Graph of the Day: Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover Anomalies, April 1966 – April 2010

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorologists began production of satellite-derived maps of Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent (SCE) in late 1966. Map data have been used in international assessments of climate variability and change, and in investigations regarding the role of snow cover in the climate system. Despite their proven climate utility, meteorological forecasting […]

UK lawns suffering from historic drought

  By Louise Gray, Environment CorrespondentPublished: 8:00AM BST 26 Jun 2010 Wimbledon may be looking green but the rest of Britain’s lawns are already turning brown this summer due to a combination of unusually dry weather and an invasion of hungry bugs. The coldest winter for 30 years caused pink and white patches to appear […]

Climate refugees in Syria driven to cities by severe drought

  Damascus (AFP) June 22, 2010 – A severe four-year drought is devastating Syria’s rural communities, forcing them to abandon the country’s traditional breadbasket in the northeast for cities in search of employment. Earlier this month, the World Food Programme started delivering food aid to nearly 200,000 people in the provinces of Al-Hasakeh, Al-Raqqa and […]

Amid historic drought, Red Cross buys starving cattle to feed Malians — ‘Dead animals litter the ground’

  Toya, Mali (AFP) June 22, 2010 – In single file, hundreds of residents of Toya wait patiently for meat distributed by the Red Cross who bought up thousands of starving animals to feed Mali’s drought-stricken population. With containers in hand they await the meat from four cows slaughtered in the village in the north-west […]

Drought adds to Syria woes of poverty and unemployment

By MICHAEL JANSEN in Damascus SYRIA IS sweltering in an unseasonable heatwave which Damascenes are blaming on climate change. “We have to fight global warming now, as well as so many other battles,” asserted Zuhair, an academic. Battle was joined in 2007 when the rains failed and 40,000 farm families in the country’s northeastern breadbasket […]

Photo gallery: Historic drought in southwest China and the Mekong basin

A solitary man and an ox cart travel across an area where locals went fishing less than a year ago in Damoguzhen County, Yunnan. ‘The old folk say it has never dried up in their lifetimes.’ Photograph: Jonathan Watts / Guardian Drought in south-west China and the Mekong basin Technorati Tags: drought,freshwater depletion,desertification,agriculture,China,global warming,climate change

Climate change threatens food supply of 60 million people in Asia

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010) — According to an article by three Utrecht University researchers published in the journal Science on 11 June, climate change will drastically reduce the discharge of snow and ice meltwater in a region of the Himalayas, threatening the food security of more than 60 million people in Asia in the coming […]

Scientists study harmful algae blooms in Guatemala’s Lake Atitlan

ScienceDaily (June 22, 2010) — A team of scientists from the University of Nevada, Reno, DRI, Arizona State University and University of California, Davis has returned from a two-week expedition to Guatemala’s tropical high-mountain Lake Atitlan, where they are working to find solutions to the algae blooms that have assailed the ecosystem and the drinking […]

Peruvians paint a mountain white, hoping to restore a glacier

By Dan CollynsBBC News, Ayacucho Slowly but surely an extinct glacier in a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes is being returned to its former colour, not by falling snow or regenerated ice sheets, but by whitewash. It is the first experimental step in an innovative plan to recuperate Peru’s disappearing Andean glaciers. But there […]

Climate changes in the Atlantic can affect drought in distant regions

(University of Haifa) Cyclical changes in atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic Ocean affect drought in the Sahel region on the southern Sahara rim. This has been revealed in an international study carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa, the French National Meteorological Service, Columbia University and the University […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial