Currently browsing: Climate Change

Climate change is expected to alter Columbia River basin streamflows in the coming years with higher water and more rain but less snowpack in winter, and more drought and lower water in the summer, which could result in less water for summer spill.

A pilot project proposed in Port Angeles, Washington is designed to test whether seawater can be used to soak up more carbon dioxide from the air.  It is a first-of-its-kind pilot project that has the potential to remove carbon dioxide from marine waters.

A 15-year period ending in 2020 that included a marine heat wave and a sea star wasting disease epidemic saw major changes in the groups of organisms that live along the rocky shores of the Pacific Northwest.

Snowpack this winter continues to be at an all-time low across several river basins in western Montana, indicating that this year could see water shortages, according to recent projections from the Montana Climate Office.

Low oxygen conditions that pose a significant threat to marine life are widespread and increasing in coastal Pacific Northwest ocean waters as the climate warms, a new study shows.

A new NOAA Fisheries study examined how climate change might affect commercial fishing fleets on the U.S. West Coast, assessing the risk to different bottom trawl groundfish fishing fleets in California, Oregon, and Washington.

Marine heat waves appear to trigger earlier reproduction, high mortality in early life stages and fewer surviving juvenile Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska, a new study from Oregon State University shows.

NOAA’s 2023 Arctic Report Card documents new records showing that human-caused warming of the air, ocean and land is affecting people, ecosystems and communities across the Arctic region, which is heating up faster than any other part of the world.

Two new research studies describe the increasing accuracy of specialized scientific models in forecasting changes in the ocean up to a year in advance.

North America’s 2021 heat wave was Washington’s deadliest weather-related disaster, claiming over 100 lives in the evergreen state and many others in neighboring regions. Scientists not only suggest that such heat waves will grow more intense and strike more often—in new work, they reveal the underlying mechanism behind these strengthened heat waves.

Even in the precipitation-heavy Pacific Northwest, more frequent heatwaves are threatening a key source of water supply.

The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) released this week finds that the impacts of weather extremes — exacerbated by climate change — are far-reaching across every region of the United States. And it indicates a warming future threatens Northwest salmon recovery.

A new report from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory shows that along a 200-mile stretch of ocean off the coast of southern Oregon and northern California, floating wind farms could potentially triple the Pacific Northwest’s wind power capacity while offsetting potentially billions of dollars in costs for utilities, ratepayers, insurance companies, and others across the West who bear the cost of climate change’s effects.

As scientists around the world sound the alarm about record sea surface temperatures, a new experimental NOAA forecast system predicts that half of the global ocean may experience marine heatwave conditions by the end of summer.

As the world warms, extreme weather events grow – and they also change. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that climate change is shifting snowfall to rainfall on mountains across the Northern Hemisphere. Those surges of liquid water bring a distinct set of dangers, including floods, landslides, and soil erosion.

n the quarter century between 1996 and 2020, wildfires in California consumed five times more area than they did from 1971 to 1995. Researchers at the University of California and other international institutions have concluded that nearly all of the increase in scorched terrain can be blamed on human-caused climate change.

A new report recently released by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife calls for new strategies and policy tools to address consequences of increasing human demand for water and the effects of climate change on Washington’s rivers, streams and salmon.

From late Dec. 2022 into Jan. 2023, a series of nine “atmospheric rivers” dumped a record amount of rain and mountain snow across the western U.S. and Canada, hitting California particularly hard. More than 32 trillion gallons of water rained down across the state alone, and the moisture also pushed into much of the Intermountain West.

Oregon continues to face new and enduring hazards related to climate change, but opportunities for adaptation and mitigation are also expanding, the latest assessment released by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute indicates.

Americans are leaving many of the U.S. counties hit hardest by hurricanes and heatwaves—and moving towards dangerous wildfires and warmer temperatures, finds one of the largest studies of U.S. migration and natural disasters.

The Washington Department of Ecology has published a new report looking at projected streamflow changes in the state due to climate change and the projected impacts on salmonids.

Snowcapped mountains not only look majestic, they are vital to a delicate ecosystem that has existed for tens of thousands of years. Mountain water runoff and snowmelt flows down to streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans and today around a quarter of the world depends on these natural “water towers” to replenish downstream reservoirs and groundwater aquifers for urban water supplies, agricultural irrigation, and ecosystem support.

