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Warmer temperatures lead to drying.....Global warming increases the risk of drought in several ways. For one, water generally evaporates more quickly at higher temperatures. Yale Climate Connections Tiffany Means May11 2025 For that reason, hotter weather can result in drier soils. As high air temperatures sap liquid water from soils and plant leaves, transforming it into atmospheric water vapor via a process called transpiration, ground-level drying will increase in some regions. (Ironically, this additional atmospheric moisture triggers heavier downpours in other regions, which explains why the overall trend in the U.S. has been toward wetter conditions.) Higher air temperatures not only encourage drought conditions to build but also intensify them. What might have otherwise been a mild or moderate drought in a cooler world will become, in a warmer world, more severe as a result of increased evaporation. Warming also diminishes snowfall, an essential water resource for the estimated 1.9 billion residents of the Northern Hemisphere who depend on snowpacks, or snow reservoirs that store water during the cooler months and release it when it’s needed in the warmer, drier months. Rising temperatures increase the fraction of winter precipitation that falls as rain rather than snow and also shorten the cold season, so there’s less time for snow to even occur. Such was the case in 2015, the fourth-warmest year in the contiguous U.S., when a snow drought reduced the April snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range to a mere 5% of its historical average water content — its lowest snowpack in 500 years.
Seasonal melting of snowpacks can be thrown off-kilter, too. As average temperatures warm above freezing earlier in the spring, snowmelt occurs sooner and faster than usual. And rapid melting results in a shorter period during which soils and plants are kept moist. Another way a warmer atmosphere can disrupt precipitation is by shifting storm tracks. Ordinarily, low-pressure systems known as extratropical cyclones form between 30 and 60 degrees latitude north and south of the equator. But as the climate warms globally, storms are shifting toward the poles. This means that weather features such as atmospheric rivers, which supply as much as 50% of annual precipitation to states in the Western U.S., could cease to pass over regions where their moisture is much-needed.
Is global warming causing more droughts? ........Scientists see a clear correlation between droughts and global warming. But a correlation between two events doesn’t always mean one caused the other. For example, ice cream sales often increase around the time that baseball game attendance rises, but that does not mean that eating ice cream causes people to attend baseball games. Nor does it mean that attending baseball games causes people to eat ice cream. It can be tricky to attribute an increase in droughts to global warming because droughts are variable. In other words, they can occur every year or every few years, last for years or decades, and cause varying levels of dryness. That makes it difficult to distinguish random events from those possibly shaped by human-caused warming. However, the more drought dovetails with trends of increasing temperature, decreasing precipitation, and with computer model projections, the more confident scientists are in pointing to climate change.
In a 2020 study in the journal Science, for example, researchers observed how human-caused climate change is contributing to the 21st-century megadrought in the Western U.S. and northern Mexico by evaluating trends in modeled temperature, relative humidity, and precipitation data between 1901 and 2018. According to the study’s findings, human-caused warming accounts for 46% of this drought’s severity. What about the rest of the world? Scientists have been cautious about linking human activities to global drought patterns, largely because drought hasn’t occurred as uniformly worldwide as it has across individual regions. That said, building evidence supports the climate change-drought connection on a global scale. According to an August 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, scientists have high confidence that for every half degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) the atmosphere warms, noticeable increases will occur in some regions in the intensity and frequency of droughts that harm agriculture and ecosystems. Similarly, the report notes that extreme agricultural and ecological drought events that used to occur once every 10 years are now 1.7 times more likely than they were from 1850 to 1900, before humans heavily influenced the climate.......read on https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/05/climate-change-and-droughts-whats-the-connection/
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Growing Water Risks Threaten World’s Most Cherished Heritage Sites. WRI July 1, 2025 Samantha Kuzma Water is impacting some of the Earth’s most cherished places: The Taj Mahal, for example, faces water scarcity that is increasing pollution and depleting groundwater, both of which are damaging the mausoleum. In 2022, a massive flood closed down all of Yellowstone National Park and cost over $20 million in infrastructure repairs to reopen. Water issues — whether it’s drought, scarcity, pollution or flooding — have become a threat to many of the more than 1,200 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These natural landscapes and cultural landmarks around the globe, including the Taj Mahal and Yellowstone National Park, are recognized for their “outstanding universal value” to people and the planet.Places ranging from the biodiversity-rich Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, to cultural treasures like the sacred city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico, to bustling urban centers like Morocco’s Medina of Fez are facing growing water risks that are not just endangering the sites, but the millions of people who depend on them for food, livelihoods, a connection to their culture, or who just enjoy traveling to these destinations.
An analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct data shows 73% of all non-marine UNESCO World Heritage Sites are exposed to at least one severe water risk (water stress, drought, river flooding or coastal flooding), with 21% Specifically, 40% (470) of world heritage sites are exposed to severe baseline water stress; 37% (434) face severe drought risk; 33% (391) of sites are exposed to severe riverine flood risk; and 4% (49) are exposed to severe coastal flood risk. of sites facing dual problems of too much and too little water. While the global share of World Heritage Sites exposed to high-to-extremely high levels of water stress is projected to rise from 40% to 44% by 2050, impacts will be far more severe in regions like the Middle East and North Africa, parts of South Asia, and northern China — areas where exiAmong the 1,172 non-marine sites we analyzed, 73% are exposed to at least one severe water risk; 21% face dual problems of too much and too little water.sting water stress is exacerbated by extensive river regulation, damming and upstream water withdrawals. In these regions, the combined pressures of infrastructure development and climate change pose a significant threat to both natural ecosystems and the cultural heritage they sustain.Water risks — such as drought and flooding — Water risks — such as drought and flooding — are threatening many UNESCO World Heritage Sites around the globe.
Hotspots like Petra in Jordan, the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu in Peru and Sagarmatha National Park (the home of Mt. Everest) in Nepal, are facing growing problems of too much water, or too little. An analysis using WRI’s Aqueduct platform classify these sites and nearly 900 of the cultural and natural sites on UNESCO’s list as severe because they fall into high or extremely-high exposure categories. Among the 1,172 non-marine sites we analyzed, 73% are exposed to at least one severe water risk; 21% face dual problems of too much and too little water......read on keep on scrolling down
https://www.wri.org/
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Spain and Portugal wildfires drive worst EU season on record BBC 28 AUG-2025 Elizabeth DawsonBBC News andErwan RivaultData Designer, A record one million hectares - equivalent to about half the land area of Wales - have burned across the European Union so far this year, making it the worst wildfire season since records began in 2006. Spain and Portugal have been hit especially hard, with roughly 1% of the entire Iberian Peninsula scorched, according to EU scientists. The worsening fire season in the Mediterranean has been linked directly to climate change in a separate study by the World Weather Attribution group at Imperial College London. Experts warn that more frequent and severe fires across Europe are likely to continue in the future. More than two thirds of the area burned in the EU is in Spain and Portugal alone. In Spain, more than 400,000 hectares have burned since the beginning of this year up until 26 August, according to the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). This record is more than six times the Spanish average for this time period between 2006 and 2024.
