Background Articles

Algal blooms in the Liffey River threaten Dublin's drinking water due to pollution and climate change, raising concerns about the safety of fish and the future impact on water treatment.

More than 80 per cent of B.C.'s water basins are experiencing level 4 or 5 drought conditions, with salmon in many parts of the province struggling to make it to their spawning grounds.

Teller is considering moving to a new subdivision site to avoid flood zones and eventually connect to water and sewer systems, with the project estimated to be completed by summer 2025.

"I am concerned about high levels of PFAS contamination in the drinking water?"

Scientists have tracked the fate of the Peyto Glacier in the Rocky Mountains for decades as a global reference point. It’s disappearing faster than expected, which is a warning sign for communities downstream that depend on its water.

This rural part of the island of Oahu is not connected to city sewers — and waste from toilets, sinks and showers is mostly collected in hundreds of pits called cesspools. Rising seas are also pushing groundwater closer to the surface, allowing cesspool effluent to mix with the water table and flow into the ocean.

Heat waves like the one that engulfed parts of parts of the South and Midwest and killed more than a dozen people are becoming more common.

Researchers found the global decline in water storage was equivalent to 17 Lake Meads — the largest reservoir in the U.S.

State officials say Unalakleet will see work to improve conditions on its water system in the near future.

The region of Catalonia, northeastern Spain, is in its worst drought since measurements began. The sheep reservoir supplies water to the city of Barcelona.

The 'phantom' Tulare Lake once the biggest lake west of the Mississippi and drained for agriculture purposes is slowly reemerging.

Trapped in all that permafrost is an estimated 30 billion tons of carbon. It’s an unfathomable amount, Kirkwood says. With global warming, the permafrost is thawing, threatening to release a “carbon bomb” of heat-trapping methane gas into the atmosphere. But there’s something else lurking in the permafrost that has the potential to be more immediately dangerous to the people and wildlife living in the area: mercury.

More than 700 inches of snow have fallen at Mammoth Mountain, almost burying entire houses and setting new record for snowfall. The snowfall in the Sierra Nevada range will help mitigate drought conditions in coming years.

Atmospheric river boosted California's snowpack, especially in Central and Southern Sierra. Now the levels are record level creating safety issues such as roofs collapsing and helping with drought conditions across the western states.

In addition to blizzard conditions, Kotzebue residents have been experiencing power outages, water service interruptions and travel complications because of the storms.

Warming soils beneath Utqiagvik are triggering erosion that threatens homes, infrastructure and cultural resources. The North Slope has seen some of the fastest changes in coastal erosion in the nation.

Dozens of once crystal-clear streams and rivers in Arctic Alaska are now running bright orange and cloudy, and, in some cases, they may be becoming more acidic. This otherwise undeveloped landscape now looks as if an industrial mine has been in operation for decades, and scientists want to know why.

Scientists have analyzed 1.4 million global lakes, saying the sky is "thirstier" than ever.

Beavers were not previously recognized as an Arctic species, and their engineering in the tundra is considered negligible. Recent findings suggest that beavers have moved into Arctic tundra regions and are controlling surface water dynamics, which strongly influence permafrost and landscape stability. Here we use 70 years of satellite images and aerial photography to show the scale and magnitude of northwestward beaver expansion in Alaska, indicated by the construction of over 10,000 beaver ponds in the Arctic tundra. The number of beaver ponds doubled in most areas between ~ 2003 and ~ 2017. Earlier stages of beaver engineering are evident in ~ 1980 imagery, and there is no evidence of beaver engineering in ~ 1952 imagery, consistent with observations from Indigenous communities describing the influx of beavers over the period. Rapidly expanding beaver engineering has created a tundra disturbance regime that appears to be thawing permafrost and exacerbating the effects of climate change.

By Seth Borenstein | The Associated Press FILE - A kayaker paddles in Lake Oroville as water levels remain low due to continuing drought conditions in