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The West’s latest air quality threats

April 14, 2025

Kevin Perry

Both are associated with climate change, which is making the West drier and warmer. Neither can be controlled through traditional emission-reduction programs that have helped reduce smog all over the West, especially in Los Angeles.

The symposium’s keynote speaker Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, explored the need for greater equity in how we protect children from air pollution. The other featured speaker, UCLA law professor Ann Carlson, discussed the progress Los Angeles has made in recent decades to rein in emissions responsible for its once-notorious air pollution and what lessons it offers for other cities struggling with bad air.

Reducing vehicle and industrial emissions alleviates particulate and ozone pollution, but such measures make little difference for smoke and dust.

A new Dust Bowl?

Salt Lake City is affected by countless dust sources—gravel quarries, the long-dried Sevier Lake, roads and lands disturbed by cattle grazing and off-roading. But the most troubling could be the shrinking Great Salt Lake, yet the state of Utah has yet to deploy the monitoring equipment to know for sure, said Kevin Perry, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. His tireless sampling forays by bike have earned him the moniker of Dr. Dust.

Derek Mallia

According to Perry’s research, there are four major “hotspots” on the 750 square miles of exposed playa where winds can lift dust into the air and potentially push it into populated areas and nearby mountains, Perry said on a panel devoted to the dust issue. These spots occur where the lakebed crusts have been disturbed, exposing the underlying sediments to the influence of the wind.

Hotspots closest to residential areas are in Farmington Bay, as well as in Bear River Bay, where most of the dust sources are located at elevations above 4,202 feet, nearly 10 feet above where the lake level stands, Perry said. The Farmington Bay spots tend to be at lower elevations.

“You can cover up a significant quantity of these dust hotspots at a lake elevation of 4,200 feet and get 70% coverage at 4,202,” he said. The lake’s ever-fluctuating level is currently at 4,193, a good 5 feet below what officials say is needed to restore Great Salt Lake’s ecological health.

“All of these dust hotspots that I’ve measured are currently exposed. They’re too wet to blow right now, but that’ll change as we move into the drier season,” Perry said. “Even if you bring that lake up to 4,198 feet, that will only cover up about 40% of the dust hotspots.”

Wind events, especially in spring, drive a big share of the Wasatch Front’s dust problem, pushing particulate pollution from the lake and other sources into the cities of Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties and into the mountains where it settles onto the snowpack. Research shows this dust contains elevated levels of cadmium, arsenic, lead and other hazardous metals, depending on its source.

“Before a cold front hits our valley, we have really strong winds from the south that scream 25 mph or more for up to 18 hours. As that front passes, the winds change and move from the west to the northwest and stay strong for a few hours. So if you look at the data from the airport at Salt Lake International Airport, when we have these strong wind events that create these big dust storms, 75% of the time the dust is moving north to communities of Layton and Syracuse and Ogden.”

Perry and his colleagues, including Derek Mallia, are eager to quantify the impact of lake playa dust on Wasatch Front cities, but there is currently not sufficient data being collected along the lake’s populated eastern shore, he said.

Read the full article by Brian Maffly in @ The U.

A Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet

March 3, 2025

Joseph Moore

In such a landscape, you remember that the planet’s hard exterior, where we spend our entire lives, is so thin that we call it a crust. Its superheated interior, meanwhile, burns with an estimated forty-four trillion watts of power. Milford was once a lead-, silver-, and gold-mining town, but when I visited the area on a sunny spring morning a scientist named Joseph Moore [research professor in civil and environmental engineering and adjunct professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Utah] was prospecting for something else: heat.

Heat mined from underground is called geothermal — “earth heat,” in ancient Greek — and can be used to produce steam, spin a turbine, and generate electricity. Until recently, humans have tended to harvest small quantities in the rare places where it surfaces, such as hot springs. Moore’s mission, as a geologist at the University of Utah and the project leader of the Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE), is to “develop the roadmap that is needed to build geothermal reservoirs anywhere in the world.” This road is long, and much of the map remains blank. The biggest problem is drilling miles through hot rock, safely. If scientists can do that, however, next-generation geothermal power could supply clean energy for eons.

