By ROBERT F. WORTHPublished: October 13, 2010 AR RAQQAH, Syria — The farmlands spreading north and east of this Euphrates River town were once the breadbasket of the region, a vast expanse of golden wheat fields and bucolic sheep herds. Now, after four consecutive years of drought, this heartland of the Fertile Crescent — including […]
By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of ClimateWirePublished: October 15, 2010 The fourth in a four-part series on Pakistan’s flood disaster. Click here for part one, here for part two and here for part three. NOWSHERA, Pakistan — “I wonder if humanity exists in other parts of Pakistan.” Salma Begum 32, fumes when asked what the government and […]
British Red CrossContact: Mark South, msouth@redcross.org.uk October 15 2010 14:53 Millions of people who lost homes, crops and food stores to the Pakistan floods are facing a winter of hunger unless more money is found. The Red Cross movement has already distributed emergency food parcels for more than 1.3m people, but with this year’s crops […]
ScienceDaily (Oct. 14, 2010) — Rivers and streams supply the lifeblood of ecosystems across the globe, providing water for drinking and irrigation for humans as well as a wide array of life forms in rivers and streams from single-celled organisms all the way up to the fish humans eat. But humans and nature itself are […]
By Rob Crilly in IslamabadPublished Date: 14 October 2010 MAN-MADE climate change was a major cause of devastating floods in Pakistan this year, shifting monsoon rains away from flood defences and into areas of the country incapable of dealing with the deluge, according to Pakistani scientists. More than 1,700 people died and millions lost […]
Years of illegal logging by the ‘timber mafia’ and the Taliban cleared forests, allowing raging floodwater to flow unimpeded, experts say. By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles TimesOctober 13, 2010 Reporting from Chail, Pakistan — People here remember when hundreds of Pakistani Taliban militants roamed through the forested ridges flanking the Chail River, armed not with […]
By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of ClimateWirePublished: October 12, 2010 The first in a four-part series on Pakistan’s flood disaster. NOWSHERA, Pakistan — “Allah was angry with us when the rain came.” Sumaira Bibi unhesitatingly leans on theology to explain what happened here on the night of July 29, when her world was drowned. Her husband was […]
By Aftab Bukhari, The Express TribuneOctober 11th, 2010. JACOBABAD: Floodwater might be receding from most areas in the province but the Sindh-Balochistan National Highway still stands flooded. Two months ago a massive breach developed in the Tori Bund and water rushed towards Jacobabad district, flooding almost 80 per cent of it. When the flood got […]
Contact: Hannah Isom, h.isom@leeds.ac.ukUniversity of Leeds 7 Oct 2010(University of Leeds) Large-scale crop failures like the one that caused the recent Russian wheat crisis are likely to become more common under climate change due to an increased frequency of extreme weather events, a new study shows. However, the worst effects of these events on […]
Irvine, Calif., October 04, 2010 — Freshwater is flowing into Earth’s oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world’s oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than […]
