Energy, Climate, & Infrastructure Security (ECIS)

Modeling & Analysis

RESOURCE: Interview with Nancy Brune, Sandia National Laboratories

Nancy Brune,  a Senior Policy analyst at Sandia National Laboratories and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, discusses security and sustainability with discusses security and sustainability with Ed Saltzberg, Managing Director of the Security and Sustainability Forum. Click here to listen to this audio track at the website for the [...]

Officials Turn to Sandia National Labs for Help on Huge Sinkhole

The 300-foot-wide sinkhole that has threatened since August to swallow gas pipelines, homes, and property in south Louisiana has drawn in experts from Sandia National Laboratories normally associated with nuclear research to figure out its cause. Experts are trying to determine what caused the sinkhole to form and expand in Assumption Parish’s Bayou Corne that [...]

Alaskan North Slope Climate: Hard Data from a Hard Place

Mark Ivey—manager for Sandia of the Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) climate research facility at Barrow—is waiting for the automated release of a weather balloon … [which] measures the Arctic atmosphere’s temperature, humidity, and wind speeds at a rapid succession of altitudes as it rises. The data gathering is part of an ongoing [...]

Water Not So “Squishy” Under Pressure

When squeezed to pressures and temperatures like those inside giant planets, water molecules are less squeezable than anticipated, defying a set of decades-old equations used to describe watery behavior over a range of conditions. Studying how molecules behave in such environments will help scientists better understand the formation and composition of ice giants like Uranus [...]