Students taking the newly launched Climate Crisis and Society course worked in partnership with the city of Lowell on a climate resilience project. The work inspired them to develop their own climate projects.

Letting forests grow would support the full range of native biodiversity while removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Three students and three faculty members traveled to Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27, the United Nations climate summit, where they were the only delegation from a public university in Massachusetts.

Do net-zero pledges mean the world is on track to protect the climate? So far, the answer is no, because if, when, and how net zero is reached matters.

UMass Lowell researchers have teamed up with local organizations in search of effective strategies that will encourage underserved communities to participate in energy efficiency programs.

When Hurricane Ian hit Florida, it was one of the United States’ most powerful hurricanes on record, and it followed a two-week string of massive, devastating storms around the world. Prof. Mathew Barlow wrote a piece for The Conversation about what’s known about how climate change fuels tropical cyclones.

The Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy awarded fellowships to plastics engineering major Abby Mastromonaco, entrepreneurship Ph.D. student William Zhou and Chemistry Asst. Prof. Juan Artes Vivancos.

The National Science Foundation-funded project Cool Science hosted its 10th annual Extreme Weather Art Competition for students in grades kindergarten through 12th. The winning posters are now displayed on transit buses in the Merrimack Valley and Worcester areas.

New homes for the Honors College, Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy and Asian American Center for Excellence and Engagement highlight a busy summer of campus improvements by Facilities Management.

Human-caused climate change is fueling rising temperatures and worsening droughts across the nation. Does this mean Massachusetts will look more like the West?

Art & Design Associate Teaching Professor Yuko Oda has a thought-provoking art exhibit that explores themes surrounding climate change, environmentalism and social justice.

Environmental, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Prof. Mathew Barlow led the Storms, Precipitation, Flooding and Groundwater section of a new report that assesses likely climate changes for the Greater Boston area. 

Prof. Juliette Rooney-Varga and a team of researchers are looking at ways to empower students to address climate change by advancing their climate literacy and STEM efficacy.

Asst. Prof. Christopher Skinner’s research, published in Science and Nature, looks at past changes in climate to help forecast the future.

Governments and organizations around the world claim that wood bioenergy is carbon neutral. New research by UMass Lowell's Climate Change Initiative, the MIT Sustainability Initiative, Climate Interactive, and Tufts University uses a dynamic model to determine the carbon - and climate - impact of wood bioenergy.

A new study published in Simulation and Gaming describes the Climate Action Simulation: a game to give people the know-how and a sense of empowerment needed for effective climate action.

New research from the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative, which spearheads impact research for the MIT Climate Pathways Project, shows that group deliberation guided by interaction with the C-ROADS model can positively influence high school and college students’ climate change knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.

Seven projects led by students, faculty and staff received a share of the university’s annual $50,000 Sustainability Encouragement & Enrichment Development (S.E.E.D.) Fund. 

UMass Lowell remains the highest-rated campus in Massachusetts for sustainability with a STARS Gold score of 83.37 from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.

A competition-based initiative to get students thinking about their residence hall energy usage won the third annual Rist Institute for Sustainability & Energy Climate Mitigation Challenge, which asks students to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions by 10,000 pounds in 10 weeks.

The Climate Impacts & Solutions with En-ROADS module is a new, free, multidisciplinary collaboration between The Climate Initiative (TCI) and the UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative (CCI).

Asst. Prof. Christopher Skinner recent work published in Nature Climate Change shows that continued use of fossil fuels will increase the risk that multiple regions across the globe experience drought simultaneously.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Asst. Prof. James Heiss a $680,000 faculty early-career development award to understand water and chemical exchanges between groundwater and surface water along the land-sea transition zone.

Asst. Prof. Christopher Skinner, who researches atmospheric rivers, explains why the weather phenomenon has been making headlines recently — and why it’s important to understand them.

An interdisciplinary group of faculty members from UMass Lowell’s Climate Change Initiative attended the recent United Nations global climate summit, aka COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, where they observed progress being made — but also missed opportunities.

An interdisciplinary team of UML faculty, led by Assoc. Profs. Meg Sobkowicz-Kline and Chris Hansen, have received a nearly $3 million National Science Foundation Research Traineeship award for a new graduate student program focused on developing sustainable materials and chemicals that won’t harm water resources.

Science education can help slow the pace of global warming, because people who understand climate science can make informed decisions, says Education Assoc. Prof. Jill Hendrickson Lohmeier. Lohmeier does research on using artwork in informal settings to educate the public about climate science.

A plan to boost ridership on Lowell’s city buses won the second annual Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy Climate Mitigation Challenge, which asks students to find ways to reduce CO2 emissions by 10,000 pounds in 10 weeks.

UMass Lowell’s Climate Change Initiative, in partnership with the Environmental, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Department and the Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy, is hosting a virtual spring seminar series featuring experts from across the country.

Four Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty members and graduate students from the Kennedy College of Sciences presented research at the virtual AGU Fall Meeting, the largest gathering of Earth and space scientists from around the world.

Thanks to a five-year, $6.6 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, The New England Consortium at UMass Lowell will expand its hazardous materials worker health and safety training under the direction of Research Prof. David Turcotte.

Funded by a $1.5M grant from the Department of Energy, Professor Meg Sobkowicz-Kline, along with colleagues Dongming Xie and Hsi-Wu Wong, is working to optimize this enzymatic recycling process for low quality contaminated PET sources and large-scale deployment.

Drought and heat waves both have a range of severe societal and ecosystem impacts. Our research seeks to understand the causes of droughts and heat waves and how they interact with one another to better predict their occurrence and help manage their impacts in the Northeast U.S.