During my trip, Moore’s corps of consultants and roughnecks were drilling the fifth borehole of their experimental project. Their rig, armed with a diamond drill bit, towered like a rocket over the rural landscape; miles of solar panels and wind turbines receded into the distance. The hole, which would eventually be L-shaped, was five thousand feet deep, and the team had another five thousand to go, horizontally. But, before they could drill any farther, they needed to install a hundred-and-fifty-ton steel tube in the hole, using special heat-resistant cement to glue it into place. The tube was like a massive straw that was meant to transport hot water and steam from an artificial underground reservoir—without contaminating local groundwater or triggering earthquakes.

At 6:15P.M.on May 3rd, cement had started flowing into the hole. Four hours later, part of the cement folded in on itself. The next morning, the cement supply ran out; the men had miscalculated how much they needed. This brought the three-hundred-million-dollar operation to a maddening halt. Moore, in bluejeans and a FORGE-branded hard hat, called his supplier. The nearest batch of suitable cement was five hundred miles away, in Bakersfield, California. The truck would not arrive until after dark.

Right now, geothermal energy meets less than one per cent of humanity’s electricity and heating needs—a puny, almost irrelevant portion. Fossil fuels power about eighty per cent of human activity, pumping out carbon dioxide and short-circuiting our climate to catastrophic effect. Converts argue that geothermal checks three key boxes: it is carbon-free, available everywhere, and effectively unlimited. Crucially, it is also baseload, which means that, unlike solar panels or wind, it provides a constant flow of energy. Companies and governments have taken notice. “Over the last two years, I have watched this exponential spin-up of activity in geothermal,” Tony Pink, a drilling expert in Houston, told me, in 2023.

But there is a glaring risk of moon shots: often, they miss. “There’s basically zero chance that you’re going to develop a moon-shot technology and have it be commercial in five years, on a large-scale, worldwide,” Mark Jacobson, a Stanford engineering professor and the author of “No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air,” told me. That’s how long humanity has to lower emissions before climatic devastation, according to his calculations. “There’s a very decent chance you can do that with wind and solar,” he said. Perhaps, when resources and time are finite, trying and failing — or simply taking too long — could be worse than not trying at all.

Read the rest of the story by Brent Crane published in The New Yorkerhere. (Requires setting up an account for limited, trial access.)

Joseph Moore, featured in the story above, was recently honored by the Utah State Legislature for his lifetime of service and dedication to advancing geothermal energy. Read more here.

An emissions tale of two cities: SLC & LA

February 28, 2025

Utah and Southern California differ sharply in their approaches to this problem, with the latter implementing more stringent regulations and fuel standards aimed at reducing emissions from motor vehicles. New research from the University of Utah, in collaboration with University of California scientists, shows California’s earlier adoption of stricter rules may have helped lower concentrations of one pollutant—carbon monoxide, or CO—on LA freeways.

We wanted to see empirically how emission characteristics have changed in these two cities over time,” said co-author John Lin, a Utah professor of atmospheric sciences. The research was initiated by Francesca Hopkins, a professor of climate change and sustainability at UC Riverside, and conducted with colleagues at UC Irvine.

The study relied on measurements taken by mobile labs that drove up and down LA and Salt Lake freeways for a few weeks in the summers of 2013 and 2019, with follow-up data gathering in Los Angeles over the next two summers to observe the effect of the COVID pandemic.

The study especially focused on the ratios of CO to CO₂ (carbon dioxide) observed by the mobile labs. These two gasses are co-emitted from fossil fuel combustion and their ratio is an indicator of the efficiency of that combustion since efficient internal combustion engines would convert more of the fuel to CO₂ instead of CO. The more CO emitted relative to CO₂, the less efficiently the fuel is being burned.

Finding Climate-Water solutions

February 13, 2025

Pearl Kling, international cooperation officer from Université Côte d’Azur, speaking with Dr. William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy.

The event fulfilled a newly formed U partnership with Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. France’s Région Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur will host the 2030 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. Salt Lake City, Utah, will host them in 2034.

The climate solutions hackathon challenges undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline to team-up and develop proposals in a slide deck within 24 hours.

This year, the teams worked from Friday Jan. 31st until Saturday morning, Feb 1st.

The teams of three to five had a day to propose a solution via a slide deck and short presentation promptly due the next morning. The challenge was to propose an innovative, data-driven solution in one of five categories:s surrounding the water resiliency theme.

