Tag Archive for: Climate Change

UC San Diego, Scripps Oceanography Sends Delegation to Cop28, the UN Climate Conference

The United Nations Climate Conference, called COP28, begins on Thursday in Dubai and students and faculty from UC San Diego (UCSD) will be there.

The UN climate conference is a global meeting of politicians and scientists that have a strong bearing on the fight against global warming. It’s where the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015.

San Diego County Could Be Fairly Dry Into Late December. Or Longer. So Where’s the El Niño?

San Diego County has fallen behind in seasonal rainfall. A weak storm could bring a little moisture Wednesday through Friday. But the National Weather Service says the region will then be dry until late next week, and perhaps for much, much longer.

After a Pandemic Pause, Detroit Restarts Water Shut-offs – Part of a Nationwide Trend as Costs Rise

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Detroit residents got a break from water shut-offs.

In March 2020, just after the coronavirus made hand-washing a matter of public health, the City of Detroit announced a plan that kept water services on for residents for US$25 a month, with the first payment covered by the state.

Opinion: This Water Project is Expensive, Wasteful and Ecologically Damaging. Why is It Being Fast-Tracked?

Noah Cross, the sinister plutocrat of the movie
“Chinatown,” remarked that “politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

He might have added public works projects to that list: If they get talked about long enough, sometimes they acquire the image of inevitability. That seems to be the case with the Sites Reservoir, a water project in the western Sacramento Valley that originated during the Eisenhower administration.

National Climate Assessment Predicts Growing Threats to Society, Economy

A long-awaited federal climate report, released Tuesday, delivers a blunt warning: Rapidly curb planet-warming emissions or face dire consequences to human health, infrastructure and the economy.

The fifth installment of the National Climate Assessment presents the most comprehensive evaluation to date of U.S. climate science, impacts and action. Dozens of authors, including representatives from multiple federal agencies, contributed to the congressionally mandated report.

The Toll of Climate Disasters Is Rising. But a U.S. Report Has Good News, Too.

The food we eat and the roads we drive on. Our health and safety. Our cultural heritage, natural environments and economic flourishing. Nearly every cherished aspect of American life is under growing threat from climate change and it is effectively too late to prevent many of the harms from worsening over the next decade, a major report from the federal government has concluded.

California’s Extreme Weather Whiplash: So Long, Drought. Hello, El Niño

Less than a year after facing historic water shortages, California this week was declared drought-free thanks to a year of epic rains, with an El Niño forecast that could keep wet conditions going into 2024.

California-El Niño-weather-waves-ocean

For California, especially Southern California, El Niño can typically mean larger storms in the winter which can mean more rainfall and larger waves along the coast. Graphic: NOAA

Opinion: Underground Water Storage is Needed in California

Despite an unusually wet season last year and predictions for a boisterous rainy season this year, California continues to struggle to store enough water to meet the needs of its population and farms. We’ve experienced two particularly grueling droughts in the last decade, with state officials repeatedly blaming climate change for the challenges.

San Diego Temporarily Solved its Water Crisis by Turning Ocean Water into Fresh Water. But Desalination Won’t Work Everywhere.

In the early 1990s, San Diego was dying on the vine, starved of water in a series of years long droughts.

The county, which relied almost entirely on imported water, had to cut back on 30% of its usage and was at risk of losing 50%.

At the last minute, a miracle saved San Diego — rain and snow in the desert replenished aquifers, saving the city from intense cutbacks.

But the water didn’t extinguish the passion of San Diegans, who after finding themselves in this situation, rallied together to find a way to become more self-sufficient, Jeremy Crutchfield, the water-resources manager at the San Diego County Water Authority, told Insider.

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Next Steps to Protect Stability and Sustainability of Colorado River Basin

The Biden-Harris administration October 25 announced next steps in the efforts to protect the stability and sustainability of the Colorado River System and strengthen water security in the West. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation released a revised draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) as part of the ongoing, collaborative effort to update the current interim operating guidelines for the near-term operation of Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams to address the ongoing drought and impacts from the climate crisis.