Drought News

Complete deforestation of the Amazon rainforest could reduce rainfall in the Pacific Northwest by up to 20 percent and snowpack in the Sierra Nevada by up to 50 percent, suggests…

Unchecked deforestation will have far-reaching impacts on temperature, rainfall, and monsoon cycles in regions well outside the tropics, affecting agriculture and water availability, warns a new report published by Greenpeace…

Around 2 million people face food insecurity in northern Namibia and southern Angola as the worst regional drought in decades takes its toll, according to the UN. Two years of…

In a large room that used to house aquatic mammals at the Minnesota Zoo, Erik Runquist holds up a vial and says, "Here are its eggs." I peer inside and…

Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no…

The Amazon rainforest is facing a higher risk of fires this dry season, warns a fire prediction system developed by researchers using NASA and NOAA data. The model is based…

33,000 square miles (85,500 square kilometers) or 2.8 percent of the Amazon rainforest burned between 1999-2010 finds new NASA-led research that measured the extent of fires that smolder under the…

The majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will live with severe pressure on fresh water within the space of two generations as climate change, pollution and over-use of…

Weather patterns around the globe are getting weirder and weirder: heat waves and record snow storms in Spring, blasts of Arctic air followed by sudden summer, record deluges and then…

A new report estimates that 258,000 people died in 2011 during a famine in Somalia, the worst of such events in 25 years and a number at least double the…

Tribal groups in Earth's largest rainforest are already being affected by shifts wrought by climate change, reports a paper published last week in the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the…

Rainforests that have been affected by even low-intensity fires are far more vulnerable to invasion by grasses, finds a new study published in special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions…

A new series of 5 films highlights how people use fire in the Amazon rainforest and how such practices can be mitigated. Collectively dubbed "Slash & Burn" each film explores…

Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe. Getting local people to become invested in wildlife conservation is not always easy, especially in parts of the world where protected areas are seen as…

State-by-state temperature records for 2012. Last year was the warmest on record for the continental U.S. going back to the late 19th Century. Courtesy of NOAA. Climate change is on…

Expert: unprecedented heatwave 'responding to the background warming trend' Fires burning in Southwest Tasmania on January 7th. Image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite.…

2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S. according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a report posted on its web site, NOAA said…

Spatial extent and severity of the 2005 Amazonian drought based on forest canopy water stress (measured by seasonal [JAS] standardized anomaly of QSCAT backscatter data). Courtesy of Saatchi et al…

Below is a quick review of some of the biggest environmental stories of 2012. The "top stories" are listed in no particular order. Scientists: we're reaching a tipping point (Hance)…

Kaleidoscopic image revealing the biodiversity of the Amazon rainforest. Each color represents different chemical signatures, revealing information about biodiversity and growth rates. Photo courtesy of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory. Severe…

Rainforest in Malaysian Borneo. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Forests worldwide are at "equally high risk" to die-off from drought conditions, warns a new study published this week in the…

Hurricane Sandy on October 25th in the Caribbean. Scientists say that climate change may have intensified Hurricane Sandy with its impact worsened by rising sea levels and increased evaporation from…

“Kansas Kids,” in Lakin, Kansas, three children prepare to leave for school wearing goggles and homemade dust masks to protect them from the dust in 1935. Courtesy of Joyce Unruh;…

Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. Photo by: Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/U.S. Air Force/New Jersey National Guard. At a news conference today, a question by New…

Hurricane Sandy storm surge on the New Jersey shore. Photo by: Master Sgt. Mark C. Olsen/U.S. Air Force/New Jersey National Guard. As the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy—killing over 100…

Children stand in sweet potato fields in Indonesian New Guinea. A new report finds that poor and small-holding farmers are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Photo by:…

Girl in village in Madagascar. One of the world's poorest countries, it has been estimated that about 70 percent of Malagasy people suffer from malnutrition. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler.…

Wind turbine in Minnesota, U.S. Photo by: Tiffany Roufs. According to a new poll, 74 percent of Americans agree that climate change is impacting weather in the U.S., including 73…

In the past 20 years, extensive forest death triggered by hot and dry climatic conditions has been documented on every continent except Antarctica, finds new review. Already facing an onslaught…

Drought in America's Midwest drive corn prices to record highs on Thursday. Corn prices are up 62 percent since mid-June to due droughts and heatwaves affecting major corn-producing areas. The…