(ClimateCentral.org) The remnants of two tropical systems — one from the Gulf of Mexico, the other just west of Baja California — are expected to serve as wells of moisture fueling rains this weekend over portions of the country’s two main drought hotspots, namely parts of the Southern Plains and Southern California. But while those rains could make dents in the Plains drought, they are likely to make little difference in California, local weather experts said. Both the Southern Plains...

India's Smog: The World's Dirtiest Air Smog covers buildings in New Delhi, India, in this aerial photo from May 2014. The World Health Organization reported in May that the Indian capital had the dirtiest atmosphere in the world, as it has the world's highest annual average concentration of airborne particles known as PM2.5. (AFP/Roberto Schmidt) Millions of tons of India's major crops were lost in 2005, worth more than $1 billion and enough to feed tens of millions of people...

Once Believed Extinct, Seychelles Snail Reappears An Aldabra Banded Snail (Rhachistia aldabrae) is examined and measured at the Seychelles Islands Foundation research station on Picard island, Aldabra Atoll, Seychelles. (AP Photo/SIF, C. Onezia) Declared extinct seven years ago, a snail native to the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles has been found alive in the wild. The Aldabra banded snail, once thought to have been among the first species lost to climate change, was rediscovered Aug. 23. The mollusk, which...

No country in the world is tearing down its untouched forests faster than Canada, according to findings released by Global Forest Watch. Canada was responsible for more than 21 percent of the world's damaged or destroyed virgin forests– forests that were previously untouched by loggers or developers– between 2000 and 2013, the report found. Russia landed just behind Canada, accounting for 20 percent, Global Forest Watch's report added. It's fair to note that the two countries, along with Brazil, contain...

#10: South Florida Where are the effects of global warming already having a major impact? In places like South Florida and especially Miami, which faces major long-term threats from a slow but stealthy adversary: sea level rise. In this region, sea levels already have risen by about a foot since 1880. By the end of this century, according to the latest assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they're expected to rise by another 1 to 3 feet,...

Twenty percent of the more than 700 places on UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites could be inundated by rising global sea levels if nothing is done to stem the tide of rising greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, according to a new study. Released this week by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Innsbruck, the study examines the outlook for rising sea levels during the next 2,000 years. Because so many World Heritage sites are located...

Blue skies and calm waters greet the team searching for the H.M.S Terror. The CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier sets out on its journey, carrying Parks Canada’s RV Investigator and the Canadian Hydrographic Service’s two launches, Gannet and Kinglett. One of a pair of ships captained by a fabled British explorer that had been lost in the Arctic for more than 160 years has been found, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced earlier this week. Using a remotely-operated underwater vehicle, a...

California Suffering Third Year of Historic Drought Low water levels are visible from a boat ramp at the San Luis Reservoir on Sept. 5, 2014, in Gustine, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) California's cities cut their water use in July by 7 1/2 percent, or 17 billion gallons, a rare piece of good news as the state suffers through the third year of one of its worst droughts in more than a century. The news comes from the latest...

Indian men and boys swim in a river on the outskirts of Amritsar earlier this summer. (NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty Images) Data released by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies on Monday shows that August 2014 was the warmest August worldwide since the instrument record began more than 130 years ago. The latest data from NASA's Global Land-Ocean Temperature index -- you can see the full record here -- showed that last month was the top-ranked August, with an anomaly of 0.70ºC...

A series of warm summers caused the massive Larsen-B ice shelf break up in 2002, scientists say. Rising air temperaturescould have caused meltwater and rain to build up in crevasses along the ice shelf and ultimately led to a collapse, said scientists in a recent report in the journal Science, according to Reuters. In the report, scientists wrote that "the 2002 Larsen-B Ice Shelf Collapse likely was a response to surface warming." (MORE: Hotter, Acidic Oceans Put Aquatic Life into...

Cody Creighton wants you to know why he hasn't showered for two months. The 23-year-old Ojai, California, native has launched a social media campaign to raise awareness of California's historic drought. Creighton's "One Day Dirtier" campaign took off last week to commemorate Creighton's 50thday without a shower and to spread the word. For every repost and #OneDayDirtier tag on Instagram, Creighton pledged another day without a shower – bringing his goal up to 128 days. "Seeing what this drought has...

In 2011, an historic flood devastated Bangkok. Hundreds died, and tens of billions of dollars were lost in economic damages. During and after the disaster, the combined efforts of thousands of residents formed the foundation of the city’s response. But while groups of citizens working in concert were able to deploy boats and organize shelters, one thing they couldn’t do on their own was distribute real-time data about the disaster. For that, they would need technology: a homegrown system that’s...

The city of Surat, India, has a problem: If it doesn’t keep it’s reservoir full, it won’t have enough water to sustain it through the dry season. If it does keep its reservoir full, however, then when monsoon rains suddenly arrive, the city needs to conduct an emergency release of the reservoir to keep the dam from overflowing, which floods the city of Surat. It’s a classic damned if you do, damned if you don’t dilemma. How does a city...