drought – Page 8 – Desdemona Despair

Hubei’s Guanyin Pavilion during the July 2017 flood and the August 2022 drought. Photo: Getty Images

October 21, 2022

Climate change has come for the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter – “There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable to what is happening in China”

By Muizz Akhtar 29 September 2022 (Vox) – China just finished one of its most disastrous summers on record, with record-breaking heat, drought, and wildfires leading to water shortages even into the fall. More than 900 million people — or about 64 percent of China’s population — faced brutal heat waves alone, highlighting how much further the nation has to […]

Percent change in ice volume for Swiss glaciers, 2001-2022. Melt rates in 2022 far exceeded the previous records from the hot summer of 2003. Glaciers in Switzerland lost around 3 cubic kilometres of ice in 2022, more than 6 percent of the remaining volume. By way of comparison, up to now, years with an ice loss of 2 percent have been described as “extreme”. The loss was particularly dramatic for small glaciers. Graphic: M. Huss / Swiss Academy of Sciences

October 21, 2022

2022 heat wave drove unprecedented melt of Swiss glaciers – “2022 was a disastrous year for Swiss glaciers: all ice melt records were smashed by the great dearth of snow in winter and continuous heat waves in summer”

By Jamey Keaten 28 September 2022 GENEVA (AP) – Switzerland’s glaciers are melting like never before, an academic study released Wednesday found, with their ice volume declining by 6% this year amid rising concerns about global warming and a summer heat wave that swept across Europe. The Swiss Academy of Sciences reported that the shrinkage […]

A couple stands on what was an ancient packhorse bridge exposed by low water levels at Baitings Reservoir in Yorkshire as record high temperatures hit Ripponden, England, 12 August 2022. Widespread drought that dried up large parts of Europe, the United States and China this past summer was made 20 times more likely by climate change, according to a new study. Photo: Jon Super / AP Photo

October 9, 2022

Climate change made 2022 summer drought 20 times more likely – “The impacts are very clear to people and are hitting hard, not just in poor countries, like the flooding Pakistan, but also in some of the richest parts of the world, like western central Europe”

By Drew Costley 5 October 2022 (AP) – Drought that stretched across three continents this summer — drying out large parts of Europe, the United States, and China — was made 20 times more likely by climate change, according to a new study. Drought dried up major rivers, destroyed crops, sparked wildfire, threatened aquatic species, […]

World corn stocks in consumption days, 2008-2022 and projected to 2023. Poor weather in key agricultural regions from the United States to France and China is shrinking grain harvests and cutting inventories, heightening the risk of famine in some of the world's poorest nations. Data: International Grains Council. Graphic: Prinz Magtulis / Reuters

September 27, 2022

Droughts, Ukraine war push global grain stocks toward worrying decade low – “It’s lining up to be like 2012. No one wants to admit it, but it’s true.”

By Tom Polansek 26 September 2022 CHICAGO (Reuters) – The world is heading toward the tightest grain inventories in years despite the resumption of exports from Ukraine, as the shipments are too few and harvests from other major crop producers are smaller than initially expected, according to grain supply and crop forecast data. Poor weather […]

Map showing drought and famine prediction priority areas in Somalia by district, 31 August 2022. Famine is projected in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts, Bay region, during October-December 2022 unless life-saving assistance is urgently ramped up to reach the people most in need. About 7.8 million Somalis have been affected by the worst drought in four decades, with more than 1 million displaced by drought including nearly 99,000 in August Graphic: OCHA

September 25, 2022

Humanitarian organizations estimate one person dying of hunger every four seconds – “It is abysmal that with all the technology in agriculture and harvesting techniques today, we are still talking about famine in the 21st century”

20 September 2022 (Al Jazeera) – One person is estimated to be dying of hunger every four seconds, more than 200 NGOs have warned, urging decisive international action to “end the spiralling global hunger crisis”. In an open letter addressing world leaders gathering in New York for the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, 238 organisations from […]

Daily surface air temperature anomaly for July 2022 relative to the daily average for the period 1991–2020. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

September 18, 2022

Europe’s hot summer of 2022 shatters records – “We’ve not only had record August temperatures for Europe but also for summer, with the previous summer record only being one year old”

By Matt McGrath 8 September 2022 (BBC News) – This summer was the hottest on record in Europe, according to data from EU satellite monitoring. A series of extreme heatwaves and a long running drought saw June, July and August shatter the previous high mark for temperature. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said the data showed August […]

Satellite view of Europe in Summer 2021 and Summer 2022. In 2022, drought affected the whole of Europe. Photo: Copernicus EU

September 17, 2022

Satellite view shows Europe drying out in the drought of Summer 2022

By Ed Browne 7 September 2022 (Newsweek) – Scientists have released images of Europe from space that show just how arid the landscape has become as part of what may be the region’s worst drought in 500 years. Europe, like large swathes of the United States, is currently in the grip of extraordinary drought conditions that are […]

The carcasses of goats lie in the sand on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, after four failed rainy seasons have driven millions of people to the brink of famine. Photo: Hayden / ZUMA Wire / IMAGO

September 17, 2022

“Pending nightmare” in Somalia with millions at risk of starvation – “Tens of thousands of people will already have died by the time we declare a famine”

By Sertan Sanderson 14 September 2022 (DW) – A humanitarian catastrophe is imminent in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. That’s the joint assessment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), following months of food security assessments. The number of people in dire […]

Lake Sawa in Iraq, 6 July 2022. The lake is filled with only 5 percent to 10 percent of its initial area. Photo: Laurence Geai / Le Monde

September 5, 2022

Iraq’s fertile valley is dying – Authorities estimate that the Euphrates could dry up as early as 2040

By Hélène Sallon 21 August 2022 (Le Monde) – From the top of the old tourist complex built on the shores of Lake Sawa, in the province of Al-Muthanna in southern Iraq, the desert stretches as far as the eye can see. The buildings have been abandoned since the 2003 US-British invasion. “In the past, […]

Children use rafts to make their way along a waterlogged street in a residential area after a heavy monsoon rainfall in Hyderabad on 24 August 2022. Record monsoon rains were causing a “catastrophe of epic scale”, Pakistan's Climate Change Minister said August 24, announcing an international appeal for help in dealing with floods that have killed more than 800 people since June 2022. Photo: Akram SHAHID / AFP

September 5, 2022

Sleepwalking to destruction: World struck by relentless climate catastrophes – “We just would not get temperatures as high as we’ve seen without human-caused climate change”

By Nick O’Malley 3 September 2022 (The Sydney Morning Herald) – Authorities are having difficulties finding the words to properly capture the devastation caused by the floods that have swept across Pakistan in recent days, killing more than 1400 people and displacing up to 50 million as water inundates about a third of the country. […]