“California has been in dry conditions for much of the last 10 years, with only two years of wet,” Jeff Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center, previously told Newsweek.
La Niña has returned for the third consecutive winter, allowing for drier-than-average conditions across America’s crop belt. Some farmers told Bloomberg that conditions are so dry that “fertilizer is evaporating from the soil, and plants are struggling to emerge from the ground.”
Hurricane Ian, which has just devastated Florida and Puerto Rico, was the 15th billion-dollar weather and climate disaster to hit the US this year so far, Axios reports. Early estimates of damage from Hurricane Ian show insured losses of $53 billion to $74 billion.
The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) chief has announced that around 50 million people in 45 countries are facing the “hell” of famine amid a catalog of world crises he described as “a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm,” Associated Press reports. WFP Executive Director David Beasley said the world must act immediately to prevent rampant food shortages next year.
The United Nations Humanitarian Chief announced Monday that Somalia is facing a second catastrophic famine, worse than that of 2011, in which 260,000 people died, DW reports. The causes of the impending catastrophe are manifold, including four years of drought and a decade of disruption wrought by an insurgency led by the Islamic State-affiliated al-Shabab terror group.
A new report by Aquanomics GHD warns that increasingly extreme weather could cause over $5 trillion in losses to the global economy by 2050, Reuters reports.
Ongoing drought is wreaking damage on the European Union’s energy generation, its drought agency warned today, just as the bloc braces for power blackouts in winter as Russia squeezes its gas supply.
For the second year in a row, Arizona and Nevada will face cuts in the amount of water they can draw from the Colorado River as the West endures an extreme drought, federal officials announced Tuesday.
France has become the latest European nation to appeal for international help to respond to a massive southwestern wildfire that officials say has already destroyed nearly 7,000 hectares or 17,300 acres of forest. French President Emmanuel Macron said several countries are assisting in fighting the blaze amid deadly wildfires triggered by record temperatures and droughts across Europe, reportedly killing at least 1,000 people.
The ongoing slaughter of Christians in Nigeria at the hands of Islamic extremists meets the established international standards for genocide, the Colson Center reports. The International Christian Concern advocacy group reported in 2020 that between 50,000 to 70,000 Christians have been killed by Islamic terrorists; the Open Doors USA advocacy group reported this year that one Nigerian Christian is killed for their faith every two hours, 13 a day, 372 a month.
The drought scorching much of the European Union is set to be the worst endured since the sixteenth century, a senior scientist at the European Commission’s (EC) drought service has warned.
