First-Ever Footage of Lightning Being Triggered

Low Frequency Array (LOFAR)—a state-of-the-art network of thousands of radio telescopes primarily used for astronomy—tunes its antennas to thunderclouds when storms roll in and impede its normal work. This allows the tool to document that “million or so radio pulses that emanate from each lightning flash,” according to Wired, “on a meter-by-meter scale in three dimensions, and with a frame rate 200 times faster than …

Building an Army of Oysters Around NYC To Mitigate Floods + Erosion

Before commercial harvesting, oyster reefs used to compose more than 220,000 acres of New York’s coastline, acting as a natural flood-mitigation system in addition to increasing marine biodiversity. With these reefs’ destruction, New York is dangerously vulnerable to natural disasters—a threat that (as Hurricane Ida recently showed) is only growing. To protect the city, Billion Oyster Project founded by Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, …

Cities Continue to Hire Chief Resilience Officers to Address Climate Change

Amidst the myriad extreme weather events globally, city and county governments in the US continue to hire Chief Resilience Officers in an effort to address the effects of climate change. Once grant-funded (through efforts like the 100 Resilience Cities initiative from The Rockefeller Foundation, which ran from 2013-2019), these roles are now full-time government positions that help cities and local leaders to prepare for and …