For its July magazine issue, Texas Monthly took an in-depth look at the diminishing Texas water supply. The detailed cover story jumps right to the heart of the matter in the first paragraph: “As last year’s historic drought reminded us, Texas has always lived life by the drop, just a few dry years away from a serious crisis. With our population expected to nearly double
Recently, the U.N.’s official climate change body announced that extreme weather events are tied to climate change and we can expect even more mayhem as the century wears on. Among other climate disasters, the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report foresee more scorching days and
A drought that affected large areas of the Amazon rainforest in 2010 triggered the release of about 1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide, more than the total annual CO2 emissions of India, according to a new study.
After combining a NASA carbon cycle simulation
Nearly 40 percent of businesses globally have already experienced “detrimental” effects related to water security, including disruptions caused by drought and other shortages, flooding, poor quality, and increased prices, according to a new report. In a survey of companies from 25 nations, more than half responded that risks to their business are “current or near
If you are planning to move in the near future, you might want to consider not just the economic, cultural and civic advantages of your new choice, but the likelihood that it will be affected by some of the changes predicted by global warming.
According to a new study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist, Aiguo Dai, the United States along with many other heavily populated countries in the Western Hemisphere is looking at a growing threat of severe and extended drought in the years to come.
Farmers and horticulturists are being advised to act now in order to survive the years of drought ahead.
A recent report commissioned by the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) shows that higher temperatures and lower annual rainfall in summer is likely to reduce river flow
For thousands of years, nomadic herdsmen have roamed the harsh, semi-arid lowlands that stretch across 80 percent of Kenya and 60 percent of Ethiopia. Descendants of the oldest tribal societies in the world, they survive thanks to the animals they raise and the crops they grow, their travels determined by the search for water and grazing lands.
Lake Mead, the massive reservoir that supplies water to millions of people across the southwestern U.S., has reached its lowest levels in nearly 75 years. Water levels dropped to 1,083 feet above sea level on Oct. 17, the lowest elevation since 1937, when the lake was first filled with the completion of the Hoover Dam.
The dropping water level — which beats a
One of the core issues surrounding the planting of trees and maintenance of crops or plantations is how to efficiently water them. Currently 1/3 of the world’s population lives in regions where water is scarce and this number is expected to double by 2025. These areas of dry land also have other soil issues, like erosion, which mean that the substrate is no longer able to support plant life.
A device created by Dutch inventor, Pieter Hoff, has the potential to mitigate some of the issues faced by farmers and business in areas of drought – the Groasis Waterboxx. The Waterboxx was recently listed as one of Popular Science’s top 10 inventions of 2010, and is designed to trap condensation that falls from the plant’s leaves during the night.
In the slums of Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya, about 1 million poor people pay up to 30 times more for water of dubious quality brought to them in old tanker trucks than middle-class citizens pay for clean and safe water provided by the local public water utility via standard household connections.
Some may be shocked by these disturbing disparities in the developing world, but a lack of access to safe, affordable and clean water is also an issue in California, particularly in the Central Valley and along the Central Coast. In these communities, more than 90 percent of drinking water is sucked from contaminated groundwater sources. All told, more than 150,000 California residents lack safe water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes; even more have water service disconnected because they cannot afford to pay their bill.
Water agencies facing droughts and shortages of freshwater, such as in coastal California, have been turning increasingly to desalination this year.
However, current desalination methods can be expensive and energy inefficient. Watchdog groups prefer water conservation and efficiency efforts, and charge that tapping the oceans for potable water can pollute waterways and kill marine creatures.
Yet could desalination become more viable and efficient? The Global Cleantech 100 list anointed several companies with that aspiration as technology innovators earlier this month.
Severe air pollution in China’s heavily industrialized east is impeding the formation of rain clouds and contributing to a drought in northern China, according to a new study. The study, which looked at rainfall and pollution patterns for the past 50 years, concluded that pollution has reduced the number of days of light rain in eastern China by 23 percent.
Atmospheric scientist Yun Qian of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said that the large number of aerosols in China’s polluted skies has led to the formation of rain droplets that are up to 50 percent smaller than rain droplets in clean skies. The smaller droplets do not as readily form rain clouds, which means that lighter rainfalls valuable to agriculture — ranging from a drizzle to accumulations of .4 inch per day — are occurring less frequently, according to the study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.
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