As pilot Bruce Gordon lifts up from the local airport, the distant perspective of the Teton Range raises the spirits, but the unfolding sight of dying forests sears the soul.

SACRAMENTO -- -- Saying California's water reserves are all but gone, state officials on Thursday announced the revival of a dormant 17-year-old program to buy water from Sacramento Valley farmers and sell it to the thirstiest Southern California agencies in case this winter brings a third year of skimpy precipitation.

What is the maximum amount that sea levels could rise by 2100? Much attention has been given to the numbers issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, and the fact that they are absolute minimums.

Satellite imagery released earlier this week provided further evidence that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon region accelerated dramatically this year.

The theory that global warming may be contributing to stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic over the past 30 years is bolstered by a new study led by a Florida State University researcher. The study will be published in the Sept. 4 edition of the journal Nature.

A huge 19 square mile (55 square km) ice shelf in Canada's northern Arctic broke away last month and the remaining shelves have shrunk at a "massive and disturbing" rate, the latest sign of accelerating climate change in the remote region, scientists said on Tuesday.

The noted Colorado State University hurricane research team on Tuesday said it expects well above-average Atlantic hurricane activity in September, with four hurricanes, two of which will become major storms. "We predict that September will be quite active based on climate signals through August," said pioneer hurricane season forecaster Dr. Bill Gray, founder of the research team.

Could our coastlines disappear underwater much sooner than we think? The controversial view that sea levels could rise at a rate of more than 1 metre per century has found support from a new study of a long-melted ice sheet.

Africa's largest water transfer effort, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, plans to supply water to the industrial heartland of South Africa and to generate energy for impoverished Lesotho. The multi-billion dollar investment offers economic growth and greater water security for underserved communities in the region.

Envisat observations from mid-August depict that a new record of low sea-ice coverage could be reached in a matter of weeks. The animation above is a series of mosaics of the Arctic Ocean created from images acquired between early June and mid-August 2008 from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard Envisat. The dark grey colour represents ice-free areas while blue represents areas covered with sea ice.

IT SEEMS to happen with depressing frequency - sunny skies turn to rain just as the weekend arrives. Now Spanish researchers say they have evidence that in some parts of Europe the weather really does follow a weekly cycle, although not in the straightforward way that the anecdote might suggest.

Think the polar bear has it bad? Here are 10 critters who are even worse off than our favorite threatened Arctic resident. Listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List as critically endangered, meaning they face an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future.

Nine Baltic sea states all scored failing grades in an annual WWF evaluation of their performance in protecting and restoring the world’s most damaged sea. The assessment, presented today at the Baltic Sea Festival, graded the countries on how well they are doing in six separate areas - biodiversity, fisheries, hazardous substances, marine transport and eutrophication - and on how they have succeeded in developing an integrated sea-use management system.

We've all been stunned by images showing the dramatic retreat of mountain glaciers. Yet few of us have given much thought to what happens next.

To keep coral reefs from being eaten away by increasingly acidic oceans, humans need to limit the amount of climate-warming greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a panel of marine scientists said on Wednesday.

Small scale fisheries produce as much annual catch for human consumption and use less than one-eighth the fuel as their industrial counterparts, but they are dealt a double-whammy by well-intentioned eco-labelling initiatives and ill-conceived fuel subsidies, according to a University of British Columbia study.

A 160-nation U.N. climate conference in Ghana split on Friday over ways to pay poor countries to slow deforestation, blamed for producing up to 20 percent of the greenhouse gases caused by human activities.

Logging of a Ghanaian forest submerged 40 years ago by a hydroelectric dam could point to an underwater timber bonanza worth billions of dollars in tropical countries, a senior Ghanaian official said on Monday.

DILLINGHAM, Alaska — Just up the fish-rich rivers that surround this tiny bush town on Bristol Bay is a discovery of copper and gold so vast and valuable that no one seems able to measure it all. Then again, no one really knows the value of the rivers, either. They are the priceless headwaters of one of the world’s last great runs of Pacific salmon.

Raposa Serra do Sol is in the Amazon jungle state of Roraima at the northwestern tip of Brazil, a land of water and abundance.