[Declaring an end to the Big Dry seems premature, cf.: While the systematic accumulation of rainfall deficits was reversed with the heavy spring and summer rainfall of 2010, the total two-year record rainfall makes up for about one third of the total rainfall ‘missed out on’ since 1996. Additionally, the recovery peaked in autumn 2011, […]
By Richard A. Kerr27 April 2012 How bad will global warming get? The question has long been cast in terms of how hot the world will get. But perhaps more important to the planet’s inhabitants will be how much rising greenhouse gases crank up the water cycle. Theory and models predict that a strengthening greenhouse […]
23 April 2012 – Flooding hit rural areas in Colombia and Peru on Sunday, driving hundreds from their homes, flooding crops and taking at least three lives in the Boyaca province. In the Colombian town of La Parada, southwest of the capital Bogota, the Tachira River overflowed its banks and flooded some 200 homes. Water […]
The Amazon has reached record breadth, width, and height this rainy season. According to Peru’s Health Ministry, the river has grown at least 6.5 feet during the floods, with the Marañón River, which feeds the Amazon, increasing some 13 feet. Neither river has swelled this much since the 1970s, when a similar flood affected the […]
By David Fogarty; Editing by Ed Davies26 April 2012 SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Scientists have detected a clear change in salinity of the world’s oceans and have found that the cycle that drives rainfall and evaporation has intensified more than thought because of global warming. The finding published on Friday helps refine estimates of how different […]
25 April 2012 (RTCC) – The villagers of Newtok in Alaska could have gained the undesirable title of America’s first climate change refugees. The community in the west of the state has undergone drastic changes as melting permafrost has literally shifted the ground beneath them and the loss of sea ice has removed a vital […]
By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk20 April 2012 Heavy rain over much of the country, provoking flash floods in some areas and severe weather warnings from the Met Office, is set to continue through the weekend but is unlikely to ease the drought gripping most of England. Flash floods closed the centre of Pocklington in […]
By Meg Weaver19 April 2012 Though writer Robert Earle Howells adds greater fuel to our wanderlust fires with his round-up of five Peruvian jungle lodges in National Geographic Traveler’s new issue, now’s unfortunately not the time to visit the Amazon Basin. Super-floods continue to inundate the region — a situation that has been underreported in […]
By Stephen Lacey 20 April 2012 Corn farmers concerned about the impact of climate change are speaking out, calling the problem “a grave threat” to the nation’s agricultural sector. Responding to the increase in severe weather — and the prospects for a “quantum jump” in such devastating events — a group of corn farmers is […]
By Arlene Martinez19 April 2012 Oil spills, water pollution, harmful pesticides: those are the types of contaminants that spurred environmental crusaders to initiate the first Earth Day in 1970. Damage from industries, businesses and agriculture was noticeable, from thick sludge in landfills that bordered homes to unnatural plumes of green smoke that were emitted from […]
