Storms filled 37 percent of California snow-water deficit

27 January 2017 (JPL) – The “atmospheric river” weather patterns that pummeled California with storms from late December to late January may have recouped 37 percent of the state’s five-year snow-water deficit, according to new University of Colorado Boulder-led research using NASA satellite data. Researchers at the university’s Center for Water Earth Science and Technology […]

U.S. health care repeal could cause 3 million people to lose jobs and trigger broad economic disruption

Washington, D.C., 5 January 2017 (The Commonwealth Fund) – A repeal of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could lead to significant economic disruption and substantial job losses in every state, according to new research. In 2019 alone, 2.6 million people could lose their jobs. These losses could rise to nearly 3 million […]

Climate scientists hatch plans to deal with Trump antiscience policies – ‘If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellites’

By Josh Fischman15 December 2016 SAN FRANCISCO (Scientific American) – Anxiety among Earth and climate scientists has been mounting for weeks. The election of Donald J. Trump as U.S. president, a candidate who called human-driven climate change a hoax, was followed by Trump naming more and more climate-change doubters to run the government’s environment and […]

102 million dead California trees ‘unprecedented in our modern history’

By Matt Stevens18 November 2016 (Los Angeles Times) – The number of dead trees in California’s drought-stricken forests has risen dramatically to more than 102 million in what officials described as an unparalleled ecological disaster that heightens the danger of massive wildfires and damaging erosion. Officials said they were alarmed by the increase in dead […]

Grassland tuned to present environmental conditions suffers in a hotter future – Study finds no CO2 fertilization effect

STANFORD, California, 5 September 2016 (Carnegie Science) – One of the world’s longest-running, most comprehensive climate change experiments produced some surprising results. The extensive experiment subjected grassland ecosystems to sixteen possible future climates and measured many aspects of ecosystem performance and sustainability. This study, appearing in the September 5, 2016, Early Online Edition of the […]

The blob that cooked the Pacific Ocean

By Craig Welch10 August 2016 (National Geographic) – The first fin whale appeared in Marmot Bay, where the sea curls a crooked finger around Alaska’s Kodiak Island. A biologist spied the calf drifting on its side, as if at play. Seawater flushed in and out of its open jaws. Spray washed over its slack pink […]

Timber company tells California town to find its own water – ‘The corporate mentality is that they can make more money selling this water to Japan’

By Thomas Fuller2 October 2016 WEED, California (The New York Times) – The water that gurgles from a spring on the edge of this Northern California logging town is so pristine that for more than a century it has been piped directly to the wooden homes spread across hills and gullies. To the residents of […]

Bark beetles: How tiny tree killers have worsened California wildfires – ‘It’s gone from critical to catastrophic’

By Max Blau and Paul Vercammen24 August 2016 (CNN) – A decade ago, Ben Ray had hoped to ease into retirement at his two-story wooden house nestled in the heart of the Sequoia National Forest. But the 79-year-old central California general contractor, who built homes for his future neighbors in Sierra Nevada Mountain communities such […]

Plagues devastating forests across the U.S. West – ‘We’re talking millions of trees killed, whole mountain sides dying’

By Oliver Milman and Alan Yuhas19 September 2016 (Guardian) – JB Friday hacked at a rain-sodden tree with a small axe, splitting open a part of the trunk. The wood was riven with dark stripes, signs of a mysterious disease that has ravaged the US’s only rainforests – and just one of the plagues that […]

Can a new vaccination stem the frog apocalypse? – ‘We’re staring at what could be the extinction of a significant fraction of the world’s amphibians’

By Lauren Sommer6 September 2016 (KQED) – A deadly fungus that’s been devastating frog populations is still spreading across the globe. In California, the chytrid fungus has moved inexorably across the Sierra Nevada from west to east, leaving thousands of frogs dead. But Bay Area scientists are trying to turn the tide against the fungus […]

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