Alex Rybchuk

NEW: The NWS has received permission to hire up to 450 meteorologists/hydrologists/radar technicians after DOGE-related cuts. Agency also given a public safety exemption from federal hiring freeze after losing more than 550 people in those cuts. (1/2)

The Department of Earth Science & Environmental Change in the School of Earth, Society, and Environment (https://earth.illinois.edu/) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the flagship campus of the University of Illinois System, invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Earth Surface Dynamics, with an emphasis on near-surface geophysics. We seek a scientist whose research addresses the physical, chemical, and biological processes that shape the Earth’s surface and near-surface environments—processes that influence water resources, landscape evolution, ecosystem health, and the mitigation of natural hazards. The full-time, 9-month (academic year) tenure-track faculty appointment is at the Assistant Professor level with a target start date of August 16, 2026. We are particularly interested in candidates who use near-surface geophysical methods—such as seismic, potential field, geodetic, and/or remote sensing techniques—to investigate shallow subsurface structures and link surface processes to deep-time geological or climatic phenomena. We welcome applicants whose work integrates field-based geophysical observations with computational or mathematical modeling, and fosters interdisciplinary connections across hydrology, geomorphology, critical zone science, atmospheric sciences, and engineering. Successful candidates will demonstrate experience with fostering or the ability to foster an inclusive and collaborative teaching, learning, departmental, and research environment where all can thrive. They will also advance the educational mission of the University of Illinois, a land-grant institution committed to access, education, research, and service and to addressing challenges at both local and global scales.

🚨Job Alert🚨
We're hiring in the broad area of *Earth Surface Dynamics Geophysics*

Please help me advertise this (rare) opportunity for a full-time tenure track assistant professorship.

illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

From 2020 to 2023, smoke PM2.5 concentrations were 2.6–6.7 times higher than the 2006–2019 average, with exposure periods twice as long.

Fascinating piece of data- capital expenditures from big tech up ~3x in last few years but tech employment is roughly flat/declining over that time, at least per: www.comptia.org/en-us/resour...

🚨 Postdoc in AI + Earth Science

Join ELLIOT (€25M EU project) in València to build next-gen foundation models for climate + Earth data 🌍🤖

🔗 Apply: forms.gle/gvhCQfLB4kko...
🗓 Deadline: Sept 15

#AI #Postdoc #ML #HorizonEurope #OpenScience #ELLIS @esa @esascience

You've heard of #methane super-emitters at oil and gas facilities.

But have you heard of super-emitting LNG supply chains?

Our latest work uses satellite data on 12 LNG exporting countries to assess their GHG intensity.

Paper: chemrxiv.org/engage/chemr...

this is a table headlined “A Brief Overview of Major US Clean Energy Tax Policy” by Shane Londagin, Avi Zevin, Luke Bassett, and the REPEAT Project. It then goes through each individual tax credit and how it has changed. You can find a full OCR-readable PDF version of the table at Heatmap

Seriously this is the most useful single table I’ve seen for summarizing what just happened to US clean energy tax credits. It is a beast. heatmap.news/politics/obb...

Graphical abstract of the paper telling this rough story: - Limited real-world deployment of advanced control in real buildings - Tons of modeling papers showing simulated performance improvements, but only 4% of ~3000 papers deploy in real buildings - We reviewed what's known from all field demonstrations we could find (52 in residential buildings, 154 in commercial) - We found that 71% of reviewed papers use experiment protocols that can make results unreliable - Over the reliable papers, duration-weighted average cost savings are 16% in residential, 13% in commercial - We recommend future work, notably including focusing R&D efforts on compressing deployment costs (which <10% of papers even discuss)

New paper: For 30+ years, researchers have worked on data-driven software (what some now call "AI") to heat and cool buildings more efficiently/comfortably and in better harmony with power grids. But <4% of papers in the field deploy in real buildings. We reviewed all the real stuff we could find.🧵

HRRRCast: a data-driven emulator for regional weather forecasting at convection allowing scales The High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model is a convection-allowing model used in operational weather forecasting across the contiguous United States (CONUS). To provide a computationally efficien...

And today we get HRRRCast! www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.05658

Dungeon Crawler Carl!

🎉 Great news: Our Machine Learning and Physical Sciences workshop will be back again this year! 🎉
Keep an eye out for updates on deadlines etc, we will be updating the website soon
ml4physicalsciences.github.io
#ML4PS2025

Full Committee Markup of Commerce, Justice, Science; Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA; and Legislative Branch Appropriations Acts | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

Senate committee on appropriations markup meeting is starting now. They'll be discussing a lot of stuff, but in particular, science agencies like NSF & NASA.

