"EPA is restarting review of a high-stakes decision on ground-level ozone standards in a step that short-circuits the prospects for any imminent action to tighten limits on the lung-damaging pollutant."

"A total of 850 people remain missing following the devastating wildfires in Maui, the Hawaiian county’s mayor said Monday, with this latest count coming ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to the island."

"[I]t’s not often that a tropical storm from the Eastern Pacific moves through Southern California on the same weekend that three tropical storms erupt in the Atlantic. That’s where things stood on Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023."

"Tropical Storm Hilary drenched the American Southwest before fading Monday to a mere rainstorm, leaving communities from the Pacific Coast to inland Nevada with a substantial cleanup effort but no reported deaths in the United States."

"Climate change is one of the top five drivers of extinction, but it’s not always a zero-sum game. In general, scientists expect species will have to move upward in elevation or latitude to cope in a warming world. However, in California, many animals have been adapting to their mutating environments in ingenious ways."

"NOAA’s five-year plan to strengthen the domestic seafood market includes establishing dozens of open-pen fish farms up to three miles offshore. But some experts worry about the well-being of marine mammals, the expansion of dead zones from fish excrement, and infringement on wild fishing grounds."

"Forty miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border in Southern California’s Imperial Valley, the Brandt Company cattle ranch is the largest single point source of methane emissions in the state, releasing more of that greenhouse gas than any oil or gas well, refinery or landfill."

"David woke suddenly in the mid-afternoon. The 56-year-old chef could hear commotion outside and scrambled up from his nap, finding his roommates on the roof of their shared home, holding garden hoses and spraying water on a raging inferno licking closer by the minute."