Water levels are running dangerously low in reservoirs across the U.S. Southwest. Declining flows in the Gila River have pushed levels to below 1 percent of capacity in Arizona’s San Carlos Reservoir
The Western U.S. is grappling with an extended drought. Nikk Ogasa explores the possibility that this continued dryness (and the fires and other hazards associated with it) could be our new climate change induced reality…
Kearny, Ariz., is a town on the brink. Located at the foot of the Dripping Spring Mountains in eastern Arizona, this small community of 2,000 people sources its water from the Gila River, a verdant waterway that snakes by the southern edge of town.
But in March, the snowpack feeding the river had dropped to precipitous levels: It was just 1 percent of its historic norm for that time of year. The Gila River water commissioner slashed Kearny’s allotment of river water by some 85 percent. And in April, town officials announced that “Zero Day” was approaching, at which point the taps would run dry.
“We need rain,” says Norm Warren, a lifelong Kearny resident. He owns the only large grocery store within a 45-minute drive of the town. Without tap water for refrigerator cooling systems, Warren says he won’t be able to store perishable products like meats and fresh produce.
Kearny’s dilemma foreshadows a crisis building across the American Southwest. Since 2000, the region — which includes Arizona, New Mexico, California, Utah, Colorado and parts of northern Mexico — has endured a historic “megadrought,” or a period of severe dryness that persists for decades. Scientists say it’s the driest this region has been in 1,200 years.
“We’re 27 years into it, and it shows no signs of letting up,” says Brad Udall, a water and climate researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
Scientists point to two factors causing the drought — rising temperatures and declining precipitation. Heat from human-caused climate change creates a thirsty atmosphere that is more effective at drying out the landscape, says Kevin Anchukaitis, a dendrochronologist who runs the University of Arizona Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research in Tucson. As for the lack of rain, many researchers wonder if it is simply a stroke of bad luck.
But a controversial study published in Nature in 2025 suggests something far more ominous: Humankind has disrupted a naturally occurring climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean that historically ushered episodes of wet weather into the Southwest. If that’s true, Udall says, things are not looking good for places like Kearny. Other researchers worry that the megadrought may be locked in place for the foreseeable future…
[Ogasa unpacks both the more traiditional analysis and the new hypothesis– that human behavior has disrupted the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, an alternating climate pattern in which areas of warmer and cooler than normal surface waters switch their positions on a timescale of many decades…]
… “The conventional wisdom suggested that the PDO could shift any given year, and we [wouldn’t] have to worry about drought [after that],” says climate scientist Jeremy Klavans of the University of Miami.
But he and colleagues weren’t so sure. They dug into that assumption, analyzing more than 500 simulations of the PDO from a dozen major climate models. They examined how the PDO shifted — and stabilized — in the presence of outside forces such as volcanic eruptions, solar variation and levels of greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Their finding: Greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions had effectively hijacked the behavior of the PDO over the last 50 years by altering atmospheric temperatures, the team reported in 2025 in Nature.
Ballooning concentrations of industrial aerosols — which can have an atmospheric cooling effect — probably pushed the PDO to increasingly favor its warm phase starting in the 1950s, the researchers say. But in the 1980s, clean air legislation decreased aerosol emissions even as greenhouse gas levels continued to rise and warm the atmosphere. That combination drove the PDO toward its cool phase, making drought conditions more likely in the Southwest. Instead of being a rare event, drought “becomes kind of commonplace,” Klavans says….
… the current climate models may actually be underestimating the potential duration of the ongoing megadrought, based on those findings, says study coauthor Victoria Todd, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
That could be bad news for the American Southwest, Udall says. Even if people stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, planet-warming carbon dioxide will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, locking the PDO and megadrought into place, potentially for decades. If the emerging science is right, then the Southwest is going to keep getting drier and drier, Udall says. “No question about it.”
Warm Phase (1977-1998): During the PDO’s warm phase, the Pacific jet stream (red arrow) moves south over North America, drawing wet weather patterns into the Southwest.
Cool phase (1999–now): When the PDO switches to its cool phase, the Pacific jet stream (blue arrow) moves north, diverting wet weather patterns out of the Southwest and making drought more likely.
The hypothesis that human emissions have disrupted the PDO could be put to the test this year. That’s because scientists are predicting a historically strong El Niño, a Pacific climate pattern characterized by months of warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific. El Niños often bring wet conditions to the Southwest — and they have been known to force the PDO into a different phase. For example, the 1976–1977 El Niño helped push the PDO into a warm phase for nearly a quarter of a century.
