CEE receives $1 million grant for campus solar project
The solar and energy storage system, to be built on the roof of the Goergen Athletic Center, will offset energy needs of a new office building south of Hutchison Hall.
Hot town, Summer Sustainability Fellows in the city
How will climate change affect the health and well-being of City of Rochester residents? This summer, students in a new sustainability fellowship program worked with city officials to help answer the question.
Alien apocalypse: Can any civilization make it through climate change?
Does the universe contain planets with truly sustainable civilizations? Or does every civilization that may have arisen in the cosmos last only a few centuries before it falls to the climate change it triggers? Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank and his collaborators have developed a mathematical model to illustrate how a technologically advanced population and its planet might develop together, putting climate change in a cosmic context.
Why does ice make that sound?
What began as a “silly pastime” of tossing ice chunks down a borehole in Taylor Glacier, Antarctica, has led to a video with more than 8 million views and a collaboration between an acoustics expert and a climate scientist.
Ocean waters prevent release of ancient methane
Environmental scientist Katy Sparrow ’17 (PhD) set out to discover whether ancient-sourced methane, released due to warming ocean waters, survives to be emitted to the atmosphere.
Time’s ticking as ‘Doomsday Clock’ scientists meet
As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists meets to evaluate scenarios for man-made catastrophe, Rochester scientists worry current risk levels are “way too high.”
Climate change for aliens
For more than 50 years, the Kardashev scale has been the gold standard for classifying hypothetical “exo-civilizations” by their ability to harness energy. A team of researchers led by Rochester astrophysicist Adam Frank have devised a new system that takes into account the impacts of that energy use.
Icy air reveals human-made methane levels higher than previously believed
Professor Vasilii Petrenko and his team are studying the air trapped in ice cores that date back nearly 12,000 years, long before mankind’s use of fossil fuels, to separate man-made from naturally occurring methane sources.
Ancient ozone levels provide a glimpse into future effects of climate change
A computer model developed at Rochester, and used to compare model data to analysis on 100,000-year-old Greenland ice cores, has shown a surprising result.
Using data science to understand global climate systems
Climate scientists and computer scientists are working together to understand what drives the global climate system—from deep in the ocean to high in the sky.