UCLA
UCLA is a university that is part of the pulse of the water sector. Here we bring together everything it publishes on Smart Water Magazine: its news, its blogs and the events it takes part in.
Floods, droughts, then fires: hydroclimate whiplash is speeding up globally
Los Angeles is burning, and accelerating hydroclimate whiplash is the key climate connection. After years of severe drought, dozens of atmospheric rivers deluged California with record-breaking precipitation in the winter of 2022-23, burying mountain towns in snow, flooding valleys with rain and snow melt, and setting off hundreds of landslides. Following a second extremely wet winter in […]
UCLA evaluates L.A.’s plan to invest billions of dollars in wastewater recycling infrastructure
A team led by researchers at the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation evaluated the city’s plan, running hundreds of thousands of scenarios, and found that it would afford the city significant protection against water shortages and uncertain future costs.
Climate change parching the American West even without rainfall deficits
Higher temperatures caused by anthropogenic climate change turned an ordinary drought into an exceptional one that parched the American West from 2020–2022. A study by UCLA and NOAA scientists has found that evaporation accounted for 61% of the drought’s severity, while reduced precipitation accounted for 39%.
Drinking water in U.S. prisons may have dangerously high levels of PFAS
Almost a million incarcerated people could suffer lifelong health consequences. PFAS are a class of nonbiodegradable chemicals used in countless products that escape into the environment and bioaccumulate, contributing to numerous health problems. A new paper finds that 47% of America’s carceral facilities are in watersheds that are likely contaminated with PFAS, while 5% of the facilities are in watersheds already known to carry dangerously high levels of PFAS.
New method destroys dangerous ‘forever chemicals’
Using common reagents in heated water, chemists can ‘behead’ and break down PFAS, leaving only harmless compounds.
Forest fires increasingly affecting rivers and streams, for better and worse
Forest fires can have a significant effect on the amount of water flowing in nearby rivers and streams, and the impact can continue even years after the smoke clears. Now, with the number of forest fires on the rise in the western U.S., that phenomenon is increasingly influencing the region's water supply—and has increased the risk for […]
Megadrought in southwestern North America is region’s driest in at least 1,200 years
Climate change is a significant factor, UCLA-led research finds.
Reduced humidity increases wildfire threat in Southwest United States
When it comes to wildfires and climate change, it’s not just the heat, it’s the humidity. A paper published today in Nature Climate Change found that, since 1950, humidity across the Southwest United States dropped an average of 22% on the hottest summer days. In California and Nevada, the effect was even more pronounced, with a decrease […]
Extreme rainfall projected to get more severe, frequent with warming
Climate and population changes would expose millions more to severe flooding in continental U.S.