“He that lives upon hope will die fasting.”
– Benjamin Franklin

As I visited different regions of the country to hold town hall meetings with NAE members over the past six months, I heard a recurring message: The NAE must be more involved and proactive in addressing the impact of ...

Research on and responses to climate change involve observations, numerical prediction models, adaptation, and mitigation strategies. The field of engineering is involved in all of these endeavors.

Impacts to the Earth system caused by a warming planet—for example, changes to permafrost, ...

Climate change has occurred throughout the estimated 4.5 billion years of Earth’s existence and has been an important factor in the evolution of life on this planet, from its beginning to the extinction of species all along the path of the evolutionary time line. It has affected human ...

The Arctic is often considered ground zero for climate change because arctic air temperatures are rising at approximately twice the rate compared to the rest of the globe (Meredith et al. 2019). However, the diverse facets of arctic climate change (e.g., sea ice loss, hydrologic changes, permafrost ...

Water is the lifeblood of civilization. From the earliest times, civilizations managed water extremes—too much (flooding) or too little (drought). More economically advanced civilizations developed infrastructure and institutions to manage these extremes.

Background

Anglo settlement of ...

The following two questions are often asked by practicing professionals and the public:

1. How will climate change affect water availability and precipitation variability and change at regional scales?
2. Can changes in precipitation trends and variability be predicted?

In this article we consider ...

People all over the world must take action to wean from an addiction to fossil fuels. Otherwise, it would seem that Earth is simply here for humans to consume.

In The Giving Tree by poet Shel Silverstein (1964), the tree tells the once playful boy now grown into old age, “I wish that I could ...

Global mean sea levels are rising because of human-induced global warming (Oppenheimer et al. 2019). The recent Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise ...

Climate intervention (geoengineering) is being considered as a response to global warming. I discuss the scheme that has been studied the most: creation of a permanent sulfuric acid cloud in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, mimicking large volcanic eruptions. It is impossible to do today, as ...

Climate change, a statistical and increasingly physically evident reality, is a global phenomenon that intersects with the discipline and practice of engineering in important ways, as documented by the articles in this issue. It is not a new phenomenon, but has struggled for the attention of the ...

RON LATANISION (RML): We’re delighted to talk with you today, Amy. Let’s start by learning a little about your interest in both engineering and dance.

AMY LaVIERS: I always had an interest in both things. When I was looking at colleges, I looked for places that had a strong engineering ...

There’s a clear line between content analysis and cussing. IBM’s Watson crossed that line. While preparing for Jeopardy!, the famous “question-answering” system ingested a smorgasbord of content, including the Urban Dictionary, a sourcebook of slang. Watson was ...