Sunday Spotlight, ADVISORY

EDITORS:

The following story will move Saturday as this week's Sunday Spotlight, a feature showcasing the best off-the-news enterprise in the AP report:

CLIMATE-DRY AND WET

America this week has been both burning and underwater. Scientists say this shows how climate change is magnifying the extremes in weather, especially rainfall, that the United States gets. Rainfall polarizes America as much as politics. Already dry, the area west of the Rockies has gotten 26% drier in the summer in the last 30 years, worsening wildfires. But in the east, it’s not just hurricanes like Sally that are making it 16% wetter in the summer. Massive non-tropical downpours are giving the East the opposite problem the West has. Scientists say both problems are made worse by man-made climate change. By Seth Bornstein. UPCOMING: 1,030 words, photos.

—The AP