By Jeremy Lovell, E&E European correspondent13 June 2011 LONDON — One of the driest spring seasons on record in northern Europe has sucked soils dry and sharply reduced river levels to the point that governments are starting to fear crop losses and France, in particular, is bracing for blackouts as its river-cooled nuclear power plants […]
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer15 June 2011 WASHINGTON — The fires searing parts of the West are an eerie echo of the past, a frightening reminder of a once terrible danger that had been held largely at bay for decades. The number of large wildfires has been rising for roughly the past 25 […]
By COCO LIU of ClimateWire14 June 2011 SHANGHAI — It is an annual tradition for Chinese to race dragon boats at the end of each spring, but this year, the tradition has run aground. Many streams and lakes along the Yangtze River have almost dried up. The world’s third-largest river — stretching from the Himalayas […]
By Chip Ward 16 June 2011 Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have […]
Predicted patterns of Indus flows above Tarbela with changes in snow-melt patterns and volume under climate change (World Bank Pakistan Country Water Assistance Strategy, 2005, quoting Rees and Collins, 2006) Forward predictions, as shown in the graph, should see a mid-term increase in annual average runoff (consistent with mass balance) and/or an increase in groundwater […]
By Katharine Gammon, LiveScience Contributor14 Jun 2011 When the climate gets wetter, plagues can get worse, according to a new study that reveals why the plague was much worse in China’s north than in the south. The results also suggest that climate change could mean more virulent plagues in northern China and North America, as […]
Bruce Blythe, Business Editor 13 June 2011 The government’s latest crops outlook brought unwelcome news for Mike Engler, a Texas feedlot operator who’s watched profits evaporate in recent months as corn prices soared to records and the cattle market slumped. There’s no apparent end in sight for tight corn supplies and high feed costs for […]
By Tracy McVeigh, The Observer12 June 2011 Global warming has long been blamed for the huge rise in the world’s jellyfish population. But new research suggests that they, in turn, may be worsening the problem by producing more carbon than the oceans can cope with. Research led by Rob Condon of the Virginia Institute of […]
By Pete Spotts, Staff writer10 June 2011 A blend of natural climate swings and global warming appears to be driving a long-term decline in snowpack along the Rocky Mountains rarely seen in the past 800 years. In the process, and perhaps more important for the future, the dominant driver behind available snowpack along the continental […]
By Lisa Evans 10 June 2011 East Anglia is now officially classed as in drought by DEFRA. Today James Meikle wrote about what this means for the farmers of East Anglia and others affected by dry weather. It’s useful to know the last time the weather was this dry, for clues about what we can […]