The world’s current climate pledges are insufficient to keep the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement firmly within grasp. Global warming will likely surpass the 1.5-degree Celsius limit.

California state scientists have released a new report that shows how the impacts of climate change are rapidly accelerating in California. Key findings illustrate an exponential increase in wildfires and point to a hotter, drier environment driven by megadrought. Climate-influenced changes in freshwater and ocean conditions, says the report, are threatening the survival of Chinook salmon in Northern California rivers.

An international coalition of researchers says in a report published this week that the Earth’s vital signs have worsened to the point that “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”

A new analysis led by researchers with the University of California has found the 2020 wildfires in the state, the most disastrous wildfire year on record, put twice as much greenhouse gas emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere as the total reduction in such pollutants in California between 2003-2019.

When the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave peaked at 121 degrees Fahrenheit, it buckled roads, melted power lines, killed hundreds and led to a devastating wildfire. Climate scientists were shocked to see heat so severe.

California lives with a sleeping giant — an occasional flood so large that it inundates major valleys with water flows hundreds of miles long and tens of miles across.

Idaho’s ten-year plan for conserving and managing the state’s most at-risk fish and wildlife and the habitat they depend on says that climate change is one of the stressors impacting all of the state’s animals and lands.

Anticipated future shifts in water supply and water demands will combine to create potential vulnerabilities related to water availability across many areas of eastern Washington, including trouble for fish, according to a new report from the Washington Department of Ecology, Washington State University, and the State of Washington Water Research Center.

Regional shifts in streamflows have prompted the Bonneville Power Administration to revise its generation forecast methodology to more accurately reflect a Northwest water supply impacted by climate change.

Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more and more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the Northern Hemisphere by later this century, according to a comprehensive new climate change study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

California is banking on its forests to help reduce planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But that element of the state’s climate-change solution arsenal may be in jeopardy, as new research from the University of California, Irvine reports that trees in California’s mountain ranges and open spaces are dying from wildfires and other pressures – and fewer new trees are filling the void.

Climate change is likely to exacerbate flooding throughout the Columbia River basin, according to a recent study by researchers at Oregon State University and the University of Washington affiliated with the Climate Impacts Research Consortium.

A report on the state of Canada’s Pacific Ocean ecosystems says warm ocean temperature have changed the zooplankton community with consequences for fish, seabirds and the entire Pacific marine food web. Climate change has altered the ecosystems that Canada’s Pacific salmon depend on at every stage of their life cycle.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2022 Summer Reliability Assessment warns that several parts of North America are at elevated or high risk of energy shortfalls this summer due to predicted above normal temperatures and drought conditions over the western half of the United States and Canada.

Knowing what factors influence when and how much snowmelt ultimately makes it to streams, rivers and reservoirs is crucial for water managers trying to make the most of limited water resources.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world’s oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to a recent study in the journal Science by Princeton University researchers.

Changing climate and oceans are affecting the nation’s living marine resources and the people, businesses and communities that depend on them. From warming oceans and rising seas, to droughts and ocean acidification, these impacts are expected to increase with continued changes in the planet’s climate system.

Increasingly large and intense wildfires in the Pacific Northwest are altering the seasonal pattern of air pollution and causing a spike in unhealthy pollutants in August, new research finds. The smoke is undermining clean air gains, posing potential risks to the health of millions of people.

A new study shows over 1,300 gigawatts of solar, storage, and wind in interconnection queues – an indicator of a major energy transition underway, even if most proposed projects will not be built.

The third and final installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report calls for aggressive and comprehensive actions if we are to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century. It finds we still need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions drastically, beyond what governments have pledged, and that this emissions gap is exacerbated by implementation gaps despite the mitigation efforts underway.

In arid Western states, the climate is growing warmer and drier, leading to increased demand for water resources from humans and ecosystems. Now, the atmosphere across much of the U.S. is also demanding a greater share of water than it used to, according to a new study.

The United States is expected to experience as much sea level rise by the year 2050 as it witnessed in the previous hundred years, says a new NOAA report released this week. The West Coast will see a rise of 4-8 inches.

