agriculture – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

A man rides a bike on a small road on the outskirts of Frankfurt, Germany, as the sun rises on Friday, 7 July 2023. Photo: Michael Probst / AP Photo

July 24, 2023

Climate collapse could happen fast – “Many scientists knew these things would happen, but we’re taken aback by the severity of the major changes we’re seeing”

By Lois Parshley 20 July 2023 (The Atlantic) – Ever since some of the earliest projections of climate change were made back in the 1970s, they have been remarkably accurate at predicting the rate at which global temperatures would rise. For decades, climate change has proceeded at roughly the expected pace, says David Armstrong McKay, a […]

Meridional winds in m/s (contours; purple: southerly, orange: northerly winds, in (a–c, e–g) contours start at an absolute value of 3 m/s and increase/decrease by 3 respectively, in (d, h) contours start an absolute value of 0.5 and increase/decrease by steps of one) and near surface temperature anomalies filled contours during (a–c) wave-7 and (e–g) wave- 5 events relative to the respective climatology in the northern hemisphere summer (JJA) based on (a, e) ERA5 reanalysis (1960–2014), (b, f) historical (1960–2014) and (c, g) future (SSP5-8.5, 2045–2099) bias-adjusted output from CMIP6 simulations (four models). d, h) Difference in meridional winds and temperature response during wave events comparing historical and future patterns in four bias-adjusted CMIP6 models (for twelve non adjusted models see Fig. S6). Hatching shows statistical significance on a 95% confidence level (a, d, e, h) or 100% model agreement in sign (4 out of 4 models, b, c, f, g) While the phase positions and intensity of the wave patterns (line contour) are well represented in the models their surface imprint are considerably underestimated in historical simulations. Changes in the temperature response are identified over North America, Eurasia and East Asia (d, h). Graphic: Kornhuber, et al., 2023 / Nature Communications

July 15, 2023

Study finds climate risk to crops greater than thought – Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions threaten global food security – “These types of concurring events are really largely underestimated”

By Kelly Macnamara 4 July 2023 (AFP) – The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and […]

Children being processed by the U.S. Border Patrol in Roma, Texas. In the past two years alone, 250,000 unaccompanied minors have come into the country. Photo: Kirsten Luce / The New York Times

July 15, 2023

Child labor in America is back and it’s as chilling as ever – “You’re taking children from another country and putting them almost in industrial servitude”

By Steve Fraser 13 July 2023 (The Nation) – An aged Native American chieftain was visiting New York City for the first time in 1906. He was curious about the city and the city was curious about him. A magazine reporter asked the chief what most surprised him in his travels around town. “Little children working,” the […]

A sick sea lion and her pup are shown recovering from domoic acid poisoning at the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, California, on 6 July 2023. During the summer of 2023, the center cared for sea lions that were sickened by a historically bad algal bloom along California’s Coast. Photo: Yannick Peterhans / USA TODAY

July 9, 2023

“Death coming out of the ocean”: Red tide killing California sea lions, dolphins – “I have been a marine mammal veterinarian for 35 years, and this is definitely the worst in my professional lifetime”

By Amanda Lee Myers 8 July 2023 (USA TODAY) – Jalapeño the sea lion turned up on a crowded California beach in a daze, experiencing seizures and heavily pregnant. Instead of giving birth in a remote location like sea lions prefer, Jalapeño had her pup on Southern California’s Hermosa Beach on a busy Saturday, surrounded by throngs […]

Heat index forecast for the United States, 3 July 2023 - 8 July 2023. An estimated 76 million people in the U.S. were exposed to dangerous heat on 2 July 2023. Graphic: The Washington Post

July 2, 2023

Summer in the Southern U.S. is becoming unbearable – “This is how it’s going to be: Things will get hotter, storms will get worse, wildfire smoke will get more common. All the while, the ruts of inequity will be worn deeper, the same people time and time again placed on the front lines of catastrophe.”

