Alaska’s glaciers are melting at an accelerating pace, losing roughly 60 billion tons of ice each year. About 4,000 kilometers to the south, in California and Nevada, records for heat and dryness are being shattered, creating favorable conditions for wildfire events.

One major factor contributing to climate change in both regions is the northward shift of winter storm tracks across the North Pacific Ocean. These storms transport heat and moisture from Earth’s warmer regions toward the pole; when their tracks shift northward, more heat and moisture reach Alaska, while natural ventilation of the southwestern United States is reduced, driving temperatures upward.

In a new study published in Nature, Dr. Rei Chemke of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department and Dr. Janni Yuval of Google Research show that the storms’ northward shift is occurring much faster than climate models have predicted. Moreover, using a new metric based on sea-level pressure—a parameter measured consistently for decades—the researchers found that this shift is not part of natural climate variability but rather a clear consequence of climate change.

Despite its tropical climate and floodplain location, Bangladesh—one of the world’s most densely populated nations—seasonally does not have enough freshwater, especially in coastal areas. Shallow groundwater is often saline, a problem that may be exacerbated by rising sea levels.

Rainfall is highly seasonal and stored rainwater often runs out by the end of the dry season. And contamination by naturally occurring arsenic deposits and other pollutants farther inland further depletes supplies of potable water, which can run desperately short during annual dry seasons. According to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, 41% of Bangladeshis do not have consistent access to safe water.

Hoping to ease the crisis, researchers from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School, led an exploration for new freshwater sources along the Pusur River in the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta. They recently published their results in the journal Nature Communications.