Environment/Energy

Clean and green: UCI physicist helps invent novel way of converting nitrogen to ammonia

The ammonia you use to clean and disinfect your kitchen floor starts off as nitrogen, a gas that makes up almost 80 percent of Earth’s atmosphere. But the conversion requires the breaking of a strong triple-chemical bond in a high-heat, high-pressure industrial process. UCI physicist Huolin Xin worked with his colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory […]

UCI/JPL: Antarctica losing six times more ice mass annually now than 40 years ago

Climate change-induced melting will raise global sea levels for decades to come

2 UCI studies ranked among the 10 most popular climate research papers of 2018

Carbon Brief, a website devoted to the analysis of energy policy and climate change science, has published a list of the 10 climate research papers in 2018 that received the most global media attention, and two originated at UCI. The rankings are based on scores tabulated by Altmetric, which tracks and measures exposure of academic […]

Grad student sees traces of fire in ice cores

To make better predictions about future wildfires around the world, climate scientists want to know the prevalence and intensity of past outbreaks. For a study published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Melinda Nicewonger, a UCI graduate student in Earth system science, examined ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica to measure changes […]

UCI and Singapore researchers find source of 2015 Southeast Asia smoke cloud

Burning of peatlands in Borneo and Sumatra created severe air pollution in region

Huolin Xin is awarded $2.5 million grant to research next-generation lithium-ion batteries

Huolin Xin, UCI assistant professor of physics & astronomy, has been awarded $2.5 million by the U.S. Department of Energy to advance research in next-generation lithium-ion batteries. His project is one of 42 supported by an $80 million fund for promising vehicle technologies to enable more affordable mobility, strengthen domestic energy security, reduce our dependence […]

Researchers discover that climate change is improving U.S. farmers’ corn yields – for now

Corn farmers in the U.S. have seen a fivefold increase in crop yields since the 1940s. Advances in farm technology have largely been credited for the production boost, but a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by UCI, University of Minnesota and Harvard University researchers shows that climate change […]

Global warming will have us crying in what’s left of our beer

UCI, other scientists project sharp declines in barley yields due to climate change

UCI study: Reduced Sierra Nevada snowmelt runoff to threaten California agriculture

One-degree rise in global winter temps to cause less high country snow accumulation

From ‘What?’ to ‘Wow!’

Innovative course teaches UCI grad students to better communicate their scientific research to the public