Drought News

January 24, 2025

Top Headlines

Stronger Stress Response in Monkeys Helps Them Survive

Jan. 23, 2025 — Researchers used the environmental circumstances and fecal samples collected from the six years prior to the severe El Ni o drought in Costa Rica to study the relationship between the endocrinologic stress response and survival in white-faced ...

How Climate Change May Alter Hydrology of Grassland Ecosystems

Jan. 16, 2025 — New research reveals that drought and increased temperatures in a CO2-rich climate can dramatically alter how grasslands use and move water. The study provides the first experimental demonstration of the potential impacts of climate change on water ...

Mosquitoes Can Be Extra-Bitey in Droughts

Jan. 15, 2025 — Mosquitoes can survive prolonged droughts by drinking blood, which helps to explain why rates of mosquito-borne illness don't always decline in dry ...

Climate Extremes in 2024 'Wreaking Havoc' on the Global Water Cycle

Jan. 6, 2025 — 2024 was another year of record-breaking temperatures, driving the global water cycle to new climate extremes and contributing to ferocious floods and crippling droughts, a new report shows. The report found rising temperatures are changing the way ...

Latest Headlines

updated 5:44pm EST

Study Shows How Plant Roots Access Deeper Soils in Search of Water

Jan. 10, 2025 — Scientists have discovered how plants adapt their root systems in drought conditions to grow steeper into the soil to access deeper water ...

Researchers Identify a Mysterious Fossil Seed to Reveal New Chapters in Climate History of Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2024 — Scientists have successfully identified a previously unknown species to Southern California from fossilized seeds, revealing a drought-fueled dance ...

Threat of Abrupt Mortality Events Keeps Endangered Monkey Population at Risk, Despite Decades of Growth

Dec. 16, 2024 — Despite the population being almost four times larger than it was in 1982, a new study published in the journal Ecology suggests the northern muriqui ...

New Research About Drought Impacts on Wildlife Can Inform Conservation Strategies

Dec. 16, 2024 — New research shows that many wildlife species in the U.S., like the endangered giant kangaroo rat, will face much more frequent and severe droughts ...

NASA Satellites Reveal Abrupt Drop in Global Freshwater Levels

Nov. 16, 2024 — The Earth's total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. The shift could indicate Earth's continents have entered a persistently drier ...

A New Piece in the Grass Pea Puzzle -- Updated Genome Sequence Published

Oct. 31, 2024 — An international research collaboration has completed the most detailed genome assembly to date of grass pea (Lathyrus ...

Beehive Fences Are Highly Effective in Reducing Human-Elephant Conflict, but Researchers Warn of Future Risks

Oct. 29, 2024 — A groundbreaking, nine-year study has revealed that elephants approaching small-scale farms in Kenya avoid beehive fences housing live honey bees up ...

New Parasite Discovered Amid Decline of California's Unique Channel Island Fox

Oct. 23, 2024 — In the 1990s, the San Miguel Island fox nearly went extinct, with numbers dropping to just 15. A recovery program increased their population by 2010, ...

Chickpeas: Sustainable and Climate-Friendly Foods of the Future

Oct. 16, 2024 — Climate change has a negative impact on food security. Researchers have now conducted a study to investigate the natural variation of different chickpea genotypes and their resistance to drought ...

How Playing Songs to Darwin's Finches Helped Biologists Confirm Link Between Environment and the Emergence of New Species

Oct. 10, 2024 — They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation -- which holds that new species emerge in response to ecological ...

Droughts' Impact on Pasturelands Is Measured in Order to Guide Extensive Livestock Management on Spain's Dehesas

Oct. 30, 2024 — A study using meteorological data and remote sensors, aims to furnish livestock farmers with information to promote more efficient ...

Researchers Discover How Plants Produce a Novel Anti-Stress Molecule

Oct. 9, 2024 — New research identifies for the first time the genes that help plants grow under stressful conditions -- with implications for producing more sustainable food crops in the face of global climate ...

Drier Winter Habitat Impacts Songbirds' Ability to Survive Migration

Oct. 4, 2024 — A new study shows environmental conditions in migratory birds' winter homes carry over to affect their ability to survive spring migration and the breeding ...

