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.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-04
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.
nature.com
· 2026-09-02
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severity after discovering multiple errors, including failure to use area-weighted grid cells, inadvertent use of an outdated dataset (GLEAM v3 instead of GLEAM4), and a timestepping bug that misclassified data periods.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.
nature.com
· 2026-09-02
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.
fortune.com
· 2026-08-30
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