Municipal Water Supply
Inland and Coastal Flooding
Agriculture
Drought
Water and Energy Infrastructure

Gathered in a bustling event hall in Crocker Science Center, the students engaged with expert faculty from both universities and drew inspiration from a video mentoring space of adept researchers. Mentors touched on important topics; for example, the U’s Marian Rice, associate director of Peak Water Sustainability Engine, spoke on topics such as partnering to protect watersheds and opportunities for green infrastructure. With approximately 88 students participating, 17 total slide decks were ultimately submitted.

On Saturday morning the teams reassembled to pitch their ideas to their peers at the Crocker Science Center, after which the group voted for the most impressive presentations. Two teams tied for this “People’s Choice Award.”

A panel of Wilkes Center staff and faculty, along with Professor Isabelle La Jeunesse from Université Côte d’Azur, deliberated over the weekend to officially select the top three proposals. Teams were evaluated according to four criteria:

Problem definition and analysis
Uniqueness and innovation
Idea feasibility
Implementation and scalability

“The ideas developed, particularly those of the finalists in this Hackathon, are realistic projects and thus potentially feasible,” said La Jeunesse. “It is therefore entirely possible that some of them will decide to get involved in developing their project, which would be fantastic given the great need in this field.”

GSL Strike Team Update

February 3, 2025

The Great Salt Lake Strike Team — a collaboration of technical experts from Utah’s research universities and state agencies – today released their 2025 data and insights summary. Their authoritative analysis makes eminently clear four critical points:

Benefits of the lake — Utah receives numerous economic, ecological and human health benefits from the lake. The costs of inaction to the economy, human health, and ecological conditions remain significant.
Making progress — The state of Utah continues to make meaningful progress, including water conservation, infrastructure investment (including measurement and monitoring), statutory and regulatory reforms, berm management, and other actions. The state’s multi-year, data-driven strategy to conserve, dedicate, and deliver water to the lake is on track.
Long-term endeavor — Stabilizing and raising lake levels; managing salinity; and protecting economic, human, and species health will require many years of stewardship leading up to the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and beyond. Success requires everyone in the Great Salt Lake Basin to participate in conserving, dedicating, and delivering water to the lake every year.
Utah’s plan — Later this month the Office of the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office will release the 2034 Plan for a Healthy Great Salt Lake. The plan builds upon the Great Salt Lake Strategic Plan, released in January 2024, by identifying actions needed over the next ten years to preserve the benefits Great Salt Lake provides to Utah and the world. This plan is informed by data developed by the Strike Team.3

“All indications demonstrate that delivering more water to the lake is a far more cost-effective solution than managing the impacts of a lake at a perpetually low level,” said Brian Steed, co-chair of the Great Salt Lake Strike Team and Great Salt Lake Commissioner. “We can invest time and financial resources now or pay a lot more later. Fortunately, we have great data and a balanced and workable plan to succeed.”

Utah’s research universities – Utah State University and University of Utah — formed the Great Salt Lake Strike Team to provide a primary point of contact for policymakers as they address the economic, health, and ecological challenges created by the low elevation levels of the lake. Together with state agency professionals, the Strike Team brings together experts in public policy, hydrology, water management, climatology, dust, and economics to provide impartial, data-informed, and solution-oriented support for the Commissioner’s Office and other Utah decision-makers. The Strike Team does not advocate but rather functions in a technical, policy-advisory role as a service to the state.

“Low lake elevations created by rising temperatures and human water depletions continue to put at risk the benefits created by the lake,” said William Anderegg, Strike Team co-chair and Director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah. “Our review of the data confirms that with steady and deliberate actions we can first stabilize and then raise lake elevation to levels that protect the benefits provided by the lake.”

The Strike Team’s report includes reporting on lake elevation, reservoir storage, salinity, streamflow, human water use, water rights and change applications, and mineral extraction. Importantly, the report identifies over 30 major milestones from 2024, including but not limited to the following:

Lake elevation — Increased inflows during 2024 were spread across both arms of the lake, resulting in a stable elevation for the south arm and larger gains for the north arm (2.8-foot rise). The lake remains well below the healthy range.
Ecosystem recovery/bring shrimp — Brine shrimp populations increased, with egg numbers up 50% from last year.
Invasive species — The state removed 15,600 acres of water-intensive phragmites, plus many more by other entities.
Funding – The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation directed $50 million toward Great Salt Lake preservation projects. Utah awarded $5.4 million to support 6,000 acres of Great Salt Lake wetlands and allocated $22 million for Great Salt Lake water infrastructure projects and $15 million to the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office for planning and water leasing.
Water donations and releases — Jordan Valley Water Conservancy, Welby Jacob Water Users, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released approximately 10,000 acre-feet from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake via the Jordan River. Compass Minerals agreed to forgo 200,000 acre-feet of future water use, and Morton Salt agreed to forgo 54,000 acre-feet of future water use. Both companies also agreed to cease all usage if the lake drops to 2022 levels. Water conservancy districts released stored water during the winter, including approximately 700,000 acre-feet of water that was released through the Jordan and Weber river systems.

