Clean Technology Meets Data Science: News and Articles

 Join us in a few weeks at the 10th CA Water Data Summit! If you're interested in listening to how utilities are innovating and using AI in their systems as well as discussing climate risks and resilience, this is a great conference to be at.

  Researchers are using city-building video games , like Cities: Skylines , to improve urban planning and public engagement. The researchers from Lancaster University believe that traditional planning methods often fail to involve the public, but these games can serve as a powerful tool to immerse people in the process of shaping their own communities. The research shows that modified city-building games can act as a form of "digital twin," a virtual replica of a real environment. By importing real-world building models and data, players can manage realistic urban challenges like transportation, public services, and tax policies. This interactive approach allows people to not only learn about urban planning but also directly influence the outcomes of future developments. The game's dashboard can even measure citizen happiness, providing a tangible metric for the impact of their decisions. Engaging the Public A key finding is the potential for these games to make urban pla...

 When we think about the sources of greenhouse gases, our minds often jump to smokestacks, car exhaust, and factory farms. We rarely picture a serene lake or a babbling river. Yet, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that these seemingly tranquil inland waters are far from innocent bystanders in the climate crisis. In fact, they are significant and underestimated sources of powerful greenhouse gases, contributing a substantial "burden" to the atmosphere. A recent study , spotlighted in Eos , a publication by the American Geophysical Union, has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of this issue. It reveals that the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide ( C O 2 ​ ), methane ( C H 4 ​ ), and nitrous oxide ( N 2 ​ O ) from the world's lakes, reservoirs, ponds, and rivers are much higher than previously thought. This groundbreaking research is forcing us to reconsider the global carbon budget and how we model our planet's climate. The Hidden Carbon Factory ...

For centuries, our planet has spun on a predictable axis, a cosmic top-like motion that has governed our seasons and dictated the flow of life. But a surprising and significant new study has revealed that a seemingly routine human activity—pumping vast quantities of groundwater—is actually altering Earth's tilt, nudging its rotational pole by a measurable amount. This isn't just an abstract scientific curiosity; it's a testament to the sheer scale of human impact on the planet's systems, with long-term implications for our climate and environment. The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters , suggests that between 1993 and 2010, the human race extracted an astounding 2,150 gigatons of groundwater. To put that into perspective, that's enough water to raise global sea levels by over 6 millimeters, a significant contribution that has now been directly linked to the planet's wobbling. The study's lead author, Ki-Weon Seo of...

You’ve probably heard about the massive energy consumption of artificial intelligence, but there’s a hidden, and arguably more pressing, environmental cost that often goes unmentioned: water. As powerful AI models like ChatGPT become integrated into our daily lives, a new study reveals the staggering amount of water they consume, raising critical questions about the sustainability of the AI revolution. The Thirsty AI: Why Your Digital Assistant Needs a Drink When you type a query into a chatbot, you're not just communicating with lines of code. You're activating a vast network of servers housed in massive data centers. These servers are running sophisticated machine learning models, and all that computational power generates an immense amount of heat. To prevent the hardware from melting down, these data centers rely on sophisticated cooling systems—and that's where the water comes in. Data centers use massive cooling towers that function like giant swamp coolers. They pull...