A theoretical index linking precipitation and atmospheric evaporative demand explains historical land humidity changes across observations, reanalyses, and climate models.

Observations, reanalysis, and E3SMv3 experiments linked inter-annual variability of Congo Basin surface temperature to the zonal position of precipitation over the Indo-Pacific maritime continent region.

Quasi-stationary Rossby waves shape North American temperature extremes, but higher model resolution does not always improve their modeled representation.

Watershed-based representation discretized into topographic subgrid units better captured small-scale land cover, precipitation, temperature, and snow variability across multiple spatial scales.

Numerical simulations reveal how well-controlled wall temperature and moisture can generate a stratocumulus-like cloud top in a laboratory cloud chamber.

A new tracer model tracked how May 2015 storm water re-entered the atmosphere and contributed to later rainfall.

Physics-informed and data-driven neural network models enhance Earth system models in simulating compound flooding at river-ocean interfaces.

Artificial intelligence helps analyze images and reduce uncertainty for a key measure of watershed function.

Dynamic organic matter traits tied to reactions can surpass static descriptors in explaining decomposition rates and responses to environmental change.

Using an AI approach to combine outputs from microbial models and apply them as inputs to reactive-transport models reduces computational time by several orders of magnitude.

Tracking water age using a new precipitation tagging method within a hydrologic model generates key information to support hydropower energy and other water-dependent systems.

More rain and less snow shorten how long water stays in watersheds.

​​Tests show which low-cost 3D method best matches field measurements to minimize errors in mapping headwaters.​

PNNL has developed a next-generation electrical resistivity tomography system for DOE that uses E4D software and AI-enhanced modeling to produce real-time subsurface images that help guide environmental remediation decisions.

RemPlex 2025 Global Summit on Environmental Remediation attendees share knowledge about cleanup and monitoring of complex sites worldwide; more than 100 presentations are posted online.

Distributed science is thriving at PNNL, where scientists share data and collaborate with researchers around the world to increase the impact of the work.

The first direct molecular-scale evidence of the temperature-driven transformation of the coordination environment of ytterbium at geologically relevant conditions.

Researchers have developed the first coastal transport model for microplastics to understand how particles move in waterways and coastal currents.

High-resolution hydrodynamic-sediment modeling shows that inundation, suspended sediment concentration in the Amazon River, and floodplain hydrodynamics drive sediment deposition in Amazonian floodplains.

Lakes are important sentinels of climate change and contribute significantly to the emissions of the second most important greenhouse gas—methane.