Water, the stuff of life, behaves differently than most other matter in our universe: as it cools to take its solid form, it expands. This thermodynamic fact (called anomalous density) affords water the power to split solid granite. Water has also proven capable of dividing sovereign nations states, and tribes. The water in the Colorado River is performing this function right now.
One liter of water, equivalent to two standard-size bottled waters, contained an average of 240,000 plastic particles. These particles belonged to seven different types of plastics, with 90 per cent identified as nanoplastics and the remaining as microplastics, the details were found in a study, as per a report.
There hasn’t been as much snow in the Sierra to date compared to last year. However, a second Sierra storm within a week is being welcomed by scientists at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab.
It seems anywhere scientists look for plastic, they find it: from the ice in Antarctica, to the first bowel movement produced by newborn babies. Now, researchers are finding that the amount of microscopic plastics floating in bottled drinking water is far greater than initially believed.
The numbers are in, and scientists can now confirm what month after month of extraordinary heat worldwide began signaling long ago. Last year was Earth’s warmest by far in a century and a half.
El Niño is here, but California isn’t seeing the impact, at least not yet. Joe Sirard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles, says precipitation for the current water year is generally lagging behind averages.
California’s legislative advisers on Friday lambasted the state’s ambitious proposal to regulate urban water conservation, calling the measures costly and difficult to achieve, “in many cases without compelling justifications.”
California’s Central Coast is an expensive place to grow food. The Pajaro Valley, which stretches for 10 miles along the coast of Monterey Bay, charges farmers for irrigation water from wells, a system that’s far different from elsewhere in the nation, where growers typically water their crops by freely pumping groundwater.
With precipitation and snowpack falling behind normal levels for this time of year, the 40 million people served by the Colorado River have last year’s wet winter to thank for the Basin’s relative stability. Right now, the entire American West is struggling with snow drought. Snowpack for the Upper Colorado River Basin — which includes Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — stands at a dismal 57.7% of average as of Jan. 3.
California’s statewide Sierra Nevada snowpack—the source of nearly one-third of the state’s water supply—is at its lowest level in a decade, a major turnaround from last year when huge storms ended a three-year drought and buried ski resorts in massive amounts of snow.
