Even as winter arrived in the East this week, with treacherous snow and an impending Arctic cold snap, much of the West and its major river basins are still entrenched in warm and dry conditions. It’s a sluggish start to what should be the region’s wet season and is raising concerns about the future of the water supplies that depend on it.
California has officially entered the era of climate-driven economic insecurity. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom laid out his new budget, facing a nearly $38-billion shortfall. That missing money is mostly due to lower-than-expected tax revenue on capital gains — the stock and investment earnings of the Golden State’s wealthiest folks weren’t quite what were expected.
This week may seem unusually cold for Southern California, but climate scientists say December 2023 was the month that truly had extraordinary temperatures – on the warm side.
California, Arizona and others, fearing a political shake-up of negotiating teams after the November election, are aiming to wrap up work this year. The states that rely on the Colorado River, which is shrinking because of climate change and overuse, are rushing to agree on a long-term deal to share the dwindling resource by the end of the year. They worry that a change in administrations after the election could set back talks.
After a worryingly weak start to the winter for California’s mountains, two storms — including what’s expected to be the biggest of the season so far — are expected to dump several inches of snow on the Sierra Nevada this week, days after some promising weekend snowfall.
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.
With the new year, Fallbrook residents are seeing a reduction in their water rates as a result of the detachment from the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) — the so-called “water divorce.”
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.
