It seems that in this case, the popular belief was wrong.news
European drought reveals cautionary “Hunger Stones” in Czech river
Our forefathers left behind an ominous warning for us — and we’d best heed it. Otherwise, we can start carving our own years into the rocks.
Drought played a key role in the demise of the Mayan civilization
The Mayans expanded haphazardly, and they ended up paying the price for it — but Mother Nature also had a say in it.
NASA creates first 3D model of Amazon rainforest canopy to estimate the effects of droughts, climate change
Drought has a massive effect on rainforests. Bad news in the current changing climate.
Europe will see a doubling of drought areas if climate change isn’t addressed
The Mediterranean, one of Europe’s most beautiful areas, will bear the brunt of the damage.
Sierra Nevada rose an inch due to water loss from California drought
It was that bad.
New finding could help plants survive drastic droughts
With drought on the rise, this finding couldn’t come at a better time.
L.A. lawns lose 70 billion gallons of water every year. “It was the maximum water loss possible,” said scientist
Talk about waste.
This solar-powered device can squeeze water out of thin air — 3 liters a day
You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, but you can squeeze water from thin air — even in the driest areas of the world.
California’s dry spell may be officially over but some parts of the state will need decades for precipitation to recover
One step forward, two steps back.
Southern Europe might become a desert by 2100, which is really bad news
The paper’s authors think it unlikely that we’ll be able to prevent it.
Meet the Pipe: a beautiful desalinization plant that might one day serve 1.5 billion gallons of water to California
Who says desalinization isn’t sexy?
Scientists find three times more groundwater beneath California’s Central Valley — but a third may already be contaminated
Stanford researchers found California’s drought-struck Central Valley harbors three times more groundwater than previously thought.
Climate change is impacting wine grape harvest dates in Switzerland and France, NASA finds
A new collaboration study between NASA and Harvard University found that climate change is breaking an important link between droughts and the grape harvests in France and Switzerland.
In the last 50 years, droughts and heat waves destroyed 1/10 of crops
Agriculture is a very risky line of work since its inevitable once in a while extreme weather will take a huge toll on the crop yields. This is common knowledge, but the quantitative impact of droughts and heat waves has only recently been investigated in great detail. A paper published in Nature by researchers at University of British Columbia found droughts cut a country’s total crop yield by 10 percent, and heat waves by 9 percent. Floods and cold spells oddly did not affect crop production in a significant way. These effects vary from country to country and another surprising finding is that crops in developed countries suffer up to twice as many losses than those in developing countries.
Drought and low aquifer levels made the Guadalupe river vanish
Vidal Mendoza, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic technician, has been spending his past Tuesday scanning the upper Guadalupe River, looking for the right spot to measure the flow of the water.
Perhaps more accurately, Mendoza has been spending his past Tuesday on a hot, mostly dry riverbed searching where the river should have been.
California’s grasslands suffer from drought, reducing wildflower diversity
The team looked at 15-years worth of data on California’s grasslands, and documented declining plant diversity from 2000 to 2014 at both the local community (5 m2) and landscape (27 km2) scales, across multiple functional groups and soil environments. They found a link between wildflower diversity decline to significant decreases in midwinter precipitation.
Dramatic Californian Drought Forces Salmon to Take the Highway
California’s record drought has completely dried off large swaths of rivers, including the San Joaquin River, which means that juvenile salmon can’t actually reach the sea. In a desperate effort to save an entire generation of hatchlings, authorities are transporting them by truck, on the highway.
Biotech used to build plant tolerance to water shortage – one way to beat California’s worst drought in history
Exploiting plants’ natural response to stress caused by drought, researchers have engineered crops that build tolerance and can withstand longer without water, while also extending the point of no return when no amount of water can save the withered plant. This “buy more” time method might hopefully help vulnerable crops fare better during long periods of drought – like the one currently in full swing in California, which is experiencing its worst drought in recorded history – and increase yields.
US drought will be the worst in 1000 years
In recent years, a number of independent studies have concluded that the American Southwest and central Great Plains will experience extensive droughts in the second half of this century – and global warming will make things even worse, exacerbating the already worrying conditions. Now, a new study says that things are even worse than previously imagined, and that the drought will
