Drought News

The great drought and megafires that the Amazon experienced in recent years caused the death of 2.5 billion trees and vines in the Lower Tapajós River Basin, one of the…

About a quarter of the world’s land is degraded. A new farming system intercrops agave and mesquite, then ferments it into cheap fodder, promising restored semiarid croplands and a peasant farming revival.

Record extreme weather in the U.S., Brazil, China and elsewhere is impacting food production this year, with the future expected to be far worse. Agriculture requires “transformational change” to meet the climate crisis, say experts.

The year 2021 is a La Niña year, and La Niña events typically lead to droughts in southeastern Brazil where São Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city, is located. La…

A new “vulnerability index” for the world’s tropical rainforests will use satellite data to assess the impact of growing threats such as land clearance and rising temperatures on forests, in…

As central and southern Brazil, along with a third of the nation's people, face the worst drought in more than 90 years, Jair Bolsonaro wrestles with how to supply water and electricity to agribusiness and to the nation.

The climate in the Amazon has been changing over the last few decades. The average temperature in the basin rose about 1º Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) between 1979 and 2018, with…

From Tripoli to Phoenix, the world’s thirst in great desert cities is deepening, even as agribusiness guzzles more water to feed them. Humanity’s arid urban places are colliding with a key Planetary Boundary, scientists warn.

Scientists warn that we are approaching the Amazon biome tipping point, but proposed solutions in Brazil appear stillborn, politically impractical or lack sufficient scale and/or funding.

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — As drought pushes more than 1 million people toward famine in southern Madagascar, violent winds have been veiling the sky with dust and sand, at times blotting…

An ocelot, a spotted and striped carnivore twice the size of a house cat, had just stopped at a water hole for a drink. But something was waiting for him:…

Over the past twenty years the concept of "tipping points" has become more familiar to the public. Tipping points are critical thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic…

It was August 26, 2020. Dirlene Mejía, a park ranger who works in the area around Concepción Lake, a protected area located in eastern Bolivia, had just left for her…

There’s nowhere on Earth quite like Madagascar when it comes to the sheer wealth and wonder of biodiversity. But along with its natural richness, the island nation is beset by…

Aid agencies amass nutrition data diligently from the scorched south of Madagascar. But on the ground, the sale of kitchen utensils is a real red flag for aid workers —…

As more trees die in the Amazon Basin, the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon dioxide weakens. But to understand why trees are dying at a faster rate, researchers first need…

“In the years when logging was not happening, sometimes you did not see the sunlight in the bush because of the tree cover,” said Musa Mballo, a forest protection activist…

People seldom think of wet soil until they step in it, but the Earth’s soggy places quietly do the work of legions: holding together coasts, giving shelter to young fish,…

Maned wolves, pumas, giant anteaters, tapirs and other Neotropical mammals are threatened with local extinctions unless more conserved areas are established in Brazil’s savanna biome, say scientists.

2020’s record Brazilian fires, which devastated the Pantanal wetlands, also reached the Amolar Mountains in recent weeks, a refuge for jaguars and other wildlife, and home to traditional Indigenous villagers.

Shifting rainfall patterns, especially those exacerbated by climate change, could drive large parts of the Amazon rainforest to become drier savanna, a new study has found. Rainfall acts like a…

Like the rainforest which takes its name, the Amazon is the largest and most biodiverse river on the planet: the Amazon carries more than five times the volume of world's…

Argentina’s Paraná Delta is on fire, and conservationists are sounding the alarm, warning that this major ecosystem could be devastated beyond repair. The delta system, which spans 19,300 square kilometers…

For two years, regions of Brazil that depend on precipitation fed by Amazonian vegetation have seen rainfall below historical averages, impacting crops and harvests. A recent bulletin from a federal agency points to agribusiness itself as one of the drivers of this pattern.

In a step towards understanding the impending Amazon rainforest-to-savanna tipping point, scientists have quantified the knock-on effect that drought and deforestation have on each other for the first time.

Agribusiness entities that deforested vast swaths of the Cerrado biome in Brazil to grow corn are now suffering a drop in production because of climate changes brought about by their own actions.

Investing in forests to fight climate change seems like a sure bet. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, pump out oxygen, and live for decades. What could go wrong?…

With just over 1,200 cases and ten deaths, it may appear that Madagascar has been spared the ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the deep south of the country,…

With its groves of pockmarked white bark and trembling green medallion leaves, Pando looks like any other aspen forest. But the approximately 47,000 stems that form its giant body share…

Late rainfall, intense drought, dry riverbeds, more forest fires, less food available — indigenous communities across the Amazon suffer social transformations due to climate change.