Why Hurricane Laura’s Storm Surge Could Be Unsurvivable

Having strengthened with astonishing speed into a Category 4 storm, Hurricane Laura will make landfall in Texas and Louisiana sometime early Thursday morning. With the landfall comes a dreaded storm surge—a rise in water level generated by a storm—that scientists say could spread seawater up to 30 miles inland, an inundation the National Hurricane Center just called “unsurvivable…”

Plastics, waste and recycling: It’s not just a packaging problem

Discussions of the growing plastic waste problem often focus on reducing the volume of single-use plastic packaging items such as bags, bottles, tubs and films. But a new University of Michigan study shows that two-thirds of the plastic put into use in the United States in 2017 was used for other purposes.

Sea-level variability to increase with ocean warming

A global tendency for future sea levels to become more variable this century as oceans warm, due to increasing greenhouse gas emissions was identified by a team of researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi.