2025-09-26
- While rivers are popular magnets for fishing, boating, and kayaking, they are also potential powerhouses in the fight against climate change. Rivers and streams carry inorganic carbon from land to oceans in a process called lateral carbon flux. In recent years, environmental engineers have proposed to utilize this movement in a class of carbon sequestration strategies known as “enhanced...
2025-09-17 - Sarah Austin didn’t set out to become a geologist. In fact, she jokes that she “messed up” when she first enrolled at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, mistakenly thinking the College of Education and Human Development was the right path to medical school. But one introductory geology course changed everything.“I sat in the second row and was so enthralled the whole class, and then was...
2025-09-15 - The world of weather and climate science is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence and set against a challenging federal funding environment. In this story, we’ll talk about the changing landscape and how weather and climate data are aggregated, shared, and used.Dr. Gan Zhang is not only an expert on weather extremes and their impacts,...
2025-09-10 - Gyudae “GD” Kim never planned on becoming a geographer. Nearly 20 years ago, he was serving his mandatory military service in South Korea when a sudden injury left him paralyzed. At the time, he wasn’t considering graduate school, let alone an academic career. He was just trying to figure out how to move forward.That turning point...
2025-08-08 - Illinois Public Media premieres a new weekly radio program and podcast, a partnership with the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences in the School of Earth, Society & Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Weather Realness brings the best weather and climate scientists in Illinois to help the public understand weather and climate by providing...
2025-08-04 - CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — On Tuesday, President Trump’s administration proposed revoking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific finding that underpins U.S. policy on greenhouse gas emissions. By identifying the gases as a threat to public health and welfare, the finding provides the basis for many emissions regulations....
2025-07-29 - As Larry Di Girolamo stood at Vandenberg Air Force Base in December 1999, he was a relatively new professor in what would become the Department of Climate, Meteorology, & Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois. He had come to witness ...
2025-07-23 - Geography and geographic information science professor Marynia Kolak and psychology professor Eleanor Seaton have helped raise public awareness of the Restrictive Covenant Project while also planning to study and research discriminatory covenants and related topics.Kolak will study how these covenants and...
2025-07-22 - Earth science and environmental change professor Bruce Fouke and his interdisciplinary team at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have pioneered the field of GeoBioMed, a unique integration of geology, biology, and medicine aimed at tackling complex health challenges through a geoscientific lens. This innovative approach, previously applied...
2025-06-27 - When Hayley Woodrich learned she'd been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in June, she almost didn’t believe it.“I got an email from NSF and thought, ‘Oh, great! Feedback is finally out!” she said. “Then I opened the email, started reading, and said, ‘Wait a minute.’ I took a screenshot and sent it to my advisors, saying, ‘What?’”The honor is one of the most...
2025-06-16 - Katharine Hayhoe (MS ’97, PhD ’10) has built a career around making climate science accessible—and personal. A world-renowned atmospheric scientist, Hayhoe bridges divides that often seem irreconcilable: she is both a devout Christian and a leading voice on climate change. Her work reaches audiences across political, cultural, and religious lines, driven by the belief that “climate change is not...
2025-05-30 - Rob Kanter believed the best education didn’t happen within four walls. Even when he stood in front of a classroom, he focused on the world beyond it.For more than a decade, Kanter guided students not only through course readings but across landscapes—from the tropical rainforests of Central America to the prairies and forests of Central Illinois—using his deep curiosity and love for the...
2025-05-28 - In a reflective piece for the Illinois News Bureau’s “In My Own Words” series, Professor Ellen Buckley of Earth Science and Environmental Change recounts the surreal and powerful experience of teaching sea ice science while standing directly on the frozen Arctic Ocean in Utqiaġvik, Alaska....
2025-05-28 - How can AI and data science help solve some of the world’s most complex environmental and societal challenges? In this Q&A, professor of geography and geographic information science and associate dean for life and physical sciences in the College of LAS, Shaowen Wang discusses his groundbreaking work in cyberGIS, the formation of a national research...
2025-05-12 - In 2023, global temperatures spiked in a way that puzzled scientists, sparked headlines, and led many people to wonder whether the climate was entering an unpredictable new phase. The spike stood out so dramatically that some called it mysterious or unprecedented.But the spike wasn't so mysterious for Shiv Priyam...