California needs much more to beat effect of three dry years By Mark Grossi, mgrossi@fresnobee.comand John Holland, jholland@modbee.com The Sierra Nevada snowpack has improved. Waterfalls are starting to thunder in Yosemite Valley. A spring storm adds to the bounty. It’s time to celebrate the end of the state’s three-year drought. Right? Wrong. The El Niño-powered […]
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AFP) – The desert is making a comeback in the Middle East, with fertile lands turning into barren wastes that could further destabilise the region, experts said at a water conference on Thursday. “Desertification spreads like cancer, it can’t be noticed immediately,” said Wadid Erian, a soil expert with the Arab League, at […]
By Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.comMarch 31, 2010 Urbanization may be having unexpected impacts in the Amazon rainforest by leaving forest areas vulnerable to exploitation by outsiders, report researchers writing in Conservation Letters. Conducting field surveys during the course of 10,000-kilometers of travel along remote Amazon rivers, Luke Parry of Lancaster University found that a sharp […]
ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2010) — Decades of drought, interspersed with intense monsoon rains, may have helped bring about the fall of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilization at Angkor nearly 600 years ago, according to an analysis of tree rings, archeological remains and other evidence. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of […]
By Bonnie Hulkower, New York, New York on 03.30.10 TreeHugger has reported in the past about the mysterious honeybee decline due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Without any discernible explanation, entire hives of honeybees have been abandoning their hives and dying. There are likely many reasons for CCD, including: parasites, viruses, bacteria, poor nutrition, […]
The number of days with record hot temperatures has increased each decade over the past 50 years. There have been fewer record cold days each decade. 2000 to 2009 was Australia’s warmest decade on record. State of the Climate [pdf] Technorati Tags: Australia,global warming,climate change,drought,flood,agriculture,sea level,freshwater depletion,heat wave
(philstar.com) Updated March 29, 2010 04:57 PM BEIJING (AP) – Rainfall in southern China provided little respite for millions of residents suffering from the worst drought in a century, a local official said Monday. The army, meanwhile, began delivering water to some of the worst-affected areas. Teams of workers in China’s southern province of Yunnan, […]
By JESSICA LEBER of ClimateWirePublished: March 29, 2010 SAKAI, Kenya — No one complained that the rains were late when they watered the parched hills and muddied the roads here in December. Normally, they would have begun weeks earlier. Villagers were grateful the rain had come at all. “God is great. After these two seasons […]
28 Mar 2010, 0101 hrs IST, PTI BANGALORE: Himalayan glaciers retreated by 16% in the last nearly five decades due to climate change, investigations by India’s scientists in selected basins in four states has revealed. The retreat of Himalayan glaciers and loss in a real extent were monitored in selected basins in J&K, Himachal […]
The relationship between the size of the hypoxic zone in July (km2) and the May nitrate+nitrite N loading (kg N) to the Gulf of Mexico each year. A linear regression of the data is shown. The individual data points are in four chronologically-sequenced groups separated from each other when the data fall below the slope, […]
