News

Artificial intelligence provides new evidence our planet will cross the global warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius within 10 to 15 years. Even with low emissions, we could see 2 C of warming. But a future with less warming remains within reach. (Source: Stanford News)

Plant-based and lab-grown meat substitutes are here to stay, but are unlikely to eliminate livestock agriculture’s climate and land use impacts anytime soon, according to Stanford environmental scientist David Lobell. In the meantime, Lobell says we should also focus on reducing emissions of animal-based systems. (Source: Stanford News)

Our list includes a mix of favorites, high-impact stories, and some of our most-read research coverage from a year of new beginnings.

American beaver populations are booming in the western United States as conditions grow hotter and drier. New research shows their prolific dam building benefits river water quality so much, it outweighs the damaging influence of climate-driven droughts.

Based on new analyses of satellite data, scientists have found that hydrologic conditions that increase flash drought risk occur more often than current models predict. The research also shows that incorporating how plants change soil structures can improve Earth system models.

Years after Hurricane Katrina altered his life’s course, Elliott White Jr. set out to understand what drives coastal wetland loss as a way to help lessen harm from future climate impacts for vulnerable coastal communities. (Source: Stanford News)

Heat waves, drought, and floods driven by climate change are already impacting access to food and driving food insecurity in many parts of the world. Stanford professor David Lobell explains how food production and access are impacted by climate change. (Source: Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health)

Pollution from wildfires is linked to lower test scores and possibly lower future earnings for kids growing up with more smoke days at school, a new study finds. Impacts of smoke exposure on earnings are disproportionately borne by economically disadvantaged communities of color.

Stanford researchers have developed an AI model for predicting dangerous particle pollution to help track the American West’s rapidly worsening wildfire smoke. The detailed results show millions of Americans are routinely exposed to pollution at levels rarely seen just a decade ago.

Fendorf, the Terry Huffington Professor in the Department of Earth System Science and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute, has been elected for his exceptional achievements.

Hurricanes and severe storms exacerbate inequalities. Ahead of a Sept. 21 webinar on the subject, Stanford experts discussed how to ensure equity in planning and response for such extreme weather events, economic benefits of nature-based storm defenses, and related issues. (Source: Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment)

“We're seeing all around the world that heat records are being broken, and we're seeing the impacts of those severe heat events, whether it's in agriculture, in our food system, water resources, electricity generation, ecosystems, both on land and in rivers and streams, as well as in the ocean from marine heatwaves,” says Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh. 

When the right atmospheric factors come together to generate heavy precipitation, there is more water available to fall from the clouds than there had been before greenhouse-gas emissions began warming the planet, explains Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh.

Unlike flooding or drought or heat, the menace of smoke in the American West is not compartmentalized along class lines; in fact, as Stanford’s Marshall Burke and his research partners have documented, U.S. smoke exposure is largely uncorrelated with income.

Stanford researchers collected water samples from boreholes at Sanford Underground Research Facility and found evidence of a long-term transformation of subsurface microbial communities.

"In order to be resilient to climate change now and in the future, its going to require updating all those sophisticated systems that we have put in place because the frequency of severe heat, how hot it gets is different now and it will be even more different in the future," says Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh.