Residents get water from a community well in Chennai after reservoirs for the city ran dry in June 2019. The bustling capital of Tamil Nadu state usually receives 825 million litres of water a day, but authorities are currently only able to supply 60 percent of that. With temperatures regularly hitting 40 degrees Celsius, reservoirs have run dry and other water sources are dwindling each day. Photo: Arun Sankar / AFP

Why India’s Chennai has run out of water

By Nityanand Jayaraman 1 July 2019 (BBC News) – As I write this, it has rained in Chennai – the first real welcome shower, but one that lasted only 30 minutes. But, still, that has been enough to flood the streets and stall traffic. The irony is that Chennai’s vulnerability to floods and its water […]

A policeman stands next to vehicles buried in hail in the eastern area of Guadalajara, Mexico, on 30 June 2019. Photo: Ulises Ruiz / AFP / Getty Images

Guadalajara, Mexico, covered in ice after a freakish summer hailstorm – “Hail more than a meter high, and then we wonder if climate change exists”

By Christina Maxouris 1 July 2019 (CNN) – Guadalajara had been enjoying a sweaty summer for the past few weeks until the weekend brought a shocking surprise. The Mexican city woke up Sunday morning to more than 3 feet of ice in some areas after a heavy hailstorm swept through the region. As government officials […]

A motorist drives on top of the Kariba Dam wall in Kariba, Zimbabwe, 19 February 2016. Photo: Philimon Bulawayo / REUTERS

Too much water or too little: Hydropower fights wild weather as climate changes rapidly

By Gerald Porter Jr. and Jeremy Hodges 22 June 2019 (Bloomberg) – The Kariba Dam has towered over one of Africa’s mightiest rivers for 60 years, forming the world’s largest reservoir and providing reliable electricity to Zambia and Zimbabwe. But as drought grips the region, flow on the Zambezi river has dwindled to a third of what […]

Aerial view of Staten Island with proposed sea wall indicated. Graphic: Vox.png

Video: New York is building a wall to hold back the ocean

10 June 2019 (Vox) – Climate change is leading to increasingly violent storms. Can seawalls hold back floods? Staten Island recently received funding for a nearly 5-mile-long seawall to protect its coast. But the plan raises a lot of questions. We’re living in a dangerously dynamic world: Hurricanes are getting worse, wildfires are rampant in […]

Tug boats idle along the shores of the Mississippi River as they wait to push barges north, on 7 June 2019. Photo: Daniel Acker / Bloomberg

Hundreds of barges stalled as record floods hinder Midwest supplies – “Very long duration flooding on the Mississippi River can really start to wear on people”

By Brian K Sullivan , Shruti Singh, and Mario Parker 8 June 2019 (Bloomberg) – Hundreds of barges are stalled on the Mississippi River, clogging the main circulatory system for a farm-belt economy battered by a relentless, record-setting string of snow, rainstorms and flooding. Railways and highways have been closed as well, keeping needed supplies […]

U.S. shallow groundwater wetness percentile from 11 May 2019 to 13 May 2019. Graphic: NASA Earth Observatory

Wettest 12 months in U.S. history, again – “The last twelve months beat the previous record, set just a month ago, by a full 1.48 inches”

By Bob Henson 6 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – Propelled by a two-week siege of widespread severe weather and heavy rain in late May, the contiguous U.S. has once again broken its record for the wettest year-long span in data going back to 1895. According to the monthly U.S. climate summary released Thursday from the […]

Aerial view of flooded homes in Arkansas, 2 June 2019. Photo: Brian Emfinger / Twitter

“Horrible scenes” in central, southern U.S. as more rain threatens areas swamped by record floods – “You have to just make a decision because you’re going to lose everything”

By Doyle Rice 4 June 2019 (USA TODAY) – More unwelcome rain is forecast this week in much of the central and southern USA, falling upon areas already swamped by record-breaking floods. “Many locations from the central and southern Plains into the Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley could see 1 to 3 inches of rain in the […]

A farm field is flooded by waters from the Missouri River, in Bellevue, Nebraska, on 29 May 2019. Photo: Nati Harnik / AP

Flooded farms in the U.S. Midwest can’t plant crops – Corn and soybean acres not planted at record high – “The frequency of these disasters, I can’t say we’ve experienced anything like this since I’ve been working in agriculture”

By Michael J. Coren 30 May 2019 (Quartz) – The angst on farmer Twitter is palpable. Across the Midwest, torrential rains have soaked the fields, leaving the sodden soil unsuitable for planting millions of acres with corn, soybeans, and other crops, presaging a terrible harvest. Seeds are usually in the ground this time of year. […]

Historic flooding on the Arkansas River in Oklahoma and Arkansas – “This is the culmination of a flood that is now in its fourth week”

By Dr. Jeff Masters 28 May 2019 (Weather Underground) – Torrential rains in Oklahoma over the past two weeks have brought the Arkansas River in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma to its highest water level ever recorded. Near the Oklahoma border at Fort Smith, Arkansas (population 300,000), the river rose to two feet above its previous […]

Exponential growth in impacts from abrupt climate change

By Nick Humphrey 2 May 2019 (Patreon) – I get asked a lot about what the future holds. I discussed the projections of global average temperature and sea level rise in an upcoming interview on Radio Ecoshock (will be posted next week). However, while trying to write an article on this, I found myself frustrated […]

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