Research
As climate changes, previously frozen chemical runoff from farms and fields puts water quality at risk in over 40 states, research says. Keith Musselman part of team looking at winter nutrient pollution, a new problem caused by climate change.
For the past five years, a team of research assistants and volunteers have hiked up Niwot Ridge in late May to set the stage for a unique experiment in which they spread 5,000 pounds of black sand across portions of the remaining snowpack. Their goal is to simulate the near-future effects of a warming planet on alpine ecosystems.
Some effects of climate change are dramatic and visible, like wildfires and extreme weather, but a new study led by Chris Ray found that climate change can impact even hidden places and some of the state’s smallest residents: pikas.
CU Boulder's earth sciences and atmospheric science disciplines ranked No. 1 and No. 2 globally in the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS). The annual ranking includes over 1,800 universities from 96 countries scored across 54 academic subject categories.
Grasslands’ biodiversity and resilience to disturbances such as fire, heat and drought is the result of a slow process over hundreds of years, like that of old growth forests, finds new CU research led by INSTAAR Katharine Suding that was published today in Science. An implication of the research is that it's important to conserve grasslands that are still intact.
New CU Boulder research by Patricia DeRepentigny, Alexandra Jahn, and others finds that the presence of clouds—or lack thereof—caused by the smoke of wildfires thousands of miles away can either help protect or endanger Arctic sea ice.
A new study that included Will Wieder and Keith Musselman finds that snow-free seasons are expected to last longer, putting Northern Hemisphere water supplies at risk.
Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the Northern Hemisphere by later this century, according to a comprehensive new climate change study. Even regions that keep receiving the same amount of precipitation will experience more variable and unpredictable streamflow as snowpack recedes.
Historic drought has depleted groundwater, melted the snowpack, and dried up lakes--and it will get worse. Washington Post visual story (paywall) illustrated by maps from the Mountain Hydrology Lab.
Climate scientist Alton Byers takes a close look at three recent and poorly understood glacial lake outburst floods in the Himalaya. The stored lake water that is suddenly released can cause enormous death and devastation downstream.