Video: Namibians face starvation in worst drought in a generation – Elephants and other desperate wildlife gather around remaining puddles and faucets in human camps

By Max Fisher13 August 2013 (Washington Post) – The United Nations Children’s Fund released this short video from Namibia, a country in southwestern Africa that’s twice the size of California, documenting the effects of the country’s most severe drought in decades. It’s a national emergency, and the United Nations is getting involved. Here are a […]

Texas fracking boom sucks away precious water from beneath the ground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone-dry, and people thirsty – ‘When the water is gone. That’s it. We’re gone.’

Suzanne Goldenberg 11 August 2013 Barnhart, Texas    (The Guardian) – Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she […]

Shanghai sets new all-time record (again) as heat wave bakes eastern China

By Justin Grieser8 August 2013 (Washington Post) – While the eastern U.S. and Canada have recently seen below-normal temperatures, a major summer heat wave has been the story in eastern China since early July. Shanghai saw its hottest July in 140 years as temperatures soared to 100ºF or higher for 10 straight days between July […]

Report: Climate change is impacting California water, forests, animals – ‘Together, these indicators paint a disturbing picture of how climate change is affecting our state and its growing threats to our future’

By Alicia Chang8 August 2013 LOS ANGELES (Washington Post) – Coastal waters off California are getting more acidic. Fall-run chinook salmon populations to the Sacramento River are on the decline. Conifer forests on the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada have moved to higher elevations over the past half century. That’s just a snapshot of […]

New Mexico is the driest of the dry – ‘It’s all changed. This used to be shortgrass prairies. We’ve ruined it and it’s never going to come back.’

By JULIE CART6 August 2013 RIO GRANDE VALLEY, N.M. (Los Angeles Times) – Scientists in the West have a particular way of walking a landscape and divining its secrets: They kick a toe into loamy soil or drag a boot heel across the desert’s crust, leaning down to squint at the tiny excavation. Try that […]

As Texas drought spreads, firms could be up the creek – ‘If you don’t have an active water management plan in place, you're courting disaster’

By Constance Gustke, Special to CNBC.com 17 Jul 2013 (CNBC) – Three straight years of blistering drought have strained Texas’ water resources. Some cities like Midland are already steeply raising their water prices. But it’s not just residents of the Lone Star State feeling parched. Texas-based companies are scrambling to reduce their water usage and […]

Arizona horses dying as Navajo Nation declares drought emergency – ‘We've been in a drought for eight years’

5 July 2013 (ICTMN) – The horses, desperate for water, had come to drink from a pool of rainwater that had run off a hill and flooded land on the Navajo reservation. What they got was a mud bath that turned deadly as they became trapped in the bentonite clay of the Chinle Formation, which […]

Waterways warmed by climate change will increase electricity prices in southern Europe

By Jonathan Tirone; Editing by James Hertling8 July 2013 VIENNA (Bloomberg) – Waterways warmed by climate change will increase electricity prices by as much as a third in southern Europe as producers struggle to cool power stations, a study showed. Countries from Romania to Bulgaria and Slovenia face the biggest price increases, according to research […]

Lake Urmia water level decreases by 28 cm in one year

By Trend T.Jafarov29 June 2013 Azerbaijan, Baku (Trend) – Lake Urmia’s water level has dropped by another 28 centimeters compared to the same period last year, the head of the department of water and water resources of Iran’s Ministry of Energy, Alireza Daimi said, the İRNA agency reported on Saturday. According to Daimi, the increased […]

Global food security weakening ‘on a scale we haven’t seen yet’ – ‘Of all the resources we have, time is the scarcest’

By Laurie Goering28 June 2013 LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Population growth, rising affluence, water shortages, and climate change are combining to create unprecedented pressure on the world’s food supply – pressure that is likely to play out both as slow rises in hunger and as famines linked to extreme weather events, a leading agriculture […]

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