Utah looks to expand cloud seeding to help with drought, Great Salt Lake

Many herders are adapting to climate change by adopting farming. In the wake of severe droughts in recent years, herding communities in Ethiopia have expressed increasing interest in farming as a way to secure additional income. The non-profit organization, Farm Africa, helps herders to make the transition into farming by educating and assisting them with technical matters, such as irrigation, as well as aiding with financing and finding markets.

In Arizona, the use of drones as farming technology is gaining traction. While still in the early stages, drones have shown to help with field mapping and data collection on things like crop conditions, water quality, and infestations. In an area that has been experiencing a 2-decade drought, these drones are able to help identify more precisely the water needed for soil.

The Women’s Collective is a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 subsistence farmers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to promote food security using millets, a crop resilient to drought and climate change. For Pavitra, one of those farmers, she began cultivating the ancient grains in 2015 and now has more than enough food to feed her family year-round. However, there’s a lack of public investment in millet production and machinery. And there’s no unified effort to create demand for millets: Some state governments lead the charge and in other states, it’s led by grassroots organizations.

Novva’s data center in West Jordan, Utah, uses recirculating pipes with refrigerant to cool its servers. This method uses significantly less water than the typical method, evaporative cooling.

After years of drought and land-clearing that left Niger with few trees left, the country now boasts about 200 million trees, which have mostly been reestablished naturally. While the effects of climate change could threaten the future of these trees, this method has also increased crop yields in villages. This model of letting trees grow back with little human influence could be implemented in other countries.

A startup is making buildings more eco-friendly by converting their energy needs from oil and gas to electric heat pumps. BlocPower is a Black-owned clean tech startup that provides a no money down lease option, making it financially accessible.

Led by Native Hawai’ians, Kamehameha Schools owns thousands of acres of land dedicated to stewardship and conservation. The school partners with Native Hawaiian organizations and conducts eco-cultural education programs for students and members of the community to foster connections between them and the environment.

The nonprofit Mahila Housing Trust provides women in India who are particularly vulnerable to extreme heat and heat-related illness with white solar reflective paint for the roofs of their homes. Painting the roofs white cools the inside of the homes by several degrees.

New Jersey schools are working to make climate education widespread by implementing general education standards that include climate change education in every grade and subject. These new education standards have been inspiring students to brainstorm solutions to climate-related issues like reducing food waste and increasing coastal resiliency. The state has also earmarked $5 million to help local teachers attend professional development sessions to teach them how to create new climate change-focused lesson plans.

The Office of Heat Response and Mitigation works to address the urban heat effect caused by intense summer temperatures. The Office has worked on several practices like coating streets and surfaces in light-colored, water-based asphalt treatments that reflect sunlight and absorb less heat than standard pavement. So far, 100 miles of residential roads have been covered in the treatment and roads with the treatment have an average surface temperature that is 10.5 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit lower than traditional asphalt.