Hot and humid conditions are ‘going to be the story for some time’ in Omaha area.
A midsummer’s heat wave has gripped the region, with no significant relief in sight.
Despite being short on moisture, Omaha and southeastern Nebraska have escaped the drought and near-drought conditions that have gripped most of the rest of the state, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
“It’s July and it’s hot and it’s humid, and that’s going to be the story for some time,” said Dan Pydynowski, a meteorologist with AccuWeather Inc., The World-Herald’s weather consultant.
“Typical July weather,” said Bryon Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Storms moving through could cool things off, but could also provide the moisture that would spike humidity, he said.
If temperatures don’t moderate, the coming week could be the hottest stretch of weather of the year, according to KMTV.
“We know July is usually going to be hot, and this year is no exception,” Pydynowski said.
“Drink lots of fluids and stay out of sun if you can.” Omaha is about 2.4 inches short on rain for the summer, according to the weather service.
Drought from that area tends to be less aggressive than drought that comes up from the Southern Plains, due to rainfall patterns.

Solar Powered Condenser Turns Ambient Humidity into Drinking Water.
MIT and UC-Berkeley Scientists recently demonstrated a new device designed to collect water straight from ambient air using only solar power.
This water harvester can even pull moisture in desert climates where humidity is as low as 20 percent.
At any moment, it’s estimated that atmosphere contains about 3,100 cubic miles of water vapor, which is enough to cover the entire surface of the Earth with one inch of water if it fell all at once.
In addition to its most visible form, clouds, atmospheric water is also present in clear air and the entire system is recycled every nine days.
Solar Powered Condenser; Off-Grid Water Harvester Researchers at MIT, in collaboration with the University of California Berkeley, have developed a prototype for a device that pulls water from clear air using solar power.
The device, reported in the journal Science, is an open air chamber containing a lattice-like structure made from a metal-organic framework (MOF), produced at the UC-Berkeley.
By the same year, two-thirds of the global population could be living under water-stressed conditions.
Developing solutions to sanitize water and produce it where it is scarce is a major challenge for many countries.
And there’s no resource more accessible than ambient air.

The area of wildfires in Borneo during drought years turns out to be ten times larger than during non-drought years, an international research team reports in Nature Climate Change of this week. The fires recurrently affecting Borneo’s humid tropical ecosystems have negative influence on the biodiversity and lead to large CO2 emissions, affecting atmospheric composition and regional climate processes. Future droughts in wet tropical regions will likely increase in frequency and severity, and consequently the fire risk, the team says. The researchers from Wageningen University & Research, Bogor Agricultural University in Indonesia, University of East Anglia and the Center for International Forestry Research analysed the spatially distributed pattern of hydrological drought, that is the drought in groundwater recharge, in Borneo using a simple transient water balance model driven by monthly climate data from the period 1901-2015. Their findings provide evidence that there has been a drying trend in terms of affected area, since the start of the last century. Droughts and wildfires The team also explored the link between hydrological drought and wildfire using the monthly fire area burnt from the spatially distributed Global Fire Emission Dataset from the period 1996-2015. They classified years in this period into drought and non-drought…

Climate change forecast: More intense deluges and downpours Down Under.
Dorothy Mackellar’s now classic view of Australia as a country of droughts and flooding rains is likely to get a further boost with just a 2°C rise in global warming.
New findings from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, published in Nature Climate Change, have pointed to strong increases in rainfall during extreme precipitation events in Australia as a result of global warming.
This paper reveals that with just a rise of 2°C in global average temperatures, Australia will see a 11.3-30% intensification in rainfall from extreme precipitation events.
Greater average humidity led to a sharper increase in the intense rainfall events.
But even in areas where average humidity and rainfall was lower, suggesting increasing aridity, the most extreme rainfall events still saw an 11.3% increase in total rainfall with 2°C of global warming.
Australia’s infrastructure will need to be prepared to adapt to these more extreme rainfall events even if we act to moderate the global temperature rise to within 2°C."
The paper also went beyond the 2°C international Paris Agreement target, looking at what would happen with a 4°C rise in global temperature, which is a likely outcome based on current increases in the rate of carbon emissions.
ScienceDaily, 17 January 2017.
Retrieved April 17, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170117140252.htm University of New South Wales.

Solar Powered Water Harvester Turns Desert Air Into Drinking Water.
Scientists demonstrated a new device designed to collect water straight from the ambient air using only solar power.
This water harvester can even pull moisture in desert climates where average humidity is as low as 20 percent.
Off-Grid Water Harvester Researchers at MIT, in collaboration with the University of California Berkeley, have developed a prototype for a device that pulls water from the air, using only ambient sunlight.
And there’s no resource more accessible than ambient air.
Considering what this device was able to produce at 20-30% humidity, it would be extremely useful in a densely-populated, consistently high-humidity city like San Antonio.
Abroad Outerbate, a village high in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, is home to an 80-year old water supply system.
But, what if MIT’s water harvester could be implemented in Outerbate?
The average regional humidity is 40-80%.
Where else could this system help most?

