Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/05/10/spanish-fruit-growers-arrested-for-using-illegal-wells-during-long-term-drought

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The post Spanish fruit farmers arrested for using illegal wells during long-term drought first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

After years of drought, it’s the first 100% allocation in 17 years.

“Water supply conditions and careful management of reservoir operations during this extreme winter allows DWR to maximize water deliveries while enhancing protections for the environment,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth in a statement. “DWR is moving and storing as much water as possible to the benefit of communities, agriculture, and the environment.”

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2023/04/21/California-delivers-100-percent-water/2191682085638/

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The post California to deliver all of requested water supplies for first time in 17 years first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“In my case, I have zero capacity to save,” said Claudia Hernansaez, a publishing company employee.

“I try to think that someday we’re going to be better off. But the inflation we’re living with today in Argentina is terrible. It feels like never before.”

The South American country is expected to announce March inflation data on Friday afternoon, with analysts polled by Reuters predicting an 8-month high 7.1% monthly rise. A central bank poll forecasts annual inflation to hit 110% this year.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/zero-capacity-save-argentines-buckle-under-103-inflation-2023-04-14/

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The post ‘Zero capacity to save’: Argentines buckle under 103% inflation first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

This is the warning report from the Rosario Grains Exchange, which said the 2022/2023 season is characterized by a complex scenario in which production of the main grains will suffer significant reductions compared with projections made at the start of the season last September.

This complexity is the result of climatic factors, rising input costs and policies that, taken together, “modify producers’ decisions,” the report said.

But the prolonged “La Niña” phenomenon, which has occurred for the third consecutive year, “has worsened the situation yet further, complicating sowing and crop development and the area suitable for planting, triggering a drop in potential yields,” the Exchange warned.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://en.mercopress.com/2023/01/14/drought-in-argentina-will-have-a-great-impact-on-agriculture-production

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The post Drought in Argentina will have a great impact on agriculture production first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

“I have never seen that!” says Carlos Perdigao, 76, as he gazes at the ruined stone houses of Vilar which were swallowed up by the Zezere river when a dam was opened in 1954.

Vilar stands on the banks of the river, surrounded by cracked yellow earth, another sign of the ongoing dry spell during what is normally a rainy winter season, with the drought also hitting neighbouring Spain.

Weather services in both countries say it was the second driest January on record since the year 2000.

The current drought is extraordinary because of “its intensity, scale and length”, says climate scientist Ricardo Deus of Portugal’s meteorology agency IPMA.

Of Portugal’s 55 dams, 24 are only holding half of their water capacity, and five are below 20 per cent, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation service.

The Algarve, Portugal’s southernmost province, and one of Europe’s top tourism destinations, is one of those most affected by the drought.

Meanwhile Spain only got a quarter of the precipitation it normally gets in January, said the AEMET weather service.

The dry spell, which began at the end of 2021, is ruining crops, leaving farmers struggling to feed livestock and hampering hydroelectricity production.

‘It’s a disaster’
Earlier this month, Portugal ordered five of its hydropower dams to suspend water use for electricity production in order to prioritise human consumption.

Nearly 30 percent of Portugal’s electricity comes from hydropower dams.

And in Spain, Agriculture Minister Luis Planas on Tuesday said the government was “concerned” about the drought and would adopt the “necessary measures” depending on how the situation evolves.

Spain’s water reserves are currently at less than 45 percent of their capacity, officials say, with the southern Andalusia region and Catalonia in the northeast worst hit.

Farmers in both countries are worried.

“Look! The grass isn’t growing to feed the animals,” says Antonio Estevao, a cheese producer who owns a herd of around 30 goats in Portela de Fojo Machio, a village in central Portugal near the town of Pampilhosa da Serra.

“If it doesn’t rain in the coming days, it’s going to be very complicated,” he sighs, gazing at his drought-stressed pastures.

The lack of rain is also jeopardising the town’s efforts to draw tourists inland with a floating pool structure set up for bathers in the Zezere river.

But the pool’s plastic lining lies slumped on the ground, with the drought forcing the river to recede.

“For us, it’s a disaster,” says the town’s mayor, Henrique Fernandes Marques.

The same area was badly hit by a wave of wildfires that raged through parched farmlands and forests in 2017, claiming over 100 lives.

No end in sight
More frequent and intense droughts are expected to put enormous strain on climate-vulnerable regions as temperatures rise, and will likely heighten the risk of related natural disasters such as wildfires, scientists say.

While the alternation between dry and wet years is normal in southern Europe, “we have observed a decline in the percentage of rainy years lately,” said Filipe Duarte Santos, an environment specialist at Lisbon University.

