Lake Mead shrank to a historic low Tuesday night, igniting concerns of a possible water supply shortage. Water levels dropped to , the Arizona Republic reported, the lowest it’s been since 1937. Over the course of its history, Lake Mead has been over-appropriated, causing a the current drought affecting the West has only made worse, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (MORE: ) The lake, which runs along the border between Arizona and Nevada, is a primary water source for...

Fifty-two service members died when their airplane smashed into a mountain more than 60 years ago near Colony Glacier, Alaska. Now scientists and volunteers tethered in safety gear and ice cleats are painstakingly scouring the frozen dirt and ice to see if the glacier has given up any more of its dead before they are swept into a lake and lost to history. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2012, and the somber recovery effort resumed this month. "It's a patriotic...

Power generating capacity additions by source. (Photo Credit: Bloomberg NEF) Big changes are afoot for the energy sector in the next 25 years. Coal and gas are headed out, and solar and wind are rushing to take their place on a multi-trillion dollar investment bonanza, according to afrom Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The report scopes out the power generating landscape through 2040. The main reason for the big shift in power generation isn’t likely to be because of a,or, though....

Saint George Basin, Australia (JAXA/European Space Agency) The collection of photos above shows some of the most beautiful features that cover the Earth as viewed from space.All of the images were taken by both satellites and astronauts over the course of many years. You'll see a number of climate zones represented in the images, ranging from deserts and tropical oceans to locations where frigid temperatures are a common occurrence. (MORE: Photos Show How the Earth is Changing) ...

Alaska and its neighbor to the east, Canada, have kicked off in a major way. Blazes have raged across the northern stretches of North America, sending smoke streaming down into the Lower 48 and leaving the landscape charred. The multitudes of fires is a glimpse of things to come as the climate warms, but blackened trees are only the most visible concern. The ground beneath them is what has some truly worried, with vast carbon reserves that could contribute to...

(Thinkstock/iStock) The world got a major dose of climate clarity on Tuesday. The U.S., Brazil and China — three of the world’s top — all released major commitments to reduce or at least slow their greenhouse gas emissions, protect forests and ramp up their use of renewable energy. The flurry of activity comes with five months to go until major climate talks in Paris. Those talks are considered critical for a and Tuesday’s news indicates a growing level of commitment...

Is it possible to conserve too much water in the midst of a historic drought? A small city near San Diego, California, apparently has, and now they've had to dump more than half a million gallons of water they'd saved after it went "bad." The mayor of Poway, a city of just over 47,000 to the north of San Diego, that local officials had no choice but to dispose of some 550,000 gallons of water in the Blue Crystal Reservoir....

Less than three months after turning off its public fountains in response to the historic drought now gripping most of California, the city of Palm Springs has decided to reverse course and turn many of those fountains back on again, a move that has surprised many in the Southern California community. A few fountains already had been turned back on by Sunday after the Palm Springs city council voted unanimously last week to allow it, after the local water utility...

The heat wave you felt last month wasn't just in your neck of the woods. From the Rockies to the West Coast, much of the contiguous United States baked under record or near-record warmth, the National Climatic Data Center announced Wednesday in its monthly , making June 2015 the nation's second-warmest June on record. The average U.S. temperature for the 48 contiguous U.S. states was 71.4°F in June 2015, or 2.9°F above the 20th century average and behind only June...

The photos above may look like the aftermath of a disaster, but in fact, concert-goers created this destruction. Music festivals are a summertime tradition for millions, but the heavily populated events have their downfalls and imperfections, one of which is the huge amount of trash these pop-up cities can leave behind. Large music festivals like the Glastonbury Festival, Coachella and Lollapalooza create a massive carbon footprint when taking into account trash, energy consumption and the commute of thousands. , a...

A monumental task is playing out along Alaska’s shores as a massive cleanup effort years in the making finally gets underway. Alaska’s remote beaches have long been a magnet for trash, but the 2011 Japan tsunami made the situation even worse. The disaster sent across the Pacific Ocean, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation Division of Environmental Health. Some of that debris reached Alaska, creating a web of fishing line, styrofoam, broken trees, fuel drums and urethane scattered...

Buildings near the ocean in north Miami, Florida. Reports indicate that Miami-Dade County in the future could be one of the most susceptible places when it comes to rising water levels due to global warming. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Even if the world manages to limit global warming to 2°C — the target number for current climate negotiations — may still rise at least 6 meters (20 feet) above their current heights, radically reshaping the world’s coastline and affecting millions in...

What New York City will look like thanks to sea level rise with 2 degrees Celsius of global warming. (Credit: Climate Central) If, as suggested by ain the journalScience, 2°C of global warming would lock in(6 meters) of eventual sea level rise, what would that warming mean for the future and heritage of the U.S.? It would mean a map we don’t recognize: Louisiana would shed its boot, the Eastern seaboard would seriously retract, and the Bay Area would grow...