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It’s being called a marine heat wave. The combination of the strongest El Niño in recent history and the warm water anomaly known as the Blob generated the greatest amount of warm ocean water that has ever been recorded, possibly affecting marine life up and down the West Coast. New research has now linked the two phenomena, with each believed to be alternately affecting the other through the atmosphere and the ocean. El Niño is the warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean and it can affect wind, temperature and precipitation patterns around the globe.

Like many people who work on forestry issues in California, Jim Branham, executive officer of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, is still trying to wrap his head around the drought’s toll on the region’s forests and the 66 million dead trees reported in the Sierra Nevada last month.

“It’s hard to comprehend,” he said, especially considering that in some areas of the Southern Sierra communities may see 85 percent of the trees around them dead or dying. “The magnitude of the problem is staggering,” he said.

Lake Tahoe is showing some severe impacts from the changing climate. Indicators released Thursday in the annual “State of the Lake” report packed a few surprises, even for scientists.

For one thing, the lake has been warming faster than ever recorded. In 2015 the lake’s average temperature rose 0.48 degrees Fahrenheit — and over the last four years, the rise was 15 times faster than the lake’s historic warming rate. “That came as a surprise to me,” says Geoffrey Schladow, a UC Davis freshwater scientist and lead author of the report.

California is the country’s second-largest rice producer, after Arkansas, and the $5 billion crop is particularly well suited to the Sacramento Valley’s clay soil.

It’s been 10 years since California enacted AB 32, which requires the state to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020.

The state is on track to meet its goal. A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California shows, despite a partisan divide, 62 percent of likely voters favor the law.

Fifty-nine percent of likely voters also favor a new law that requires greenhouse gases be reduced even more. For Californians who believe gas prices will rise as a result, 63 percent of voters still favor expanding the goals.