale phenomenon characterized by compounding processes that involves feedbacks between human and nature, provides new insights that will be useful for planning and management of water resource systems.” Read More
Epic Women in Cyber — Saltanat Mashirova
Medium -
Saltanat Mashirova is a Cyber Security Consultant at Honeywell (Industrial IT and Cybersecurity Engineer/Architect). She is focused in Control systems, Network engineering and Cyber Security in various fields of Oil, Gas, and Energy Industries. She was awarded a Presidential Scholarship in Kazakhstan to study at University of California, Irvine. She has graduated UC Irvine with a Master’s Degree focused in Networked Systems. Read More
Summer forecast calls for intensifying drought across American West
ABC News -
In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, claim that greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution are directly tied to increases in the frequency and severity of droughts. "There has always been natural variability in drought events around the world, but our research shows the clear human influence on drying, specifically from anthropogenic aerosols, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases," the study's lead author Felicia Chian said in a press release earlier this week. The study's co-author, Omid Mazdiyasni, added: "To make matters worse, droughts can be accompanied by heat waves, and high heat and low moisture can increase wildfire risk, which is already significant in the western United States." Read More
Drought and Fire
BYU Radio -
Severe drought grips the western half of the US. States are rationing water. California has declared a drought emergency in nearly all counties. Meanwhile, California, New Mexico, and Arizona have each had two large wildfires this year. Is this an early beginning to fire season, or is fire season more of a year-round thing now? We get answers from Tirtha Banerjee, who is an [assistant] professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Read More
Severe Drought, Worsened by Climate Change, Ravages the American West
The New York Times -
Dry conditions can also make warming worse, said Amir AghaKouchak, [professor of civil & environmental engineering], who studies climate-related and other water resource issues at the University of California, Irvine. Warming causes soil to lose moisture through evaporation … “During droughts, moisture levels become very low, so evaporation doesn’t happen,” Dr. AghaKouchak said. “The skin of the earth warms up, and that warms the atmosphere.” [Subscription required, campus-wide access provided by UCI Libraries. Sign-up here: https://guides.lib.uci.edu/nytimes] Read More
Move over, Death Valley: These are the two hottest spots on Earth
Science -
Lut [Desert] hit its all-time high in 2018, a record the Sonoran [Desert], in a weird coincidence, matched the next summer, Yunxia Zhao, [graduate student, civll & environmental engineering], of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues report .… It’s unclear whether climate change is driving up surface temperatures, Zhao says. But she notes that the Sonoran’s highs coincided with La Niña, a climate oscillation featuring cooler surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and drier desert conditions. Read More
Iran's groundwater depletion is reaching crisis levels, warn researchers
Phys.org -
More than three quarters of Iran's land is under extreme groundwater overdraft, where the rate of human uptake is higher than the rate of natural recharge. This is according to a new study led by Concordia researchers published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. The article was co-authored by Samaneh Ashraf …. Amir AghaKouchak, [professor, civil and environmental engineering], of the University of California, Irvine, also contributed to the paper. Read More
Droughts are getting longer and more intense (and humans are to blame)
Yahoo News (The Conversation) -
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) say that the increasing droughts are caused by greenhouse gases and aerosol pollution. … Lead author Felicia Chiang, who conducted the project as a UCI graduate student in civil & environmental engineering, said: “There has always been natural variability in drought events around the world, but our research shows the clear human influence on drying, specifically from anthropogenic aerosols, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.” Read More
Opinion: Drought-stricken western states face a water crisis and another dangerous fire season
MarketWatch -
Amir AghaKouchak, UCI associate professor of civil & environmental engineering and others write, “Scientists are also closely watching the impact that the rapid warming and drying is having on trees, worried that water stress could lead to widespread tree deaths. Dead and drying vegetation means more fuel for what is already expected to be another dangerous fire season. … As climate scientists, we track these changes. Right now, about 84% of the western U.S. is under some level of drought, and there is no sign of relief.” Read More