Climate Research

How Earth’s most intense heat wave ever impacted life in Antarctica

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 20:47:39 +0000

How Earth’s most intense heat wave ever impacted life in Antarctica Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/04/2024 - 14:47

As part of a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project in Antarctica, a research team led by Associate Dean for Research Mike Gooseff found that the unexpected melt followed by a rapid refreeze likely disrupted the life cycles of many organisms and killed a large swath of some invertebrates in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

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Precipitation may brighten Colorado River’s future

Anonymous — Thu, 02 May 2024 02:21:00 +0000

Precipitation may brighten Colorado River’s future Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/01/2024 - 20:21

New study, co-authored by civil engineering researcher Balaji Rajagopalan, finds recovery is probable, with small risk for historic low flows.

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CU Boulder part of $160M NSF-funded effort to promote climate resilience

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 22:58:17 +0000

CU Boulder part of $160M NSF-funded effort to promote climate resilience Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/01/2024 - 15:58

The National Science Foundation today announced the Colorado-Wyoming Climate Resilience Engine (CO-WY Engine) as a recipient of its inaugural Regional Innovation Engines program.

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Environmental engineering on an icebreaker ship at the North Pole

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 17:12:41 +0000

Environmental engineering on an icebreaker ship at the North Pole Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/31/2023 - 10:12

Jeff Zehnder

Shelby Buckley has made the research trip of a lifetime – studying the impacts of climate change up close and personal on a five-week trip to the Arctic aboard the Kronprins Haakon icebreaking ship.

It offered a unique chance to personally collect ice core and seawater samples and experience the excitement and fears of life on top of the world.

Polar Bears

“I flew into Svalbard, Norway. It’s an Arctic island with no trees and you can’t leave the city limits without a rifle because there are so many polar bears,” Buckley said.

On the ship, they took similar precautions. Any time a team was on an ice flow, observers with rifles and binoculars kept watch, and with good reason. Over the course of the trip, Buckley saw 20 polar bears.

“I was shocked by the number. The first one I saw I think I screamed like a little girl. By the 14th one, it’s okay, another one,” Buckley said.

Buckley is studying organic matter and pollutants and as a PhD student in environmental engineering at the ��, working under the leadership of Professor Fernando Rosario-Ortiz.

Diminishing Ice Coverage

“Seeing how little ice there was at the North Pole was very sad,” Buckley said. “When we got there we struggled to find an ice floe big enough to walk on. The climate projections in general are frightening and seeing it with your own eyes, it’s real.”

The trip was sponsored by the Norwegian Polar Institute and came about through a longstanding research collaboration Buckley has with Juliana D’Andrilli, a professor at the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium.

Buckley’s work includes analysis of organic matter in the Arctic. When organic matter is hit by sunlight it reacts to form carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. As the ice sheets continue to melt, the sunlight will penetrate further into ocean releasing these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

In addition, Buckley is studying the presence of persistent organic pollutants such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, herbicides and flame-retardant chemicals. While the arctic has very few people, these pollutants are carried to the region on air and water currents from more populous areas thousands of miles away.

She was able to conduct some analysis on the ship, but much of the work required collecting samples to bring back home to a more controlled environment.

“When the ship is breaking ice, the boat lifts up over the ice and then comes down over and over. It’s hard to do chemistry,” she said.

24 Hours of Sun

Life on board was a continuous adventure with nearly every experience shared with her shipmates. And with the sun above the horizon all day and night, there was plenty of time to get to know the 28 researchers and 15 crewmembers aboard.

The Kronprins Haakon above the Arctic Circle.

“It’s 10 p.m. and still sunny and we’re wondering if we should we keep hanging out or go to bed,” Buckley said. “Every night we would play board games. I learned to knit. A researcher gave me needles and yarn and we would sit and talk and have coffee and tea.”

Although there was an abundance of high-tech scientific instruments, there was no internet access and while email was available, it was a single account shared by the entire crew.

“You’re with these people for five weeks 24 hours a day. I formed really strong relationships and friendships I hope last forever,” Buckley said. “It’s a little like summer camp in that way.”

Now back in the lab, Buckley is conducting organic matter photochemistry on the samples.

“I run optical measurements like absorbance and fluorescence to characterize the samples,” she said. “I use a solar simulator to hit the Arctic organic matter samples with artificial sunlight. You can measure the formation of reactive intermediates, which are generated by reactions between organic matter, the environment and light.”

The goal is to learn more about how sunlight interacts with the Arctic organic matter in the environment and how that affects climate change.

More Arctic Plans

Despite the risk of polar bear encounters, Buckley is eager to return to the tundra, and is planning an expedition to Alaska and Mt. Denali for this spring to analyze persistent organic pollutants in the high alpine.

“My Mom is excited but is concerned about my safety,” Buckley said. “She has asked why I can’t pick a field that doesn’t risk my life.”

After completing a trek to the North Pole, Buckley is also hopeful to make a similar trip to the opposite end of the Earth.

“It was never on my bucket list to visit the South Pole, but now that I’ve visited the North Pole, I want to go,” she said. “I am passionate about research and leading project, and I want to make a positive difference in the fields of environmental and climate science.”

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Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 15:52:19 +0000

Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/18/2022 - 08:52

United Nations Human Rights and CU Boulder are co-hosting the Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit this December, a three-day summit addressing the interconnectedness of human rights and climate change.

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Video: Pioneering the resilient infrastructure of the future

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 15:41:41 +0000

Video: Pioneering the resilient infrastructure of the future Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/18/2022 - 08:41

Engineering a sustainable and equitable future takes innovation and collaboration.

Shideh Dashti is the Acting Associate Dean of Research at CU Boulder's College of Engineering & Applied Science, and an Associate Professor in the Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering Department.

Dashti's research is specifically focused on geotechnical engineering, centrifuge modeling, and designing resilient infrastructure in the wake of earthquakes and climate-related natural disasters.

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PhD student Skyler Kern optimizes computational models to better understand the marine ecosystem

Anonymous — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 21:41:56 +0000

PhD student Skyler Kern optimizes computational models to better understand the marine ecosystem Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/17/2022 - 14:41

Michael Lock Swingen

Skyler Kern, a PhD student in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, spent a lot of his childhood fishing on the rivers and inlets around Anchorage, Alaska.

In fact, Kern’s first word as a child was “boat.”

“My family and I were in our car pulling up to the water to go fishing, and I looked out the window and said ‘boat.’ My parents were so surprised that we almost had a car accident,” he said.

That early and ongoing love for the water and the place he grew up informs Kern’s doctoral research, which looks for ways to optimize computational biogeochemical models to better reproduce the lowest level of the marine ecosystem in specific parts of the ocean.

Biogeochemistry is a highly interdisciplinary science that studies biologically mediated geochemical changes in the environment. These geochemical changes vary across a wide range of temporal and spatial scales – from the microscopic to the global, from the instantaneous to the multi-decadal.

By finetuning computational models of the ocean, Kern is interested in developing accurate representations of biogeochemical processes happening on small scales. Those models can then be used to yield outsized insights into broader phenomena like climate change.

“We are thinking about the smallest scales of the marine ecosystem and how those processes work their way up,” said Kern. “Photosynthesis in the ocean makes the phytoplankton grow, which are consumed by zooplankton, which are consumed by other things. Then you start to get to the point where things are being consumed by fish and on up.”

But climate change is affecting this process.

“If you don't have phytoplankton growing as it should, you're not going to have the food that the fish needs. And then everything that eats the fish is going to suffer,” said Kern.

Kern’s research into developing better representations of these small-scale biogeochemical processes will help inform large-scale computer models that can track the global carbon cycle.

Ultimately, Kern hopes that more accurate computational models of biogeochemical processes, both small- and large-scale, will help inform policymaking in the battle against climate change.

For Kern, that battle hits home.

“There’s something called Arctic amplification,” said Kern. “The global mean temperature is increasing, but the increase in temperature in the Arctic – which is a major part of Alaska – is drastically larger than the global average.”

This means that the communities that exist in that region, which are mostly isolated and rural indigenous populations that practice a traditional subsistence lifestyle, are going to be disproportionately affected by climate change.

Kern said he is happy that his research will help those from the native community in his home state. After he completes his doctorate, he plans on teaching at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the department of mechanical engineering.

