Phoenix sizzled through its 31st consecutive day of at least 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) and other parts of the country grappled Sunday with record temperatures after a week that saw significant portions of the U.S. population subject to extreme heat.
The National Weather Service said Phoenix climbed to a high of 111 F (43.8 Celsius) before the day was through.
From climate change to species loss and pollution, humans have etched their impact on the Earth with such strength and permanence since the middle of the 20th century that a special team of scientists says a new geologic epoch began then.
Called the Anthropocene — and derived from the Greek terms for “human” and “new” — this epoch started sometime between 1950 and 1954, according to the scientists. While there is evidence worldwide that captures the impact of burning fossil fuels, detonating nuclear weapons and dumping fertilizers and plastics on land and in waterways, the scientists are proposing a small but deep lake outside of Toronto, Canada — Crawford Lake — to place a historic marker.
A renewable energy plant being commissioned in Oregon on Wednesday that combines solar power, wind power and massive batteries to store the energy generated there is the first utility-scale plant of its kind in North America.
The project, which will generate enough electricity to power a small city at maximum output, addresses a key challenge facing the utility industry as the U.S. transitions away from fossil fuels and increasingly turns to solar and wind farms for power. Wind and solar are clean sources of power, but utilities have been forced to fill in gaps when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining with fossil fuels like coal or natural gas.
When Don Cox was looking for a reliable place to build a family farm in the 1950s, he settled on California’s Imperial Valley.
The desert region had high priority water rights, meaning its access to water was hard for anyone to take away.
“He had it on his mind that water rights were very, very important,” said his grandson, Thomas Cox, who now farms in the Valley.
The intensifying crisis facing the Colorado River amounts to what is fundamentally a math problem.
The 40 million people who depend on the river to fill up a glass of water at the dinner table or wash their clothes or grow food across millions of acres use significantly more each year than actually flows through the banks of the Colorado.
In fact, first sliced up 100 years ago in a document known as the Colorado River Compact, the calculation of who gets what amount of that water may never have been balanced.
Record high temperatures in urban Europe as heat waves bake the planet more often. Devastating floods, some in poorer unprepared areas. Increasing destruction from hurricanes. Drought and famine in poorer parts of Africa as dry spells worsen across the globe. Wild weather worldwide getting stronger and more frequent, resulting “in unprecedented extremes.”
Thousands of residents were under evacuation and shelter-in-place orders early Tuesday after heavy rains unleashed mudslides in a mountain area east of Los Angeles that burned two years ago, sending boulders and other debris across roads.
Firefighters went street by street in the community of Forest Falls Monday night to make sure no residents were trapped. Eric Sherwin, spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, said crews hadn’t found anyone who needed to be rescued and no one was reported missing. Crews would canvas the neighborhoods again and begin cleanup efforts after sunrise, he said.
Parts of northern Texas, mired in a drought labeled as extreme and exceptional, are flooding under torrential rain. In a drought.
Sound familiar? It should. The Dallas region is just the latest drought-suffering-but-flooded locale during a summer of extreme weather whiplash, likely goosed by human-caused climate change, scientists say. Parts of the world are lurching from drought to deluge.
In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, buzzing chainsaws interrupt the serenity. Crews are hustling to remove charred trees and other debris that have been washing down the mountainsides in the wake of the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history, choking rivers and streams.
Heavy equipment operators are moving boulders dislodged by the daily torrential summer rains that have followed the flames.
The ruptured offshore pipeline that spilled tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil off the Southern California coast this fall did not have a fully functioning leak detection system at the time, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press.
The report was compiled by pipeline operator, Beta Offshore, a subsidiary of Houston-based Amplify Energy, and filed with federal regulators. It reveals Amplify is investigating whether personnel or control room issues contributed to the accident but does not explain what was wrong with the detection system.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