These droughts are “one of the most serious consequences of climate change,” he added.

“Until greenhouse gas emissions are drastically reduced, the problem will continue.”

The situation is not likely to improve in the coming weeks as forecasters expect rainfall in both countries to be below the seasonal average.

Faced with this reality, the Portuguese government on Thursday said it would boost its cooperation with Spain to fight the drought.

Source: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220212-spain-portugal-hit-by-winter-drought

The post Spain, Portugal hit by winter drought first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The extreme heat and dry conditions of the past few years pushed what was already an epic, decades-long drought in the American West into a historic disaster that bears the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change. The long-running drought, which has persisted since 2000, can now be considered the driest 22-year period of the past 1,200 years, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Previous work by some of the same authors of the new study had identified the period of 2000 through 2018 as the second-worst megadrought since the year 800 — exceeded only by an especially severe and prolonged drought in the 1500s. But with the past three scorching years added to the picture, the Southwest’s megadrought stands out in the record as the “worst” or driest in more than a millennium.

“Without climate change, this would not be even close to as bad as one of those historical megadroughts,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles. “The thing that is really remarkable about this drought period is that temperatures have been warmer than average in all of the years but one.”

The double whammy of searing heat and persistent drought in recent years reflects the steady increase in global temperatures brought on by the burning of fossil fuels. The authors attribute 19 percent of the severe 2021 drought, and 42 percent of the extended drought since the 21st century began, to human-caused climate change.

This giant climate hot spot is robbing the West of its water

Scientists refer to this combined hot and dry effect as “aridity” — a warm and thirsty atmosphere that can pull moisture from soil and plants, melt snow, and intensify heat waves.

“All of the climate models agree that when greenhouse gases go into the atmosphere and temperatures rise, that’s going to enhance the ability of the atmosphere to pull water out of ecosystems,” Williams said.

This “background drying” brought on by a warmer atmosphere can dwarf occasional wet or cool periods. For example, the Southwest’s 2021 drought maintained its grip despite robust monsoon rains and record summer precipitation in some areas, in part because of extraordinary heat waves early last summer, and generally above-average temperatures.

The study’s tree-ring record also provides a sobering view of what is possible in the West. “The tree rings tell us that there can actually be very, very extreme dryness in the West without the help of climate change at all,” Williams said. “Even without climate change, we can have monumentally severe and long-lasting droughts.”

The study finds that the 21st century has been substantially drier than the previous five decades, with 8.3 percent less precipitation, and nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) warmer than the period from 1950 to 1999.

The American West’s drought isn’t a disaster. It’s our new, permanently arid normal.

And scientists have made clear that future warming could bring even more crippling and frequent droughts. Last summer, a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that even as global warming can bring more extreme rainfall and flooding in some areas, it can also fuel more intense drought in many regions.

That analysis found that at the current warming trajectory, droughts in drying regions that previously occurred only once every 10 years are now happening about 1.7 times per decade, on average. If the Earth warms 2 degrees Celsius, scientists expect those once-rare events to take place roughly 2½ times per decade, on average.

But the West’s most recent megadrought isn’t just written in scientific data. It has manifested in the shrinking water levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which last summer reached their lowest on record. These reservoirs have declined during the 21st century with rising temperatures, despite intermittent wet years.

The intensifying drought looks to continue in 2022 — unless a miraculous spring season brings a return of the storm track and moisture-rich atmospheric rivers.

Fueled by climate change, costly Southwest drought isn’t going away

While the study covers only the period through 2021, drought conditions have taken a turn for the worse in 2022. After a promising start to the wet season in December, unusually dry conditions have persisted over much of California since January.

California’s snowpack declined to just 73 percent of normal as of Monday, after being at 160 percent of normal in December.

The Central Sierra Snow Lab run by the University of California at Berkeley tweeted that its snowpack lost 5 percent of its water content amid unusually warm weather over the past week. At its monitoring site, the snowiest December on record has been followed by a record streak of 37 days without precipitation.

The parched conditions laid the groundwork for a recent record-setting winter heat wave in California.

From Wednesday through Sunday, the National Weather Service in Los Angeles issued the first heat advisory on record during the winter months in Southern California. Scores of record high temperatures were set, from San Diego to San Francisco.

Brush fires raged in Southern California amid record heat, worsening drought

Death Valley soared to 94 degrees on Feb. 11, its highest temperature recorded so early in the season.

The hot, dry weather, combined with gusty winds, fueled several brush fires in Southern California late last week. California has seen more than 12 million acres burn in the past decade, and 18 of the top 20 largest wildfires in state history have occurred in the past two decades.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service predict drought conditions to persist through the spring.

