"After smashing March heat records in 14 states and the U.S. as a whole, the gigantic heat dome that’s baked the Southwest is creeping eastward and may end up being one of the most expansive heat waves in American history, meteorologists and weather historians said."
"Wildfires burn nearly 775,000 acres in Nebraska. Land is a grazing resource for about 40,000 cows."
"The industrial-grade buoys, already being installed in Brownsville, Texas, are meant to prevent unauthorized crossings. But experts warn the buoys could intensify flooding and change the river’s course."
"Energy storage is surging on the U.S. grid — and now the country has more than enough battery-making factories to meet that booming demand."
"A new analysis warns that some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies have entered a ‘gaslighting’ phase to bolster their profits."
"The Trump administration reached a nearly $1 billion agreement with French energy giant TotalEnergies on Monday to cancel its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York and North Carolina."
"The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds."
The capacity to visualize Earth’s ecosystems in detail is an invaluable aid to reporting on the environment. That’s now being bolstered with an ongoing upgrade to NASA’s Earthdata program, fueled by its ranks of satellites. Reporter’s Toolbox says the refurbishment offers treasures for journalists ranging from oceans, groundwater and land surfaces to the biosphere and atmosphere.
Bugs may get a bad rap, but a serious possible global decline in their populations is making clearer what may be lost for ecosystems and human societies. Issue Backgrounder peers beneath the detritus to find what insects do, how we try to kill them and how they survive, and why it’s so hard to pin down the data around their shifting numbers.
"These books and reports explore climate change through historical, scientific, social, and political lenses."
