Disaster at the Top of the World

By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON, Aboard the Louis S. St-LaurentAugust 22, 2010 STANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with […]

Time short for Ladakh flood victims as winter looms

By Staff WritersLeh, India (AFP) Aug 16, 2010 Winters come harsh and early in India’s Himalayan region of Ladakh, where the waning summer spells more hardship for thousands left homeless by devastating flash floods. In Ladakh’s main city, Leh, around 800 families lost everything in the torrent of mud and water that invaded their homes […]

Climate change drives food crisis in Bolivia

Xinhua17:03, August 23, 2010 Persistent drought, cold weather and flooding, all attributed to climate change, are threatening Bolivia with a food crisis, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and experts have recently warned. FAO coordinator Einstein Tejada said one fifth of Bolivia’s territory now suffer from the effects of climate change, causing food […]

Haze from British Columbia fires expected to worsen in Alberta

By JENNA McMURRAY, QMI AgencyAugust 23, 2010 6:47am CALGARY – Though haze that settled over Calgary and much of Alberta last week due to wafting smoke from B.C. forest fires dissolved somewhat on the weekend, there’s more where that came from, according to Alberta Environment. Bob Myrick, manager for air policy, said though the air […]

Graph of the Day: US West Coast Butterfly Range Shifts Northward

As climate warms, many species in the United States are shifting their ranges northward and to higher elevations. The map shows the response of Edith’s checkerspot butterfly populations to a warming climate over the past 136 years in the American West. Over 70 percent of the southernmost populations (shown in yellow) have gone extinct. The […]

Image of the Day: Fires and Smoke in British Columbia Viewed from Orbit, 13 August 2010

Multiple clusters of fires burned in British Columbia, sending a thick plume of smoke over the Pacific Ocean in mid-August 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on August 13. East of the snowcapped Coast Mountains, numerous fires, many of them clustered into large groups, send smoke […]

Melbourne water levels on the up as dams reach 38 percent, but ‘storages are still depleted’

By Jason DowlingAugust 16, 2010 MELBOURNE’S water storages are having their best winter run-off since 1995, swelling above 38 per cent full and adding more than 220 billion litres to last year’s historically low levels. More good news is expected in coming weeks, with big inflows expected from the winter/spring filling season. But this exceptional […]

Prairies choke on smoke from British Columbia forest fires

By Tamara Baluja, The Province; with files from Laura Baziuk August 22, 2010 B.C.’s ferocious wildfires have resulted in an air-quality advisory that remained in effect Saturday for B.C., Alberta and even parts of Saskatchewan as smoke continues to drift east. There have been unconfirmed reports that the smoke has even drifted to the western […]

Desperate refugees fight over food as UN says eight million flood-stricken Pakistanis are in ‘urgent need’ of food

By Mail Foreign ServiceLast updated at 9:57 AM on 22nd August 2010 Tired, desperate and starving, these two men come to blows as they fight over a food package handed out by a local charity. With more than 20million people displaced by flooding that is now officially the worst disaster Pakistan has ever faced, the […]

Thousands stay in Pakistan floods to protect homes

By TIM SULLIVAN (AP)22 August 2010 HAMDANI LEGARI, Pakistan — The old man stepped carefully through his village, dodging craters as deep as graves where they had been mining soil for embankments to hold back the floodwaters. Already, nearly half this village of tenant farmers had been destroyed. The crops wiped out. But Mohammed Ayoub […]

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