The Strike Team acknowledges and appreciates the support of Gov. Spencer Cox and his Cabinet, Senate President Stuart Adams, Speaker Mike Schultz, the full Utah Legislature, Presidents Elizabeth Cantwell and Taylor Randall, and other colleagues and partners who support data-informed solutions for the lake. The leaders of the Strike Team affirmed in their opening letter that “actions to ensure a healthy Great Salt Lake are both necessary and possible.”

Recent average daily elevation of Great Salt Lake north and south arms (1903-2024)

Source: US Geological Survey Historical Elevation at Saltair Boat Harbor and Saline, UT.

The full report is now available online.

Water resiliency and the Olympics

January 29, 2025

Because of a warming climate, future winter Olympic Games will contend with declining snowpacks that may prevent the world’s best athletes from competing on the global stage. Host cities are strategizing how to reduce carbon emissions and protect their precious water resources.

Anticipating these challenges, a group of graduate students from Université Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, will travel to the University of Utah this week to participate in a climate solutions “hackathon” focused on addressing water resiliency.

France’s Région Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur will host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in 2030, and Salt Lake City will host the games in 2034.

“Water resiliency is one of the defining challenges of our time. U researchers are tackling it head-on by exploring critical questions across water science, policy, engineering, and health sciences and addressing issues like water access, quality, and sustainability,” said Erin Rothwell, Vice President for Research at the U. “By working collaboratively with policymakers, organizations, and communities, we’re driving innovative solutions to ensure a sustainable water future—locally and globally—for generations to come.”

The U and Université Côte d'Azur have grown their strategic partnership since a successful Film & Media Arts learning abroad program that launched in 2017. Last year, the universities kicked off a collaborative international research program geared toward sustainable and inclusive Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“It is truly inspiring to witness the flourishing bond between the University of Utah and Université Côte d'Azur, both in its purpose and its dynamic potential,” said President of Université Côte d’Azur, M. Jeanick Brisswalter. “This collaboration exemplifies our shared commitment to addressing global challenges, particularly through the lens of the sustainable development goals. With our students participating in the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy international hackathon on climate change, focused on tackling water management, we will be looking forward to seeing their innovative contributions at the intersection of education, sustainability, and global action.”

The Climate Solutions Hackathon, organized annually by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the U, provides an ideal venue for collaboration and creativity in addressing current and forecasted climate change-driven conditions.

Undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline are encouraged to team-up and develop proposals in a slide deck within 24 hours. They will pitch their projects to their peers on Saturday and meet again Monday, Feb. 3 for an awards reception event. Last year the hackathon focused on wildfire, and urban heat was the focus in 2023.

“The French Alps and the Wasatch range are both experiencing changes in hydrology, rates of snowmelt, and rising temperatures,” noted William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center. “The challenges facing water resilience and winter sports have no boundaries, and thus this collaboration to generate creative solutions is essential.”

Schedule of hackathon activities:

Friday, Jan. 31, 12:00 noon, the 24-hour hackathon begins. (Crocker Science Center, Room 206, 1390 Presidents' Cir, Salt Lake City, UT 84112)
Saturday, Feb. 1, 10:30 p.m., the hackathon ends.
Saturday, Feb. 1, 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon, teams present their solutions to a panel of judges. (Crocker Science Center, Room 206)
Monday, Feb. 3, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., reception and awards ceremony for all participants at Red Butte Gardens and Arboretum.

More information about the event is online here.

January 21, 2025
Above: Atmospheric instrumentation on the roof of the Browning Building, University of Utah.

Anderegg Receives White House Early-Career Award

January 23, 2025

William Anderegg, professor of biology and director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the U, is one of the newest PECASE recipients.

The PECASE Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers. The awards are conferred annually at the White House following recommendations from participating agencies. Established by President Clinton in 1996, PECASE recognizes scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers.