By Olivia Paschal 1 July 2023 (The Atlantic) – A few weeks ago, as the first wave of smoke from the Canadian wildfires rolled south, I was getting ready to drive from Charlottesville, Virginia, about 18 hours west to my hometown of Rogers, Arkansas, to visit family. I figured that by the time I hit […]

(a) Individual contributors to the polar motion (PM) excitation trend. (b) Sum of PM excitation trend contributors with (solid blue) and without (dashed blue) groundwater depletion. Red arrow is the observed PM excitation. Graphic: Seo, et al., 2023 / Geophysical Research Letters

July 2, 2023

Humans have pumped so much groundwater that we’ve nudged the earth’s spin – “As a resident of Earth and a father, I’m concerned and surprised to see that pumping groundwater is another source of sea-level rise”

WASHINGTON, 15 June 2023 (AGO) – By pumping water out of the ground and moving it elsewhere, humans have shifted such a large mass of water that the Earth tilted nearly 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 alone, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, AGU’s journal for short-format, high-impact research with […]

Seasonal managed honeybee colony loss rates in the United States across years 2008-2023 (A), and by operation type (B-D): backyard (managing up to 50 colonies), sideline (managing 51-500), and commercial (managing >500 colonies) beekeepers. The loss rate was calculated as the total number of colonies lost divided by the number of colonies at risk during the season. Colonies at risk were composed of living colonies at the start of a period, as well as new colonies made or acquired, while excluding colonies sold or parted with. Annual loss covers the whole period from one 1 April to the next 1 April (in red); summer (1 April – 1 October, in yellow); winter (1 October – 1 April, in blue). Error bars represent the 95% confidence interval obtained from a bootstrap resampling of the data (n-out-of-n, 1000 rep). Graphic: Bee Informed Partnership

June 30, 2023

Nearly half of U.S. honeybee colonies died in the 2022-2023 season – “This is a very troubling loss number when we barely manage sufficient colonies to meet pollination demands in the U.S.”

By Seth Borenstein 22 June 2023 WASHINGTON (AP) – America’s honeybee hives just staggered through the second highest death rate on record, with beekeepers losing nearly half of their managed colonies, an annual bee survey found. But using costly and Herculean measures to create new colonies, beekeepers are somehow keeping afloat. Thursday’s University of Maryland […]

An aerial view shows the normally submerged colonial-era Dominican church in Quechula, Mexico, in June, 2023. The 16th-century construction emerged from reservoir waters amid a drought. Photo: Raul Vera / AFP / Getty Images

June 19, 2023

Drowned 16th-century church emerges from bottom of Mexico reservoir after drought – “What do I support my family with? Right now, I have nothing.”

By Aristos Georgiou 19 June 23 (Newsweek) – A 16th-century church has emerged from the waters of a reservoir in Mexico amid a drought. The colonial-era Dominican church is located in Quechula in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. The building had been almost entirely submerged since 1966 when a dam was built on a […]

The human Ecological Footprint measured as “Overshoot Day”, 1971-2023. The Ecological Footprint is the most comprehensive biological resource accounting metric available. Based on 15,000 data points per country per year, it adds up all of people’s competing demands for biologically productive areas – food, timber, fibers, carbon sequestration, and accommodation of infrastructure. Currently, the carbon footprint, i.e., the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel, make up 61 percent of humanity’s Ecological Footprint. For the last 5 years, the trend has flattened. How much of this is driven by economic slow-down or deliberate decarbonization efforts is difficult to discern. Still, overshoot reduction is far too slow. To reach the UN’s IPCC target of reducing carbon emissions by 43 percent worldwide by 2030 compared to 2010 would require moving Earth Overshoot Day 19 days annually for the next seven years. Graphic: Global Footprint Network / National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts / FoDaFo / York University

June 18, 2023

The 2023 Earth Overshoot Day lands on August 2 – Trend is flattening but still far from reversing – “Persistent overshoot leads to ever more prominent symptoms including unusual heat waves, forest fires, droughts, and floods, with the risk of compromising food production”

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, 5 June 2023 – August 2nd marks this year’s Earth Overshoot Day, according to the latest National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts. They now track countries’ performance up to 2022, reducing reporting lag by three years. However, Earth Overshoot Day’s apparent delay by five days compared to last year’s isn’t all good news, as genuine advancements amount […]

A view of the drought that affected the Los Bermejales reservoir, which was at 18 percent of its capacity in Arenas del Rey in Granada, Spain, on 13 May 2023. Photo: Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

June 11, 2023

Europe is struggling with a precarious water situation ahead of another drought-riven summer in 2023 – “A few years ago, I would never have imagined that water would be a problem here in Europe, especially in Germany or Austria”

By Sam Meredith 5 June 2023 (CNBC) – European policymakers are battling to get to grips with a growing water crisis ahead of what researchers fear could be yet another climate crisis-fueled summer of drought. Water resources in Europe are growing increasingly scarce because of the deepening climate emergency, with record-breaking temperatures through spring and a historic winter […]