A few hundred farms in the southern tip of California, along the Mexican border, may hold the key to saving the drought-plagued Colorado River from collapse.

These farmers, in Imperial County, currently draw more water from the Colorado River than all of Arizona and Nevada combined. They inherited the legal right to use that water, but they're now under pressure to give up some of it.

Europe and parts of China have experienced extreme temperatures this summer, dry conditions in Africa have put millions at risk of starvation, and the American West continues to see a persistent lack of rainfall.

Scientists say warmer and drier seasons are likely to become the norm, but have these past few months been the driest on record?

How dry is the earth?

One measure of drought conditions used by scientists is based on the level of moisture in the soil as measured by satellite imagery.

More than 2,000 people in an exclusive Californian neighbourhood, including celebrities such as Kevin Hart and Kim Kardashian, have been put on a list of water offenders as drought ravages the state.

The BBC went on patrol with the people residents have labelled the 'water police', who are tasked with reducing water use and educating people about how to cut back.

A drought that has turned vast swaths of the American West into a tinderbox and revealed several sets of human remains at the nation’s largest reservoir has unveiled another discovery in Texas — dinosaur tracks.

Prints mostly left by the Acrocanthosaurus — a theropod that stood 15 feet, weighed 7 tons and roamed the area 113 million years ago — have emerged in recent weeks as the Paluxy River has dried up almost entirely in most parts of Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, a spokeswoman with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said in an email.

They’re among the biggest names in entertainment and sports: Sylvester Stallone, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Hart, Kim and Kourtney Kardashian.

And as Southern California struggles with a third year of punishing drought and unprecedented water restrictions, they may be among the biggest names in water waste in the tony San Fernando Valley enclaves of Calabasas and Hidden Hills, documents obtained by The Times show.

More human remains were found Monday at Lake Mead as water levels continue to recede due to severe drought conditions, marking the latest discovery as the fifth set recovered since May.

National Park Service reported Tuesday that rangers responded to a report of the discovery of human skeletal remains in the Swim Beach area of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

Authorities set a perimeter to recover the remains with support from Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s dive team and later contacted the Clark County medical examiner.

In places, the Loire can now be crossed on foot; France’s longest river has never flowed so slowly. The Rhine is fast becoming impassable to barge traffic. In Italy, the Po is 2 metres lower than normal, crippling crops. Serbia is dredging the Danube.

Across Europe, drought is reducing once-mighty rivers to trickles, with potentially dramatic consequences for industry, freight, energy and food production – just as supply shortages and price rises due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bite.

The megadrought in the Western U.S., the region’s worst in 1,200 years, is threatening America’s cattle heartland: withering pastures, wrecking feed harvests and endangering a quintessential way of life. 

The drought is forcing ranchers here in Texas and across the Southern plains to make an agonizing decision: Sell early now for less money than they planned on — or hold on, pray for rain and risk losing everything. 

Southwestern cotton growers are abandoning millions of parched acres that they planted in spring, prompting forecasts for the weakest U.S. harvest in more than a decade and sending prices sharply higher.

U.S. agricultural forecasters expect drought-struck farmers to walk away from more than 40% of the 12.5 million acres they sowed with cotton and harvest the smallest area since Reconstruction. Back then, in 1868, yields per acre were less than a fifth of what they are today, but the market for cotton was vastly smaller too.

A mention of California might usually conjure images of wildfires and droughts, but scientists say that the Golden State is also the site of extreme, once-a-century “megafloods” — and that climate change could amplify just how bad one gets.