Solis remembers when water surged into her Lucky Drive neighborhood in January as storms and King Tides swelled nearby Corte Madera Creek. "Things got bad quickly," she said. "There were no signs from the city or county about flooding. We had no idea it was going to get that bad."
A new report published by Swarmed, a resource for bee removal and a tracking network of more than 10,000 beekeepers, found that this year's swarm season began an average of 17 days earlier than last year nationwide. In Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin, some swarms arrived more than a month ahead of schedule. But bee experts think Swarmed's four-year dataset needs additional time to establish a trend.
Sea levels are just the start of how climate change will upend the ocean. Rising temperatures are also threatening a critical artery that runs through the ocean known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. This current, in short, sends warm water northwards and dumps colder water southwards in a giant loop, massively influencing the world's weather systems along the way.
“You can really tell the difference in products that have chocolate. They've decreased the chocolate and increased the sugar, likely [because] it's less expensive.”
Over the past century, humanity has achieved extraordinary gains in human health. Advances in water and sanitation, maternal and child care, infectious disease control, vaccinations, and other public health achievements have vastly improved human longevity and quality of life, reducing global child mortality significantly and increasing life expectancy to about 71 years as of 2021 ( WHO, 2024).
She parted some creosote branches to reveal a shriveled shrub, just ankle-high. This doomed seedling was part of a National Park Service planting effort to replace dozens of Joshua trees cut down by a Southern California Edison contractor tasked with protecting the company's power lines. But of the 193 babies planted here roughly five years ago, only 27, or 14%, are still alive, according to the Park Service. If researchers don't figure out why so few survived, an imperiled icon of the California desert may disappear even more quickly.
The 2026 World Cup is not only the most politically combustible tournament in modern history, but it is also on track to be the most polluting World Cup ever, with total greenhouse gas emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. Scientists conservatively project that the tournament will generate around 9m tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Air travel comprises approximately 7.7m tons of this carbon budget, and more than four times that of the average for tournaments held between 2010 and 2022. The researchers note that the worst-case upper estimate for air transport is about 13.7m tons of CO2.
The problem was colder and more specific than a simple lack of weather: too much of that water failed to become durable mountain snow. That is the signature of a warm snow drought. A dry snow drought is straightforward, the mountains do not get enough precipitation. A warm snow drought is more frustrating for skiers because the atmosphere can still look active. The water shows up, but it arrives as rain, heavy wet snow, or snow that melts too early to build a lasting pack. The mountain gets weather, but the snowpack does not get the full benefit.