By Catherine Lagrange and Bate Felix; editing by David Stamp LYON, France (Reuters) – A pocket of water big enough to fill 20 Olympic pools, trapped inside a glacier on Mont Blanc, could burst at any time and endanger lives in a French Alpine valley, officials said Thursday. Researchers at the National Center for Scientific […]
This figure shows the percentage of the land area of the lower 48 states that experienced much greater than normal precipitation in any given year, which means it scored 2.0 or above on the annual Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). The thicker orange line shows a nine-year moving average that smooths out some of the year-to-year […]
By Nina Chestney; editing by Janet Lawrence (Reuters) – Britain’s coasts have become cleaner but sea levels and temperatures are rising due to climate change, a government report said on Wednesday. The five-year study by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) examined how climate change has affected sea levels and temperatures, […]
By Staff WritersQue Dien, Vietnam (AFP) July 14, 2010 The rivers that should nourish his thirsty rice paddies are too salty, and the rains are late this year. Dang Roi does not know if he will be able to salvage anything from this spring’s crop. Vietnam is the world’s second-biggest rice exporter and the Mekong […]
Decadal means of temperature of (a) the whole of China, (b) frequencies of droughts, (c) floods, (d) internal wars, (e) external aggression wars, (f) all wars, (g) locust plagues and (h) rice price in China during AD 10–1990. Dynastic periods are defined by following Chen (1939) as: A, Han (206 BC–AD 220); B, Three Kingdoms […]
Bucharest (AFP) July 5, 2010 Romanian authorities on Monday issued a flooding red alert for several towns along the Danube, which has risen to a record level, threatening to cause further damage in the hard-hit country. “This week we will be facing dangerous meteorological and hydrological events,” Prime Minister Emil Boc said after an emergency […]
Britain has experienced the driest first six months of the year for more than 80 years. Met Office figures showed the average rainfall across the country was 356.8mm, making it the driest start to the year since 1929 and the second driest in a century. The long-term average for January to June is 511.7 mm. […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com June 24, 2010 The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) has condemned Malaysia’s booming practice of converting tropical forests into rubberwood plantations, arguing that the conversion threatens Malaysia’s biodiversity, endangered species, and releases significant greenhouse gas emissions. According to the resolution, rubberwood plantations in Malaysia have expanded nearly 30-fold in […]
By Jessica Shankleman, BusinessGreen17 Jun 2010 British businesses need to invest in adaptation measures to cope with flooding and drought in the coming decades even if substantial reductions in greenhouses gas emissions are achieved. That is the stark warning from the insurance industry today after a new report from the Met Office warned that global […]
Sydney (AFP) June 6, 2010 – Weather-related catastrophes brought about by climate change are increasing, the top UN humanitarian official said Sunday as he warned of the possibility of “mega-disasters”. John Holmes, the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, said one of the biggest challenges facing the aid community was the problems stemming from changing […]
