Drought

The past decade has brought the dangers of climate change into sharp relief, often most clearly through images.

In the Arctic, scientific expeditions this year found increasingly thin ice and surprisingly open seas. Higher up, photographers documented the disappearance of glaciers, including some in the Andes and the Himalayas that provide fresh water to billions of people. On lower lands, drought threatened crops and lives from China to Kenya, Australia to California.

Here’s a look at some of the most worrisome environmental changes through the lenses of scientists, satellites, explorers and humanitarians.

For much of the last 200 years, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide hovered around 275 parts per million. In this century, with atmospheric carbon dioxide nearing 390 ppm, and climbing annually by about 2.5 ppm, we are already beyond what many scientists see as a critical threshold in climate change.

Farmers around the world are already feeling the impact.

In India, the worst monsoon season since 1972 threatens the 60 percent of cropland that relies on rain; many fields weren’t even planted this year. In China, a drought that started in the north in the spring (leading some to suggest moving the capital, Beijing) now extends to the central and southern portions of the nation, and is being touted as the worst in 40 years.

The same situation is repeating itself in the Middle East, with serious impacts in Iraq, parts of Turkey, Jordan and Syria as the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run dry. The Aral Sea, tapped to grow Russian cotton in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, has lost 80 percent of its water since 2006.

In Africa, nations like Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are experiencing severe drought. Where once the rains failed every nine or 10 years, they now fail every two to three years. In Kenya’s Kamba region, where many crops have withered, residents live on a meagre government dole and try to dig wells, but a subsurface rock layer stymies them. Dying livestock add to the turmoil, forcing cattle raids within and across borders that further threaten the stability of governments and facilitate the work of rebels, who leave behind their own trail of dead and dying.

The world’s forests are being damaged by climate change-related heat and drought, even in areas not traditionally known for water shortages, U.S. Geological Survey researchers say in the first global assessment of tree deaths from heat stress and drought.

The findings highlight the very real risk that tree mortality could become a bigger problem as global climate change progresses.

They also suggest that emissions offset programs designed to prevent logging and clear cutting of forests are missing the big picture: Allowing polluters to pay to preserve or plant trees rather than reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions may keep one area of trees alive, but it continues to endanger forests around the world.

As climate change alters the African landscape, making some parts of the continent unsuitable for agriculture, raising camels could supplant crops and other livestock in the hardest hit areas, a study from the International Livestock Research Institute suggests.

Environmental scientist Philip K. Thornton is serious about that recommendation.

In parts of the arid and semi-arid regions of West, East and southern Africa, increasingly inadequate rainfall already causes crops to fail one out of every six years – a rate that is increasing as global warming takes its toll.

By 2050, between 500,000 and 1 million square kilometers of Africa could fall below the crop threshold of 90 reliable of days of moisture, according to a series of computer models that take into account potential impacts from climate change.

Where impacts are most severe, switching from cropping to herding may be the only salvation.

Thornton’s research suggests that raising drought-hardy camels could be a viable option for some 20 million to 35 million people living in scattered areas about the size of Egypt that will likely become so arid by 2050 that raising food will be virtually impossible. It could also be more lucrative than people realize.

"Water Shortage Threatens China." "California Faces Water Rationing." "Drought in Australia Food Bowl Continues."

Water scarcity is becoming eerily prominent in recent newspaper headlines — and for good reason.

With global temperatures increasing, scientists have told us to expect water scarcity problems like those California and China are now experiencing to increase and become even more severe. The consequences for an already reeling global economy will be profound. Numerous industry sectors should expect decreased water allotments, shifts towards full-cost water pricing and ever-more stringent water quality regulations.

Already, China, India, and the western U.S. are seeing growth limited by reduced water supplies from shrinking glaciers and melting snowcaps that sustain key rivers. Meanwhile, power plant production has been cut back due to more frequent and more intense heat waves and droughts in Australia, Europe, and the southeast United States.

A new report from Ceres and the Pacific Institute evaluates water-related risks to eight water-intensive sectors: technology, beverage, food, electric power/energy, apparel, biotechnology/pharmaceuticals, forest products and mining. Our conclusion is that each of these sectors faces serious near- and long-term economic risks related to their water dependence.

For example,