Climate change hit home in Colorado this week, exacerbating multiple environmental calamities: wildfires burning across 135,423 acres, stream flows shrinking to where state officials urged limits on fishing, drought wilting crops, and record temperatures baking heat-absorbing cities.
This is what scientists, for decades, have been warning would happen.
California avoided another round of rolling blackouts Tuesday as power conservation efforts helped stave off an energy shortage while excessive heat continued to plague the state.
For the first time in nearly two decades, the federal government tapped Glen Canyon Dam for extra power generating capacity this weekend, triggering emergency water releases as heat waves persisted across the West.
As temperatures hit records in California, power providers turned to sources in Nevada, Utah and Arizona to cope with the surge in demand across its electrical grid.
While PG&E and SCE are required to shut power off in some areas, California Water Service also advises residents to limit their water usage during these outages.
According to California Water Service, they are doing everything they can to make sure water services are not interrupted.
It may not be the biblical end of times, but the searing heat and humidity, rain, thunder and lightning thrashing California could be the beginning of the end of the region’s dry Mediterranean climate and a prelude of more surprises to come, scientists said Monday.
A new report warns Kern County agriculture will face tough challenges in the decades ahead as climate change makes irrigation water scarcer and weather conditions more variable and intense.
The study concludes these hurdles “ultimately challenge the ability to maximize production while ensuring profitability.” But it also predicts impacts will vary by crop, with almond production benefiting somewhat while growers of pistachios, grapes, oranges and carrots face overall difficult conditions.
If California lawmakers set aside climate concerns like sea level rise, and focus only on the pandemic, the state could be setting itself up for an even worse economic hardship, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office cautioned in a report Monday.
By the 2070s, global warming will increase extreme rainfall and reduce snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, delivering a double whammy that will likely overwhelm California’s reservoirs and heighten the risk of flooding in much of the state, according to a new study by UCLA climate scientists.
The state will suffer dire long-term consequences if lawmakers set aside concerns about rising seas to focus solely on COVID-19, the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office warned Monday.
Sea level rise will likely put at least $8 billion in property underwater by 2050, and could affect tens of thousands of jobs and billions in gross domestic product, according to studies cited by the office.
Nearly 200,000 people were evacuated when the spillways failed at Oroville Dam in 2017, an infrastructure disaster that cost around a billion dollars to repair.
Three years later scientists say events that partially led to the incident could become more frequent. It comes down to how and when snow and rain fall.