The authors of the paper also see no end in sight to the West’s arid reality.

“This drought will very likely persist through 2022,” they wrote, “matching the duration of the late-1500s megadrought.”

Williams said that tree-ring records do provide some reason for hope — megadroughts do eventually end when the rains return. Those rains are arriving in increasingly intense bursts as the atmosphere warms.

“The way you get out of droughts in the West is probably changing,” he said. Droughts may end abruptly during extremely wet years, like 2017, but then quickly reverse course again into another multiyear dry spell.

Brady Dennis and Jason Samenow contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/14/southwest-megadrought-worst-1200-years/

The post Southwest drought is the most extreme in 1,200 years, study finds first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — As winter sets in, Afghan widow Kubra needs to find fuel to heat the single room where eight family members live in the central province of Bamiyan. The flour they bought months ago is running out, so food is also becoming scarce.

“We got two sacks of flour last spring which we’re still using. After that, we have to have faith that God will help us,” the 57-year-old told Reuters in a room lined with rice sacks to keep out the cold.

Their firewood was stolen when they left their home amid the chaos that engulfed Afghanistan in the summer, as Taliban insurgents swept towards Kabul on their way to seizing back control of the country.

Stories like Kubra’s are increasingly common in a country struck by severe drought and where money has run dry.

Before the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in August, the economy relied heavily on foreign aid. But with the international community wary of the Islamist militant movement and the United States imposing sanctions on some of its leaders, that support has all but disappeared.

The United Nations estimates nearly 23 million Afghans — about 55 percent of the population — are facing extreme levels of hunger, with nearly 9 million at risk of famine as winter takes hold.

Life for Afghanistan’s poor has always been hard; Kubra’s family works on farms in the spring, earning potatoes instead of money.

But it’s getting worse. Vegetables like cauliflower are out of reach, and plastic sheets protect their home from the freezing weather and snow. There is so little space in the single room that Kubra sleeps at her sister’s house at night.

“My son used to collect pieces of scrap metal but right now he has no work,” she said.

‘Nothing left’
Already vulnerable after months of severe drought and decades of war that forced many to flee homes for relatively stable regions like Bamiyan, Afghans are entering the unknown.

“We never used to have different kinds of food but in the past it was alright, we had rice and cooking oil,” said Massouma, a 26-year-old mother of four from the neighbouring province of Maidan Wardak.

“We used to cook once a day and that was good. Now it’s once a week and sometimes there isn’t even any bread to eat.”

Bamiyan is best known outside Afghanistan for imposing Buddhist sites which dominate the little market town, 20 years after the Taliban blew up the two giant statues that once looked down over the high plains.

In winter it is bitterly cold, with temperatures that can drop below freezing and biting winds.

Work slows in the cold months, but the region was already suffering since the visitors who once came for the Buddhist sites and the nearby Band-e Amir lake disappeared as the Taliban offensive reached its climax.

Taliban officials say they are aware of the problems facing the poor, which they say stem partly from the effects of more than four decades of conflict and mismanagement under the previous government.

They have also repeatedly called on Washington to unblock around $9 billion in central bank assets.

“We intend to ease these problems,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. “We know what the people are facing.”

Cash for rights
The crisis Afghanistan faces this winter is of a magnitude not seen for at least 20 years, when the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed forces and replaced by governments in Kabul who relied heavily on foreign support — both financial and military.

With the former insurgents back in power the financial system is all but closed, prompting a collapse in the local afghani currency.

The international community is looking to restore aid by pressing the Taliban to become more inclusive and ensure basic human rights including lifting restrictions keeping women and girls from work and school.

Like other Taliban officials, Mujahid said the new government was slowly opening schools for girls and had promised an amnesty for former government officials.

He also pointed to the recent appointment of Abdul Latif Nazari, a sometime Kabul university lecturer from the Hazara minority, as deputy economy minister as evidence the government was becoming more inclusive.

While the wrangling continues, people like Sayed Yassin Mosawi have more immediate concerns.

“In the winter, we normally borrow what we need from shops or the baker and we repay the loan after two or three months when the work starts getting better,” said the market porter, whose income drops to between 30-50 afghani ($0.30-0.50) a day during the quiet winter months.

“But there have been big changes,” he said. “Since the Taliban took over, there is no work, prices have gone up, people have left the country. We have nothing left.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/famine-looms-afghanistan-leaving-millions-hungry-rcna10400

The post With famine looming over Afghanistan, millions struggle for every meal first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — As winter sets in, Afghan widow Kubra needs to find fuel to heat the single room where eight family members live in the central province of Bamiyan. The flour they bought months ago is running out, so food is also becoming scarce.