The award recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology, expands awareness of careers in science and engineering, recognizes the scientific missions of participating agencies, enhances connections between research and impacts on society, and highlights the importance of science and technology for our nation’s future.

The White House website reported the names of all 400 awardees, explaining that "From Day One of his Administration, President Biden has recognized the important role that science and technology plays in creating a better society. He made historic progress, increasing federally funded research and development and deploying past research and development at an unprecedented scale through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act."

“I am honored to have received this award,” said Anderegg upon learning of the announcement in mid-January. “As I look over the names and institutions of the other recipients I am struck by the breadth and depth of scientific talent in the U.S. I am humbled to be among them.”

“Bill is thoroughly deserving of this prestigious recognition,” said the U’s College of Science Dean Peter Trapa. “As one of the world’s leading forest ecologists and climate scientists, his research has advanced our understanding of the most important environmental issues of our time. His leadership of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy has amplified the impact of scientific research at the U – including his own – through actionable recommendations to government and industry leaders. ”

Anderegg’s nomination along with 111 other awardees were recommended by the National Science Foundation. "These honorees embody the excellence and innovation that drive STEM education and research forward," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "We are proud to support these educators and scientists whose transformative work inspires students, cultivates a passion for learning and advances the frontiers of discovery. Notably, two of this year's PECASE honorees, Anderegg and Melanie Matchett-Wood, are former winners of the NSF Alan T. Waterman Award, underscoring their exceptional contributions to science and engineering.”

Joining Anderegg in this prestigious recognition from the University of Utah are Amir Arzani, Kate Isaacs, Ryan Stutsman, and Ben Wang Philips from the College of Engineering, who were also honored with PECASE awards this year.

This year’s awardees are employed or funded by 14 participating agencies within the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs and the Environmental Protection Agency, the intelligence community, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institution.

The U is a leader in science and technology education

January 21, 2025

He has previously served as the chair of Department of Physics and Astronomy and prior to that, the chair of the Department of Mathematics at the U.

In addition to overseeing these departments, Trapa has also been involved in the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy and is the founder of the Science Research Initiative. He talks about the college, their programs and amazing opportunities for students.

Here he talks with KPCW's Cool Science Radio co-hosts Lynn Ware Peek and Kate Mullaly on how STEM disciplines in the College of Science and beyond have elevated the state's flagship university into a national reputation for science and technology education.

Listen to the podcast here.

Technology for oxidizing atmospheric methane?

January 21, 2025

One recent proposal seeks to infuse the atmosphere with hydrogen peroxide, insisting that it would both oxidize methane (CH₄), an extremely potent greenhouse gas while improving air quality.

Too good to be true?

Jessica Haskins. Credit Todd Anderson

Alfred Mayhew. Credit Todd Anderson

University of Utah atmospheric scientists Alfred Mayhew and Jessica Haskins were skeptical, so they set out to test the claims behind this proposal. Their results, published on Jan. 3, confirm their doubts and offer a reality check to agencies considering such proposals as a way to stave off climate change.

“Our work showed that the efficiency of the proposed technology was quite low, meaning widespread adoption of the technology would be required to make any meaningful impact on atmospheric CH₄,” said Mayhew, a postdoctoral researcher with the U’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy. “Then, our results indicate that if this technology is adopted at scale, then we start to see some negative air-quality side effects, particularly for wintertime particulate matter air pollution.”

To conduct the study, the Utah scientists modeled what would happen if you deployed the technology patented by a Canadian company, which is proposing to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide, or H₂O₂, into the atmosphere during daylight hours from 600-meter towers. These towers would approach the height of the world’s tallest radio towers.

Read the full article by Brian Maffly in @ TheU.
This story also appeared in Space Daily, Eureka Alert, Science Blog. and Securities.io.

Why mobile farm technology won the 2024 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

January 7, 2025

This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.

A "pyrolizer," a machine that can apply high heat without oxygen to crop waste and create a soil additive called biochar, dumps loads of the substance into bags. Applied Carbon, a Texas startup, has received a $500,000 prize from the U's Wilkes Center to develop the technology as a way to store carbon. Credit: Applied Carbon

The stalks and husks of corn plants — the waste product left by combine harvesters — could be a key tool in the fight against climate change, and the University of Utah is putting up $500,000 to test the idea.

