The numbers are in, and scientists can now confirm what month after month of extraordinary heat worldwide began signaling long ago. Last year was Earth’s warmest by far in a century and a half.
California is set to adopt regulations that will allow for sewage to be extensively treated, transformed into pure drinking water and delivered directly to people’s taps.
The regulations are expected to be approved Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board, enabling water suppliers to begin building advanced treatment plants that will turn wastewater into a source of clean drinking water.
In the minds of many Californians, El Niño has long loomed as a rainmaker of epic proportions. In 1982-83, the Pacific climate pattern caused storms that pounded the state’s shoreline, damaging 1,000 homes between Santa Barbara and the Mexican border and washing the tip of the Santa Monica Pier out to sea.
The Biden administration has announced new water-saving agreements with California water agencies intended to shore up supplies on the overburdened Colorado River.
California’s state government began drawing up plans for Sites Reservoir in the Sacramento Valley 70 years ago. And it still only exists on paper.
So, kudos to Gov. Gavin Newsom for deciding that it’s finally time to put this tardy project on the fast track.
Fast track means there’ll be limited time for any opponent to contest the project in court on environmental grounds.
The start of wine grape growing season in California’s Napa Valley now comes nearly a month earlier than it used to because of the region’s warming climate, according to a new study from a team led by UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Dan Cayan.
The research, published online in the International Journal of Climatology on June 29, is based on an analysis of local temperature records spanning 1958-2016 that charts the effects of natural climate variations such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the growing influence of human-caused climate change upon the seasonal rhythms and shorter term temperature extremes in Napa Valley.
Human-caused global warming made July hotter for four out of five people on Earth, with more than 2 billion people feeling climate change-boosted warmth daily, according to a flash study.
For much of the last 23 years, the Colorado River has been ravaged by unrelenting dryness, its reservoirs falling to their lowest levels since they were filled. New research shows that global warming is a major culprit, shrinking the river’s flow and robbing the region of a vast amount of water.
A team of scientists at UCLA estimated that from 2000 to 2021, rising temperatures led to the loss of about 32.5 million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River Basin, more than the entire storage capacity of Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir.
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.
The drought-stricken Colorado River is in critical condition. Almost two years ago, the federal government declared the first ever shortage on the river, triggering cuts to water supplies in the Southwest. Today, the river remains unsustainably low. The Colorado is the lifeblood of the region. It waters some of the country’s fastest growing cities, nourishes some of our most fertile fields, and powers $1.4 trillion dollars in annual economic activity. The river runs more than 1,400 miles, from headwaters in the Rockies to its delta in northern Mexico where it ends in a trickle.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