“We got two sacks of flour last spring which we’re still using. After that, we have to have faith that God will help us,” the 57-year-old told Reuters in a room lined with rice sacks to keep out the cold.

Their firewood was stolen when they left their home amid the chaos that engulfed Afghanistan in the summer, as Taliban insurgents swept towards Kabul on their way to seizing back control of the country.

Stories like Kubra’s are increasingly common in a country struck by severe drought and where money has run dry.

Before the Taliban toppled the Western-backed government in August, the economy relied heavily on foreign aid. But with the international community wary of the Islamist militant movement and the United States imposing sanctions on some of its leaders, that support has all but disappeared.

The United Nations estimates nearly 23 million Afghans — about 55 percent of the population — are facing extreme levels of hunger, with nearly 9 million at risk of famine as winter takes hold.

Life for Afghanistan’s poor has always been hard; Kubra’s family works on farms in the spring, earning potatoes instead of money.

But it’s getting worse. Vegetables like cauliflower are out of reach, and plastic sheets protect their home from the freezing weather and snow. There is so little space in the single room that Kubra sleeps at her sister’s house at night.

“My son used to collect pieces of scrap metal but right now he has no work,” she said.

‘Nothing left’
Already vulnerable after months of severe drought and decades of war that forced many to flee homes for relatively stable regions like Bamiyan, Afghans are entering the unknown.

“We never used to have different kinds of food but in the past it was alright, we had rice and cooking oil,” said Massouma, a 26-year-old mother of four from the neighbouring province of Maidan Wardak.

“We used to cook once a day and that was good. Now it’s once a week and sometimes there isn’t even any bread to eat.”

Bamiyan is best known outside Afghanistan for imposing Buddhist sites which dominate the little market town, 20 years after the Taliban blew up the two giant statues that once looked down over the high plains.

In winter it is bitterly cold, with temperatures that can drop below freezing and biting winds.

Work slows in the cold months, but the region was already suffering since the visitors who once came for the Buddhist sites and the nearby Band-e Amir lake disappeared as the Taliban offensive reached its climax.

Taliban officials say they are aware of the problems facing the poor, which they say stem partly from the effects of more than four decades of conflict and mismanagement under the previous government.

They have also repeatedly called on Washington to unblock around $9 billion in central bank assets.

“We intend to ease these problems,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. “We know what the people are facing.”

Cash for rights
The crisis Afghanistan faces this winter is of a magnitude not seen for at least 20 years, when the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed forces and replaced by governments in Kabul who relied heavily on foreign support — both financial and military.

With the former insurgents back in power the financial system is all but closed, prompting a collapse in the local afghani currency.

The international community is looking to restore aid by pressing the Taliban to become more inclusive and ensure basic human rights including lifting restrictions keeping women and girls from work and school.

Like other Taliban officials, Mujahid said the new government was slowly opening schools for girls and had promised an amnesty for former government officials.

He also pointed to the recent appointment of Abdul Latif Nazari, a sometime Kabul university lecturer from the Hazara minority, as deputy economy minister as evidence the government was becoming more inclusive.

While the wrangling continues, people like Sayed Yassin Mosawi have more immediate concerns.

“In the winter, we normally borrow what we need from shops or the baker and we repay the loan after two or three months when the work starts getting better,” said the market porter, whose income drops to between 30-50 afghani ($0.30-0.50) a day during the quiet winter months.

“But there have been big changes,” he said. “Since the Taliban took over, there is no work, prices have gone up, people have left the country. We have nothing left.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/famine-looms-afghanistan-leaving-millions-hungry-rcna10400

The post With famine looming over Afghanistan, millions struggle for every meal first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

William Brangham:

The Colorado River is a critical source of water for the Western United States, but a mega-drought, one significantly exacerbated by climate change, is jeopardizing that river’s future, how that water gets used, and threatening longstanding agreements between states.

Miles O’Brien has our report.

It’s part of our coverage on how climate change is creating a tipping point for the U.S. and the world.

Miles O’Brien:

This is where the shortage meets the soil, Pinal County, Arizona, desert farmland between Phoenix and Tucson, lifelong home for farmer Nancy Caywood.

Nancy Caywood, Farmer:

My family has been farming in this area for 91 years. My grandfather bought this farm, 255 acres.

Miles O’Brien:

They grow alfalfa and cotton, both thirsty crops, which are not doing well right now.

Nancy Caywood:

This is the drought in action right here. I have never seen it this bad before.

Miles O’Brien:

Much of her water comes from canals that are filled by the Gila River, a tributary of the Colorado River. But in April of 2021, the water stopped flowing.