The U.’s Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy recently awarded its half-million-dollar Wilkes Climate Launch Prize to Applied Carbon, a Texas-based startup.

Applied Carbon won the prize for its mobile farm technology, which turns crop waste into a soil additive that decreases the need for fertilizer and stores the remaining carbon in the earth’s soil.

William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center, said one of the main selling points of Applied Carbon’s technology is its potential to be made for scale.

“The scalability is very exciting, and you can see a path for them to really scale up across many different agricultural fields in the next couple of years,” he said.

The crop waste is produced when combine harvesters sail through tall corn fields, their rotating blades slicing through the stalks, filtering them into the machine’s mouth, where its spinning cylinders rip the corn kernels from the husk and stems. The combine saves the kernels of corn in its body and spits out the stalk and husk remnants, leaving it to waste on the flattened field.

The prize, one of the largest university-run climate prizes in the world, was created in 2023 to help jump-start promising climate solution ideas. At a September reception in partnership with the Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine, Anderegg awarded the prize money to Jason Aramburu, Applied Carbon’s CEO and co-founder.

At the reception, Aramburu said that “as a startup company … there’s often a funding gap, particularly in this sector, to get your technology to market.” He later added that the prize money will help the company produce more of their biochar machines and get them into the field.

Applied Carbon now has four mobile pyrolizers, a machine that can reach high temperatures without oxygen, and the company will apply the prize money to its field operations in Texas, Aramburu said. These operations, he said, work in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“We’ve got about 4,000 acres of corn that we’re working with. We will test our equipment [in Texas] and also test how effective the biochar is on the soil,” he said.

The yield and soil chemistry testing, Aramburu said, will determine if the process works and to measure the impact of the technology. The project, in its first multi-season trial run, is expected to remove 100,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2026, he said.

Biochar, a charcoal-like substance derived from biomass waste, is made through pyrolysis, a heat-driven process that uses virtually no oxygen and stores carbon in the waste product, according to Utah State University. Biochar, Anderegg added, is promising as a nature-based tool for fighting climate change because its carbon storage is stable and lasts hundreds of years.

“By contrast, a huge number of companies and governments are interested in tree planting, … but forests are at increasing risk from fire and drought and climate change,” he said. “We really worry about planting trees in one area that may be dead in 10 to 20 years.”

By Giovanni Radtke

You can read the full story for free at Amplify or with a subscription in the Salt Lake Tribune.

College of Science

The West’s latest air quality threats

the West’s latest air quality threats

A new Dust Bowl?

A Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet

a Climate Moon Shot Beneath Our Feet

North Milford Valley, in western Utah, is home to dormant volcanoes, subterranean lava deposits, and smatterings of obsidian—black volcanic glass—that Paiute peoples once collected for arrowheads and jewelry. Scalding groundwater still bubbles to the surface in places.

An emissions tale of two cities: SLC & LA

An emissions tale of two cities: SLC vs. LA

They may both be Olympic host cities, but Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, the major population hubs of their respective states, are many different places. However, they both experience poor air quality and share valley topography that traps pollutants during weather inversions.

Finding Climate-Water solutions

Finding Climate-Water Solutions

GSL Strike Team Update

making progress on Great Salt Lake

Low water levels at Great Salt Lake continue to threaten Utah’s economic, ecological and human health.

Water resiliency and the Olympics

Water resiliency challenges and the Olympics

Students from the University of Utah and Université Côte d'Azur, France, will tackle water resource challenges with Climate Solutions Hackathon

Anderegg Receives White House Early-Career Award

Anderegg Receives White House Early-Career Award

In his last week in office, President Biden awarded nearly 400 scientists and engineers the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers.

The U is a leader in science and technology education

U a Leader in Science & Tech Education

The University of Utah is a global leader in science and technology education, research and development and leading these endeavors is Peter Trapa, dean of the College of Science.

Technology for oxidizing atmospheric methane?

tech for oxidizing atmospheric methane?

As the atmosphere continues to fill with greenhouse gases from human activities, many proposals have surfaced to “geoengineer” climate-saving solutions, that is, alter the atmosphere at a global scale to either reduce the concentrations of carbon or mute its warming effect.

Too good to be true?

Why mobile farm technology won the 2024 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

How mobile farm technology won the 2024 Wilkes Prize

A Texas company, winner of the 2024 Wilkes Climate Prize, aims to develop technology to create 'biochar' as a soil additive that could benefit farmers.