This paper evaluates whether mangroves can mitigate the impact of hurricanes on economic activity. The paper assembles a new, regionwide panel data set that measures local economic activity using nightlights, potential hurricane damages using a detailed hurricane windstorm model, and mangrove protection by mapping the width of mangrove forests on …
Many of the world's largest deltas are densely populated and heavily farmed. Yet many of their inhabitants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to flooding and conversions of their land to open ocean. The vulnerability is a result of sediment compaction from the removal of oil, gas and water from the delta's …
Over the last 50 years, nine out of ten natural disasters around the world have been the result of extreme weather and climate events. Storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves, dust storms, wildfires and many other natural hazards threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide. The threat is expected …
If the big and largely rich emitters of today were to take mitigation in the immediate future seriously, they could achieve emission reductions without denying the poor in India the prospects of a humane existence, says Arvind Panagariya IHAVE been surprised by the number of reasonable Indians who have come …
Taiwan's cabinet approved a special T$100 billion ($2.9 billion) budget on Thursday for typhoon reconstruction after the worst storm in 50 years killed about 500 people and left destruction across the island's south. The cabinet passed the three-year reconstruction budget to cover rebuilding damaged areas, where farm and factory-related losses …
Scientists expect climate change to dramatically affect coffee production in Central America in the coming decades, but some lowland farmers in Guatemala say they are already feeling the effects. The United Nations forecasts temperatures will rise one to six degrees over the next century, which will make some lower-lying coffee …
Atlantic tropical cyclone activity, as measured by annual storm counts, reached anomalous levels over the past decade. The short nature of the historical record and potential issues with its reliability in earlier decades, however, has prompted an ongoing debate regarding the reality and significance of the recent rise. Here the …
Disease, bleaching events killed corals in the Caribbean caribbean coral reefs have lost their complex structure and flattened over the past 40 years said a study by University of East Anglia in the UK. The marine population and fishing industry that depend on them feel the impact of this change …
Bids For Patent On System For Lowering Ocean Temperatures To Slow Down Storms Tony Allen-Mills Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, is backing inventors and climate scientists who claim to have devised a technique for diminishing the power of hurricanes. Gates was named last week among a group of weather …
Across the globe an emerging El Nino weather pattern threatens to cause droughts and floods and trigger a spike in planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from burning forests. El Nino is a warming of tropical Pacific waters that affects wind circulation patterns. Its effects on the global climate vary from one …
Climate change has already caused "visible impacts" in the United States and poses particular risks to the U.S. agriculture and energy industries, a new government report said on Tuesday. The report, which lays out the effects of global warming on specific U.S. regions and sectors, calls for quick policy action …
Hurricane Katrina victims around the Gulf Coast who were told to vacate their temporary trailers by the end of May will instead be allowed to buy them for $5 or less, White House officials announced on Wednesday. Eleven members of the Barthelemy family live in the FEMA trailer park in …
President Barack Obama is carrying through on campaign promises to fight global warming, challenging the car companies and energy industry to get on the carbon-cutting bandwagon. But one of his toughest opponents may end up coming from his own US Midwestern back yard: Agriculture. Obama on Tuesday forged ahead with …
Floods in New Orleans following hurricane Katrina were made worse by a channel dug by a US government agency, according to testimony heard by a federal court. The hearing, in which the government is being sued for allowing the channel to be built, could lead to payouts to hundreds of …
LOCKHEED MARTIN is best known for building stealth fighters, satellites and other military equipment. But since late 2006 the company has taken on a different kind of enterprise
Bigger, higher and stronger levees cannot save New Orleans from the worst floods and the city remains vulnerable to a repeat of Hurricane Katrina, the National Academy of Sciences said on Friday. New Orleans had the flood protection of a 563 km (350-mile) network of levees, I-walls and T-walls ringing …
John Schwartz A suit by some property owners who lost heavily during the hurricane claims that the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet channel was flawed in its design and that the flaws intensified the flood damage. A groundbreaking civil suit began in the federal court in New Orleans on Monday to …
Once, Bibile was famous for the goodness of 'Peni Dodam,' or oranges, just as apple-like big pears for Nuwaraeliya prior to the 1978 hurricane. Would the fate of gleaming red or yellow Rambutan in Malwana be similar? Yes, probably, it could be a matter of few more years before growers …
The Geological and Mines Bureau has requested the External Resources Department and donor agencies like JICA and the Russian government to install four short period network systems to monitor local earth tremors like Wednesday's since the monitor at Pallekele was a Broad Band station to monitor the whole region, Director …
A decline in sun-dimming airborne dust has caused a fast warming of the tropical North Atlantic in recent decades, according to a study that might help predict hurricanes on the other side of the ocean. About 70 percent of the warming of the Atlantic since the early 1980s was caused …
GENEVA - Much like over-exposed banks, many countries have ignored big risks from natural hazards and must now take urgent steps to protect people from disasters, a United Nations official said on Thursday. Margareta Wahlstrom, U.N. assistant secretary-general for disaster risk reduction, said that governments should encourage "more wise behavior" …
