LOS ANGELES — As wildfires rage across Canada and the American West, the announcement from federal forecasters that an El Niño warming is forming thousands of miles away in the tropical Pacific Ocean may offer some regions relief — next year, at least.

The El Niño climate pattern materializes erratically every two to seven years and can ...Read more

Pennsylvania’s roughly 100,000 oil and gas wells produce wastewater that’s many times saltier than seawater and contains radium, a known carcinogen. For decades, that saltwater, called brine, was spread on dirt and gravel roads across the state to control dust and also on paved roads to melt ice.

The state Department of ...Read more

When a devastating heat wave, hurricane, flood or wildfire strikes, people often want to know: How much did human-caused climate change influence this event, if at all?

For many years, scientists could answer that question only in general terms. They knew that human-caused climate change was increasing the frequency or intensity of ...Read more

Engines were switched and a tropical storm had moved along, so SpaceX was able to launch the Starship and Super Heavy rocket on its 13th suborbital test mission on Friday night.

The heavy-lift rocket lifted off at 6:51 p.m. EDT from SpaceX’s Texas launch site Starbase with a successful booster separation that sent the upper stage Starship on ...Read more

WASHINGTON — Federal lawmakers are considering whether to expand the government’s authority to kill more sea lions and seals to bolster salmon recovery efforts in the Pacific Northwest.

The region’s critical salmon runs are on life support: Fourteen species and populations of salmon and steelhead trout in Washington State are deemed at ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- It lurks ominously beneath California’s many natural wonders, a reminder that nothing in this landscape is truly permanent.

It’s been described as “the mother of all earthquake faults,” the source of both our geological birth and, perhaps, our ultimate undoing.

But the most unnerving thing about the San Andreas fault ...Read more

It was Labor Day 2017, and the remote thermometer at McIntyre Estate Vineyard in Monterey County’s Santa Lucia Highlands was registering a noontime temperature Steve McIntyre couldn’t quite believe: 104 degrees.

McIntyre jumped in his car, hoping the sensor was broken. Twenty miles later he stepped out into the searing air at his vineyard ...Read more

An autonomous AI agent powered by OpenAI models escaped a testing environment designed to isolate it from the internet and hacked another company’s systems to steal answers to a cybersecurity test, an “unprecedented” breach that demonstrated how AI agents can evade their developers’ controls in pursuit of assigned goals.

OpenAI said the...Read more

President Donald Trump signed proclamations on July 13, 2026, cutting the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by roughly 90% – meaning nearly 3 million acres will lose monument status and revert to ordinary public lands management in September. The Antiquities Act of 1906 requires presidents to use ...Read more

California and two other states have avoided the harshest water cutbacks the Trump administration could have imposed over the next two years to deal with the deepening crisis on the Colorado River.

The Los Angeles Times has learned that federal officials have agreed with an offer made earlier this year by California, Arizona and Nevada to ...Read more

Spotted lanternflies, the pest that has infested Maryland for 8 years, are shifting their populations across the state as increased predators, effective management techniques and community reporting play a role in the bug’s presence.

Although scientists disagree on whether the bugs are on the decline within the state, they agree that the ...Read more

ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX is set for its next Starship and Super Heavy test mission from Texas now set for Friday because of poor weather Thursday from Tropical Storm Bertha. It’s the next step on Elon Musk’s company’s path to operational launches from Florida.

Now pushed by one day, it’s targeting what would be the 13th suborbital ...Read more

MIAMI — As underwater temperatures continue to soar in South Florida, the coral shuffle has begun.

Scientists are eyeing any coral that isn’t tied down and making plans to move them somewhere safe: to deeper waters, to a shaded spot or even to land-based aquariums. They hope to avoid the disaster of 2023, when waters got so hot that a ...Read more

Anthropic will pay $1.5 billion to authors whose pirated books it used to train its AI in the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history.

Federal Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin in Oakland, California, granted final approval of the settlement Monday. The record payout was a modest win for copyright holders, setting a precedent as a wave of AI-...Read more

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Fort Lauderdale officials say all that yellow water flowing from the tap will disappear when the city’s pricey new water plant is fully operational later this year.

That claim is being met with deep-seated skepticism from experts who say the city’s network of old, unlined cast-iron pipes that snake underneath Fort ...Read more

Pennsylvania may now have more ospreys than in pre-Colonial times, according to a biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Osprey nest reports have increased 37-fold since the 1980s, according to surveys for the third Pennsylvania Bird Atlas. Unlike bald eagles, which glide as they fish, ospreys hover over the water, then dive, punching...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Like many American suburbs, Abington, Pennsylvania, accidentally spent centuries building a goose paradise. Now, the feds will help the township evict the waterfowl from their ideal habitat.

Abington Township approved a contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on July 9 for Canada goose abatement in Alverthorpe Park, ...Read more

Every year, billions of migratory birds connect the world’s continents, oceans and ecosystems as they undertake epic journeys between their foraging habitats and their breeding grounds.

A bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) leaves its breeding grasslands of North America for the Pampas of South America. A Newell’s shearwater (...Read more

SAN DIEGO — A program that distributes air purifiers to residents of San Diego's South Bay region who are affected by the Tijuana River sewage crisis is accepting applications again after a two-month suspension due to a lack of funding, county Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said Wednesday.

Bethany Case, a 17-year resident of Imperial Beach, is one...Read more

Silicon Valley residents are increasingly trying to stop the advance of artificial intelligence, even as the region attracts hundreds of billions of dollars in investment to expand the technology's reach.

Companies and workers around San Francisco Bay sparked the global AI explosion. Now, the nation's tech hub also sits at the center of an ...Read more