Irvine, Calif., — Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires, which have been gradually increasing since 2000, spiked drastically to a record high in 2021, according to an international team of researchers led by Earth system scientists at the University of California, Irvine. Nearly half a gigaton of carbon (or 1.76 billion tons of CO2) was released from […]
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UC Irvine researchers find that carbon dioxide pollution dropped on California freeways during pandemic
Irvine, Calif., Dec. 14, 2022 –The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world. One thing it changed right here in Southern California is the way people drive their cars. In a place where freeways, traffic and smog are ubiquitous, Southern Californians drove far less during the pandemic, and that change in behavior resulted in a massive decrease […]
UCI-led study finds prolonged, low-level radon exposure still a leading cause of lung cancer
Irvine, Calif., June 14, 2022 – A study led by the University of California, Irvine shows a strong relationship between prolonged exposure to low levels of radon and lung cancer, indicating a need for enhanced protection measures. Radon gas in the air decays into tiny radioactive particles which can damage lung cells and lead to […]
Human-triggered California wildfires more severe than natural blazes
Irvine, Calif., June 6, 2022 – Human-caused wildfires in California are more ferocious than blazes sparked by lightning, a team led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine reported recently in the journal Nature Communications. The research could help scientists better understand fire severity and how likely a blaze is to kill trees and inflict long-term […]
Prospects for a democratic breakdown in the U.S.
What pathways would lead most directly to democratic failure in the U.S. and why is a breakdown more plausible today than at previous points in recent history? A new essay by Bernard Grofman, Jack W. Peltason Endowed Chair of Democracy and Distinguished Professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, argues that the […]
UCI study could explain why Parkinson’s drug improves, then diminishes quality of life
Irvine, Calif., Jan. 19, 2022 — A team of University of California, Irvine researchers has discovered a possible reason why L-dopa, the front-line drug for treating Parkinson’s disease, loses efficacy and causes dyskinesia – involuntary, erratic muscle movements of the patient’s face, arms, legs and torso – as treatment progresses. “Paradoxically, the exact therapy that improved […]
UCI-led team of physicists detects signs of neutrinos at Large Hadron Collider
Irvine, Calif., Nov. 24, 2021 — The international Forward Search Experiment team, led by physicists at the University of California, Irvine, has achieved the first-ever detection of neutrino candidates produced by the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN facility near Geneva, Switzerland. In a paper published today in the journal Physical Review D, the researchers describe how […]
Fires in the Sierra Nevada likely to grow in frequency
Irvine, Calif., Nov. 18, 2021 – Naturalist John Muir called the Sierra Nevada “the Range of Light.” But a more ominous nickname, “the Range of Fire,” may lie ahead, according to new research from the University of California, Irvine. By 2040, as humans continue to change the climate, fire-conducive heat waves will become so common that […]
Wind and solar could power the world’s major countries most of the time
Irvine, Calif., Nov. 5, 2021 — With the eyes of the world on the United Nations COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, strategies for decarbonizing energy infrastructure are a trending topic. Yet critics of renewables question the dependability of systems that rely on intermittent resources. A recent study led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine tackles […]
UCI-led study finds disparities in O.C. rates of COVID-19 infection, mortality
Irvine, Calif., Aug. 19, 2021 — Socioeconomic, geographic and demographic factors all played critical roles in the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 mortality among Orange County residents last year, according to a study led by the University of California, Irvine. The findings, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, show that some groups were more likely […]
Climate change is driving plant die-offs in Southern California, UCI study finds
A shift is happening in Southern California, and this time it has nothing to do with earthquakes. According to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Irvine, climate change is altering the number of plants populating the region’s deserts and mountains. Using data from the Landsat satellite mission and focusing on an […]
Greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions are lengthening and intensifying droughts
Irvine, Calif., May 17, 2021 — Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollution emitted by human activities are responsible for increases in the frequency, intensity and duration of droughts around the world, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine. In a study published recently in Nature Communications, scientists in UCI’s Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering showed […]
California’s wildfire season has lengthened, and its peak is now earlier in the year
Irvine, Calif., April 22, 2021 — California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century. Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine have conducted a […]
UCI’s Tirtha Banerjee probes the physics behind catastrophic blazes
In southern New Jersey, deep in an isolated, desolate forest known as the Pine Barrens, a small group of men trudge through the woods, behind them a charred trail of smoldering underbrush. This is not the work of criminal arsonists but a controlled burn conducted by members of the U.S. Forest Service. Scattered throughout the […]
California schools can reopen safely, UCI pediatricians tell us how
March 3, 2021 – Many students in California have not been inside a classroom since last March. Though low-income students have been affected the most, all kids have had to adjust because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As more people are vaccinated, the end of remote learning is in sight, but schools will still need to use […]
UCI researchers: Climate change will alter the position of the Earth’s tropical rain belt
Irvine, Calif., Jan. 18, 2021 — Future climate change will cause a regionally uneven shifting of the tropical rain belt – a narrow band of heavy precipitation near the equator – according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions. This development may threaten food security for billions of people. In a […]
UCI study first to link disparities and ‘pharmacy deserts’ in California
Irvine, Calif., Jan. 6, 2021— In the United States, Black, Latino and low-income communities have historically lacked nearby access to pharmacy services. To provide the first record of these “pharmacy deserts” in Los Angeles County, a University of California, Irvine study identified communities where the nearest pharmacy was at least one mile away. Unlike previous […]
California’s 2018 wildfires caused $150 billion in damages
Irvine, Calif., Dec. 7, 2020 — In 2018, California wildfires caused economic losses of nearly $150 billion, or about 0.7 percent of the gross domestic product of the entire United States that year, and a considerable fraction of those costs affected people far from the fires and even outside of the Golden State. For a […]
UCI researchers launch first-of-its-kind coronavirus statistics portal
Irvine, Calif., Aug. 10, 2020 — Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have unveiled a public website that provides up-to-date statistics on coronavirus infections in Orange County, with comparisons to neighboring and other California counties. The site displays information collected from the California Open Data Portal in an easily comprehended format, giving visitors quick access to the most relevant […]
UC Irvine engineers evaluate snow drought in different parts of the world
Irvine, Calif. Aug. 4, 2020 — Environmental engineers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a new framework for characterizing snow droughts around the world. Using this tool to analyze conditions from 1980 to 2018, the researchers found a 28-percent increase in the length of intensified snow-water deficits in the Western United States during the […]