power plant stacks

Boosting power plants’ efficiency can cause emissions rebound, study finds

Nov. 29, 2016

Increasing the efficiency of power plants’ efficiency is often assumed to be an effective means of reducing carbon emissions. However, an empirical analysis of plants’ efficiency and emission led by a University of Colorado Boulder sociology professor casts some doubt on that conventional wisdom.

Taylor Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Credit: Dave Haney, NSF

Season of intense melting in Antarctica offers insights into continent's future

Oct. 13, 2016

Scientists and students working with the National Science Foundation, including Associate Professor Michael Gooseff of environmental engineering and INSTAAR, have authored a series of papers on how a single season of intense melting in Antarctica in 2001-02 may affect the continent’s ecological future, including its potential impact on global climate change.

Different types aircrcraft gathered data for the new study

Study finds fossil fuel methane emissions greater than previously estimated

Oct. 5, 2016

Methane emissions from global fossil fuel development are up to 60 percent greater than previous estimates, according to a new study.

Greenland's Zachariæ Isbræ.

Greenland Ice Sheet may be losing more glacial mass than previously estimated

Sept. 21, 2016

Previous estimates of ice mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet—already known to be shrinking—may be underestimates, according to a new study co-authored by CU Boulder researchers. Photo credit: Greenland's Zachariæ Isbræ, Anders A. Bjørk

a satellite image showing Arctic sea ice cover

2016 Ties 2007 for Second Lowest Arctic Sea Ice Minimum

Sept. 15, 2016

The Arctic’s ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent on September 10, 2016, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), part of CIRES and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Arctic sea ice with snow cover

The difficulty of predicting an ice-free Arctic

Sept. 14, 2016

The Arctic is nearing its seasonal sea ice minimum this month, but predicting exactly when the region will see its first ice-free summer may be more difficult than previously believed.

Graduate students install and monitor a seismometer

Preventing human-caused earthquakes

Aug. 25, 2016

While the earthquake that rumbled below Colorado’s eastern plains May 31, 2014, did no major damage, its occurrence surprised both Greeley residents and local seismologists. To some Greeley residents, the magnitude-3.2 earthquake felt like a large truck hitting the house.

Shoting star across a night sky

Impressive Perseid meteor shower to peak tonight

Aug. 11, 2016

It’s August and that means the hottest show in the night sky, the Perseid meteor shower, will make it annual appearance – peaking in the pre-dawn hours tonight through Aug. 13.

Bart Foster and Wil Srubar look through a pair of eyeglass lenses with graduate research assistants Sankar Ravichandran and Elizabeth Delesky standing behind them.

Partnership 'looks into' creating new material from eyeglass lens waste

Aug. 4, 2016

Through CU Boulder's Office of Industry Collaboration, entrepreneur Bart Foster has teamed up with members of the campus community to look into an optical solution, how to recycle the byproduct of eyeglass lenses. Made out of three or more types of plastic, currently several tons of the material are dumped into landfills each year.

Snow covered landscape

Earlier snowmelt reduces forests’ ability to regulate atmospheric carbon, decreases streamflow volume

Aug. 3, 2016

Earlier snowmelt periods associated with a warming climate may hinder subalpine forest regulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), according to the results of a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The findings, which were recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters , predict that this shift in the timing...

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