Patty Guerra

The global climate crisis was entirely predictable and impacts nearly every facet of life. But we still can slow its progress and mitigate the effects we already see.

That was the message delivered earlier this month by climate scientist Michael Mann, who spoke at the first in a series of presentations at UC Merced planned for the university community and the public.

Mann said he and colleagues published research in the 1990s that showed the Earth's warming and the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the climate.

Wildfires are growing more frequent and severe across the western United States, and California's Sierra Nevada is ground zero. Decades of fire suppression have left these forests overstocked and vulnerable to catastrophic fires, drought and pest outbreaks.

Beyond destroying homes and infrastructure, high-severity wildfires release massive amounts of carbon, degrade water quality, erode soils, reduce timber supply and fill the air with hazardous smoke that threatens public health.

Lightning from thunderstorms rolling through Central California on Sept. 2 ignited numerous wildfires, including several large fires in the Sierra Nevada foothills that had burned more than 19 square miles by Wednesday morning. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services recorded more than 9,000 lightning strikes in a single day.

Lightning is a major source of wildfire ignition in the western United States every summer.

A team of UC Merced researchers has shown that tiny artificial cells can accurately keep time, mimicking the daily rhythms found in living organisms. Their findings shed light on how biological clocks stay on schedule despite the inherent molecular noise inside cells.

Recently, more than 150 students at 10 high schools in Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C. completed Climate Justice, a UC Merced course , through a unique partnership between the University of California and the National Education Equity Lab.

Pictures accompanying Professor John Abatzoglou's presentation on the 2025 fire season were blurry. That was intentional, he said, because so much about wildfire is unpredictable.

"There's a lot that we know, and a lot we don't know," he said.

Conducting research can be daunting.

UC Merced, like its sister University of California campuses, prides itself on the opportunities it provides its students to conduct research as part of their educational experiences. But the idea of looking into a concept and producing new results can seem intimidating. Where do you even start?

National Parks are magnificent landscapes where the public can go for sightseeing and recreation. They also are research labs - gorgeous, awe-inspiring and wild research labs, to be sure. And the science conducted there can help ensure that the parks' natural beauty will be available for generations of people to come and enjoy, and also support local and national issues calling for sustainable management.

Researchers at UC Merced examined the relationship between science and the parks and how both can serve each other better.

A new study co-authored by UC Merced researchers assesses the effect of a warming climate in pushing the elevation of snow to rain higher during a storm, increasing runoff and the risk of flooding.

A grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will fund a project led by a UC Merced researcher looking into predicting behavior of wildfires.

Jeanette Cobian-Iñiguez is leading a team from UCs Merced and Irvine awarded $1,179,479 to predict the impact of forest fuel treatments on fire behavior, focusing on an improved understanding of the influence of surface-fuel attributes on fire behavior and severity, and ultimately, on forest carbon storage, according to a project summary.