But a powerful El Niño in 2015 wasn’t able to force the switch for more than a few years. That suggests the PDO may be slowly changing, Klavans says. “Something’s different here.”
Even if the current El Niño is strong enough to force the PDO into a warm phase, no one should expect the megadrought to go away any time soon, Seager says. “We’re talking about something that’s been going on for a few decades now. Even one very wet winter is not going to be enough to restore Colorado River reservoirs to where they would preferably be.”…
… Even in the best-case scenarios, the Southwest never returns to the wet years of the 1980s and ’90s, when lakes Powell and Mead reached maximum capacity numerous times, the researchers reported in 2023 in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science. The findings instead suggest that, regardless of what the PDO does, the region will face a far drier climate than it did in its recent past. In other words, even if the megadrought were to end, the Southwest faces an uncertain future when it comes to water, according to the study.
Communities need to prepare for the future by improving their water conservation efforts and infrastructure, Anchukaitis says. Those practices will grow only more crucial as the Southwest’s population continues to balloon: Utah, Texas, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona are among the 10 fastest growing states by population this decade, according to a 2024 report by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Even if wet weather returns, Anchukaitis says, the cities of the Southwest shouldn’t fall into complacency. “[More rain] doesn’t mean that … megadroughts aren’t going to come back,” he says. “Maybe it buys us some time to ease systems into a new way of thinking.”…
As we pray for rain, we might recall that it was on this date in 2006 that NASA recorded th largest ozone hole in the atmosphere to date. From September 21-30, the average area was 10.6 million square miles, as measured by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA’s Aura satellite. At the worst point, a record low of 1.2 Dobson Units compared to a 125 DU non-hole reading. For the past several decades, each year during the Southern Hemisphere Spring (Northern Hemisphere Autumn) chemical reactions due to chlorine and bromine man-made compounds in the atmosphere cause the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere over the southern polar region… all contributing to the phenomenon discussed above.
False-color view of total ozone over the Antarctic pole. The purple and blue colors are where there is the least ozone, and the yellows and reds are where there is more ozone. (source)
Do YOU want to feel INCREDIBLY OLD? I mean, I imagine you already feel incredibly old, what with, well, your age, and the terrifying pace of everything, and the fact that nothing makes sense, but if you would like to feel EVEN OLDER then you will ‘enjoy’ this site which presents a whole load of ‘XX was closer to WWII than Y’-type facts to help you realise quite how much time has passed since you’ve been alive and how transient and ephemeral your existence in fact is. You can even plug in your birthday to get personalised horrordata…
Try it for yourself at: “Another day closer to the end.” No extra points for guessing that the example illustrated in the pic above was generated with your (very old) correspondent’s birthday.
Huge amounts of sand have been and continue to be sent to Singapore, even though Vietnam officially banned sand exports in 2017. Sa Đéc, Vietnam, December 2020.
(Roughy) Daily has looked before at that most common– and essential– of substances, sand. (See here, here, and here.) Today, via Michaela Büsse, an update…
After water, sand is the second most used material in the world. Each year, approximately 40-50 billion metric tons of sand are consumed worldwide.
This accounts for 79% of all aggregates extracted and traded, making sand the literal foundation for global human infrastructure. Sand plays a vital role in the production of glass, steel, and concrete. Silica, one of the most common minerals found in sand, is the key ingredient in silicon chips and thus for the development of digital technologies. But sand is also fundamental to the creation and maintenance of land itself, rendering it constitutive to processes of urbanization. Artificial islands, port expansions, and beach nourishment projects consume vast quantities of sand. As the bedrock of urban infrastructures, sand is embedded in the very fabric of modern life. Yet, its ubiquity belies its complexity. As a sediment, sand is foundational for the functioning of ecosystems. The relentless expansion and intensification of cities is starving rivers and coasts of sediment, depleting sand at a rate that far exceeds its natural replenishment.
Intensive dredging of rivers and seabeds has fundamentally altered sedimentation patterns, disrupting the delicate equilibrium that governs ecosystems. Rivers, which once carried sand from mountains to coastlines, now struggle to replenish beaches and wetlands. This depletion has far-reaching consequences. Without sufficient sand deposits, coastlines are left vulnerable to erosion, rising sea levels, and the devastating impact of extreme weather events. In ecosystems already on the front lines of climate change—like deltas, wetlands, and estuaries—the effects of sand extraction are compounded. Delta regions, for instance, rely on continuous sediment deposits to counteract the natural sinking of land. When sand is removed faster than it can be replaced, these regions are exposed to subsidence, where land sinks at an accelerated rate, amplifying flood risk and increasing the salinization of freshwater resources. Such impacts are often delayed, manifesting years or even decades after extraction, making them challenging to monitor and mitigate effectively.