Neighbouring Portugal has also suffered a record burn area of 270,000 hectares so far - almost five times the average for the same period. The combined burn area across the Iberian peninsula this year is 684,000 hectares - four times the area of Greater London, and most of it burned in just two weeks. Fires have been concentrated in forested areas of northern Portugal and in Spain's north-western regions of Galicia, Asturias and Castile and León. Protected areas like Picos de Europa National Park have been impacted, as well as major routes on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage network which usually attracts more than 100,000 visitors in the summer months. The events have triggered the largest known deployment of the EU civil protection mechanism's firefighting force. Smoke from fires has dramatically decreased air quality in the area, with southerly wind sending smoke as far as France and the UK.Climate change makes the conditions leading to wildfires more likely, but in a vicious cycle, the fires also release more planet-warming carbon dioxide gas (CO2) into our atmosphere. CO2 released by fires in Spain this year has reached a record 17.68 million tonnes, according to the EU. This is more than any total annual CO2 emissions since 2003 from wildfires in that country, when data was first recorded by satellites. For comparison, it is more than the total annual CO2 emitted by all of Croatia in 2023.....read on https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd6n8qqlj8go
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Why the Shrinking Great Salt Lake Is a Public Health Crisis.Drought and overallocation of water lead to toxic dust that pollutes Salt Lake City communities. Sierra Club Helena Huizenga July 23, 2025 The first time I worried about the air my son was breathing was two years ago. The sky over Salt Lake City was hazy, and I remember wondering, ‘Is there a fire somewhere?’ There wasn’t. It was just a windy day, and dust was blowing from the exposed lakebed of the Great Salt Lake. My parents moved to Salt Lake City five years ago. My partner and I followed two years later. We wanted to raise our son in a place where he’d grow up hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter.
But it turns out I need to be careful about being outside because dust from the shrinking lake has become a serious public health concern. That’s why on Saturday, April 26, my grandmother, my mom, and I walked up the steps of the Utah State Capitol to join an Earth Day rally for the Great Salt Lake. Three generations of us, standing shoulder to shoulder with others who had gathered for a disappearing body of water. Many of us held signs that bent in the very wind that was carrying dust and toxins into our lungs. We stood together, arms linked against the wind, with a united purpose: to advocate for policies that would protect the water levels of the Great Salt Lake and prevent more toxic dust from getting exposed. Working together with scientists and the illustrator Clément Vuillier, they turned their ideas into a book in two segments – a children's picture book at the front and a collection of adult essays and interviews at the back. "Thanks to this dual narrative — one aimed at children, the other more critical and scientific for adults — The Down Under encourages reflection at different stages of life, with the ambition of functioning both as a children's book and as a transgenerational educational tool," said Trimarchi and Farresin. The Down Under story is accompanied by full-page illustrations by Vuillier that combine his signature complex style with influences drawn from scientific visuals. Trimarchi and Farresin asked him to develop the drawings based on high-powered microscope images of material samples sourced from a slag heap in Genk. There is a psychedelic, Alice in Wonderland quality to the drawings and narrative, as the main character falls through the earth, sees beyond his normally limited human perception and considers time from the perspective of a 400-million-year-old hive mind. The text represents a continuation of themes that Formafantasma has been exploring through works such as their Milan design week play, imagining animals reflecting on modernism, and their Oltre Terra exhibition examining the relationship between humans and sheep.
From the podium, Courtney Henley, a physician and board member of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, painted a vivid picture of why the lake’s disappearance isn’t just an ecological disaster but a public health emergency too. “The medical urgency arises from the pervasive nature of the threat,” she said. “All living beings will inhale blowing lakebed dust, and every human resident in the path of blowing dust is impacted.” Unlike most air pollution, she explained, this is a regional issue because the dust disperses widely. “One large dust storm can impact millions of people.” A 2022 Brigham Young University study found high levels of toxic dust around the lake’s edge, posing serious risks to respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological health. As the lakebed dries, it exposes dirt, which gets picked up and spread by wind. “Most of the toxins are the result of centuries of industrial pollution that have deposited arsenic, mercury, and lead in the lake bottom,” Henley explained in a follow-up interview. These particles don’t just irritate the lungs; they dissolve into the bloodstream, potentially leading to heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, asthma, and even cancers. “Pregnant women and children are particularly vulnerable because of increased blood flow to growing tissues and the higher respiratory rates in children. Their rapidly dividing DNA is more susceptible to mutation caused by air pollution,” Henley said. “And elderly people are more at risk because they often have underlying diseases and weaker immune systems.”
