By Chris Buckley; Editing by David Fogarty17 January 2012 BEIJING (Reuters) – Global warming threatens China’s march to prosperity by cutting crops, shrinking rivers and unleashing more droughts and floods, says the government’s latest assessment of climate change, projecting big shifts in how the nation feeds itself. The warnings are carried in the government’s “Second […]
By Nicolas Guérin, Mediacom18 January 2012 EPFL mathematicians have shown that the risk of extreme climate events is largely underestimated. They are developing a model for better understanding the impact of climate change. Remember the 2003 heat wave? According to the standard weather models, it was impossible. Mathematicians from EPFL’s Chair of Statistics, however, say […]
Projected annual changes in dryness assessed from changes in soil moisture (soil moisture anomalies, SMA). Increased dryness is indicated with yellow to red colors; decreased dryness with green to blue. Projected changes are expressed in units of standard deviation of the interannual variability in the three 20-year periods 1980-1999, 2046-2065 and 2081-2100. The figure shows […]
HOUSTON, January 7 (AP) – The National Weather Service says 2011 was Texas’ driest year on record as well as its second hottest. The agency said Friday the average rainfall for the drought-stricken state last year was 14.88 inches. The previous driest average total was in 1917 with 14.99 inches. The weather service says 2011’s […]
ISI Web of Science search of the trend in published reports of climate-related forest mortality in the scientific literature, for the years 1985–2009. Plotted bars show the percent of references using the topic words “forest AND mortality AND drought”, relative to all “forest” references. Line represents the linear regression model fitted to the data (R2 […]
By Jeff Masters30 December 2011 A remarkable blitz of extreme weather events during 2011 caused a total of 32 weather disasters costing at least $1 billion worldwide. Five nations experienced their most expensive weather-related natural disasters on record during 2011 – Thailand, Australia, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. According to insurance broker AON Benfield’s November […]
By George Webster, for CNN23 December 2011 When Tropical Storm Washi ripped through the southern Philippine city of Cagayan de Oro last weekend, it dumped in one day more than the city’s entire average rainfall for the month of December. According to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, a total of 181 millimeters […]
White dots indicate documented localities with forest mortality related to climatic stress from drought and high temperatures. Background map shows potential environmental limits to vegetation net primary production (Boisvenue and Running, 2006). Only the general areas documented in the tables are shown—many additional localities are mapped more precisely on the continental-scale maps. Drought and heat-driven […]
By Jim Forsyth; Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune20 December 2011 SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service. “In 2011, Texas experienced an exceptional drought, prolonged high […]
By Betsy Blaney, The Associated Press17 December 2011 LUBBOCK, Texas – The worst drought in Texas’ history has led to the largest-ever one-year decline in the leading cattle-state’s cow herd, raising the likelihood of increased beef prices as the number of animals decline and demand remains strong. Since Jan. 1, the number of cows in […]
