Droughts may seem like the least exciting kind of natural disaster, but they actually cause some of the most damage. Bernadette Woods Placky explains how something so slow moving can be so dangerous.

The pressure that’s on drought-hit Californians to conserve dwindling water supplies is largely the result of a stubborn ridge of high pressure that has been parking itself off their coastline. That ridge has blocked water-laden winter storms, sending them spiraling northward instead of into the Golden State, reducing snowpacks that Californians us

Sap a forest of rain — say, for three or four years — toss in seemingly endless sunshine and high temperatures, and you’ve got just the right recipe for some catastrophic wildfires. Such is the story playing out in the West, where, thanks in part to climate change, drought-fueled infernos are incinerating forests at a record pace from Alaska to

Forests are sometimes called the lungs of the earth — they breathe in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and store it in tree trunks until the forest dies or burns. A new study, however, shows that forests devastated by drought may lose their ability to store carbon over a much longer period than previously thought, reducing their role as a buffer