Europe and U.S. Pacific Northwest face record heat

By Michael Carlowicz12 July 2015 (NASA) – For two weeks in late June and early July 2015, western Europe and the Pacific Northwest of North America endured record-setting heat and parched landscapes. Other parts of the world got a taste of the heat, too, as new temperature records were set on three continents. The map […]

California drought leads to mass tree felling across Los Angeles

By Adam Justice 7 July 2015 City officials in Los Angeles have said they don’t have enough water to irrigate all the trees in the city, so they are cutting down roughly 14,000 of those that are dead or dying from drought. ”It’s difficult to say the specific cause of death. But the drought is […]

Heat wave in U.S. West enters second chapter – More record highs through holiday weekend

By Jon Erdman and Nick Wiltgen4 July 2015 (The Weather Channel) – While it may not be quite as hot as last weekend in some areas, there appears to be no end in sight to this torrid heat wave in the West. June and even a few all-time record highs have already been shattered in […]

Megacity drought: São Paulo withers after dry ‘wet season’

By Leila Carvalho26 June 2015 (The Conversation) – Exceptional drought, extreme temperatures, unprecedented drops in reservoir levels, and threatening water shortages for millions of people have dominated headlines in California in recent years. Unfortunately, Californians are not the only people being stressed with the “water crisis.” Citizens of one of the most densely populated areas […]

The baffling, gruesome plague that is causing sea stars to tear themselves to pieces – ‘It’s the stuff of nightmares’

By Nathaniel Rich13 May 2015 (Vice) – Allison Gong is a marine biologist, so she knows perfectly well that a sea star has no blood, brain, or central nervous system. Still, she can’t help thinking of the stars in her lab as pets. “Because of my weird personality,” she told me, “I form an emotional […]

California drought taking serious toll on aging sewer system in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, 29 June 2015 (CBS SF) – California’s severe drought is taking a serious toll on San Francisco’s aging sewer system. Some of the city’s 1,000 miles of sewer pipes are more than 100 years old, among the first installed after the Gold Rush. The waste was getting dumped into the streets, the streets […]

California drought is part of a much bigger water crisis

By Abrahm Lustgarten, Lauren Kirchner, Amanda Zamora, and ProPublica26 June 2015 (Scientific American) – Why do I keep hearing about the California drought, if it’s the Colorado River that we’re “killing”? Pretty much every state west of the Rockies has been facing a water shortage of one kind or another in recent years.  California’s is […]

EPA’s new fracking study: A close look at the numbers buried in the fine print – At least 12.2 million Americans live or drink water from within a mile of a fracked well

By Sharon Kelly25 June 2015 (DeSmog) – When EPA’s long-awaited draft assessment on fracking and drinking water supplies was released, the oil and gas industry triumphantly focused on a headline-making sentence: “We did not find evidence of widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.” But for fracking’s backers, a sense of […]

California water cuts leave city days away from running out of water – ‘We don’t want this town to become a ghost town, it was a beautiful master-planned community’

By Nick Janes16 June 2015 MOUNTAIN HOUSE (CBS13) – The community of Mountain House is days away from having no water at all after the state cut off its only water source. Anthony Gordon saves drinking water just in case, even though he never thought it would come to this. “My wife thinks I’m nuts. […]

Western wildfires: Firefighters battling blazes in 4 states as weather heats up in West

18 June 2015 (Associated Press) – Wildfires are chewing through parched parts of the West, where temperatures are rising Thursday. Here’s a look at the latest hotspots and what crews are doing to control them. ALASKA Two wildfires are burning outside Anchorage, one that tripled in size and forced the evacuation of campsites on the […]

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