Yesterday Sen. Moran indicated funding would be 33.9 billion, preserving FY '24 numbers.
www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/ful...

Announcing the release of “Zoning Report: Colorado,” our first state-level report capturing unprecedented information about how land is zoned across Colorado. 🎉

www.zoningatlas.org/zoning-repor...

🧵

US home prices have greatly outpaced incomes: in 2024, the price-to-income ratio hit 5, well above the ratio of 3 that has traditionally been considered affordable. As prices rose, existing home sales dropped to a 30-year low.

New report out today:
www.jchs.harvard.edu/state-nation...

NSF Division of Earth Sciences Informational Webinar starting in less than a minute....

Will live post as things come up....

Fervo Energy Drills 15,000-FT, 500°F Geothermal Well, Pushing the Envelope… | Tim Latimer | 21 comments Excited to announce Fervo Energy&#39;s latest field results, where we have set a new standard for deep geothermal well drilling with the Sugarloaf Appraisal well: 15,000+ feet, 500°F. All in just 16 d...

Fervo announces new progress on geothermal drilling: deeper, faster, hotter
www.linkedin.com/posts/timlat... 🔌💡

This is the type of data that encouraged me to put a heat pump in my own house. They simply work!

And — never thought I'd care about this in New England — it also cools our house when the summers kick up above 90F / 30C.

This is concerning for all of us. I heard a conference I go to regularly is expecting up to 40% less attendees. That’s a LOT and affects their ability to even run the conference given the rates conference centers charge!

We're getting hit with 55 mph sustained winds at NREL's Flatirons Campus right now! midcdmz.nrel.gov/apps/gdispla...

Hold on to your butts #Boulder #cowx

🍃Tomorrow! 8-9 AM (MDT)🍃 European-American Collaboration in Wind Energy Presents: James G. Brasseur, CU Boulder “Nonsteady Forcing of the Wind Turbine Main Bearing by the Passage of Atmospheric Surface Layer Turbulence Eddies” Join Us Online! Details & Webcast link here: ral.ucar.edu/events/2025/...

The House Republican's budget bill is starting to drop. It extends trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy while effectively crippling US manufacturing & energy industries and raising energy costs. It's effectively full repeal of the IRA. Here's tax portion waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/u... 🔌💡

The average American has three friends

Tonight, Boulder City Council will decide whether to approve a redevelopment project in the Flatirons Business Park that was denied by the Planning Board.

This decision will shape the future of the East Boulder Subcommunity Plan—and set a lasting precedent.

@coloradosun.com @boulderrl.bsky.social

Colorado’s 25-Year Housing Gamble - Yellow Scene Magazine Colorado’s been stuck in the same cycle — sprawl, skyrocketing housing costs, and half-measures that don’t stick. Now, space is running out, and the state is running out of time to fix it.

“Colorado’s housing crisis is not an accident. It’s the predictable result of 25 years of decisions.”

yellowscene.com/2025/04/27/c...

Yellow Scene’s new piece is essential reading. Some highlights in the thread below:

#Colorado #HousingCrisis #UrbanPlanning

The rise of machine learning in climate modelling Click on the article title to read more.

THE RISE OF MACHINE LEARNING IN CLIMATE MODELLING Very pleased to report the first published output from the @metoffice.bsky.social new team Data Driven Climate Modelling team. A short commentary from my esteemed colleague George Jordan rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Ensemble‐Based, Large‐Eddy Reconstruction of Wind Turbine Inflow in a Near‐Stationary Atmospheric Boundary Layer Through Generative Artificial Intelligence To validate the second-by-second dynamics of turbines in field experiments, it is necessary to accurately reconstruct the winds going into the turbine. Current time-resolved inflow reconstruction tec....

Check out "Ensemble-Based, Large-Eddy Reconstruction of Wind Turbine Inflow in a Near-Stationary Atmospheric Boundary Layer Through Generative Artificial Intelligence" here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

In our new paper, we demonstrate for the first time that it is indeed possible* to use LES to reconstruct real-world ABLs in a way where you can track the observed large eddies (on the ~1 second timescale and ~10 m spatial scale).

*possible, but currently woefully impractical and kinda hacky

Mesoscale-microscale coupling techniques allow LES to follow bulk changes in the state of a real-world ABL, but if you want your LES to reconstruct on the scale of real-world "large eddies", you're out of luck.