New Mexico

Future generations face sea-level rises of 18 to 27 feet, extinction of 30 percent to 50 percent of animal species and other catastrophes if carbon-based fuels continue to be used at the same rate as today, climate scientist James Hansen told a group at the Santa Fe Institute on Thursday.

Posted by Zack Guido | on December 03, 2012
A once-promising winter forecast for an El Niño-and the wet conditions it often brings to the Southwest-has dissipated. Now, it appears a neutral phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is moving in, diminishing chances for copious winter rain and snow in the region.

The fight between state and federal regulators over how best to clean up an aging coal-fired power plant in northwest New Mexico is also a debate about the state’s energy future.

Using tree ring records, scientists have concluded that the drought of 2000-12, in terms of its combination of tree-stressing dryness and heat, was the fifth worst in the last thousand years, and climate trends show the worst could be yet to come.

The Southwest is headed for a megadrought in our lifetime, the likes of which haven’t been experienced in more than four centuries, according to a recently published study by a coalition of scientists.

A panel of environmental experts gave U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., some pretty dire news: The world, the country and the Southwest are all going to keep heating up, drying up and burning up due to the effects of climate change, much of which is caused by man.

A recent study by a New York-based think tank predicts New Mexico ski areas will have to spend more on snow-making in coming years due to climate change if greenhouse-gas emissions remain the same.

Trees in forests all over the world, from the Arctic to semi-arid New Mexico, are dying at an alarming rate. Nate McDowell’s team hopes to devise a system that will help predict tree die-off and the potential climate impacts.

New Mexico's stratosphere may soon be the test-bed for an experiment to test a controversial proposal to combat global warming. It's called solar geoengineering.

Posted by Zack Guido | on June 27, 2012
The North American monsoon, the fickle phenomenon that is the summer rainy season in the Southwest, is forecast to be more vigorous than average, with a strong beginning and end.