Tag Archive for: Climate Change

The USDA Didn’t Publish Its Plan To Help Farmers Adapt To Climate Change. Here’s Where They Need It The Most.

/in , , /by /Mother Jones (San Francisco)by Tom Philpott

The Trump administration’s department of agriculture has apparently settled on its strategy for preparing the food system for an uncertain future: ignore climate change.  This wasn’t always the agency’s tactic. Back in 2017, as Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich recently reported, the USDA was set to release a big plan on how to “help the agriculture industry understand and adapt to climate change.” But “top officials chose not to release the report, and told staff it should be kept for internal use only,” Bottemiller Evich wrote. Weeks before, Bottemiller Evich reported about how the USDA’s top decision makers have systematically “refused to publicize” its own scientists’ research on the impact of climate change on farming.

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SDRVC Climate Change, San Diego, and You

/in , , /by /San Dieguto River Valley Conservatory Mentioned: San Diego County Water Authority

What are the likely effects of global climate change (GCC) around the world, across the United States, and within the San Diego region? Is where you live in any danger? Is there evidence that GCC is already affecting the San Diego region? What steps should we be taking? Professor Emeritus Phil Pryde first started teaching about greenhouse gas effects at SDSU in the 1980’s and has followed the topic ever since. This will be an illustrated, objective look at what we know and don’t know about global climate change and its possible effects locally.

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Climate Change Threatens California Freshwater Fish. We Can Do Something About It, Experts Say.

/in , /by /The Sacramento Beeby Caroline Ghisolfi

Fish die-offs in freshwater lakes are an increasing threat in California, and experts say climate change is to blame. Researchers from UC Davis and Reed College in Portland, Ore., found a strong link between fish deaths in freshwater lakes in Wisconsin and hot summers. They predict that fish die-offs will double by 2050 and quadruple by 2100 in Wisconsin. Andrew Rypel, a UC Davis wildlife, fish and conservation biology researcher, said we should expect similar effects in California. He told The Bee in an interview that California lakes may be even more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than those in Wisconsin, because they host many sensitive cold-water species.

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In an Era of Extreme Weather, Concerns Grow Over Dam Safety

/in , , /by /Yale Environment 360 (New Haven, CT)by Jacques Leslie

It is a telling illustration of the precarious state of United States dams that the near-collapse in February 2017 of Oroville Dam, the nation’s tallest, occurred in California, considered one of the nation’s leading states in dam safety management.

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A Drier Future Sets The Stage For More Wildfires

/in , , /by /Science Daily (Rockville, MD)

November 8, 2018 was a dry day in Butte County, California. The state was in its sixth consecutive year of drought, and the county had not had a rainfall event producing more than a half inch of rain for seven months. The dry summer had parched the spring vegetation, and the strong northeasterly winds of autumn were gusting at 35 miles per hour and rising, creating red flag conditions: Any planned or unplanned fires could quickly get out of control.

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Scripps Study Finds Climate Change Will Cause Wet and Dry Extremes In California

/in , , /by /Times of San Diegoby Chris Jennewein

A study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggests that a new pattern of wet and dry extremes is emerging in California with extreme precipitation caused by streams of moisture in the sky known as atmospheric rivers.

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Never Mind Those Earthquakes: Atmospheric Rivers Could Put Sacramento 30 Feet Under Water

/in , , /by /Sacramento Beeby Candace Wang

The biggest freshwater rivers on Earth don’t flow along the planet’s surface. Instead, they surge and whip through the atmosphere thousands of feet above our heads, carrying 2½ times the amount of water that gushes through the Amazon River at any given time. They’re called atmospheric rivers, or, more aptly, rivers in the sky. These rivers are capable of burying Sacramento under 30 feet of water.

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California Was Warned About Climate Change 30 Years Ago-Now It’s Feeling The Effects

/in , , /by /Phys.Orgby Julia Rosen

Back in 1989, Californians received a sobering warning: The accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere would likely bring more droughts, floods, fires and heat waves to the state.

In the 30 years since, those projections of what would happen in a warming world have proven to be remarkably prescient.”We’ve already observed some of the things we expected in 1989,” said Susan Fischer Wilhelm, a research manager at the California Energy Commission, the agency that compiled the report.

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How Is Climate Change Affecting Oceans? Check The Tide Pools

/in , , /by /San Francisco Chronicleby Nick Rahaim

On a sunny afternoon in mid-April, Professor Eric Sanford crouched in a tide pool off Bodega Bay and turned over algae-covered rocks in search of a chocolate porcelain crab, a dime-size crustacean with blue speckles. The creature has been spotted in small numbers around Bodega Bay for decades. But five years ago a severe marine heat wave, dubbed “the blob,” caused a sharp increase in its numbers north of the Golden Gate, says Sanford, a marine ecologist who researches climate change and coastal ecosystems at UC Davis’ Bodega Marine Lab. “I look at how organisms adapt to climate change,” says Sanford, who regularly publishes articles in scientific journals on how life between the Northern California tides is changing.

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Dams Could Protect Ranchers From Climate Change’s Drought…But Could They Also Contribute To It?

/in , , /by /KUNC (Greeley, Colo.)by Melodie Edwards

It’s late May in Wyoming. It snowed last night, and more snow is predicted. That’s why it’s good that Big Piney Rancher Chad Espenscheid is behind the wheel of the truck. The roads are sloppy and Middle Piney Creek is running high. “Speaking of water,” he says, laughing. “Yeah, seems like it’s starting to flood,” I observe. “Yeah, it’s just wet.” That wetness is nerve-wracking for ranchers like Espenscheid. “It’s been a cold, long winter,” he says. “The cows and calves are really needing some sunshine about now. We got quite a bit of sickness going on around the valley.”

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