When blackouts rolled across California on August 14 and 15, briefly cutting off power to several hundred thousand households and their air conditioners, fridges, and medical devices during a pandemic and a record-breaking heat wave, some critics blamed the state’s heavy reliance on solar and wind energy. As the state pursues its ambitious renewable energy goals, they asked, will electric power become unreliable?
The San Diego County Water Authority announced Monday it is partnering with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego to better predict atmospheric rivers and improve water management before, during and after those seasonal storms. This month, Scripps’ Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes launched the Water Affiliates Group, which brings together science and hands-on water industry experience to enhance reservoir operations in light of the changing climate. The water authority has a long-running alliance with Scripps.
An international team of researchers has found that dam building in the 20th century offset some of the factors that would have led to a higher rise in sea levels. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their study of the factors that have led to a rise in global sea levels and what they learned.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently released his Water Resilience Plan, a platform of 142 proposals gathered from state agencies to manage and improve California’s water future.
The big ticket items are two infrastructure projects: the Delta conveyance tunnel and Sites Reservoir, alongside the Sacramento River.
Public health officials are urging boaters, swimmers and recreational water users to be on the lookout for hazardous blue-green algae blooms as warm temperatures persist.
San Joaquin County Environmental Health Department officials said in a news release Monday that staff have posted advisory signs at local marinas warning people to stay out of the water where toxic algae is present.
On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned.
Men and women from Native American tribes in Northern California stood in a circle, alongside university students and locals from around the town of Mariposa. Several wore bright yellow shirts made of flame-resistant fabric. For the next two days, the group would be carefully lighting fires in the surrounding hills.
A bill that would have provided the necessary funds to fix the sagging Friant-Kern Canal was killed by the state legislature on Thursday.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado introduced SB 559 to the legislature in February 2019, but the Assembly Appropriations Committee stuck it in the suspense file since August of last year, delaying its consideration to the 2020 legislative session.
The waters off San Diego are home to the two largest kelp forests on the West Coast, and both are being closely watched by local experts who are concerned about the effects of climate change on the underwater groves.
The giant kelp forests off La Jolla and Point Loma are important to the ecosystem, said Ed Parnell, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla whose studies focus on coastal ecosystems in Southern California.
The two dozen major fires burning across Northern California were sparked by more than 12,000 lightning strikes, a freak weather occurrence that turned what had been a relatively mild fire season into a devastating catastrophe
With the North Bay’s LNU Complex Fire topping 124,000 acres Wednesday and new state evacuation orders emerging every few hours, local and state officials urged Bay Area residents to take a variety of precautions. The city of Healdsburg said Wednesday evening that all of its roughly 12,000 residents should be prepared to evacuate their homes “soon.”