For more than 20 years, the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production’s Chemicals Science and Policy Initiative has been a leading research and strategy effort focused on driving the transition to safer, more sustainable chemicals, materials, and products.

Supported by a three-year, $784,000 National Science Foundation grant, a team of researchers led by James Heiss in the Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EEAS) are studying the impact of extreme multi-hazard coastal storms on groundwater flow and saltwater-freshwater mixing in beach aquifers.

Climate Change is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events and resulting disasters. The New England Consortium (TNEC-CSEA) in partnership with the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) and Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Health and Safety (MassCOSH) received another 5-year NIESH Hazmat Disaster Preparedness Training Program grant to train organizations and their workers who prepare for and respond to climate related disasters.

Cool Science brings an inter-disciplinary approach to the challenge of improving public understanding of climate change science by focusing on issues related to heat transfer, energy and extreme weather. This project aims to engage students, teachers, parents, and the general public with the science of extreme weather.

The Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy has awarded its inaugural fellowships to Asst. Prof. of Economics Kelly Hellman, plastics engineering major Kerry Candlen and chemical engineering major Maria Fonseca-Guzman.

A new honors seminar that helps students think critically about different sources of energy is inspiring research involving renewables, including projects at UMass Lowell’s Haiti Development Studies Center.

Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Asst. Prof. James Heiss and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were awarded a three-year, $784,000 National Science Foundation grant to study how powerful coastal storms affect the fresh water flowing below the ground along the seashore.

UMass Lowell is No. 16 on Sierra magazine’s “Cool Schools” list for 2020, the university’s highest ranking ever in a survey that assesses colleges’ performances on everything from sustainability-focused courses, carbon-neutral energy and land policies, eco-friendly dining halls and student engagement.

Profs. Mathew Barlow and Christopher Skinner of the Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences will study the cause of heat waves and droughts in the Northeast and how they interact with each other under a three-year, $478,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Environmental science students from the Kennedy College of Sciences led free educational sessions on Zoom for middle and high school students who, like them, are stuck at home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Three student projects proposing ways to reduce the university community’s carbon dioxide emissions by 10,000 pounds in 10 weeks received the first-ever Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy (RISE) Student Innovation Awards and a share of $1,000 in prize money.

Climate change was the central issue at the 100th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Boston, where students, faculty and alumni from the Kennedy College of Sciences shared their environmental and atmospheric science research and networked with meteorologists, climate scientists and academics from around the country.

The commonwealth of Massachusetts recognized UMass Lowell for its sustainability efforts across campus with a 2019 Leading by Example award, which Chancellor Jacquie Moloney accepted at a State House ceremony. 

The National Science Foundation recently recognized Asst. Prof. Hsi-Wu Wong of the Department of Chemical Engineering with a prestigious faculty early career development grant, called the “CAREER” award. This highly competitive annual program selects the nation’s best young university faculty-scholars “who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.”

Causing numerous deaths and billions of dollars in damages, recent wildfires in California have raised concerns about growing wildfire risk. As people become more vulnerable to wildfire risk, it is imperative that information regarding such risk is effectively communicated.

How do individuals with a variety of interests and wills form common cause to change society? Working at the interface of media and movements, Charlotte Ryan studies how individuals build learning communities that, in turn, form coalitions and movements for systems change.

Climate models are used to study how and why atmospheric rivers change as the climate changes. This is the research topic of Chris Skinner’s recent NSF grant: “Elucidating the drivers and consequences of changes in atmospheric rivers from the last glacial maximum to the present day.”

Professor Robert Gamache’s current work aids satellite programs of NASA’s Earth Observing System, missions to Mars and Venus, several satellite programs of ESA, EUMETSAT and CNES, and the study of the atmospheres of exoplanets.

The UMass Lowell Climate Change Initiative, in conjunction with the National Association of Geoscience Teachers and the College of Education, hosted a professional development workshop for two dozen area K-12 teachers on incorporating climate change education into the classroom. 

A major goal of this grant is to contribute to research on the potential of systems thinking, place-based curriculum in out-of-school TRIO college access programs, such as Upward Bound, to increase underrepresented students’ STEM interest, self-efficacy, and motivation to pursue STEM degrees/careers.

The Climate Education in an Age of Media (CAM) Project brought together a team of scientists, science educators, media artists, and media instructors, to create curriculum materials and resources that give geoscience educators the tools they need to bring student media production into their own climate change education work.

The university’s Climate Change Initiative hosted members of the state’s House Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change for a roundtable discussion on climate science and policy at which faculty members shared scientific research and expertise to help inform policy decisions.

The university marked two major milestones at its Earth Day celebration: the completion of its $23.1 million Accelerated Energy Program and its latest STARS Gold rating, which moves UML into the top 10 nationally.

Six of the 12 projects to receive a share of the $50,000 Sustainability Encouragement & Enrichment Development (S.E.E.D.) Fund this year were led by students, the most in the fund’s three-year history.

The River Hawk Shop now gives customers recyclable paper bags instead of single-use plastic bags, a move that will eliminate around 10,000 plastic bags from the waste stream each year. 

The 2018 David Lustick Climate Change Teach-In, “Invisibilities: Seeing and Unseeing the Anthropocene,” explored how images can both shape and obscure our understanding of climate and environment. It was organized by Assoc. Prof. of Art History Kirsten Swenson as part of the IDEA Leadership Grant Initiative.

The university planted 25 mature trees and shrubs behind Allen House on South Campus, all donated by the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust via a $10,000 grant from TD Bank.

Ten projects led by students, faculty and staff received more than $50,000 in support from the university’s Sustainability Encouragement & Enrichment Development (S.E.E.D.) Fund, which saw a jump in applications in its second year.