A deal has been reached to conserve at least 3 million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River through 2026, the Department of the Interior announced on Monday. More than half of that would be saved by the end of 2024.
It’s Earth’s original disrupter — a recurring climate pattern so powerful that it can drive global average temperature to record highs, and generate both cliff-crumbling storms and crop-destroying droughts across the planet.
Now, after a long hiatus, El Niño is showing signs of a strong return in 2023.
Snow is melting earlier, and more rain is falling instead of snow in the mountain ranges of the Western U.S. and Canada, leading to a leaner snowpack that could impact agriculture, wildfire risk and municipal water supplies come summer, according to a new study from the University of Colorado Boulder.
“Old superlatives have been dusted off and new ones count to better describe the tragedy, damage, and trauma associated with the State’s latest ‘unusual’ weather experience.” DWR Bulletin 69-83, California High Water 1982-83, p.1
Climate change’s hotter temperatures and society’s diversion of water have been shrinking the world’s lakes by trillions of gallons of water a year since the early 1990s, a new study finds.
A close examination of nearly 2,000 of the world’s largest lakes found they are losing about 5.7 trillion gallons (21.5 trillion liters) a year. That means from 1992 to 2020, the world lost the equivalent of 17 Lake Meads, America’s largest reservoir, in Nevada. It’s also roughly equal to how much water the United States used in an entire year in 2015.
Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to unveil a sweeping package of legislation and sign an executive order Friday to make it easier to build transportation, clean energy, water and other infrastructure across California, a move intended to capitalize on an infusion of money from the Biden administration to boost climate-friendly construction projects.
Americans can likely expect summer temperatures to be even more sweltering than usual, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Hotter-than-normal temperatures are possible for much of the U.S., with all of the East Coast, the South, the West Coast and Rockies forecast to sustain scorching conditions, according to the NOAA’s Summer Outlook, released on Thursday.
In 2021, at a Colorado River conference in Las Vegas, the Southern Nevada Water Authority laid out an ambitious and detailed plan to lower per capita water use through conservation. The presentation quantified why deep municipal conservation — limits on decorative grass, pool sizes, golf courses, septic tanks and landscaping — was necessary to adapt to a far drier future.
The natural burst of El Niño warming that changes weather worldwide is far costlier with longer-lasting expenses than experts had thought, averaging trillions of dollars in damage, a new study found.
An El Niño is brewing now and it might be a big — and therefore costly — one, scientists said. El Niño is a temporary and natural warming of parts of the equatorial Pacific, that causes droughts, floods and heat waves in different parts of the world. It also adds an extra boost to human-caused warming.
A majority of Marin residents’ water bills will see significant increases beginning in July as the Marin Municipal Water District looks to make historic investments in new water supplies and recover from the recent drought.
The agency’s board of directors voted 4-1, with Director Larry Russell dissenting, on Tuesday to approve a plan to hike water rates and fees for the next four years.