As global sand consumption surges to unprecedented heights, the profound and far-reaching consequences of extraction come sharply into focus. Numerous journalistic and scientific accounts warn of the “looming tragedy of the sand commons,” highlighting environmental concerns related to dredging and mining sand, such as pollution, biodiversity loss, and soil disturbance, as well as illegal practices in the sand trade. The reality of the sand trade is both dirty and messy, intertwining national and transnational politics. In regions like Southeast Asia, rapid urbanization and investments in large-scale infrastructure projects have spurred an unprecedented demand for this essential resource. Here, land reclamation has emerged as a flashpoint where extraction practices intersect with issues of sovereignty, livelihoods, and environmental justice, transforming sand into a highly sought-after and contested commodity. Building new land for some means taking old land from others. The exploitation of sand goes hand in hand with exploitative labor and geopolitical maneuvering.
Sand’s impending scarcity has fueled a black market, giving rise to “sand mafias”—criminal organizations that exploit extraction and trade through corruption, violence, and intimidation, often circumventing national mining and export bans. It is not uncommon for sand to become a matter of life and death for those who mine it as well as for those who seek to prevent it from being mined. Across the world, activists and local communities have mobilized against sand extraction and land reclamation, fighting the prevailing narratives of development and progress that often justify environmental exploitation. However, these initiatives are rarely successful, resulting (at best) in compensation payments to the affected communities. A transboundary governance of sand would require international standards, which many researchers and organizations have requested. Even so, it is nearly impossible to control the natural flow of sand.
As sand transitions from a sediment to a precious resource, it has become instrumental in urban ideals of late modernity. Cities like Dubai and Singapore epitomize how architectural ambitions is built on vast quantities of imported sand. Land built from scratch, towering skyscrapers, and sprawling infrastructure are testaments to sand’s transformative potential. Yet, these urban landscapes are haunted by their materiality: each grain is a silent witness to the ecological and social disruptions that enabled its journey. The sand in these structures embodies the persistence of environmental degradation, displaced labor, and the exploitation that made them possible. In this way, sand is both an architect and a specter of modernity’s unrestrained ambitions, leaving us to confront the shadows cast by our own constructions…
As we get grainy, we might send insightful birthday greetings to James Hansen; he was born on this date in 1941. An atmospheric physicist, he was Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (from 1981-2013). He is best known for his (June, 1988) testimony to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that there was 99% certainty the cause of climate change was known with 99% certainty to be the buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in the atmosphere– helping raise broad awareness of global warming– and for his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. (Hansen has since proposed a revised explanation of global warming, where the 0.7°C global mean temperature increase of the last 100 years can be to some extent explained by the effect of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (such as methane).
Currently the Director of the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, he remains a climate activist.
As Oliver Hawkins and Peggy Hollinger report, an analysis of commercial radio spectrum filings shows a growing number of players– government agencies, but increasingly private companies– bettting on the emergence of a lunar economy…
Private companies are staking claims to radio spectrum on the Moon with the aim of exploiting an emerging lunar economy, Financial Times research has found.
More than 50 applications have been filed with the International Telecommunication Union since 2010 to use spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enable all wireless technology, on or from the Moon.
Last year the number of commercial filings to the global co-ordinating body for lunar spectrum outstripped those from space agencies and governments for the first time, according to FT research. The filings cover satellite systems as well as missions to land on the lunar surface.
“We will look back and see this as an important inflection point,” said Katherine Gizinski, chief executive of spectrum consultancy River Advisers, which has filed for lunar spectrum for three satellite systems on behalf of other companies since 2021.
Although total registrations were lower in 2024 than the previous year, the increased proportion of commercial filings reflects a race to build the infrastructure that will enable the “cislunar economy”, the area between the Earth and Moon…
As we linger over the lunar, we might recall that it was on this date in 1971 that NASA accomplished the third lunar EVA: Commander Alan B. Shepard and Lunar Module pilot Edgar D. Mitchell became the fifth and sixth men to walk on the Moon (in the lunar highlands near the crater Fra Mauro) as part of the Apollo 14 mission.
During this four-hour “activity,” they deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP)– scientific experiments that were left on the lunar surface and other scientific and sample collection apparatus. B efore lifting off on the next day, the astronauts went on another moonwalk almost to the rim of nearby Cone crater, collecting 42.9 kg of samples along the traverse. At the end of this 3.45 km walk, Shepard used a contingency sampler with a Wilson 6-iron connected to the end to hit two golf balls.
