California has seen so much rain over the past few weeks that farm fields are inundated and normally dry creeks and drainage ditches have become torrents of water racing toward the ocean. Yet, most of the state remains in severe drought. Andrew Fisher, University of California, Santa Cruz The Conversation The L.A. River was wild […]
It may not feel like it, but technically, meteorological summer is over. Of course, that doesn’t mean that temperatures will cool off immediately. So what does the first month of meteorological autumn hold? The September 2022 climate outlook from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center favors a warmer-than-average month for much of the contiguous U.S. outside of the southern […]
As global temperatures rise, people in the tropics, including places like India and Africa’s Sahel region, will likely face dangerously hot conditions almost daily by the end of the century – even as the world reduces its greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows. David Battisti, University of Washington The Conversation The mid-latitudes, including the […]
On Aug. 24, 2022, the State Water Resources Control Board issued the following statement regarding an enforcement action regarding illegal diversions by the Shasta Water Users Association. By Dan Bacher As California heads into a fourth year of drought, the State Water Resources Control Board has continued to protect water supplies and the environment by […]
Green water – the rainwater available to plants in the soil – is indispensable for life on and below the land. But in a new study, we found that widespread pressure on this resource has crossed a critical limit. By Arne Tobian, Stockholm University; Dieter Gerten, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and Lan Wang […]
Summer and fall are wildfire season across the western U.S. In recent years, wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes, forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate and exposed tens of millions to harmful smoke. By Nathan Mietkiewicz, National Ecological Observatory Network and Jennifer Balch, University of Colorado Boulder The Conversation Wildfires are a natural […]
The heat wave hitting the northwestern U.S. and Canada has been shattering records, with temperatures 30 degrees Fahrenheit or more above normal. With drought already gripping the West, the intense heat has helped suck even more moisture from millions of acres of forests and grasslands, bringing dead vegetation in many regions to record-dry levels and […]
“Are you going to run out of water?” is the first question people ask when they find out I’m from Arizona. The answer is that some people already have, others soon may and it’s going to get much worse without dramatic changes. Robert Glennon, University of Arizona The Conversation Unsustainable water practices, drought and climate […]
The water in Lake Powell, one of the nation’s largest reservoirs, has fallen so low amid the Western drought that federal officials are resorting to emergency measures to avoid shutting down hydroelectric power at the Glen Canyon Dam. Caitlin Grady, Penn State and Lauren Dennis, Penn State The Conversation The Arizona dam, which provides electricity […]
Domestic water use in California rose by 19 percent in March, exposing what Food & Water Watch describes as the “clear failure” of Governor Gavin Newsom’s repeated pleas for voluntary reductions in household water consumption, as well as California’s failure to rein in Big Ag and other corporate water abusers. By Dan Bacher This morning […]
Journalists reporting on the status and future of the Colorado River are increasingly using the phrase “dead pool.” It sounds ominous. And it is. Robert Glennon, University of Arizona The Conversation Dead pool occurs when water in a reservoir drops so low that it can’t flow downstream from the dam. The biggest concerns are Lake […]
News Release from the California Water Impact Network: A paper that was recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change had a convoluted title: Rapid Intensification of the Emerging Southwestern North American Megadrought in 2020-2021. But what the paper detailed was explicit, easily understood – and terrifying. Using tree-ring data, researchers determined that the decades between 2000-2021 were the driest […]
The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced this week that they will increase the State Water Project allocations to 15%, but Scientist Deirdre De Jardins of California Water Research warns that DWR is “taking a huge risk” of not meeting environmental water needs later in the year given the huge problems last year with […]
As the three latest fish surveys on the Delta reveal that the Delta smelt is virtually extinct in the wild, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) today announced an initial State Water Project (SWP) allocation of 0 percent for state water contractors in 2022, with the exception of certain health and safety needs. By Dan Bacher DWR also announced several […]
Above-average temperatures are favored across the South and most of the eastern U.S. as La Nina climate conditions have emerged for the second winter in a row according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center — a division of the National Weather Service. In NOAA’s 2021 Winter Outlook — which extends from December 2021 through February 2022 — wetter-than-average conditions are anticipated […]