Climate & Environment
<p>A new $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to a coalition of organizations including the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ will be used to help improve wind energy forecasting in mountain and valley regions.</p>- <p>A massive new ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ study indicates there is a statistical link between hotter temperatures generated by climate change and the risk of armed conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.</p>
<p>CU-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Professor John O’Loughlin led a research team that assessed more than 78,000 armed conflicts between 1980 and 2012 in the Sahel region of Africa – a semi-arid belt just south of the Saharan Desert that spans about 3,000 miles and more than a dozen countries from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans.</p>
<p>A new study led by the University of California, Berkeley and involving the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ indicates the current response to wildfires around the world—aggressively fighting them—is not making society less vulnerable to such events.</p>- <p>The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was ranked second in the world in geosciences this week by U.S. News & World Report.</p>
<p>CU-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ trailed only the California Institute of Technology. Rounding out the top five are the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Harvard University and the University of Washington. U.S. News & World Report ranked the top 100 universities in geosciences in 2014 based primarily on their research and reputation.</p>
<p>Former NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless will present ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ senior Jeni Sorli with a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation during a free public campus event on Thursday, Oct. 30.</p>
<p>NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft has provided scientists their first look at a storm of energetic solar particles at Mars and produced unprecedented ultraviolet images of the tenuous oxygen, hydrogen and carbon coronas surrounding the Red Planet, said ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Professor Bruce Jakosky, the mission’s principal investigator.</p>
<p>NASA has awarded a team led by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ more than $7 million to study aspects of the origins, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.</p>
Colorado’s Front Range fire severity today not much different than in past, says CU-ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ study<p>The perception that Colorado’s Front Range wildfires are becoming increasingly severe does not hold much water scientifically, according to a massive new study led by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif.</p>- <p>A new study led by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ found that different strategies used by states to reduce power plant emissions -- direct ones such as emission caps and indirect ones like encouraging renewable energy -- are both effective. The study is the first analysis of its kind.</p>
<p>The gradual fall cooling on Colorado’s Front Range this September is helping to set up what could well be a prime-time show of gold, yellow and red leaves in the region’s aspen forests, according to a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ plant ecologist.</p>