Not long ago the search for extraterrestrials was considered laughable nonsense. Today, as Adam Frank explains, it’s serious and scientific…
Suddenly, everyone is talking about aliens. After decades on the cultural margins, the question of life in the Universe beyond Earth is having its day in the sun. The next big multibillion-dollar space telescope (the successor to the James Webb) will be tuned to search for signatures of alien life on alien planets and NASA has a robust, well-funded programme in astrobiology. Meanwhile, from breathless newspaper articles about unexplained navy pilot sightings to United States congressional testimony with wild claims of government programmes hiding crashed saucers, UFOs and UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) seem to be making their own journey from the fringes.
What are we to make of these twin movements, the scientific search for life on one hand, and the endlessly murky waters of UFO/UAP claims on the other? Looking at history shows that these two very different approaches to the question of extraterrestrial life are, in fact, linked, but not in a good way. For decades, scientists wanting to think seriously about life in the Universe faced what’s been called the ‘giggle factor’, which was directly related to UFOs and their culture. More than once, the giggle factor came close to killing off the field known as SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence). Now, with new discoveries and new technologies making astrobiology a mainstream frontier of astrophysics, understanding this history has become important for anyone trying to understand what comes next. But for me, as a researcher in the field of technosignatures (signs of advanced alien tech) – the new face of SETI – getting past the giggle factor poses an existential challenge.
I am the principal investigator of NASA’s first ever grant to study signatures of intelligent life from distant exoplanets. My colleagues and I are tasked with developing a library of technosignatures or evidence of technology-wielding life forms on distant planets. Taking on that role has been the culmination of a lifetime fascination with the question of life and the Universe, a fascination that formed when I was a kid in the 1970s, drinking deep from the well of science fiction novels, UFO documentaries and Star Trek reruns. Early on, as a teenager reading both Carl Sagan and Erich von Däniken (the author of Chariots of the Gods), I had to figure out how to separate the wheat from the chaff. This served as a kind of training ground for dealing with questions facing me and my colleagues about proper standards of evidence in astrobiology. It’s also why, as a public-facing scientist, I must work to understand how people not trained in science come to questions surrounding UFOs as aliens. That is what drove me, writing a recent popular-level account of astrobiology’s frontiers called The Little Book of Aliens (2023), to stare hard into the entangled history of UFOs, the scientific search for life beyond Earth, and the all-important question of standards of evidence…
[Frank explains the efforts underway, their history, and the rigor being applied in sifting for credible evidence…]
… With the giggle factor receding for the scientific search for life, where does that leave UFOs and UAPs? There, the waters remain muddied. It is a good thing that pilots feel they can report sightings without fear of reprisal as a matter of air safety and national defence. And an open, transparent and agnostic investigation of UAPs could offer a masterclass in how science goes about its business of knowing rather than just believing. In The Little Book of Aliens, I even explained how such an investigation might be conducted (the recent NASA UAP panel and the Galileo Project are exploring these kinds of options). But if my colleagues and I claimed we’d found life on another world, we’d be required to provide evidence that meets the highest scientific standards. While we should let future studies lead us where they may, there is simply no such evidence surrounding UFOs and UAPs that meets these standards today. In fact, at a recent hearing conducted by NASA’s UAP panel, it was revealed that government studies show only a small percentage of reported sightings failed to find a reasonable explanation. Many of the remaining cases did not have enough data to even begin an attempt at identification. The sky is simply not awash in unexplained phenomena.
In the end, what matters is that, after thousands of years of arguing over opinions about life in the Universe, our collective scientific efforts have taken us to the point where we can finally begin a true scientific study of the question. The next big space telescope NASA is planning will be called the Habitable Worlds Observatory. The name tells you all you need to know. We’re going all in on the search for life in the Universe because we finally have the capabilities to search for life in the Universe. The giggle factor is finally history.
As we look up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1930 that Pluto was announced to be the name chosen for the newly-discovered ninth planet (previously known as Planet X) by Roger Lowell Putnam, trustee of Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, (and nephew of the late Percival Lowell who had established the observatory and initiated the search there for the ninth planet). Pluto had been located there on in February of that year at that institution by Clyde Tombaugh.
Putnam was quoted on the front page of the New York Times, saying, “We felt in making our choice of a name for Planet X, that the line of Roman gods for whom the other planets are named should not be broken, and we believe that Dr. Lowell, whose researches led directly to its discovery, would have felt the same way.” Pluto in mythology was the ruler of the underworld, regions of darkness. “P.L.” is also Lowell’s monogram.
While it’s still known as Pluto, in 2006 the International Astrophysical Union demoted it from a “planet” to a “dwarf planet.”
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