Currently browsing: Critical Issues

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.

Recognizing changes in the state’s climate and in the ocean, Oregon last week adopted a policy that gives its fish and wildlife agency guidance on how to respond to the threat of climate change.

Climate change will leave some farmers with a difficult conundrum, according to a new study by researchers from Cornell and Washington State University: Either risk more revenue volatility, or live with a more predictable decrease in crop yields.

Marine life off the West Coast, from Mexico up through Canada, inhabit the California Current. The cool, nutrient-rich water supports life from invisible phytoplankton to the economically important salmon, rockfish and Dungeness crab to the orcas.

A large marine heatwave would double the rate of the climate change impacts on fisheries species in the northeast Pacific by 2050, says a recently released study by researchers from the University of British Columbia and University of Bern.

With a dwindling number of summer steelhead returning to the Columbia River each year and warming waters resulting from climate change, Oregon fishery managers are considering setting certain dates and locations designated as thermal angling sanctuaries in three tributaries upstream of Bonneville Dam.

A Washington state agency has laid out a plan for withstanding and adapting to the impacts of global climate change. The state’s Department of Natural Resources last week released its “Plan for Climate Resilience” that the agency says will minimize the impacts of climate change and “maximize new opportunities” in making the state more resilient to changes.

It was unprecedented when nearly one million common murres died at sea and washed ashore from California to Alaska in 2015 and 2016. Scientists from the University of Washington, the U.S. Geological Survey and others blame an unexpected squeeze on the ecosystem's food supply, brought on by a severe and long-lasting marine heat wave known as "the blob."

The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission is being briefed Friday, Jan. 17, on an agency-developed Climate and Ocean Change Policy. The public will also have a chance to comment on the policy during the all-day meeting in Salem.

A new analysis shows that in 2019 the world's oceans were warmer than in any other time in recorded human history, especially between the surface and a depth of 2,000 meters (about 6,500 feet). The analysis also shows that the past five years have shown the highest global ocean temperatures and that recent ocean warming is 450 percent greater over the past 30 years than in the 30 year period beginning in 1955.

The manipulation of rivers in California is jeopardizing the resilience of native chinook salmon. It compresses their migration timing to the point that they crowd their habitats. They may miss the best window for entering the ocean and growing into adults, new research shows.

Life cycles for birds, insects and trees are shifting in this current era of a rapidly changing climate. How migration patterns, in particular, are changing and whether birds can track climate change is an open question.

A global coalition of scientists led by William J. Ripple and Christopher Wolf of Oregon State University says “untold human suffering” is unavoidable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change.

The planet baked under the sun this summer as temperatures reached the hottest ever recorded and heat waves spread across the globe. While the climate continues to warm, scientists expect the frequency and intensity of heat waves to increase. However, a commonly overlooked aspect is the spatial size of heat waves, despite its important implications.

In the wake of recent wildfires that have ravaged northern and central California, a new study finds that the severity of fire activity in the Sierra Nevada region has been sensitive to changes in climate over the past 1,400 years. The findings suggest that future climate change is likely to drive increased fire activity in the Sierras.

Rising ocean temperatures have long been linked to negative impacts for marine life, but a Florida State University team has found that the long-term outlook for many marine species is much more complex -- and possibly bleaker -- than scientists previously believed.

Oregon has a new roadmap for addressing rising ocean acidification and hypoxia – two climate change-induced conditions that could have widespread consequences for the state’s ocean ecosystem and the economy.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report highlights the urgency of prioritizing actions to address unprecedented and enduring changes in the ocean and cryosphere, the frozen part of the planet.

Beginning in 2014, the U.S. West Coast experienced an extreme marine heatwave. Could it have been predicted so that fisheries managers and stakeholders could have better planned for impacts?

Sea temperature and ocean acidification have climbed during the last three decades to levels beyond what is expected due to natural variation alone, a new study led by Princeton researchers finds.

Consecutive low snow years may become six times more common across the Western United States over the latter half of this century, leading to ecological and economic challenges such as expanded fire seasons and poor snow conditions at ski resorts, according to a study.

A new study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego suggests that a new regime of wet and dry extremes is emerging in California and that the projected bolstering of extreme precipitation is likely to be caused by streams of moisture in the sky known as atmospheric rivers (ARs).

A catastrophic forest die-off in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range in 2015-2016 was caused by the inability of trees to reach diminishing supplies of subsurface water following years of severe drought and abnormally warm temperatures.

New strategies for river management are needed to maintain water supplies and avoid big crashes in populations of aquatic life, researchers argue in a perspective piece published this week in Nature.

Forest fires are causing snow to melt earlier in the season, a trend occurring across the western U.S. that may affect water supplies and trigger even more fires, according to a new study by a team of researchers at Portland State University, the Desert Research Institute, and the University of Nevada, Reno.

Glaciers are set to disappear completely from almost half of World Heritage sites if business-as-usual emissions continue, according to the first-ever global study of World Heritage glaciers.

Heavy rain over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean is a good indicator that temperatures in central California will reach 100 degrees in four to 16 days, according to a collaborative research team from the University of California Davis and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Climate Center in Busan, South Korea.