GoKawiil
Tech News
A study by Fajardo and colleagues, published in Nature, found that Northern Hemisphere conifer species introduced into Southern Hemisphere environments grow noticeably faster than their counterparts in native ranges. The transplanted trees also showed better resistance to and recovery from drought stress compared with those growing at home.
Climate scientists tracking 14 forecasting models report that central Pacific sea surface temperatures are running about 2.9°C above the 30-year average, more than 1°C hotter than at the same point in the record 1997 and 2015 El Niño events. Models now give a greater than 90% probability that this year's El Niño will exceed every event recorded since the 1870s, raising fears of severe drought, flooding, wildfires and coral bleaching worldwide.
Researchers have identified numerous rock glaciers—ice masses disguised beneath layers of rock and debris—that were previously overlooked in freshwater assessments. The newly mapped ice reserves amount to roughly 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water, hidden in mountainous terrain around the world.
NOAA data shows the contiguous United States just endured its warmest summer since record-keeping began, with an average temperature of 75.6°F and daytime highs averaging 88.6°F, surpassing the previous record set jointly by 2021 and 1936. The South and West bore the brunt of the heat, while Arizona logged its second-hottest summer ever and Alaska and Hawaii each posted their third-warmest.
A viral video shows a large data center in Denver's Elyria-Swansea neighborhood running sprinklers heavily on its grounds while residents face stage-one drought restrictions limiting lawn watering to two days a week. The facility is believed to be an 18-megawatt, 170,000-square-foot site owned by cloud provider CoreSite, though the tenants using the space haven't been confirmed.
NASA's satellite imaging teams have documented New Mexico's largest reservoir, Elephant Butte, dwindling to just 1.4% of its capacity due to prolonged drought conditions. Beyond monitoring the water loss, these scientists are working directly with farmers and communities affected by the shortage to help manage the crisis.
A Denver resident filmed a newly built AI data center running its lawn sprinklers heavily enough to create standing puddles, even as Denver Water's Stage 1 drought restrictions limit residential and commercial lawn watering to twice a week through September, with a full ban starting October 1. The footage went viral and fueled anger, though it remains unclear whether the facility violated the rules, since the timing of the video, use of recycled non-potable water, or a special variance could all justify the watering.
A new comparative analysis shows that pine trees planted in the Southern Hemisphere grow faster and cope with drought stress more effectively than pines in their native Northern Hemisphere ranges. Researchers attribute this to differences in growth-lifespan trade-offs and the absence of co-evolved pests and competitors that constrain growth in native habitats. The findings draw on decades of research into tree mortality, carbon storage, and invasive species dynamics across hemispheres.
The authors have retracted their paper on warming and global drought severity after discovering multiple errors, including failure to use area-weighted grid cells, inadvertent use of an outdated dataset (GLEAM v3 instead of GLEAM4), and a timestepping bug that misclassified data periods. They also acknowledged unclear explanations of how an arid-region mask was applied across different figures. Rather than issue a correction, the authors chose to retract the paper entirely and plan to resubmit a fully revised version for new peer review.
A severe, prolonged drought and heat wave across Central and Eastern Europe have dried up rivers, lakes and fish ponds, killing hundreds of tons of fish in Hungary and threatening more in Serbia, Bosnia, Romania and the Czech Republic. Hungary's meteorological service reports that roughly 99% of the country is under severe or extreme drought, with nearly 1,600 hectares of fish ponds drying out and about 280 metric tons of fish dead at 20 farms.