By ROBERT F. WORTHPublished: October 31, 2009 JAHILIYA, Yemen — More than half of this country’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by […]
By James Morgan, BBC News, Kenya At the edges of Kenya’s Lake Nakuru, Paul Opiyo picks up a dead flamingo and warns some eager tourists not to touch it, just in case. He points down to his feet – the brown earth is speckled with brittle white feather shafts. “We should be underwater, standing here,” […]
Nairobi — With exactly a week to go before a deadline for those settled in a section of the Mau Forest complex expires, thousands of anxious settlers are grappling with the inevitability of eviction. A two-pronged plan in the past week has cleared any doubts on the government’s determination to get the settlers out and […]
Scientists unravel how warming temperatures will trigger more wild fires in California’s Yosemite National Park. By Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News Wild fires within California’s world famous Yosemite National Park are set to become more frequent and severe due to climate change. New research has unpicked how this may happen; and it is not just […]
(a) Seasonal Melt Departure (SMD) for June-August and (b) seasonal maximum daily temperature anomalies at three coastal meteorological stations in Greenland for June-August from 1973 to 2007 (Mote 2007). The recent marked retreat, thinning, and acceleration of most of Greenland’s outlet glaciers south of 70° N has increased concerns over contributions from the Greenland Ice […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com, November 02, 2009 The most recent survey among the ice fields atop Mount Kilimanjaro found that the ice atop Africa’s most famous mountain could be gone in twenty years—and maybe even sooner. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the study [pdf] was conducted by a team of […]
By Ben Cubby EARLIER this year, when their village was knee deep in water following another king tide, the Saibai Islanders turned to prayer to turn back the waters. It appeared to work, in that the tide eventually retreated, but the residents of Saibai – a low-lying Australian island just south of Papua New Guinea […]
Posted Thursday, October 29 2009 at 14:13 More families were displaced in Mandera Central district as heavy rains continue to pound the area for the last three days in row. Millions of property including food rations were destroyed in flash flood that also cut off many roads in the North-Eastern Province. The displaced families who […]
By Standard Team Flooding has claimed three lives, displaced hundreds and cut off towns following heavy rainfall, even as meteorologists warn it would get worse. The most affected areas are Coast and North Eastern provinces, which have seen a sudden increase in rainfall in line with the Meteorological Department’s forecast in August that flooding, would […]
By Brandon Keim, October 28, 2009 Fueled by previously unappreciated links between climate and ecology, the North Sea has undergone a radical ecological shift in the last half-century, say scientists. The very shape of the food web has changed, from plankton on up to the cod and flatfish that once dominated the icy waters, supporting […]
