IoES in the News

EcoWatch

Wildfires, Record Highs Scorch California

The heat wave hit California in July, breaking temperature records and leaving areas in a blaze. "The overall trend over decades to more intense and more frequent heat waves is definitely a signal of global warming," said UCLA's climate scientist Daniel Swain.

Featured: Daniel Swain

Executive Summary for July 6th: Wildfires Plague the West

“The extreme heat and localized strong offshore winds along the SoCal coastal plain will clearly lead to major fire weather concerns Friday-Saturday [7/6/18-7/7/18],” UCLA climate scientist, Daniel Swain said. “This will be of particular concern given the high degree of ongoing large fire activity in NorCal and subsequent drawdown of firefighting resources, likely fueled in part by our dry winter and the legacy of long-term drought.”

Featured: Daniel Swain

LAist

It’s Summer, But LA Is Thinking About How To Catch Rain

"You see a storm year like [2016] and you see all the water that ends up going through the L.A. River and Ballona Creek and Dominguez Channel, and you say, 'Wow. That could have been our water supply for the next year,'" said Mark Gold of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Featured Faculty: Mark Gold

The Weather Channel

Climate Change Contributed to Oroville Spillway Collapse, Study Says

A study led by UCLA IoES Center for Climate Science postdoc Xingying Huang finds that climate change has already contributed to greater wintertime runoff in the Sierra Nevada, and that flood risk climbs in the future. "Our big dams were designed to capture smaller floods than what we expect in the future," said colleague Daniel Swain in Weather Channel. "...these structures were built for a climate that we no longer have."

Featured: Daniel Swain and Xingying Huang

Smithsonian Magazine

This Device Pulls Water Out of Desert Air

"The idea of sucking water out of the atmosphere is not new", says Eric Hoek in the Smithsonian. “The real innovation [of Yaghi's research] is a materials innovation... These materials pull water out and more easily give it up."

Featured Faculty: Eric Hoek

Wild parrots fill the soundscape in Los Angeles

"Parrots are not uncommon around Los Angeles. More than a dozen different species have established wild populations in the area, descendants of pet birds that escaped at some point and managed to make a home for themselves in some part of the sprawling metropolis," Ursula Heise writes in Elemental.

Featured Faculty: Ursula K. Heise and H. Bradley Shaffer

PBS SoCal

Is Los Angeles Truly a Hotspot for Biodiversity?

Published as part of an environmental storytelling partnership with the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA, with extensive contributions from faculty and MFA students in UCLA’s documentary film program in…

Featured ESE Alum: Jenny Aleman-Zometa

José González in REI

José González is the founder of Latino Outdoors and Pritzker nominee. He is an experienced educator as well as a K-12 public education teacher, environmental education advisor, outdoor education instructor…

Featured 2018 Pritzker Award Nominee: José González

Yale Climate Connections

Forecast for California: More frequent wild weather swings

“Rather than considering average precipitation, as most previous studies have, we instead focused on wet and dry precipitation extremes specifically using a large ensemble of climate model simulations,” Daniel Swain,…

Featured: Daniel Swain

Siberian bogs may play a crucial role in greenhouse gas

Total rainfall might not change much averaged across these sharp shifts between very dry and very wet years, but “it doesn’t just wash out in the end,” said Daniel Swain to MIT Technology Review.

Featured: Daniel Swain

PBS SoCal

Adaptation to Global Water Shortages

The latest KCET Earth Focus episode features Jon Christensen (IoES adjunct assistant professor, UCLA Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies co-founder) and Yoram Cohen (IoES faculty member, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering professor) of UCLA.

Featured Faculty: Jon Christensen and Yoram Cohen