Environment

On the morning of Aug. 26, a section of mountain near Langtang Lirung peak in Nepal suddenly collapsed.... Read more

Mount Sinabung on Indonesia erupted Monday, spewing a column of black ash and smoke 3,500 meters (11,482 feet) from the top of the mountain into the sky over Sumatra island.... Read more

Cooling from air conditioning saves lives—more than 5,000 a year in the United States alone—but it also heats up the planet and taxes our electrical grid, scientists say.... Read more

How protective is air conditioning in preventing deaths amid soaring temperatures and record heat levels? Yale researchers found that AC use cut the number of annual heat-related deaths by half in the U.S., saving more than 5,000 lives a year. However, while AC is a highly effective heat adaptation tool,... Read more

As Europe burns, many cities are trying to cut emissions, upgrade buildings and rethink how energy is produced and used. However, there is a recurring challenge: getting people to participate in and accept the solutions needed to bring about the transformation. From this perspective, community engagement is often described as... Read more

Emissions from aircraft that use leaded aviation gasoline are a significant source of environmental pollution in neighborhoods near regional airports, according to a new study by researchers at Oregon State University and Portland State University. The findings were published in Communications Sustainability.... Read more

Aerosols have a profound influence on air quality, human health, clouds and climate, but new particle formation in the atmosphere has remained a scientific conundrum. Large fractions of airborne fine particulate matter consist of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) formed by gas-to-particle conversion of organic precursor molecules in the atmosphere. The... Read more

Resources such as sea level rise viewers, heat maps and flood prediction services are crucial tools in a changing climate. NASA Earth Observations (NASA EO) datasets provide important information on these and other natural hazards, but many communities that may benefit from these tools face barriers to accessing them.... Read more

Malaysia's Sarawak state plans cloud-seeding operations in early September, officials said Monday, as smoke from fires in neighboring Indonesia pushes air quality to hazardous levels.... Read more

Forecast storms in the Grand Canyon on Monday threatened efforts to find more than a dozen people missing after flash floods over the weekend, the National Park Service (NPS) said, with two bodies already recovered.... Read more

Data from many sources, including NASA, have shown a significant decrease in Arctic sea ice since 1979. However, the processes driving the melting and freezing of sea ice are complex, and fluctuations occur throughout the year. Short-term variations in temperature, winds, ocean convection and water salinity within a certain region... Read more

Whakaari/White Island's sudden eruption in December 2019, which killed 22 people and severely injured 25 others, was New Zealand's deadliest volcanic disaster in recent history.... Read more

The catastrophic flood that killed hundreds of people in Nepal on Aug. 26, 2026, and left many more missing likely began with falling ice and rock crashing into the river below, but that wasn't the end of the disaster. Days later, a new lake pooled behind the debris and then... Read more

The cause of the huge floods and debris flow on the border between Nepal and Tibet, which have caused hundreds of deaths, appears to have been an ice avalanche—the result of a huge piece of a glacier collapsing and cascading down the mountain more than 1,000 meters (3,281 feet) to... Read more

Zachary Kopel '26 has developed a forecasting tool now in use by the U.S. Space Force to help predict dangerous convective wind events, including microbursts that can threaten rockets during launch operations.... Read more