Scientists Urge New Conservation Approach to Save Vulnerable Species from Climate Change Impacts

Sep. 18, 2024 — A team of scientists alarmed by the loss of biodiversity across the world due to climate change has proposed a new approach to managing vulnerable landscapes, focusing on sites that are least ...

Hardship Early in Life Can Affect Health and Longevity -- Even for Marmots

Sep. 16, 2024 — The cumulative adversity index for people quantifies numerous measures of hardship, such as poverty and stress to understand health and longevity over the individual's lifespan. A similar tool ...

How El Nino and Mega Ocean Warming Caused the Greatest-Ever Mass Extinction

Sep. 12, 2024 — Mega ocean warming El Nino events were key in driving the largest extinction of life on planet Earth some 252 million years ago, according to new research. The study has shed new light on why the ...

Dangerous Airborne Fungus Boosted by California Droughts

Sep. 3, 2024 — Researchers have identified the seasonal and climate-based cycles of Valley fever, an emerging but dangerous fungal disease spread through dust in the ...

Study Reveals Urban Trees Suffer More from Heat Waves and Drought Than Their Rural Counterparts

Aug. 13, 2024 — A recent study details how trees in New York City and Boston are more negatively impacted by heat waves and drought than trees of the same species in nearby rural forests. The finding highlights the ...

Seismic Detectors Measure Soil Moisture Using Traffic Noise

Aug. 5, 2024 — Using state of the art techniques, researchers use vibrations from traffic to measure underground soil ...

From Genes to Jeans: New Genetic Insights May Lead to Drought Resilient Cotton

July 29, 2024 — Cotton is woven into the very fabric of our lives, from soft T-shirts to comfortable jeans and cozy bedsheets. It's the world's leading renewable textile fiber and the backbone of a global ...

Agriculture: Less Productive Yet More Stable Pastures

July 22, 2024 — Climate change will have a considerable influence on the biodiversity and productivity of meadows and pastures. However, according to the results of the large-scale climate and land use experiment ...

Study Examines Urban Forests Across the United States

July 12, 2024 — Tree-planting campaigns have been underway in the United States, especially in cities, as part of climate mitigation efforts given the many environmental benefits of urban forests. But a new study ...

Researchers Create Groundbreaking Cotton Quality Model to Aid Farmers

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have produced a cotton quality module -- a part of a larger forecasting tool -- allowing cotton producers to better monitor crop quality under changing environmental ...

Near Chromosome-Level Genome of the Mojave Poppy Bee

July 2, 2024 — Scientists have developed a near chromosome-level genome for the Mojave poppy bee, a specialist pollinator of conservation ...

This Desert Moss Has the Potential to Grow on Mars

June 30, 2024 — The desert moss Syntrichia caninervis is a promising candidate for Mars colonization thanks to its extreme ability to tolerate harsh conditions lethal to most life forms. The moss is well known for ...

Groundbreaking Discovery: Zinc Can Make Crop Yields More Climate-Resilient

June 27, 2024 — Climate change, drought, increased temperature and other stressors challenge agricultural sustainability. Researchers have now made an unexpected discovery: zinc plays a pivotal role in the plant ...

Human Activity: A Double-Edged Sword in the Face of Drought

June 21, 2024 — A professor analyzes the conflicting impacts of human activities on extreme spring ...

Fish out of Water: How Killifish Embryos Adapted Their Development

June 6, 2024 — The annual killifish lives in regions with extreme drought. A research group now reports that the early embryogenesis of killifish diverges from that of other species. Unlike other fish, their body ...

Roots Are a Key to Drought-Tolerant Maize

May 22, 2024 — Maize can grow successfully in very different local conditions. An international study has now demonstrated the important role of the plant root system. The researchers analyzed more than 9,000 ...

Unraveling the Drought Dilemma: Can Reservoirs Be a Carbon Source?

May 20, 2024 — A team delves into the spatiotemporal patterns of water volume and total organic carbon concentration of agricultural ...