Technology

December 21, 2020

Chill out the easy way: science can cool you down

Tim Radford

Heidi Kaden on Unsplash

Built Environment, Adaptation, Climate Change, Technology

It’s getting simpler and cheaper to chill out: US scientists have developed an ultra-cool white paint that can reflect more than 95% of the sun’s rays and keep the house cooler on the hottest days. Across the Pacific in Singapore, researchers have developed a “smart window” clever enough to block the incoming sunlight and regulate the building’s internal temperature. It’s pretty good at blocking the noise from the streets, too.

November 30, 2020

Pollinator-Friendly Solar Could be a Win-Win for Climate and Landowners, but Greenwashing is a Worry

Ilana Cohen

Jared Lauritsen

Climate Action, Ecological Impacts, Solar Photovoltaic, Solutions, Technology

Solar developers are planting native flowers and grasses near—or even in between—solar panels, addressing the twin problems of pollinator decline and climate change.

November 24, 2020

Sea Level Watcher Takes Flight

NASA

Technology, Climate Change, Sea-level Rise

A joint U.S.-European satellite, built to monitor global sea levels, lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base just after 9 a.m. Pacific Time on November 21, 2020. About the size of a small pickup truck, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich will extend a nearly 30-year continuous dataset on sea surface height.

November 20, 2020

NASA has a mind-blowing plan to map rising sea levels from space

Susan Karlin

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Climate Change, Future, Scientists, Sea-level Rise, Technology

The Sentinel-6 will see details that previous sea level missions couldn’t. Existing satellites can track large phenomena stretching thousands of miles, such as the Gulf Stream and weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña. But smaller sea-level fluctuations near coastlines exceed their abilities. Sentinel-6’s higher resolution measurements will enable researchers to see finer, more complicated ocean features, especially near shorelines. It will also offer faster data turnarounds—collecting, processing, and releasing data within three hours, down from months and years. The data can be used to more quickly and accurately predict, map, and 3D model coastline changes; weather, such as hurricane intensity; ocean current fluctuations, which dissipate climate energy; and ocean topography and circulation, as movement of heat, salt, pollution, and nutrients impacts marine ecosystems.

November 12, 2020

Virtual reality forests could help understanding of climate change

Jiawei Huang, Melissa S. Lucash, Robert M. Scheller, Alexander Klippel.

iStock

Forests, Climate Action, Climate Change, Technology

The effects of climate change are sometimes difficult to grasp, but now a virtual reality forest, created by geographers, can let people walk through a simulated forest of today and see what various futures may hold for the trees.

November 4, 2020

Copernicus Sentinel-6 will monitor sea level rise in real time

Chrissy Sexton

Climate Change, Sea-level Rise, Technology

The Sentinel-6 will use radar altimetry to obtain near real-time measurements of sea surface height and wind speeds, which will help scientists monitor sea level rise. The mission is a collaboration between ESA, the European Commission, EUMETSAT, NASA and NOAA, with support from the French space agency CNES.

November 1, 2020

The super-cool materials that send heat to space

XiaoZhi Lim

Jyotirmoy Mandal

Technology, Climate Change, Energy

When businessman Howard Bisla was tasked with saving a local shop from financial ruin, one of his first concerns was energy efficiency. In June 2018, he approached his local electricity provider in Sacramento, California, about upgrading the lights. The provider had another idea. It offered to install an experimental cooling system: panels that could stay colder than their surroundings, even under the blazing hot sun, without consuming energy.

October 31, 2020

Climate change: You’ve got cheap data, how about cheap power too?

Justin Rowlatt

GETTY IMAGES

Technology, Climate Change, Energy Transition

Green tech is at a tipping point where it could take off explosively – just like the smartphone did. And, just like the smartphone, it could bring a revolution in how we do much more than just create energy.

October 26, 2020

NASA Supercomputing Study Breaks Ground for Tree Mapping, Carbon Research

Jessica Merzdorf

NASA

Carbon, Climate Change, Forests, Mapping, Technology

Using powerful supercomputers and machine learning algorithms, scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and international collaborators are demonstrating a new method for mapping the location and size of trees growing outside of forests. In the process, they have discovered billions of trees in arid and semi-arid regions and are laying the groundwork for more accurate global measurement of carbon storage on land.

October 25, 2020

Climate change: Technology no silver bullet, experts tell PM

Roger Harrabin

REUTERS

Technology, Climate Action, Climate Change, Mitigation, Policy

While clean technologies like offshore wind, carbon capture and solar power are clearly a huge part of any climate solution, addition measures including new incentives, laws, rules, bans, appliance standards, taxes and institutional innovations are also needed.

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