IoES in the News

Scientific American

L.A.’s Not Just Sizzling, It’s Sultry: Why California’s July Heat Wave Is So Weird

“This has been an extraordinary heat wave,” said UCLA's climate scientist Daniel Swain in Scientific American. Not only were the high temperatures extraordinary in California for the July heat wave, the time of the year, high temperatures moving into the night, and humidity levels were as well.

Featured: Daniel Swain

IJR

Paul Ryan Says a Family of Woodchucks Destroyed His Car

Paul Ryan reported that his (R-Wisc.) Chevrolet Suburban was home to a family of woodchucks during the winter. During their stay, they bit through the wires and the car no longer runs.  UCLA's professor, Daniel Blumstein, explained why they would in the car and showed them sympathy. “We’ve got marmots climbing in cars and being driven around and sometimes getting killed and eating cars and destroying wiring... But usually they’re going for the radiator fluid, somehow. And it can’t be good for them.” 

Featured Faculty: Daniel Blumstein

Zócalo Public Square

Helping the Environment is Nice. Helping Yourself is OK, Too.

Transforming "green into gold": UCLA economist Magali Delmas joined Zocalo Public Square to discuss how companies can better reach consumers with green products. In her new book, "The Green Bundle: Pairing the Market with the Planet,” she points out that most people are convenient consumers — it's not enough for a product to be simply be good for the planet. The key? Bundling the environment with personal benefits.

Featured Faculty: Magali (Maggie) Delmas

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: 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