Category: Climate

California water authorities told Al Jazeera Friday that barring a series of heavy storms, California faces a drought next year that would restrict residents’ access to water and hurt agricultural production in the heartland in the long-term. "On the horizon, there is a chance we will receive some rain and snowfall in Northern California. We’re hoping the storm door will open," Bill Croyle, drought manager at the California Department of Water Resources, said. "We’re coming close to meeting some thresholds where we are in a drought. We’re looking at making recommendations after the January or February snow forecast," he said. California’s wine industry worries about the prospect of an ecological disaster. "It has a potential to be a historic drought," said David Graves, managing member of Sonoma Valley, Calif.’s Saintsbury Winery, which is associated with the trade group Napa Valley Vintners Association. For the past two years, California has […]

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From advances in renewable power to the clear impacts of climate change, to denying the lot of it, climate and energy issues in 2013 are sometimes best expressed through graphs. Here are eight of the best from throughout the year: Global Temperatures Keep Going Up Carbon Final The chart above shows how dramatically temperatures have spiked in recent years, largely due to greenhouse gas pollution. The blue line shows global temperature levels over the last 11,300 years, and that spike right at the end shows what “temperature is changing 50 times faster than it did during the time modern civilization and agriculture developed” actually looks like. The red line is the best estimate scientists have for what the temperature is likely to be in the near future if we continue on our current trend. The more greenhouse gases are emitted, the more they trap heat within the atmosphere before […]

Click here to view full article at www.resilience.org

Most conventional yield projection models are oblivious to the real world say US researchers Industrial agriculture could be hitting fundamental limits in its capacity to produce sufficient crops to feed an expanding global population according to new research published in Nature Communications . The study by scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln argues that there have been abrupt declines or plateaus in the rate of production of major crops which undermine optimistic projections of constantly increasing crop yields. As much as “31% of total global rice, wheat and maize production” has experienced “yield plateaus or abrupt decreases in yield gain, including rice in eastern Asia and wheat in northwest Europe.” The declines and plateaus in production have become prevalent despite increasing investment in agriculture, which could mean that maximum potential yields […]

Click here to view full article at www.rawstory.com