The drought that has enveloped southwestern North America for the past 22 years is the region’s driest “megadrought” — defined as a drought lasting two decades or longer — since at least the year 800, according to a new UCLA-led study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

A recent study describes a link between dwindling sea ice and worsening wildfires in the western United States. As sea ice melts from July to October, sunlight warms the increasingly iceless, surrounding area. This ultimately brings heat and fire-favorable conditions to distant states like California, Washington, and Oregon later in autumn and early winter.

The supply of farmed seafood such as salmon and mussels are projected to drop 16 per cent globally by 2090 if no action is taken to mitigate climate change, according to a new University of British Columbia study.

New Oregon State University research shows that warm-water habitats can be critically important for the survival of cold-water fish such as trout and salmon.

The western United States has experienced a rapid increase of fire weather as the vapor pressure deficit (VPD) increases in the area during the warm season.

A University of Arizona-led effort to reconstruct Earth's climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system.

Rather than ocean oxygen levels improving as they usually do this time of year, hypoxia off the Pacific Northwest coast is as bad as it’s been at any point in 2021, according to collaborative research by Oregon State University, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Oregon’s crabbing industry.

Intensive pumping of aquifers during drought can speed up deterioration of groundwater quality, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. The results highlight clean drinking water supply vulnerabilities in California and other western states currently experiencing record drought conditions.

Unchecked climate change may leave some Arctic predators surviving off of marine “junk food,” according to a new University of British Columbia study.

The Bureau of Reclamation has released the Missouri River Headwaters Basin Study that provides options to meet the increased water demand and a change in the timing of the snowmelt runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Fort Peck Reservoir. The basin covers about 50,000 square miles and is the primary water source for 320,000 people and about 1.1 million acres of irrigated lands.

Many commonly-eaten fish could face extinction as warming oceans due to climate change increases pressure on their survival while also hampering their ability to adapt.

Firefighters have reported that Western wildfires are starting earlier in the morning and dying down later at night, hampering their ability to recover and regroup before the next day’s flareup.

Roadless national forests in the American West burn more often and at a slightly higher severity than national forests with roads, but the end result for the roadless forests is greater fire resilience, Oregon State University researchers say.

Earth's climate is determined by a delicate balance between how much of the Sun's radiative energy is absorbed in the atmosphere and at the surface and how much thermal infrared radiation Earth emits to space. A positive energy imbalance means the Earth system is gaining energy, causing the planet to heat up. Now, NOAA and NASA researchers have found that Earth’s energy imbalance approximately doubled during the 14-year period from 2005 to 2019.

Is the availability of water to meet all instream (flows for fish) and out-of-stream demands vulnerable to expected changes in climate and population growth in eastern Washington?

Warm river habitats appear to play a larger than expected role supporting the survival of cold-water fish, such as salmon and trout, a new Oregon State University-led study found.

Floating solar farms could help to protect lakes and reservoirs from some of the harms of climate change, a new study suggests.

As the planet warms, scientists expect that mountain snowpack should melt progressively earlier in the year. However, observations in the U.S. show that as temperatures have risen, snowpack melt is relatively unaffected in some regions while others can experience snowpack melt a month earlier in the year.

NOAA Fisheries is using life-cycle modeling that projects threatened Snake River spring/summer chinook salmon will experience starkly lower survival rates during their years in the ocean in the future compared to now. Unusually warm temperatures—including a 2014-2015 marine heatwave— have depressed salmon returns to many West Coast rivers, including the Snake and Columbia.

In 2017, a widely cited study used statistical tools to model how likely the world is to meet the Paris Agreement global temperature targets. The analysis found that on current trends, the planet had only a 5% chance of staying below 2 degrees Celsius warming this century — the international climate treaty’s supposed goal.

The effects of a changing climate continue to significantly affect Oregonians and the state’s resources and infrastructure, the latest biennial report released today by the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute concludes.

During the summer of 2020, an area of unusually warm ocean water—a marine heatwave—grew off the West Coast of the United States. It became the second most expansive Northeast Pacific heatwave since monitoring began in 1982. The heatwave eventually encompassed about 9.1 million square kilometers, almost six times the size of Alaska, towards the end of September.

To date in 2020, 1,217 wildfires have burned 1,473,522 million acres of National Forest System lands in California; 8,486 wildfires have burned over 4 million acres across all jurisdictions in California.