Norway plans to build the world's first tunnel for large cargo and passenger ships to help vessels navigate through a coastal area known for its dangerous seas and high winds. The 1-mile Stad maritime tunnel "will be carved into a piece of the peninsula's mountainside, linking two fjords, hallmarks of the Norwegian coastline." The $166 million project is slated to begin in 2018 and be finished in ... read more >>

The Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP)[1] of Deutscher Wetterdienst created a global dataset of monthly rainfall covering the years 1901-2011 at 0.5o resolution. It is based on rain gauge observations and was first published in 2011.

Rainfall patterns and variability vary greatly from one location to another. Moreover, the human eye is easily fooled by randomness in time-series da ... read more >>

Soil samples across China have revealed remnants of toxic heavy metals dating back at least a century and traces of a pesticide banned in the 1980s, an environmental official said on Wednesday, revealing the extent of the country's pollution problems. Street-level anger over air pollution that blanketed many northern cities this winter spilled over into online appeals for Beijing to clean water s ... read more >>

The desiccation of the Colorado River Delta resulted in severe environmental damage in a border context with little in the way of proven remedies. But the United States and Mexico peered into the abyss of the dying delta, realized they didn’t like what they saw, and in the context of an agreement to improve water reliability for cities and farms on both sides of the border, took steps to start ri ... read more >>

Hong Kong residents breathed in the worst air of 2013 on Monday, joining citizens in mainland China who have been choking on dangerously high pollution levels, and further undermining the city's role as an Asian financial centre, Air pollution index readings hit their highest levels this year at roadside monitoring stations in Mong Kok and Central, home to financial institutions such as HSBC Hold ... read more >>

When the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire on 17 December 2010, it was in protest at heavy-handed treatment and harassment in the province where he lived. But a host of new studies suggest that a major factor in the subsequent uprisings, which became known as the Arab spring, was food insecurity. Drought, rocketing bread prices, food and water shortages have all blight ... read more >>

Amar Singh Patel, a small-scale farmer in Chhattisgarh, India, explains the impact of using the System of Rice Intensification on his crops. Although a Chinese scientist has questioned claims of record harvests in the neighbouring state of Bihar, Amar Singh says he now produces enough rice to feed his family from only 1.5 acres of land. ... read more >>

Following the Fukushima nuclear accident in northern Japan, the US EPA is planning to issue a draft report of how to respond to a nuclear disaster; the report will focus on the long run rather than the short term. However, the work is highly criticized by nuclear power plant companies. ... read more >>

NOAA has issued a report on a small part of the recent brutal droughts that have hit the United States over the past few years. The report — “An Interpretation of the Origins of the 2012 Central Great Plains Drought” — is needlessly confusing, scientifically problematic, and already leading to misleading headlines.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth, former head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National ... read more >>

supervising engineer Craig Davis learned about the pipes in 2003 and negotiated to import some for the Los Angeles pilot project shortly after the 2011 quake. Mr. Davis said water agencies in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle have contacted him, expressing interest in similar projects. "We're just learning about it—it's really only recently that you could identify this pipe system as earthquake ... read more >>