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Despite decreasing cloudiness in China over the past half century, a new Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that less sunlight is reaching land. The researchers suggest that heavy air pollution shades earth's surface there, masking greenhouse warming and altering precipitation potential.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has awarded contracts to four university teams to support the Department of Homeland Security's mission with the National Visualization and Analytics Center. These contracts will establish regional visualization centers and will bring academic expertise to the nation's efforts to discover information that may warn officials of a terrorist attack before it can be carried out.

A team comprised of Purdue University and Indiana University's School of Medicine has been named a Regional Visualization and Analytics Center by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash. PNNL leads the Department of Homeland Security's National Visualization and Analytics Center, which is bringing academic expertise to the nation's efforts to discover information that may warn officials of a terrorist attack.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory announced today the launch of the Pacific Northwest GridWiseTM Demonstration Projects, a regional initiative to test and speed adoption of new smart grid technologies that can make the power grid more resilient and efficient.

Earth's climate is noticeably changing over time. Glaciers are smaller, droughts last longer, and extreme weather events like fires, floods and hurricanes occur more frequently. PNNL researchers involved in the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program are working to understand these phenomena through improved cloud representations in the computer models that simulate changes in the earth's climate.

The advancement in computing technology has enabled scientists to collect massive amounts of data, taking us a step closer to solving complex problems such as global climate change and uncovering the secrets hidden in genes. The exponential growth in the amount of data collected in research, however, has created an urgent technical challenge.

Solving complex scientific problems requires not only advanced high-performance supercomputers but also innovative software programs that can discover patterns and integrate data across different space and time scales. Researchers at PNNL are creating innovative software and processes to do just that.

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has created a new way to manage scientific research and deal with the resulting information overload. Three types of knowledge centers -- science-based, technology-based and mission-based -- are tackling the daunting tasks of collecting, managing, visualizing, analyzing, distributing and storing massive data accumulations using unique software products.

Outbreaks of Avian flu or "bird flu" during the past several years have disrupted the poultry industry. More ominous is that the virus spreads to humans. The ability to identify this disease early on may help prevent epidemics that wreak havoc on a country's economy and take lives. Now, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, through the multi-year Environmental Biomarkers Initiative (EBI), are developing new techniques and tools for identifying these early warning signals also known as environmental biomarkers.

Ask any experienced do-it-yourselfer or professional and they'll tell you the importance of using the "right tool for the right job." At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Computational and Information Sciences Directorate (CISD), the right tools are powerful high-speed computer systems that are analyzing vast amounts of data and enabling scientists to discover solutions to many complex global problems.