The Washington Post
As California narrowly avoided widespread blackouts, the millions of residents who kept the grid afloat by jacking up thermostats and shutting appliances were not the only ones feeling the heat.…
Featured Faculty: Rajit Gadh
Vox
Heat’s impact on the grid is twofold, explained Eric Fournier, research director at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. First, more people turn on their air conditioners and run them for longer on hot days, which means electricity demand is higher. Second, heat has a physical impact on the infrastructure of the grid, making wires less efficient at moving electricity and pushing transformers and thermal power plants to their temperature limits. As the temperature rises, those air conditioners have to work harder to cool the air — which means they draw more power, straining the grid even more. “So you get this feedback loop,” said Fournier.
Featured: Eric Fournier
HuffPost
California has experienced temperatures as high as 117 degrees Fahrenheit in certain areas. “This will be essentially the worst September heat wave on record, certainly in Northern California and arguably…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Los Angeles Times
“This is going to be a long-duration event,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. “And that’s sort of characteristic of heat domes — that’s partly because they can sort of be self-persisting,…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Salon
“The shrinking of Lake Powell is due to a number of factors, including the climate change-induced drying noted above, increasing human demand for water in the Basin, and various specific…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Barron's
Following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, China canceled bilateral climate discussions with the US on August 5. At this time, the world’s two largest polluters are no longer involved…
Featured Faculty: Alex Wang
The Washington Post
“It is unusual, especially on the extreme precipitation [and] flash flood side,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “They’re not just beating…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Financial Times
California has enacted laws that would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, aiming to reduce its biggest source of carbon emissions. Cara Horowitz, co-executive director of the…
Featured Faculty: Cara Horowitz
Brad Shaffer, director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was interviewed for a recent article…
Featured Faculty: H. Bradley Shaffer
UCLA Newsroom
Extreme heat & wildfire smoke are both harmful to our health, but new research led by doctoral student Noam Rosenthal suggests that when we are exposed to both at the…
Featured PhD Alum: Noam Rosenthal
Bloomberg
The reasons global waterways have dried to a trickle are complex. There’s the impact of the weather-roiling La Nina, prolonged drought in many regions and also simple bad luck. But the…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Orange County Register
“I think that incentives are a way to reward the rich for doing the right thing and don't do a whole lot for the poor," said Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.
UCLA Newsroom
Turner is focused on the issue of extreme heat, and how we can address the looming crisis. “Protecting people from extreme heat will require a coordinated and well-researched government approach,”…
Featured Faculty: V. Kelly Turner
The New York Times
Climate change is hastening the arrival of a different “Big One” in California. The New York Times features Daniel Swain and Xingying Huang’s research on the state’s coming megastorm.
Featured: Daniel Swain
UW News
“Our findings suggest that some birds may have been able to use more spaces in cities because our human footprint was a little lighter,” said Sanderfoot, who completed the study…
Featured: Olivia Sanderfoot
KCRW
“When water comes at such a high rate from the sky, it’s really hard to capture it. And so it ends up being more destructive than it is beneficial,” said…
Featured Faculty: Alex Hall
USA Today
“If it (passes)… it will mark a true milestone in the United States,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It will be the first legislation in…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Los Angeles Times
Yoram Cohen, a desalination expert and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA weighs in on Catalina Island’s desalination plant, its impact, and the drought. “At the end of…
Featured Faculty: Yoram Cohen
The New York Times
There’s not necessarily an increase in the number of fires in the West, “but the fires are bigger, more severe, and last longer so the total area burned per year…
Featured Faculty: Morgan Tingley
Yahoo News
“Climate change is clearly increasing the severity and frequency of unprecedented extreme heat events globally,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Yahoo News…
Featured: Daniel Swain
Wired
Bad air can mislead birds, causing them to fly into the flames instead of to safety. “Carbon monoxide poisoning, if it doesn’t result in fatality, can also cause confusion. It…
Featured: Olivia Sanderfoot
UCLA Newsroom
More detailed data collection and analysis will be important in this effort and others, and it will be led by the California Center for Sustainable Communities — specifically leveraging its Energy Atlas, which can show city officials where resources are being consumed and at what level, down to the individual building or unit. “Anything that has a spatial characteristic, we can examine and provide an analysis for it,” said Stephanie Pincetl, founding director of the center. “Our motivation is to work at consumption through the lens of equity. How much are they using? Where? And to do what, and under what conditions?”
Featured Faculty: Stephanie Pincetl and Yifang Zhu
Reuters
“Climate change is making extreme and unprecedented heat events both more intense and more common, pretty much universally throughout the world,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “Heat…
Featured: Daniel Swain
HuffPost
For Travis Longcore, president of the Los Angeles Audubon Society and professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the very act of paying attention to your natural environment and the wildlife…
Featured Faculty: Travis Longcore