Ashley Braun

1 month ago | smithsonianmag.com | Ashley Braun

Scientist Charles Keeling’s invention had a profound effect on scientists’ understanding of the severity of the climate change crisis To unlock the secrets of the atmosphere, first, travel away from cities, forests, cars and people, to somewhere the air blows clean. Say, the top of a Hawaiian volcano. Bring two round glass flasks, volleyball-sized but with the air vacuumed out, wrapped in surgical tape for safety. Point the glass nozzle jutting from each toward that fresh air.

Mar 25, 2025 | nautil.us | Ashley Braun

From inside a package about the size of a shoebox mounted to a ship’s deck, a set of highly stabilized heat-sensing cameras scan the ocean’s surface. Suddenly, against the misty waves far in the distance, they spot a small puff of white. And another. Now the algorithm catches on. A machine learning system snags the footage and runs it through a neural network trained on millions of similar snippets. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now .

Mar 18, 2025 | nationalobserver.com | Ashley Braun

Led by Daniel Zitterbart, a biophysicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, scientists have been testing this new AI-powered but human-verified whale detection system on ferries, research vessels, and cruise ships, and from land-based installations along the east and west coasts of North America, as well as in parts of the Southern Ocean. Since WhaleSpotter first got underway during research trials in 2019, its capabilities have grown tremendously.

Dec 27, 2024 | desmog.com | Ashley Braun |Julie Dermansky

As the year began, the climate movement had its sights set on reining in the sprawling liquefied natural gas (LNG) export industry that’s been transforming the Gulf Coast since 2016. Author and activist Bill McKibben proclaimed “a massive win” early on. But that victory proved to be short-lived. From start to finish, the future of LNG in the United States would take a wild ride in 2024.

Dec 16, 2024 | thestranger.com | Ashley Braun

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we live in a bubble. No, not the political bubble, or even the tech bro bubble (though anyone who’s ever spent time on dating apps seeking viable men knows what that’s like). I’m talking about the blissful temperate climate bubble—the illusion that this region has two weather modes: drizzly winter depression and sunny summer euphoria. For a long time, the thinking seemed to go: We barely deal with snow here.