Four days before deadly floods swept through western Germany and parts of Belgium last week, Hannah Cloke saw a forecast of extreme rain on a Europe-wide flood alert system to which she belongs. Researchers “were stupidly congratulating ourselves that we were forecasting something so early. … The assumption was that would be really helpful,” says the hydrologist and flood forecaster at the University of Reading. Instead, she was stunned to…

Street protests over water shortages in southwest Iran continued for a sixth night on Tuesday amid rising violence, while residents in the capital of Tehran chanted anti-government slogans, according to videos posted on social media on Wednesday and Iranian news outlets. Several videos uploaded by social media users showed security forces using tear gas to disperse protesters, and the semi-official news agency Fars said "rioters" shot dead one policeman and…

Residents of some of the worst-hit towns return to salvage what they can from their lives and businesses It looks like a bomb went off. Everything’s destroyed. There’s nothing left of the city centre,” said Michaela Wolff, a winemaker from one of the German towns worst hit by last week’s catastrophic flooding. Her family vineyard and guesthouse, the Weingut Sonnenberg, would normally be filled with tourists descending the red wine…

Desert plants – famous for tolerance of torrid landscapes – are dying at an alarming rate due to the twin threats of even hotter weather and less rain, according to last research. After analyzing more than three decades of satellite data, University of California, Irvine, scientists found a 37% decline in native vegetation across nearly 5,000 square miles of the Southern California Sonoran Desert, from the Mexican border north across…

The well known nonprofit charitywater.org announced the launch of a celebrity-funded Bitcoin Water Trust initiative. The trust will be allowed to hold bitcoin donations to fund water projects worldwide until 2025. A number of announcements were revealed at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami and one announcement was from the global safe drinking water nonprofit, charity water. The organization charity water is a nonprofit that helps provide clean and safe…

The Yara Birkeland, the world’s first net-zero, battery-powered autonomous container ship, was delivered to Norwegian fertilizer company Yara Norge AS in November 2020. It’s currently in the Norwegian port of Horten, where it’s undergoing further preparations for autonomous operation and a late 2021 launch. Electric, autonomous container ship The open-top Yara Birkeland was ordered by Yara in 2017, designed by Marin Teknikk, and fitted at Vard Brattvåg in Norway. Norway’s…