Nancy Caywood:

We don’t know when we will see water in here again.

Miles O’Brien:

Same goes for farmers in Pinal County who draw water directly from the Colorado River. When the U.S. government declared an official shortage for the river in August, farmers who depend on it were also drastically cut back.

Almost 1, 500 miles’ long, the Colorado winds its way through seven states and into Mexico. This river basin is filled with lush natural ecosystems. It transforms about 5.5 million acres of barren desert into fertile farmland; 40 million people are sustained by this water.

It’s one of the most heavily utilized rivers in the world, and it starts here, as a deep blanket of snow high in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.

Hydrologist Ben Livneh is an assistant professor at University of Colorado Boulder.

Ben Livneh, University of Colorado Boulder: Most of the of the water in the Colorado River starts as snowpack, and one of the reasons is that mountains act as these big catchments of precipitation.

Miles O’Brien:

But around the year 2000, a drought took hold and has not let go. This means less snow on those peaks in the Rockies year after year, and thus a steady reduction of water to feed the river.

The two largest reservoirs in the river basin, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are now at all-time low levels. Climatologist Park Williams is an associate professor at UCLA. He uses tree rings to study the ancient climate.

Park Williams, UCLA:

The 2000s drought in the Colorado River Basin and across the Western United States has been as dry as any other 22-year period in the last millennium. The drought that we’re in today is not going to last forever, that it will break at some point when we have a string of really good luck years.

Miles O’Brien:

But the climate emergency has changed the odds. The global temperature is about two degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution.

Park Williams:

If climate change hadn’t happened, the West would still be in a drought, but the severity of the drought is undoubtedly worse because of climate change.

Miles O’Brien:

Here’s why. Warmer temperatures mean drier air. As the snowpack shrinks, it sheds water vapor into the atmosphere. A larger amount of snow melts into liquid water and rapidly evaporates in this warmer climate. Now the soil is dryer than usual.

Park Williams:

This causes the soils to act like a very dry sponge, and the next precipitation events that occurs on top of that dry sponge is going to work to refilling the soil sponge, as opposed to refilling our rivers and reservoirs.

Miles O’Brien:

This precious resource is allocated based on a 1922 agreement called the Colorado River Compact. Once the river basin states agreed on their fair shares, they each established a seniority system, first in time, first in right.

Ben Livneh:

There’s kind of a hierarchy of water rights. That means that people who gained access to the river first, they have what we would call a senior water right.

Miles O’Brien:

Colorado River water first came to Pinal County in the mid-1980s, upon completion of the Central Arizona Project, a network of canals that spans more than 300 miles across the desert.

It puts farmers here at the bottom of the seniority list, making them the first to go dry in the midst of this mega-drought.

Will Thelander, Farmer:

So, over the years, we have had to adapt to different whatever we can make money at, basically. So, on this farm, it’s really close to a bunch of dairies, and they need a bunch of feed.

Miles O’Brien:

Will Thelander is a third-generation farmer in Casa Grande. He and his family are part of an experiment in using their dwindling allocation of water on crops that demand less of it.

Will Thelander:

Here’s the guayule field. So you can see it’s in a nice bloom, and this crop hasn’t been watered for about two weeks.

Miles O’Brien:

They have planted a 40-acre tract of guayule, a plant that thrives in the desert and contains a milky latex that can be used to formulate rubber.

An acre can produce enough to make 50 tires. Bridgestone is working out the production kinks at this pilot plant, while Thelander does the same at this pilot plot.

Will Thelander:

With this crop, using half as much water as the corn, our water will last twice as long here. So that’s why the crop is so promising, and we really hope it takes off.

Miles O’Brien:

But for Nancy Caywood, the story is different. She can’t afford the cost of the new equipment required to harvest crops that need less water. She says she can hold onto the family farm for a year, but:

Nancy Caywood:

Eventually, the money runs out. You can’t pay the water and the taxes anymore. So it’s not your best interest to try to keep the land. Your best interest is to probably go ahead and sell. And it’s heart-wrenching to think that, but it’s true.

Miles O’Brien:

It would be the end of an era here, and maybe the beginning of a new one. Her neighbors recently sold their land, and it’s now a solar farm. Caywood has been approached by an energy company as well.

There is little to suggest this trend will reverse anytime soon. For years, humans overspent the Colorado River, and nature covered the overdrafts. But now the climate emergency has insured the bill has come due.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Miles O’Brien in Phoenix.

Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/unrelenting-drought-leaves-millions-who-rely-on-colorado-river-facing-an-uncertain-future

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