23 June 2016 (Climate Central) – The 2016 wildfire season has barely begun and dozens of large wildfires have already raged through Western states, with hundreds of thousands of acres burned. This comes on the heels of a 2015 wildfire season that was the worst on record in the U.S., with more than 10 million […]
By Trevor Hughes26 June 2016 LAKE ISABELLA, California (USA TODAY) – As crews searched Saturday for more wildfire victims, officials said scorching heat predicted for the next week will likely help fuel the deadly Erskine Fire and complicate efforts to control the blaze. Two people are confirmed dead in the 35,000-acre wildfire that began Thursday […]
By Darryl Fears23 June 2016 (Washington Post) – The burning sensation in the southwestern United States was diagnosed by climate scientists more than a year ago. As California broiled in high temperatures and drought last year, academic institutions across the country released study after study that suggested rising temperatures and less moisture were part of […]
By Jodi Helmer6 June 2016 (NPR) – Between December and March, beekeepers send millions of hives to California to pollinate almond trees. Not all of the hives make it back home. “The number of beehive thefts is increasing,” explains Jay Freeman, a detective with the Butte County Sheriff’s Office. In California, 1,734 hives were stolen […]
By Alexander L. Forrest13 June 2016 (The Conversation) – In an age of rapid global population growth, demand for safe, clean water is constantly increasing. In 2010 the United States alone used 355 billion gallons of water per day. Most of the available fresh water on Earth’s surface is found in lakes, streams and reservoirs, […]
By Matt Wood17 June 2016 (University of Chicago) – California mussel shells collected off the coast of Washington state in the 1970s are, on average, 32 percent thicker than modern specimens, according to a new study published by UChicago biologists. Shells collected by Native Americans 1,000 to 1,300 years ago were also 27 percent thicker […]
VALLEJO, California, 22 June 2016 (USFS) – The U.S. Forest Service today announced that it has identified an additional 26 million trees dead in California since October 2015. These trees are located in six counties across 760,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada region of the state, and are in addition to the 40 million […]
By Matthew Chin21 June 2016 (UCLA) – Even with this winter’s strong El Niño, the Sierra Nevada snowpack will likely take until 2019 to return to pre-drought levels, according to a new analysis led by UCLA hydrology researchers. Additionally, they suggest their new method, which provided unprecedented detail and precision, could be useful in characterizing […]
By Nick Stockton13 May 2016 (Wired) – Drought is a tricky thing to define. It is not just a matter of how little water falls out of the sky. If it were, you would be forgiven for believing that California’s wettish winter had ended, or even alleviated, the worst drought in state history. But no. […]
By Ian Lovett 9 May 2016 LOS ANGELES (The New York Times) – With California entering its fifth year of a statewide drought, Gov. Jerry Brown moved on Monday to impose permanent water conservation measures and called on water suppliers to prepare for a future made drier by climate change. Under the governor’s executive order, […]
