Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy By Thanh Truong, NBC News14 August 2012 WARREN COUNTY, Missouri – There’s a desperate search for water under way throughout Missouri where 95 percent of the state is enduring extreme levels of drought. In the rural area of Truxton, farmer Rusty Lee estimates […]
15 August 2012 (AFP) – A tropical storm slammed into the Philippines on Wednesday, dumping heavy rains and causing renewed flooding and landslides in a nation hit by weeks of destructive monsoon weather. Tropical Storm Kai-tak made landfall over the northeast of the main island of Luzon before dawn, packing powerful winds and dumping up […]
14 August 2012 (NBC News) – Wildfires raged in several Western states on Tuesday, destroying dozens of homes and threatening hundreds more. In Idaho, one firefighter was killed by a falling tree. A fire in central Washington grew rapidly overnight and destroyed more than 60 homes, spurring the state’s governor to declare an emergency in […]
Rome, 9 August 2012 (FAO) – The FAO Food Price Index climbed 6 percent in July 2012 after three months of decline. The Index, which measures the monthly change in the international prices of a basket of food commodities, averaged 213 points, up 12 points from June. That was still well below the peak of […]
Mountain pine beetle (MPB) is an insect native to the forests of western North America and is also known as the Black Hills beetle or the Rocky Mountain pine beetle. MPB primarily develop in pines such as lodgepole, ponderosa, Scotch and limber pines, and less commonly affect bristlecone and piñon pines. Symptoms of Infestation Popcorn-shaped […]
By Robin McKie, science editor, www.guardian.co.uk11 August 2012 Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth’s polar caps. Preliminary results from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometres […]
[12,588 hectares = 48.6 square miles. This afternoon, the sky in Seattle is an eerie, hazy yellow from Siberia smoke carried on the jet stream, the incinerated remains of trees and animals. This may be the most under-reported story of 2012.] By Jennifer Zielinski 13 August 2012 It may be forest fire season but the […]
By Mynardo Macaraig, AFP 13 August 2012 Philippine authorities warned Monday an intensifying storm could bring more misery to the flood-battered capital and surrounding areas, where nearly half a million were in evacuation centres. While flooding that covered 80 percent of Manila last week had largely subsided, vast areas of mainly rice-growing provinces to the […]
By David Biello, Scientific American27 July 2012 Remember when climate change contrarians professed outrage over a few errors in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s last report? One of their favorite such mistakes involved an overestimation of the pace at which glaciers would melt at the “Third Pole,” where the Indian subcontinent crashes into […]
By Eugene Robinson9 August 2012 Excuse me, folks, but the weather is trying to tell us something. Listen carefully, and you can almost hear a parched, raspy voice whispering: “What part of ‘hottest month ever’ do you people not understand?” According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July was indeed the hottest month in […]