Solar Powered Water Harvester Turns Desert Air Into Drinking Water.
Scientists demonstrated a new device designed to collect water straight from the ambient air using only solar power.
This water harvester can even pull moisture in desert climates where average humidity is as low as 20 percent.
Off-Grid Water Harvester Researchers at MIT, in collaboration with the University of California Berkeley, have developed a prototype for a device that pulls water from the air, using only ambient sunlight.
And there’s no resource more accessible than ambient air.
Considering what this device was able to produce at 20-30% humidity, it would be extremely useful in a densely-populated, consistently high-humidity city like San Antonio.
Abroad Outerbate, a village high in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, is home to an 80-year old water supply system.
But, what if MIT’s water harvester could be implemented in Outerbate?
The average regional humidity is 40-80%.
Where else could this system help most?

Solar-powered device pulls drinking water straight out of thin air.
People living in arid, drought-ridden areas may soon be able to get water straight from a source that is all around them – the air, US researchers say.
Scientists have developed a box that can convert low-humidity air into water, producing several litres every 12 hours, they wrote in the journal Science.
Share on Facebook SHARE Share on Twitter TWEET Link "It takes water from the air and it captures it," said Evelyn Wang, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and co-author of the paper.
The technology could be "really great for remote areas where there"s really limited infrastructure", she said.
The system, which is still in the prototype phase, uses a material that resembles powdery sand to trap air in its tiny pores.
When heated by the sun or another source, water molecules in the trapped air are released and condensed, essentially "pulling" the water out of the air, the scientists said.
Areas going through droughts often experience dry air, but Wang said the new product could still help them get access to water.
"Now we can get to regions that really are pretty dry, arid regions," she said.
It opens the way for use of [the technology] to water large regions as in agriculture."

Moisture Farming From ‘Star Wars’ Will Soon Be A Reality, Scientists Say [Video].
In the fictional world of George Lucas’ "Star Wars," Tatooine is a desert planet where there are moisture farmers using devices called "vaporators" to extract water from desert air.
On the real world of planet Earth, researchers have built a device utilizing the same principle.
To demonstrate how the device does it, visualize a tall iced glass of any drink, water droplets form on the outside of the glass.
Condensation occurs when warm air is cooled down, which can then be collected.
In desert locales, there is lower water content in the air making the system less efficient.
To solve this problem, a passive cooling technology is employed along with a type of material and surface quality critical for water collection.
Researchers have shown this can be realized by adding a special coating that attracts water molecules.
However, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed technology that is potentially more efficient.
Reports indicate that a kilogram of this material can potentially harvest 2.8 liters of water a day in environments with humidity levels as low as 20 percent without the need of an external power source.

Solar-Powered Device That Sucks Moisture From Air Can Save Millions From Water-Related Diseases.
Foreground — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Opaque Background — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done Play Video Play Mute Current Time 0:00 / Duration Time 0:00 Loaded: 0% Progress: 0% Stream TypeLIVE Remaining Time -0:00 Playback Rate 1 Chapters Chapters Subtitles subtitles off Captions captions settings captions off Fullscreen This is a modal window.
Foreground — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Opaque Background — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window — White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan — Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Default Monospace Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Sans-Serif Casual Script Small Caps Defaults Done A sponge-like device that uses the power of sunlight to harvest water vapor from air even in areas with low humidity such as deserts could be an answer to the world’s water scarcity problem.
Water Scarcity And Water-Related Diseases Figures from the World Health Organization show that at least 1.8 billion people worldwide drink water that are contaminated with feces.
WHO estimates that diarrhea alone that is caused by viral, parasitic, and bacterial organisms from contaminated water supplies kills 842,000 and sickens about 4 billion people per year.
Schistosomiasis, which is caused by parasitic worms that are contracted through exposure to infested water, also affects 240 million people.
The drought results in proliferation of water-related diseases, as people have to rely on contaminated and stagnant water sources.
New Device May Make Water More Accessible To Dry And Drought-Stricken Areas The new device developed by MIT researchers offers hope in that it is capable of wringing water from air even in areas with low humidity.
Researchers said that the device can produce liters of water in areas where humidity is as low as 20 percent, which is about the same as the humidity in most deserts.
The device may one day become a household fixture in poorer parts of the world where water is scarce, allowing people to produce their own drinking water rather than walking far distances to fetch water or rely on available but contaminated water sources.

Scientists Turn Air Into Drinking Water With Device Powered Solely by Sunlight.
Scientists have created a device that can pull drinking water from the air using only the power of sunlight.
That could change the lives of the 4 billion people around the globe who lack access to safe drinking warer for at least one month per year.
The technology is based on a material called a metal-organic framework (MOF), first developed by Yaghi more than 20 years ago.
Recently, he and Wang, a mechanical engineer, teamed up to develop an MOF device that could collect water.
This was in conditions with just 20 to 30 percent humidity.
Wang tells Newsweek that at the moment, the device is not viable as a commercial product.
We can then think about clever designs of how to stack these layers into the system by which you can enhance the transportation of the vapor molecules and the production of the water.” The plan is to create a 30-liter system, about the size of a carry-on suitcase, which would be able to provide drinking water for a family of four each day.
Certainly, there are many techniques for capturing water at high humidity but all those don’t work at low humidity as this MOF device does.
“This is the first material and device capable of water capture and delivery under such conditions, making it potentially possible to water those areas where water is scarce.