“A large part of why I feel like I was successful is that I was involved in the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program as a high school student and then into my undergrad education,” he said.

Kern wants to pay it forward and do his part to keep the rivers and inlets that make up Alaska as healthy as possible for future generations.

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In the air, on the ground and everywhere in between

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 20:52:13 +0000

In the air, on the ground and everywhere in between Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/21/2022 - 14:52

Josh Rhoten

Engineers put remote sensing to work for sustainability

Farmers know how much fertilizer they spread over their fields each year and how much water they use every day. But fine-tuning those amounts can be a challenge because the results from the field either are not available or are hard to analyze.

But what if there were a few tiny, wirelessly linked sensors lodged inside plants throughout their fields? The sensors would constantly measure ambient air temperatures or soil moisture levels and report back in real time about potential issues in their specific sections. They could even test a plant’s sap frequently to check key metrics for growth and suggest actions farmers could take to improve them.

Engineers at CU Boulder are working to make that a reality. It’s one of many interdisciplinary efforts to use the power and promise of remote sensing to help solve food supply, pollution and water scarcity problems around the globe.

Elliot Strand is a PhD candidate in the Materials Science and Engineering Program, studying with Professors Greg Whiting and Robert McLeod. He leads a project that focuses on creating fully printed ion-selective organic electrochemical transistors that can detect macronutrient concentrations in whole plant sap.

Essentially, Strand said, the team has developed a sort of “diabetes test strip for plants” that can quickly measure nutrients like potassium.

“To collect the data, we simply take a drop of sap and put it on these cheap, flexible and disposable sensors,” Strand said. “The best part is we can quickly 3D print these sensors on basically anything — even paper. That means we don’t need expensive and complicated equipment way out in the field to get this valuable, real-time data, and it opens up opportunities to compost or recycle the material after use.”

Elliot Strand drops a sap sample onto an ion-selective organic electrochemical transistors that can detect macronutrient concentrations.

Whiting, a professor in mechanical engineering, said the next phases of the research will likely focus on inserting these sensors into plants. The team will also be looking at different metrics that can be tracked, such as air temperature or specific plant hormones.

A high-level goal when it comes to sustainability, he said, would be helping farmers increase crop yields by fine-tuning the use of water and fertilizer based on sensor readings.

“We have developed a very real stepping stone towards those goals that is also quite usable right now for agriculture or conservation work,” he said.

While Whiting and his team are approaching these problems from the ground, Associate Professor Evan Thomas is coming in from the air. As director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering, he and his team are developing the Drought Resilience Impact Platform (DRIP), an integrated systems-based approach to reducing the effects of drought and improving water quality and soil health.

The platform combines NASA satellite data about drought conditions with information from sensors installed on groundwater pumps across hundreds of sites in Africa that alert the network if a pump is failing or in need of routine maintenance. This dual approach — along with modeling and other work — is being used to ensure communities in Kenya and Ethiopia have the knowledge, access and infrastructure to get the water they need.

Thomas said the interdisciplinary work showcased in DRIP and related projects is a great example of the work that needed to be done over the next decade around the globe.

“This platform can also be used in Colorado or anywhere around the globe where water is becoming a scarce resource,” Thomas said. “Over the next few years, I hope we can start to get this data into the hands of regional providers and leaders on the ground to help inform their decision-making and potentially avoid costly and dangerous drought emergencies.”

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Video: Turning waste into energy

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 16:52:13 +0000

Video: Turning waste into energy Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/21/2022 - 10:52

Will Medlin is a Denver Business Challenge Endowed Professor and the Department Chair for Chemical and Biological Engineering. His research group investigates reactions for renewable and sustainable energy applications, and particularly focuses on interfacial chemistry important in the conversion of biomass to fuels and chemicals.

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CU Boulder, Deloitte launch Climate Innovation Collaboratory to accelerate action on climate crisis

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 16:57:55 +0000

CU Boulder, Deloitte launch Climate Innovation Collaboratory to accelerate action on climate crisis Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/19/2022 - 10:57

Deloitte and the �� on Tuesday launched a new Climate Innovation Collaboratory to translate cutting-edge climate research and data into meaningful climate solutions for federal, state and local government agencies and communities.

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