Wind

VTT Technical Centre of Finland unveiled its decorative, mass-producible organic photovoltaic (OPV) leaves in January. Now, the company has followed the logical path and come up with an energy-harvesting tree that generates electricity from a variety of sources.

Generally speaking, wind turbines are banished to uninhabited countryside, or even out to sea.A French entrepreneur says that sculpting them in the form of artificial trees could see them more widely adopted in urban centers, making use of weaker winds that circulate around buildings and streets.

When a tornado's heading your way, the best thing you can do is to go your basement or better yet, to a purpose-built storm shelter. The problem is, not everyone has access to either. That's where the Tuuli Armor Tornado Shield comes in. Essentially, it's a big bag that you get inside of.

The Skywatch Windoo series of anemometers from Swiss company JDC Electronic SA pack wind- and weather-tracking power into your smartphone by way of a sleek, plug-in unit that's small enough to clip on to your keychain.

Building enormous walls as a means of preventing tornadoes might sound far-fetched, but a new study suggests that strategically placed, 1,000 ft (300 m) high walls could negate the forming of the destructive wind storms in the American Midwest's notorious Tornado Alley.

Hitting the beach or lake on top of a paddleboard has been all the rage over the past few years, and some enthusiasts have set out to make it better. The latest innovation comes to the paddle, integrating a small sail into its handle to give boarders a little wind power on the water.

To help make sure that airdrops end up where they belong, the US Air Force Research Laboratory has awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin to adapt its WindTracer wind measurement system for the Precision Air Drop unit to help aircrews land supplies faster and on target.

A helium-filled shell with a wind turbine in the middle, the Buoyant Air Turbine from Altaeros has already been tested to 500 feet off the ground in 45 mph winds. Now it's set to break the world record for the highest wind turbine in history.

Soaring birds catch rides on rising air currents to save energy, and now researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, are aiming to develop bio-inspired UAVs capable of doing the same thing.

Though a pause in global warming since 2001 has created something of a paradox for climate scientists, a new study suggests the stabilizing of air temperatures is a result of abnormally strong east to west trade winds, causing warmth to be stored temporarily beneath the western Pacific ocean.

Four turbines at the Smøla wind farm in Norway are to have one rotor blade painted black to see whether increasing the visual contrast of the turbine against its background might help to reduce bird strikes.

Crowdfunding has come to the small wind generation field with an Indiegogo campaign for a small wind generator intended for an interesting target niche: clipped onto solar panels.