droughts

It seems intuitive that large forests exist in areas where there is a lot of rainfall. But what if the converse were true? What if forests themselves were a significant factor in causing rainfall?[read more]

2012 was officially the warmest year on record in much of the US, with average temperatures across the country shattering the 20th Century average by 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit.[read more]

An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.[read more]

Last year was officially the hottest ever recorded for the lower-48 states. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tallied weather and temperature data for 2012, and found that the year was both the warmest and the second-most extreme for weather ever recorded for the contiguous U.S.[read more]

Thanksgiving is a time of plenty – or, maybe more accurately, of vast over-consumption — from the meal to the midnight shopping rampage afterward.But across the United States this year, “plenty” has not been enjoyed by many farmers. A historic drought devastated crops over the summer, causing a spike in grain prices that led to farmers...[read more]

Ethanol Nuzzle via Shutterstock

Last Friday the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected the petitions of a bi-partisan group of state governors for a waiver of the federal ethanol mandate, resolving one of several energy-related issues that had been deferred beyond the presidential election.  The waiver requests filed in August cited...[read more]

The latest weekly Drought Monitor update set another grim record. The brutal U.S. drought expanded to 65.45% of the contiguous U.S. — the highest ever in the Monitor’s 12-year history. The previous record was 64.8% — set just last week.In the third quarter alone, crop production dropped $12 billion “due to this summer’s...[read more]

Thermometer via Shutterstock

The summer of 2012 has come to a close, but it won’t be forgotten anytime soon. It delivered one extreme weather event after another, from heat waves to freak storms, wildfires to drought. People lost their homes and livelihoods, yet even as they try to pick up the pieces, more powerful weather systems are looming on the horizon.Extreme...[read more]

There's a lot of fear-mongering in the media about the impact of the U.S. drought on food production and what that means for the future. A look at the crop supply data, available from the USDA feed grains yearbook, tells the full story, and it is not about food, nor is it entirely about the drought.[read more]

Last month, I spent a week traveling with my NRDC colleague Bob Deans through the drought-decimated corn and wheat fields of Colorado and Kansas, talking to farmers knocked flat by one of the hottest summers ever. This is ground zero for one of the worst droughts in recent history; more than half the counties in the US have been...[read more]

Plant in Drought via Shutterstock

In the wake of the record drought affecting much of the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released on Friday an extremely pessimistic paper projecting much lower production of corn and soybeans this year. The report is sure to incite more citizens and legislators to demand that the mandate requiring ethanol consumption...[read more]

Recent reports indicate that what had been expected to be a record crop of corn has been downgraded such that only 40% of the corn crop is being classified as in good or excellent condition. This represents one of the biggest threats to the U.S. ethanol industry.[read more]

The U.S. Agriculture Department has issued a natural disaster declaration for more than 1,000 U.S. counties facing severe drought. This disaster declaration is the largest ever from the Agriculture Department and includes one-third of counties and spans 26 states. Some 53 percent of the Midwest is facing moderate or severe drought, but...[read more]

The Southeastern United States is experiencing an Unusual drought, part of the extreme weather condition pattern that is probably related to anthropogenic global warming.Government climate scientists are using terms such as exceptional and extreme drought to describe the current situation which extends from Arizona eastward into Texas...[read more]