California drought and the rise of the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge

By Daniel Swain1 April 2016 (The California Weather Blog) – Since early 2013, the state of California has been in the grip of an extraordinary multi-year drought. The accumulated precipitation deficit over the course of the ongoing drought is unprecedented in California’s century-long observational record, and when the additional drying effects of record-high temperatures are […]

Photo gallery: Aerial view of drought and fire impacts on California landscape

By Amy Graff29 March 2016 (Seattle PI) – About three and a half years ago, Thomas Heinser was on a plane landing at San Francisco International Airport, when he was admiring the beautiful color palettes of the salt ponds on the edge of the bay. The S.F.-based photographer had spent many years taking aerial images […]

1 in 5 people will be obese by 2025, study says – In past four decades, global obesity has doubled among women and more than tripled among men

By Joshua Berlinger1 April 2016 (CNN) – The obesity epidemic has gone global, and it may be worse than most thought. A new study in The Lancet says that if current trends continue, 18% of men and 21% of women will be obese by 2025. In four decades, global obesity has more than tripled among […]

Is global warming causing marine diseases to spread?

  By Charlotte Eve Davies28 March 2016 (The Conversation) – Global climate change is altering the world’s oceans in many ways. Some impacts have received wide coverage, such as shrinking Arctic sea ice, rising sea levels, and ocean warming. However, as the oceans warm, marine scientists are observing other forms of damage. My research focuses […]

Sierra snowpack better than 2015, but not enough to declare California drought over – ‘A big improvement compared to last year, but not what we had hoped for’

By Matt Stevens30 March 2016 (Los Angeles Times) – In a symbolic moment in California’s slow but steady drought recovery, a state surveyor on Wednesday found several feet of snow in the same Sierra Nevada meadow that was bare and brown just a year ago. The depth of the snowpack was declared to be just […]

Deaths of eagles in Delaware, Maryland baffle investigators

By Erik Ortiz27 March 2016 (NBC News) – A single bald eagle found dead in southern Delaware last Saturday didn’t raise red flags for state wildlife officials. But then a few hours later and a mile away, a startling scene unfolded: Eight bald eagles — distressed and disoriented — were discovered on the ground, barely […]

Most major California reservoirs below average levels at end of rainy season

28 March 2016 (Rabett Run) – Last week I was asked by my Rotary Club to give opening comments before a guest speaker from Lockheed Martin talked about new technology developments, so I decided to talk about water and technology. To set the stage, we’re having an unusually average water year in California. The story […]

Gallup: U.S. concern about global warming at eight-year high

By Lydia Saad and Jeffrey M. Jones16 March 2016 PRINCETON, N.J. (Gallup) – Americans are taking global warming more seriously than at any time in the past eight years, according to several measures in Gallup’s annual environment poll. Most emblematic is the rise in their stated concern about the issue. Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults […]

Photo gallery: Watch Detroit neighborhoods fall into ruin through Google Street View images – ‘The financial crisis has been far more destructive than any other moment outside of the fire of 1805’

[The blog is here: GooBing Detroit.] By Kate Abbey-Lambertz26 March 2016 (The Huffington Post) – Google Street View’s trove of data and visuals has been used to collect images of streets that made history, of colorful glitches and surreal scenes of oblivious bystanders. For Alex Alsup, it’s a tool to track Detroit’s rapid and continuing […]

World’s largest monarch butterfly population could disappear in 20 years – ‘The next generation of children may never see a monarch butterfly’

WASHINGTON, 21 March 2016 (Center for Biological Diversity) – The eastern migratory population of the monarch butterfly — which includes 99 percent of the world’s monarchs — is at high risk of extinction within two decades unless the population rebounds dramatically, according to a new study published today by Nature Scientific Reports. The study from […]

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