climate change

Governments are likely underestimating the risks of climate change to agriculture, especially in the event of simultaneous extreme weather events in key areas, say researchers from the U.K.’s Met office. Using 1,400 climate model simulations, the researchers discovered that the probability of severe drought was greater than if judged solely from observations.

Conservative groups have written a letter to U.S. lawmakers calling on them to cancel programs started under the Obama administration to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the military. The groups argue that the programs “are likely to undermine military readiness by diverting scarce resources.”

After meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, President Trump told reporters that he might consider recommitting the United States to the Paris climate accord, which he pulled the country out of in May, said Reuters.

By 2050, a number of U.S. water basins will begin to experience water shortages if there is no action to reduce greenhouse gases, says a team of MIT researchers. The study says several basins, particularly in the Southwest, will see their existing water shortages become "severely accentuated," says the MIT study, published in the journal Earth's Future.

Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, told reporters he would like to see a televised debate on climate change led by scientists, though he didn’t mention how they would be selected, says Reuters. "There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered (about climate change)," said Pruitt.

The industry-led Oklahoma Energy Resource Board has spent $50 million since the 1990s training the state's K-12 teachers to teach a science and math curriculum that critics claim is more industry promotion that real education.

With an eye to grooming leaders in U.S. food policy, a Washington-based university is launching a one-year program to prepare graduates to take a guiding hand in resolving climate change and food inequalities. Former deputy agriculture secretary Kathleen Merrigan says the Food Policy Leadership Institute will "supercharge" the work of the Food Institute that she leads at George Washington University.

The U.S. stood alone at the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, as all the other countries, including China and the European Union, called on the Trump administration to address climate change.

The United Nations’ UNESCO committee has voted to not add the Great Barrier Reef to its “in danger” list, despite the biggest die-off of coral ever at the World Heritage Site. "We're taking every action possible to ensure this great wonder of the world stays viable and healthy for future generations to come,” Australia's Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio.

The EPA is recruiting experts to review climate-change findings, says a senior agency official, in what may be the latest attempt to undermine climate change efforts. “The program will use ‘red team, blue team’ exercises to conduct an ‘at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science,’ the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations,” reports E&E News.

Famine often starts in rural areas and must be prevented in rural areas, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in a report on hunger in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen, collectively one of the world's largest food crises in 70 years. Some 20 million people in the four nations are at risk of famine, a figure that could grow to 30 million if there is no additional action, said FAO.

Dairy farmers in three counties in California's Central Valley have temporary permission from local officials to bury or compost hundreds of cows that died in a June heat wave, says the Fresno Bee. Ordinarily, the dead animals would be sent to a rendering plant, but there are too many carcasses and a mechanical malfunction reduced the plant's capacity.

Drought is intensifying in the northern Plains and a quarter of North Dakota, a cattle and wheat state, suffers extreme drought, according to the weekly Drought Monitor. With hot and dry weather expected to continue, USDA vastly expanded the region where ranchers can graze livestock on Conservation Reserve land, normally out of bounds.

Even as human carbon emissions have stabilized in the past few years, researchers are seeing an increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists are worried that the Earth’s carbon “sponges,” including its forests and oceans, aren’t capturing the gas as efficiently as they once did.

At least the third study in a year has found that the rate of sea level rise is increasing. A recent report in Nature Climate Change said that the rate of sea level rise had grown from 2.2 millimeters per year in 1993 to a 3.3-millimeter annual rise in 2014.

As average summertime temperatures rise across the West and southern Plains, wildfires are also becoming more frequent. Already this year, they have consumed more than 2.5 million acres.

In FERN’s latest story, published with Switchyard Magazine, reporter Robert Kunzig takes us to the upper Mississippi River Delta, where the idea of growing more fruits and vegetables — to ease the burden on California in the climate-change era — is taking root.