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A ‘Thirsty’ Atmosphere is Propelling Northern California’s Drought Into the Record Books

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Paul Duginski

Increasing evaporative demand is escalating summertime drought severity in California and the West, according to climate researchers.

Evaporative demand is essentially the atmosphere’s “thirst.” It is calculated based on temperature, humidity, wind speed and solar radiation. It’s the sum of evaporation and transpiration from plants, and it’s driven by warmer global temperatures, which can be attributed to climate change.

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California Moves on Climate Change, but Rejects Aggressive Cuts to Greenhouse Emissions

/in , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Samantha Young

As California trudges into another autumn marred by toxic wildfire smoke and drought-parched reservoirs, state lawmakers have cast climate change as a growing public health threat for the state’s 40 million residents. But they were willing to push the argument only so far.

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Contamination a ‘Huge Challenge’ For Affordable Drinking Water in California

/in , /by /Capital and Mainby Dan Ross

Francisco Diaz remembers when the water piped to his home in the Central Valley community of Monterey Park Tract made everything smell rotten, including himself.

“We had to take our clothes and go to the city and wash it over there because if you had washed it here and put it on, you’d stink,” said Diaz, who heads the Monterey Park Tract Community Service District, a form of specialized local government. “We couldn’t even take showers.”

Unsurprisingly, the water was undrinkable. Agricultural run-off, heavy in potentially toxic nitrates, had contaminated both wells that supplied water to Monterey Park Tract, nestled amid the crop fields and dairy farms of Stanislaus County.

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Dry and Failing Wells in Tuolumne County are a Sign of Drought’s Severity

/in , , /by /The Union Democratby Guy McCarthy

Terry Carney, 71, showed the head of his well Thursday and said it dried up about two weeks after the July 9 magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck near Walker, Nevada and was felt by people up and down the Sierra Nevada and as far west as the Bay Area.

Carney’s well is one of more than a dozen that have dried up so far this year in Tuolumne County, in addition to at least 19 other wells that are failing but have not yet dried up, according to county staff.

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Opinion: Water Markets Can Help Bring California’s Groundwater Into Balance

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Andrew Ayres and Ellen Hanak

The San Joaquin Valley town of Corcoran is sinking. It’s fallen as much as 11.5 feet in some places, damaging drinking wells, changing the town’s flood zones and undermining critical infrastructure. The story is so dramatic that the New York Times covered it recently. The culprit here, though, is no ordinary villain – it’s the overpumping of groundwater.

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Sacramento Reduces Water Consumption but Falls Short of Newsom’s Goal for California

/in , , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

As California’s drought deepens, Sacramento residents are falling short of meeting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s call for water conservation — at least so far.

Area residents reduced water usage by an average of 6% last month, compared to August 2020, according to data released this week by the Sacramento Regional Water Authority. That compares with the 15% voluntary goal announced by Newsom in an executive order in July.

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Stunning Photos Show Drought’s Impact on Huge California Reservoir

/in , , /by /Mercury Newsby Nhat V. Meyer

The California drought has been brutal over the past few years, but to see just how devastating it has been, you need to see before-and-after pictures side by side.

Bay Area News Group photojournalist Nhat V. Meyer went out to the San Luis Reservoir in Merced County this week and took pictures in approximately the same places that he did in January 2019. The reservoir is one of the largest in California.

The results are startling.

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California Fires Are Burning at Higher Elevations Than Ever, Creating New Dangers

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Hayley Smith

Just hours before the Caldor fire threatened to level the resort town of South Lake Tahoe, the massive blaze performed a staggering feat: burning from one side of the Sierra to the other.

It seared through crests and valleys, over foothills and ridges — and also at elevations of 8,000 feet or higher.

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Opinion: Climate Change Is Bankrupting California’s Ecosystems

/in , /by /CalMattersby Martha Davis

For decades, scientists have warned that climate change would disrupt almost every natural life-sustaining system on our planet. What have we done about it? We’ve dithered. We refuse to believe the evidence, or rail against the cost and inconvenience of change, or hope the problem will just go away. But global warming is not going away. Last month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most alarming report yet: Earth is on the edge of ecological bankruptcy.

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It Isn’t Your Imagination. This Summer in California Is the Hottest Ever Recorded

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Dale Kasler

Drought. Wildfires. And, for the country as a whole, temperatures worse than the Dust Bowl.

In a further bit of evidence of the reality of climate change, California has just experienced its hottest summer on record, according to data released this week by the federal government.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average temperature in California reached 77.3 degrees from June to August. That topped the previous record of 76.5 degrees in summer 2017.

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