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California’s record-smashing fire season sparks hunt for solutions

December 9, 2017
This year’s wildfire season, still on the move in Southern California, is one for the record books. Federal firefighting costs soared to a new high. The nightmarish Wine Country blazes leveled more than 5,000 homes and killed 44 people. And two weeks before Christmas, when fire danger is...

Southern California fires are destructive and unprecedented — and a sign of things to come

December 8, 2017
Southern California this week looked like scenes from a disaster movie. Flames from the Thomas Fire, spread by powerful Santa Ana winds, surrounded the mountain town of Ojai, a tourist mecca with a population of 7,500. The local hospital was forced to evacuate nearly 50 people in the middle of the...

A Look at Climate Change Effects On San Diego County

December 6, 2017
A recent presentation by Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography on climate change held locally (at the San Diego City Council Environment Committee meeting), made us wonder what climate change might look like here in San Diego County. Typically, weather...

LA fires: Why 2017’s record wildfire season keeps getting worse

December 6, 2017
Even before the dramatic Southern California wildfires began their harrowing path this week, California was already experiencing its deadliest and most destructive fire season ever. And it’s only getting worse. In Ventura and Los Angeles counties, four fires driven by the Santa Ana winds...

Hellman Fellowships Give Young Professors a Leg Up on Research

December 5, 2017
Jason Sexton traveled to research sites to learn more about the evolution of monkey flowers. Teamrat Ghezzehei installed soil sensors in the Sierra. Asmeret Berhe laid the foundation for a large collaborative soil-science project. And Emily Ritter is employing a graduate student to...

The Sierra ‘Snow Line’ Seems To Be Moving Uphill — Rapidly

November 22, 2017
If you make the winter run to Tahoe on a regular basis, it might seem like you’ve had to go farther up the hill to find snow in recent years. Some scientists say it’s not your imagination. Researchers have been keeping their eyes on the “snow line,” the point of elevation...

Study Finds That Giant Sequoias Are Being Impacted By Drought Driven By Climate Change

November 17, 2017
Giant sequoias, long viewed as majestic, impervious guardians of the high Sierra, are beginning to struggle with the multi-year stretches of drought, according to research conducted in Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks and elsewhere in the Sierra. The iconic trees, which only grow in some 70...

Study: Climate Change, Drought Threaten Giant Sequoias

November 9, 2017
A new study published online in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences finds that the giant sequoia, a fixture of California’s Sierra Nevada forests for the past 2.6 million years, might be in jeopardy from the effects of drought and climate change. The iconic trees, which only grow in...

What Do We Know About Mountain Snowpack, Runoff? Far Too Little

November 8, 2017
Most Americans may not realize it, but we really don’t know with a lot of accuracy how much snow there is sitting in the mountains during winter. We also don’t always have a precise picture of where the snow level is when a storm moves in, or how much will run off when the snow melts...

Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County is most destructive in state history

October 20, 2017
The onslaught of fires that laid waste to huge swaths of Northern California this month reached a new level of infamy Friday when the 36,432-acre Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County became the most destructive wildfire in modern state history. The fire, which destroyed an estimated 5,300 structures,...

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