Here’s a fascinating bit of business in GRL (I’ve only seen the abstract, haven’t read the paper): Summer soil moisture increased significantly from 1958 to the mid 1990s in Ukraine and Russia. This trend cannot be explained by changes in precipitation and temperature alone. To investigate the possible contribution from solar dimming and upward CO2 …
U.N. rights advocate sees more malnutrition Jean Ziegler, a U.N. expert on food rights, said that some 852 million people were “gravely, permanently undernourished on this planet” at the end of 2005, an increase of 11 million from the year earlier. Much of that increase came in Africa, where drought, climate change and poor farming …
Some interesting discussion in today’s drought monitor about the way the early water year is shaping up in the Pacific Northwest: [T]he 2006-07 wet season is off to a slow start in parts of the Northwest. From October 1 to October 24, Washington rainfall totaled just 2.48 inches (36% of normal) in Quillayute and 1.00 …
art: Apropos of nothing except that I happened to have just listened to it, a marvelous old NPR piece from a few years back on Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting “Nighthawks”. paper of the day: Multi-Century Tree-Ring Reconstructions of Colorado Streamflow for Water Resource Planning, by Connie Woodhouse and Jeffrey Lukas. The tree ring people have …
From the Inkstain Australia desk, word that folks Down Under are turning to crime in response to drought: Rainwater tanks around Canberra have been drained and farm ponds have been pumped dry. Police say stealing water is often the perfect crime because evidence disappears without trace.
With drought in Australia, snakes are on the move: Although snakes don’t need water because they don’t sweat, Mr Neindorf said they rely on food to keep their fluids at a reasonable level, meaning more of them were on the ground in search of a meal. “Because conditions have been so dry for such a …
I ran across an old paper this morning by Vörösmarty and colleagues about the relative importance of increasing water demand vs. climate change over the next quarter century. Their conclusion is that human population growth etc. swamps any possible climate change effect. I’ve blogged about this before, but I was struck by this wonderful sentence …
USGS streamflow data
Reuters reports famine in Afghanistan because of drought: Some 2.5 million drought-stricken Afghans across much of the country have lost their crops and are facing acute food shortages, international aid group Christian Aid warned on Wednesday in the capital, Kabul. An assessment carried out by the aid group in 66 villages in the provinces of …
Google Earth Snotel Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. As winter progresses, snowpack is one of the key western U.S. drought variables to monitor. Snowpack is an important leading indicator of hydrologic drought (see here for a discussion of various drought definitions and measures) in the coming year. Snow that builds up in the mountains during the …