The global cost of disasters is growing: The economic burden of disasters is intensifying. While the direct costs of disasters averaged $70–80 billion a year between 1970 and 2000, between 2001 and 2020 these annual costs grew significantly to $180–200 billion. But the real cost is far higher. Disaster costs …
Kerala has been officially declared a drought-affected area after successive monsoon failures during the current water year. The State Disaster Management Authority met here on Wednesday before taking the call. POOR RAIN This came after a review of rainfall received during the two monsoons as also field-level reports. Both rang …
Opposition members stage a walk out in the Assembly The Kerala Cabinet will discuss on Wednesday how the State should respond to Tamil Nadu’s unresponsiveness to its demand for releasing water under the Parambikulam-Aliyar pact. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Tuesday told the Assembly that the Minister for Water Resources …
The amount of land needed to grow crops worldwide is at a peak and an area more than twice the size of France can return to nature by 2060 due to rising yields and slower population growth, a group of experts said on Monday. The report, conflicting with U.N. studies …
Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA) has announced the new water resources allocation policy which stipulates the maximum allocation for all categories of domestic and industrial users. It has prescribed a formula by which the allocation is to be reduced for various categories in case of drought. The policy has …
Wildfire activity in North American boreal forests increased during the last decades of the 20th century, partly owing to ongoing human-caused climatic changes. How these changes affect regional fire regimes (annual area burned, seasonality, and number, size, and severity of fires) remains uncertain as data available to explore fire–climate–vegetation interactions …
The controversial white paper on irrigation projects produced by the state water resources ministry is littered with outdated, confusing and allegedly misleading statistics. Data pertaining to over half a dozen major projects are at least a decade old and widely differ from information submitted by the ministry to the state …
Mammals could be at greater risk of extinction due to a higher frequency of extreme conditions such as cyclones and droughts spurred by climate change, scientists have warned. Researchers from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) have mapped out land mammal populations, and overlapped this with information of where droughts …
Drought continued to expand through many key farming states within the central United States in the past week, as scattered rainfall failed to replenish parched soils, according to a report issued Thursday by state and federal climatology experts. Drought conditions were most pervasive in the Plains states, including in top …
Alarmed by this year’s scanty rainfall and the drying up of water reserves in several parts of the State, the office of the Kerala State Disaster Management Authority has forwarded a recommendation to the State government to this effect. The scarce northeast monsoon has failed to make up for the …
Addressing the potential to be harmed along the Indian coast by Anurag Danda, WWF at CSE Climate change adaptation workshop: Towards Climate Resilient Communities in South Asia: Emerging Policies and Practices (New Delhi, December 13 - 14, 2012).
India faces the risk of devastating drought as monsoon rains are likely to have a shortfall of 70% in the years ahead, as climate change shakes up global weather phenomena, recent research and experts at a global conference said. The risk of adverse changes in global weather is aggravated by …
United Nations climate talks on Monday entered their final week amid rows over the Kyoto Protocol and funding for poorer countries, despite fresh warnings of the peril from greenhouse gases. After six days of wrangling, nearly 200 nations remained far apart on issues vital for unlocking a global deal on …
When the worst drought in 60 years hit America’s corn belt this summer, many people wondered if it was caused by climate change. It is too early to say much about such a recent episode but various studies have attributed earlier individual heatwaves or drought to global warming, notably those …
Evidence that global warming is man-made is getting stronger, the head of a U.N. panel of climate scientists said, in a further blow to skeptics who argue rising temperatures can be explained by natural variations. Rajendra Pachauri spoke on the sidelines of a conference in Qatar where 200 nations are …
Environmental and weather-related disasters caused by climate change would displace more than 95.72 million people in Bangladesh by 2040, warned a study giving an alarming scenario of climate-induced internal migration. The study conducted by Unnayan Onneshan said the situation was likely to grow worse as climatic disorders exacerbate such problems. …
Tree-ring records are a valuable source of information for understanding long-term, regional-scale drought changes. In this study, a tree ring width chronology spanning the last 330 years (A.D. 1681–2010) is developed for the northern fringe of the Asian summer monsoon in north central China based on tree ring widths of …
Analysis of data from forest plants worldwide shows that margins between threshold xylem pressures at which plants suffer damage and the lowest xylem pressures experienced are small, with no difference between dry and wet forests, providing insight into why drought-induced forest decline is occurring in both arid and wet forests.
Sea levels are rising 60% faster than UN projections, threatening low-lying areas from Miami to the Maldives, a study said on Wednesday. The report, issued during UN talks in Qatar on combating climate change, also said temperatures were creeping higher in line with UN scenarios, rejecting hopes the rate had …
The United States resisted pledging steeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 on Monday despite calls by poor nations at the start of a U.N conference for tougher action to avert storms, droughts and rising seas. About 200 nations met for annual U.N. talks on global warming with little …
