Water is life. Knowledge is power.
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Lake Mead is the country’s biggest reservoir of water. Think of it as the savings account for the entire Southwest. Right now, that savings account is nearly overdrawn.
For generations, we’ve been using too much of the Colorado River, the 300-foot-wide ribbon of water that carved the Grand Canyon, supplies Lake Mead, and serves as the main water source for much of the American West. … [more…]
The world’s largest rivers have their sources in glaciers – will the global population be left high and dry without the "eternal" ice? A glacial river in Vatnajökull, Iceland. Credit: Matthias Huss/ETH Zurich
The world’s largest rivers begin in glaciated mountain regions. However, climate change may cause many glaciers to disappear. Will water become scarce?
There are around 200,000 glaciers worldwide. They play a central role in the water cycle, … [more…]
When ice shelves melt, they dump freshwater into the sea which lightens the salty water. Credit: Flickr/NASA ICE, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Melting ice shelves are changing the ocean’s chemistry at the South Pole and the result could be a change in global currents and increased glacial melt, according to scientists who are creating maps to feed into climate change models.
At the North and South Poles, cold dense … [more…]
WASHINGTON — To ensure that tap water in the United States is safe to drink, the federal government has been steadily tightening the health standards for the nation’s water supplies for decades. But over and over again, local water systems around the country have failed to meet these requirements.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that, since 1982, between … [more…]
Photo: The Joe’s Crab Shack in Louisville, Kentucky, sits surrounded by water along the Ohio River.
(CNN) Heavy rains across much of the central United States have caused intense flooding and left at least three people dead. These striking photos from the Midwest show the extent of the floodwaters, which have consumed cars and buildings in cities along the Ohio River.
Flooding along the Ohio River in Ripley, Ohio:
Emily … [more…]