The toxins are reaching people like Brandi O’Brian, who moved to Salt Lake City in 2021 after years of seasonal conservation work in Southern Utah. Drawn by the natural beauty and the sense of community she found, she never imagined that the air she was breathing would become a daily threat to her health. “At first, it was something I just saw,” she told me. “Then it was something I felt.”Her first asthma attack hit during a winter inversion, and it wasn’t subtle. “It was terrifying—a stark wake-up call that something was not right.” She’d never had asthma before moving here. Now, it’s part of her life. On dusty days, she experiences chest tightness, dizziness, and shortness of breath. “I’ve had to use my inhaler multiple times a day during these episodes,” she said. O’Brian has developed what she calls a ‘sixth sense’ for bad air. “Now, I can feel bad air quality in my lungs before I even check the report,” she said. “On those days, I avoid going outside, keep windows closed, run my air purifier, and skip exercise.” And still, despite every precaution, she can’t fully protect herself. “The dust has been awful,” she told me. “Unless you’ve experienced it, it’s hard to describe how scary it is to feel like you can’t get a full breath.” read on
Despite growing awareness of the crisis, public response has lagged. Much of the water that once flowed to the Great Salt Lake is now siphoned off for agriculture and suburban developments. Meanwhile, Utah lawmakers have refused to implement reforms to ensure the lake remains at stable levels, initiate new programs to study water use, or allocate sufficient funding for water conservation plans. As a result, the lake continues to shrink, exposing more toxic dust and accelerating the public health crisis. If the Great Salt Lake continues on this path, the consequences could ripple throughout the West. It will impact air quality and public health beyond Utah’s borders. In other words, the anxiety that many Utahns feel on windy days could soon be felt across state lines. If the pace of water diversions continues, researchers from Brigham Young University estimate that the lake could disappear within the decade. “We’re stuck in a political holding pattern,” Henley said. “Water is being diverted. Reforms are slow. And people are getting sick.”..........and Climate Change and Global Heating will only make it even worse(editor)...... https://www.
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As the World Warms, Extreme Rain Is Becoming Even More Extreme. Even in places, like Central Texas, with a long history of floods, human-caused warming is creating the conditions for more frequent and severe deluges. NY Times Raymond Zhong Climate reporter July 5, 2025 Colossal bursts of rain like the ones that caused the deadly flooding in Texas are becoming more frequent and intense around the globe as the burning of fossil fuels heats the planet, scientists say. Warm air holds more moisture than cool air, and as temperatures rise, storms can produce bigger downpours. When met on the ground with outdated infrastructure or inadequate warning systems, the results can be catastrophic. These were the ingredients for tragedy in Texas, a state that is well acquainted with weather extremes of all kinds: high heat and deep cold, deluges and droughts, tornadoes and hurricanes, hail and snow. Indeed, the Hill Country, the part of the state where the Guadalupe River swelled on Friday, is sometimes called “flash flood alley” for how at risk it is to seemingly out-of-nowhere surges of water.Humid air blows into the area from two main sources, the Gulf of Mexico and the tropical Pacific Ocean. When this air collides with cool air drifting down across the Great Plains, severe storms can erupt. The hilly terrain and steep canyons quickly funnel the rain into river valleys, transforming lazy streams into roaring cascades. In parts of Texas that were flooded on Friday, the quantities of rain that poured down in a six-hour stretch were so great that they had less than a tenth of 1 percent chance of falling there in any given year, according to data analyzed by Russ Schumacher, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.
The Guadalupe River rose from three feet to 34 feet in about 90 minutes, according to data from a river gauge near the town of Comfort, Texas. The volume of water exploded from 95 cubic feet per second to 166,000 cubic feet per second. And the warming climate is creating the conditions in Texas for more of these sharp, deadly deluges. In the eastern part of the state, the number of days per year with at least two inches of rain or snow has increased by 20 percent since 1900, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s flagship report on how global warming is affecting the United States. Across Texas, the intensity of extreme rain could increase another 10 percent by 2036, according to a report last year by John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist. To understand patterns of heavy rain at a more local level, communities and officials rely on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency has for decades published nationwide estimates of the probabilities of various precipitation events — that is, a certain number of inches falling in a particular location over a given amount of time, from five minutes to 24 hours to 60 days. https://www.nytimes.com/
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