EESA Climate Scientist Featured on KQED Forum Radio Show - Earth and Environmental Sciences Area

A warm day in the city. (Photo credit: Tom Wang/Shutterstock)

The high temperatures that hit the San Francisco Bay Area during the week of June 18 got a lot of residents thinking about warm weather. And with many cities hitting triple digits, many locals, no doubt, were wondering how to handle extreme heat in the future.

Travis O'Brien By the end of the week, Travis O’Brien, a climate scientist with the Earth & Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) at Berkeley Lab, was on hand to answer the public’s questions—and provide some insight on both the science behind heat waves, as well as how our society can adapt to warmer weather. As a featured guest on KQED Radio’s public affairs program Forum on the morning of June 23, O’Brien was interviewed by host Mina Kim.

Listen to a full recording of the program here.

News & Events

EESA Scientists Investigate Extreme 2013 Colorado Flood

July 24, 2017

In a paper that appeared online on July 18, 2017 at Weather and Climate Extremes, a team of Berkeley Lab scientists—including EESA’s Bill Collins and Christina Patricola—reports that climate change attributed to human activity made a Colorado storm much more severe than would otherwise have occurred.

EESA Scientist to Lead Multimillion-Dollar Geothermal Energy Project

July 20, 2017

Tim Kneafsey, a staff scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Earth & Environmental Sciences Area, will lead a new $9 million project aimed at removing technical barriers to commercialization of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS), a clean energy technology with the potential to power 100 million American homes.

Berkeley Lab will partner with seven other DOE national labs and six universities to develop field experiments focused on understanding and modeling rock fractures, an essential element of geothermal systems. Scientists will use the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in South Dakota to create small-scale fracture networks in crystalline rock 1,500 meters below ground.

New Data Archive Aims to Amplify Impact of Ecosystem Research

July 18, 2017

As environmental scientists move towards understanding earth systems at greater resolution than ever before, it’s critical that they have access to needed data sets. Yet much of these data are not archived, publicly available, or collected in a standardized format, due to the multiple challenges of coordinating efforts across independent research groups and institutions worldwide.

Now researchers at Berkeley Lab are taking action to address these challenges. Thanks to $3.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Science, the Lab’s Computing Sciences and Earth & Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) are partnering on a three-year project to develop an archive that will serve as a repository for hundreds of DOE-funded research projects.

EESA Celebrates 40 Years of Innovative Research

July 17, 2017

Today we celebrate 40 years of innovative research. On July 17, 1977, Berkeley Lab formed the Earth Sciences Division (ESD) in response to the U.S. energy crisis. Now—as the Earth & Environmental Sciences Area (EESA)—it has evolved into a research group studying a broad range of the most pressing environmental and subsurface energy challenges. To commemorate the occasion, EESA has created a a collection of materials that tells the Area’s story: a timeline, a video, and an alumni and friends network page.