16 March 2014 (PhysOrg) – A study led by the University of Leeds has shown that global warming of only 2°C will be detrimental to crops in temperate and tropical regions, with reduced yields from the 2030s onwards. Professor Andy Challinor, from the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds and lead […]
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — California is coming off of its warmest winter on record, aggravating an enduring drought in the most populous U.S. state, federal weather scientists said Monday. The state had a average temperature of 48 Fahrenheit (9 Celsius) for December, January and February, an increase from 47.2 F in 1980-81, the last hottest […]
By Jonathan Kaiman25 February 2014 Beijing (theguardian.com) – Chinese scientists have warned that the country’s toxic air pollution is now so bad that it resembles a nuclear winter, slowing photosynthesis in plants – and potentially wreaking havoc on the country’s food supply. Beijing and broad swaths of six northern provinces have spent the past week […]
By Diana Marcum6 March 2014 SAN JUAN BAUTISTA, California (Los Angeles Times) – The woman in line at the bank said she had already sold all her cattle and was now selling her land. It was one too many tales of drought hardship for Laynee Reyna, also known as She Who Makes Things Happen — […]
By Joe Taschler3 March 2014 (Journal Sentinel) – Next time you bite into a big, juicy hamburger, don’t be surprised if it bites back — at your bank account. Unrelenting drought across large swaths of the Great Plains, Texas, and California has led to the smallest U.S. cattle herd since 1951, shrinking the supply of […]
By Holli Riebeek28 Feb 2014 (NASA) – Dense smoke cloaks central Sumatra, Indonesia, in these images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. The smoke is coming from fires in Riau province, where palm oil and pulpwood plantations are abundant. Though illegal for all but small landowners, fire […]
25 February 2014 (mongabay.com) – With more than 140 cities implementing water rationing, analysts warning of collapsing soy and coffee exports, and reservoirs and rivers running precipitously low, talk about the World Cup in some parts of Brazil has been sidelined by concerns about an epic drought affecting the country’s agricultural heartland. With its rise […]
By Terrell Johnson 18 February 2014 (weather.com) – When he was asked last March to name the nation’s biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region, U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III gave a response many people didn’t expect: climate change. “People are surprised sometimes,” he said in an interview with the Boston Globe, […]
By Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Richard Borsuk18 February 2014 SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – California’s drought has put 10 communities at acute risk of running out of drinking water in 60 days, and worsened numerous other health and safety problems, public health officials in the most populous U.S. state said on Tuesday. Rural communities where residents […]
By Peter Coy 13 February 2014 (Business Week) – You may have trouble believing that today’s mammoth snow-and-ice storm on the East Coast has anything to do with climate change, even though there’s strong scientific evidence that global warming makes erratic weather in the U.S. more likely by disrupting the jet stream. But while you […]