Land surfaces across the globe absorb about a third of greenhouse gas emissions every year, due to the difference between two key processes: ecosystem photosynthesis and respiration. Despite their significance, it’s impossible to measure these two processes at the ecosystem scale during the daytime. Scientists have relied since the 1980s on a technique known as…
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Paul Witherspoon is considered the “father” of the Earth Sciences Division here at Berkeley Lab. On Saturday, February 9, 2019, Witherspoon would have been 100 years old. He is widely remembered for having raised awareness of the potential for hydrogeological research to help address energy and environmental challenges that were beginning to emerge in…
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In traditional seismology, researchers studying how the earth moves in the moments before, during, and after an earthquake rely on sensors that cost tens of thousands of dollars to make and install underground. And because of the expense and labor involved, only a few seismic sensors have been installed throughout remote areas of California, making…
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Berkeley Lab has funded 89 LDRD projects for FY19 at a total value of $22.2M. Proposals have been accepted from 11 EESA research scientists as part of the FY19 LDRD program. Eight of these project teams were awarded renewal funds to continue work begun during the previous fiscal year, and there are three new projects.…
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Before the Camp Fire this fall, the October 2017 Northern California Wildfires were the deadliest in California history. Last year’s fires burned 110,000 acres in Sonoma and Napa counties–and 8 percent of the Russian River watershed. This week in Washington, D.C. at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, research scientist Michelle Newcomer has…
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New supercomputer simulations by climate scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that climate change intensified the amount of rainfall in recent hurricanes such as Katrina, Irma, and Maria by 5 to 10 percent. They further found that if those hurricanes were to occur in a future…
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A future warmer world will almost certainly feature a decline in fresh water from the Sierra Nevada mountain snowpack. Now a new study by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) that analyzed the headwater regions of California’s 10 major reservoirs, representing nearly half of the state’s surface storage, found they could…
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With nearly 25,000 attendees, AGU’s annual fall meeting is the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world — and it begins Monday in Washington, D.C. EESA scientists will be involved in more than 300 presentations, and 32 of our experts will be presenting invited talks. Click the image below for an in-depth visual…
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The International Conference on Coupled Processes in Fractured Geological Media: Observation, Modeling, and Application (CouFrac) was held in Wuhan, China, November 12-14, 2018. Berkeley Lab Senior Scientist Jonny Rutqvist initiated the new conference with the objective of focusing on exciting advances in all areas of coupled processes associated with fractured geological media. The conference was…
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Three hundred twenty miles north of the Arctic circle in Barrow on Alaska’s northern slope, average high temperatures are at or below zero degrees Fahrenheit for 160 days per year. This cold, harsh climate creates a vast expanse of permafrost to help make this Arctic tundra biome one of the biggest carbon sinks on the…
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