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Archive for July 21st, 2012
Dry as a bone: Drought’s wide impact is likely to last for years
Posted by Kansas City Star: Rick Montgomery and Ian Cummings on July 21st, 2012
Kansas City Star: Of all natural disasters, drought is the most common and the least understood. It doesn’t hit like a hurricane, earthquake or twister. You can’t see it coming on satellite radar, experts note, which may be why many people disregard the effects. Around Kansas City, drought creeps — first claiming the Missouri crop grower, then the Kansas cattleman who can’t afford grain to feed livestock. In time, grocery shoppers around the nation will wonder what’s with the higher prices for produce and hamburger....
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Searching for Clues to Calamity
Posted by New York Times: Fred Guterl on July 21st, 2012
New York Times: SO far 2012 is on pace to be the hottest year on record. But does this mean that we’ve reached a threshold — a tipping point that signals a climate disaster? For those warning of global warming, it would be tempting to say so. The problem is, no one knows if there is a point at which a climate system shifts abruptly. But some scientists are now bringing mathematical rigor to the tipping-point argument. Their findings give us fresh cause to worry that sudden changes are in our future. One of them...
Himalayan glaciers melting more rapidly
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 21st, 2012
IRIN: The Himalayan glaciers that feed major south Asian rivers like the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Ganges are melting more rapidly, reveals a major new study which says that soaring global temperatures are not the only reason.
The study, led by Yao Tandong, director of the Institute of Tibetan Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and eminent glaciologist and paleo-climatologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, is the most comprehensive examination so far of the region's...