The gradual melting of winter snow helps deliver water to both farmland and cities, but new research suggests declines in snowpacks will severely deplete water supply to many regions of the globe.
A team of scientists looked at snow-dependent drainage basins in the northern hemisphere, which currently provide water to over two billion people, the Earth Institute at Columbia University reported. Snowpack water is an important resource for people across American West, southern Europe, the Mideast and central Asia. Water from snowpacks is especially relied on in mountainous regions, where the snowmelt slowly runs down the mountain during the growing seasons. Global warming appears to be disrupting this process, causing more winter precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow, washing away immediately.
"Snow is important because it forms its own reservoir. But the consequences of reduced snowpack are not the same for all places--it is also a function of where and when people demand water," said lead author Justin Mankin, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Earth Institute based jointly at the institute's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and its affiliated NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "Water managers in a lot of places may need to prepare for a world where the snow reservoir no longer exists."
As the world has been warming, once-permanent snowfields have been vanishing in the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to northern Montana and even the Himalayas. Snowpack in California has reached its lowest point in about 500 years as a result of the devastating drought.
To make their findings, the researchers looked at 421 drainage basins spanning the northern hemisphere and combined this data with multiple climate models. The team identified 97 basins serving about two billion people that rely on snowmelt and have at least a two-thirds chance of declines. The most sensitive and heavily relied on basins were found to exist in: northern and central California, which is a major provider of U.S. produce; the basins of the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers, which provide for the American west and Mexico; the Atlas basin of Morocco; the Ebro-Duero basin, which provides water for Portugal, Spain, and France; and a series of basins across Italy and Turkey.
The researchers noted across most of North America, northern Europe, Russia, China and southeast Asia, rainfall is expected to continue to meet human demands for the foreseeable future, but reduced snowpacks could lead to forest fires and loss of valuable ecosystems including bird nesting habitats. Accelerated melting of glaciers in the Himalayas could also cause increases in water supplies to regions such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
"Managers need to be prepared for the possibility of multi-decadal decreases in snow water supply," Mankin said. "But at the same time, they could have large multi-decadal increases. Both of those outcomes are entirely consistent with a world with global warming."
(entire article quoted)
Ukraine’s 2016 wheat crop is now sailing into uncharted waters given both the significantly missed planting target and a record percentage of crops in poor condition.
Ukraine, the world's sixth-largest wheat exporter, has faced one of the most challenging winter planting campaigns this year than ever before in the wake of a historic drought that set in during late summer.
As a result, planting progress and plant emergence has been considerably behind normal pace all along, and crop health has suffered immensely.
The outlook was rather gloomy as of early November, but hope still remained that Ukrainian farmers could boost winter wheat area throughout the month with help from favorable weather, which would also presumably help improve overall plant conditions.
But despite the seemingly supportive weather during November, crop conditions worsened throughout the month. Planting progressed in the meantime, though not significantly, but now the planting window has more or less closed.
This all but confirms the significant area reduction for the 2016 wheat harvest. Even with optimistic spring wheat area forecasts, the 10 percent cut in planned winter wheat area will likely lead to the smallest wheat harvest since 2012 and a consequential slash in exports.
... Loss of area combined with the recent conditions has prompted Ukrainian agency UkrAgroConsult to lower its 2016/17 production forecast to 17.8 million tons, down nearly one-third from last year.
On Nov. 16, a representative from Ukraine’s agriculture ministry suggested that 2016/17 wheat exports could fall to 3.5 million tons, which would represent a drastic decline of 13 million tons from the planned export volume for 2015/16. This would drop Ukraine from the sixth-largest wheat exporting nation to the eighth largest.
vox_mundi wrote:Grim reality sets in for Ukraine wheat cropUkraine’s 2016 wheat crop is now sailing into uncharted waters given both the significantly missed planting target and a record percentage of crops in poor condition.
Ukraine, the world's sixth-largest wheat exporter, has faced one of the most challenging winter planting campaigns this year than ever before in the wake of a historic drought that set in during late summer.
As a result, planting progress and plant emergence has been considerably behind normal pace all along, and crop health has suffered immensely.
The outlook was rather gloomy as of early November, but hope still remained that Ukrainian farmers could boost winter wheat area throughout the month with help from favorable weather, which would also presumably help improve overall plant conditions.
But despite the seemingly supportive weather during November, crop conditions worsened throughout the month. Planting progressed in the meantime, though not significantly, but now the planting window has more or less closed.
This all but confirms the significant area reduction for the 2016 wheat harvest. Even with optimistic spring wheat area forecasts, the 10 percent cut in planned winter wheat area will likely lead to the smallest wheat harvest since 2012 and a consequential slash in exports.... Loss of area combined with the recent conditions has prompted Ukrainian agency UkrAgroConsult to lower its 2016/17 production forecast to 17.8 million tons, down nearly one-third from last year.
On Nov. 16, a representative from Ukraine’s agriculture ministry suggested that 2016/17 wheat exports could fall to 3.5 million tons, which would represent a drastic decline of 13 million tons from the planned export volume for 2015/16. This would drop Ukraine from the sixth-largest wheat exporting nation to the eighth largest.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
the single-crop farming practices that prevail in North America would leave the food supply of countries in the developing world more vulnerable if they were adopted there.
“This tells us that we should be wary of proposed solutions to hunger in poor countries that are based on the adoption of large-scale industrial farming systems,” Jennifer Clapp, a professor of global food security at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said.
onlooker wrote:The drought conditions of the Amazon rain forest cannot but have dire consequences for the Earth's climate. My goodness this plethora of environmental instability is distressing to me and I do not even have kids. What have we done to our planet!
http://www.weather.com/news/news/brazil ... azon-river
Bolivia’s second largest lake has dried up with devastating impacts, proving that financial support from the European Union was not enough to save the high-altitude saltwater ecosystem of Bolivia’s Lake Poopo prompting local authorities to declare a national disaster, local media reported Sunday.
dohboi wrote:CA still looks pretty dark red. That El Nino is taking its time about dumping tons of water on the area. Perhaps the Warm Blob in the Northeast Pacific is altering the pattern. This El Nino is playing itself out in a world that is climatically fundamentally different from earlier major El Nino's so it's not too surprising that it is 'expressing' itself somewhat differently.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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