This is the summer that climate change impacts are becoming overwhelmingly obvious and costly across much of Europe.

The big picture: Western Europe's fourth region-wide, fierce heat wave of the summer is well underway.

It's pushing temperatures into the triple digits Fahrenheit in Portugal, Spain, and France, and close to that level in the United Kingdom.

French firefighters are battling a nearly 20,000-acre blaze in the Gironde region that has forced thousands from their homes, while other fires burn elsewhere in the heat-affected regions.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced a set of revamped water strategies on Thursday, warning that the state’s supply is expected to plunge by up to 10 percent by 2040.

In anticipation of these shortfalls, Newsom unveiled a 16-page action document that focuses on “adapting to a hotter, drier future” by adjusting state priorities “based on new data and accelerating climate change.”

The American West is facing its longest drought in 1,200 years, presenting the nation with its worst water crisis since the Dust Bowl of the early 20th century.

When Maria Regalado Garcia tried to wash the dishes in her California home one recent morning, only a trickle of water emerged from the kitchen faucet. Other taps in her Tooleville house in rural Tulare County ran similarly dry.

The lack of water meant Garcia, 85, couldn’t brush her teeth properly or fill a swamp cooler that pumps out chilled air — a necessity with temperatures topping 100 degrees in her central California town. So Garcia fled to her granddaughter‘s home in Exeter, a few minutes away, to have a place cool enough to sleep.

Satellite images released by NASA this week show a dramatic drop in water levels over the last 22 years at Lake Mead.  

NASA confirmed that water levels in Lake Mead, located in Nevada and Arizona, are at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was being filled for the first time.

As of Monday, Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, was filled to 27% capacity, according to NASA.  

President Biden labeled climate change as an “emergency” on Wednesday but stopped short of declaring a national emergency following pressure from climate advocates. 

In a speech at a former coal plant in Somerset, Mass., Biden also pledged to take action to combat the threat of climate change after congressional action stalled. 

President Biden traveled to Massachusetts on Air Force One Wednesday to speak about the “climate crisis” linked to use of fossil fuels — pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in the process.

With the presidential aircraft scheduled to land in Warwick, Rhode Island, Biden will then join a largely gasoline-powered motorcade to travel 25 miles to Brayton Point Power Station — a onetime coal-burning plant that is being refurbished to support offshore windmill-generated energy — in Somerset, Mass.

As President Biden's climate ambitions continue to languish in the Senate, he traveled to the site of a former coal power plant in Massachusetts to announce new funding designed to help communities bear extreme heat, as well as tout the country's developing offshore wind industry.

"As president, I have the responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that's what climate change is about," Biden said. "It is literally — not figuratively — a clear and present danger."

California and six other Western states have less than 60 days to pull off a seemingly impossible feat: Cut a multi-way deal to dramatically reduce their consumption of water from the dangerously low Colorado River.

If they don’t, the federal government will do it for them.

Droughts are periods characterized by abnormally dry conditions. But what are megadroughts, and how bad is the one currently affecting parts of the United States?

While there are no clear definitions of what a megadrought is, in general these events are defined as droughts that last for multiple decades, i.e. two or more, according to Ashok Mishra, a professor in the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University.

"Although there may be a few wet spells, most periods remained dry," he told Newsweek.