Tag Archive for: Climate Change

Politics Report: City’s Big Recycled Water Project Wins in Court

/in , , /by /Voice of San Diegoby Andrew Keatts

San Diego’s oft-delayed Pure Water project – a bid to create a third of the city’s water from recycled sewage – scored a victory in court Friday that could get the $5 billion project back on track.

Superior Court Judge Richard Strauss ruled there was no conflict between a state law that prohibits cities from banning union-friendly construction contracts if they want state funding, and a 2012 ballot measure that prohibited the city from requiring those very contracts on city projects.

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NOAA’s La Niña Watch Could Signal a Dry Winter for Los Angeles

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

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a La Niña watch earlier this month, meaning that conditions are favorable for development of a La Niña in the next six months.

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Groundbreaking Study: Earth Will Warm 4.9 to 7 Degrees F

/in , , /by /E&E Newsby Chelsea Harvey

How much warming will greenhouse gas emissions cause in the coming years? It’s one of the most fundamental questions about climate change — and also one of the trickiest to answer.

Now, a major study claims to have narrowed down the range of possible estimates.

It presents both good and bad news. The worst-case climate scenarios may be somewhat less likely than previous studies suggested. But the best-case climate scenarios — those assuming the least amount of warming — are almost certainly not going to happen.

It’s “the most important climate science paper that’s come out in several years,” according to climate scientist Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M University, who was not involved with the study.

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Bigger, Badder Storms Coming In Years Ahead, and California Is Right In Their Path

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Kurtis Alexander

California’s wild weather swings, from pounding rain to drought and from fires to floods, are widely expected to worsen as the climate warms. A new study shows just how severe things might get, and it’s not pretty.

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Extreme Atmospheric Rivers: What will California’s Strongest Storms Look Like in a Warming Climate?

/in , , /by /WeatherWestby Daniel Swain

Atmospheric rivers (ARs)—long, sinuous corridors of water vapor in motion in the lower half of Earth’s atmosphere—are a key aspect of California’s cool-season climate. ARs are in many cases pretty unremarkable when they’re out over the open ocean, visible on satellite as a narrow ribbon of cloudiness and (usually) light precipitation. But when these moisture plumes attach themselves to wintertime low pressure systems and make landfall along the California coast, the consequences can be dramatic—prolonged heavy rain and mountain snow often result, along with sometimes powerful winds.

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As If the Pandemic Weren’t Enough, 2020 Might Be the Hottest Year Ever

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Sammy Roth

Welcome back to Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. If this is your first edition, we’re glad to have you.

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Future Precipitation Increase from Very High Resolution Ensemble Downscaling of Extreme Atmospheric River Storms In California

/in , /by /Science Advancesby Xingying Huang, Daniel L. Swain, and Alex D. Hall

Precipitation extremes will likely intensify under climate change. However, much uncertainty surrounds intensification of high-magnitude events that are often inadequately resolved by global climate models. In this analysis, we develop a framework involving targeted dynamical downscaling of historical and future extreme precipitation events produced by a large ensemble of a global climate model.

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Future Precipitation Increase from Very High Resolution Ensemble Downscaling of Extreme Atmospheric River Storms in California

/in , , /by /ScienceAdvances (AAAS)by Xingying Huang, Daniel L. Swain, and Alex D. Hall

Precipitation extremes will likely intensify under climate change. However, much uncertainty surrounds intensification of high-magnitude events that are often inadequately resolved by global climate models. In this analysis, we develop a framework involving targeted dynamical downscaling of historical and future extreme precipitation events produced by a large ensemble of a global climate model. This framework is applied to extreme “atmospheric river” storms in California.

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The Most Powerful Renewable Energy

/in , , /by /BBCby Adrienne Bernhard

The world’s most relied-upon renewable energy source isn’t wind or sunlight, but water. Last year, the world’s hydropower capacity reached a record 1,308 gigawatts (to put this number in perspective, just one gigawatt is equivalent to the power produced by 1.3 million race horses or 2,000 speeding Corvettes). Utilities throughout the globe rely upon hydropower to generate electricity because it is cheap, easily stored and dispatched, and produced with no fuel combustion, meaning it won’t release carbon dioxide or pollutants the way power plants burning fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas do.

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San Diego Regional Water Projects Awarded $15M from State

/in , , /by /WaterWorld Quoted: San Diego County Water Authority

The California Department of Water Resources has awarded more than $15 million in grant funds to advance several regional water projects in San Diego County, ranging from water recycling and reuse to water conservation.

The San Diego County Water Authority submitted the funding request on behalf of the San Diego Integrated Regional Water Management Program, or IRWM. The San Diego IRWM Program began in 2005 as an effort by water agencies, wastewater agencies, stormwater and flood managers, watershed groups, business leaders, disadvantaged communities, tribes, agriculture, and nonprofit stakeholders to improve water resources planning in the region.

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