Drought
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Attention

From summer drought to a rainy harvest, Alberta weather has dealt farmers a tough hand


CBC News
Sun, 19 Sep 2021 11:46 UTC
The summer drought created lower yields for Alberta farmers, who are now racing against the clock to get their crops off the field.
© Shannon VanRaes/BloombergThe summer drought created lower yields for Alberta farmers, who are now racing against the clock to get their crops off the field.
When Alberta farmers needed rain, the weather was dry as a bone.

Now that harvest season has arrived and they need dry weather, the sky has brought forth showers.

"(Crops) are considerably less than what they would be on a normal year," Christi Friesen, who has a grain farm near Peace River, Alta., told CBC's Edmonton AM on Wednesday.

Friesen grows canola, barley, oats and wheat. Because of the drought that persisted through the summer, some of her crops yielded less than 25 per cent of normal, she said.

Barley, for example, normally comes in at more than 100 bushels per acre. "We're lucky to hit 30 this year," she said.
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Coffee

Drought, frost takes a massive toll on coffee crops in Brazil

Michael Fox
pri.org
Fri, 10 Sep 2021 14:36 UTC
damge
Coffee plants destroyed by frost during extremely low temperatures
It's a typical weekday afternoon at Red Emma's coffee shop in Baltimore, Maryland. A handful of people sit chatting over wooden tables in the large open dining area.

Behind the counter, barista Najee Haynes-Follins makes an iced Americano at the machine. She's a member of the worker's co-op that owns and runs the coffee shop, restaurant and bookstore.

"What do I love about coffee?" Haynes-Follins asked. "I have ADHD, so stimulants are useful to me and so if I'm gonna focus in the morning, I'm usually drinking a cup of coffee in order to keep me a little bit in line."

She said Red Emma's coffee prices have stayed roughly the same recently. But that it might not be for long, due to a major glitch in the global coffee supply. Brazil, the world's largest coffee exporter, was hit by unprecedented extreme weather that seriously damaged coffee crops — which may ultimately drive up the cost of coffee around the world.

In late July, southern Brazil was hit by uncommon freezing temperatures. Snow blanketed many hillsides. In coffee-growing regions, frost covered the fields. In one video shared online, a farm worker inspects coffee plants that have been devastated by the frost in the state of Minas Gerais. The leaves are dead and brown. The coffee beans are black and encased in ice.
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Attention

Severe drought devastates Washington state's wheat crop

Nicholas Geranios
SF Gate
Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:02 UTC
A combine transfers wheat into a grain truck, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, near Pullman, Wash.
© Ted S. Warren/APA combine transfers wheat into a grain truck, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2021, near Pullman, Wash.
The wheat harvest on Marci Green's farm doesn't usually begin until late August, but a severe drought stunted this year's crop and her crews finished harvesting last week because she didn't want what had grown so far to shrivel and die in the heat.

It's the same story across the wheat country of eastern Washington state, a vast expanse of seemingly endless stretches of flatlands with rolling hills along its edges that produces the nation's fourth largest wheat crop. It's been devastated by a drought the National Weather Service has classified as "exceptional" and the worst since 1977.

"This is definitely the worst crop year we have had since we started farming 35 years ago," said Green, whose family is the sixth generation on the same farming land just south of the city of Spokane.

She estimated her farm's wheat crop this year at half of normal, and of poor quality.

Green grows soft white winter wheat, a variety that is prized in Asian countries because it is excellent for making pastries, cakes, cookies and noodles.

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Sun

Prolonged drought in Brazil threatening Paraná River

Joel Richards
CGTN
Thu, 12 Aug 2021 10:39 UTC
People who live in the fishing village of Espinillo
© AP/Victor CaivanoPeople who live in the fishing village of Espinillo Island walk their goods across the Old Parana River delta now that boats can't reach their community and others, amid a drought that turned the river into a sand bank, across the river from Rosario, Argentina, Thursday, July 29, 2021.
One of South America's longest rivers is at its lowest level in living memory.

The Paraná ​River runs through Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina.

Prolonged drought in southern Brazil is one reason it is at its lowest level since 1944.

Many of the river's tributaries have all but dried up.

Local communities are feeling the effects of the falling water levels firsthand.

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Attention

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: When the easiest food source stops


Adapt 2030
Thu, 12 Aug 2021 01:08 UTC
Germany hailstones
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
Fast food chains experiencing paper bag shortages with McDonalds leading the shortages. Questions across the industry are how will people be able to take away food from the drive through? Crops in mega-drought zones. Cannon ball sized hail Germany and Lightning strike through a car aftermath.

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Blue Planet

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Downfall of civilization triggers


Adapt 2030
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 17:58 UTC
Histomap
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
The Histomap of the last 4000 years of world history published in 1931 shows all of the major Grand Solar Minimums with contractions of empires and kingdoms through history. Its simple, inadequate food supplies equal civilization crumbling. There are several unnamed GSM's in the 4000 years as well. 2024 brings the next global contraction in food supplies.


Comment: See also:

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Fire

Seven dead as wildfires sweep across Algeria


Dhaka Tribune
Tue, 10 Aug 2021 12:17 UTC
Some fires erupted near houses, forcing inhabitants to flee [Screengrab/ Social media]
Some fires erupted near houses, forcing inhabitants to flee [Screengrab/ Social media]
Algeria is the latest Mediterranean country to be hit by wildfires, after blazes hit Greece, Turkey and Cyprus.

Wildfires fanned by blistering temperatures and tinder-dry conditions have killed at least seven people in Algeria, the interior minister said Tuesday, adding the fires had criminal origins.

Photographs posted on social media show huge walls of flame and billowing clouds of smoke towering over villages in the forested hills of the Kabylie region, east of the capital Algiers.

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Bizarro Earth

Major Atlantic ocean current system might be approaching critical threshold


Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Thu, 05 Aug 2021 18:54 UTC
The major Atlantic ocean current, to which also the Gulf stream belongs, may have been losing stability in the course of the last century. This is shown in a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, transports warm water masses from the tropics northward at the ocean surface and cold water southward at the ocean bottom, which is most relevant for the relatively mild temperatures in Europe. Further, it influences weather systems worldwide. A potential collapse of this ocean current system could therefore have severe consequences.
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,
© R.Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution/Science/USGCRP
"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning really is one of our planet's key circulation systems," says the author of the study, Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Freie Universität Berlin and Exeter University. "We already know from some computer simulations and from data from Earth's past, so-called paleoclimate proxy records, that the AMOC can exhibit - in addition to the currently attained strong mode - an alternative, substantially weaker mode of operation. This bi-stability implies that abrupt transitions between the two circulation modes are in principle possible."
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Cloud Precipitation

Ice Age Farmer Report: China floods, Brazil freezes, US dry - Top exporters lose crops as grains crisis accelerates


Ice Age Farmer
Sat, 31 Jul 2021 12:20 UTC
floods
As Brazil gets hit repeatedly by unusually low temperatures, destroying crops, the flooding in China's Henan province -- which accounts for 10% of their grains production -- has damaged wheat, infrastructure, and thousands of large hog farms. All hopes are on US, which is also having its own issues. This signals a huge red flag for worldwide food production as these are the #1/2/3 producers/exporters of many grains. In fact, Brazil has started importing! Christian explores what this means in this episode of the Ice Age Farmer broadcast.


Comment: See in addition: 69 dead, 5 still missing in floods in Henan, China - 12.9 million people affected - 972,000 hectares of farmland damaged

A catalogue of crop failures

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Sun

The Kazakhstan drought could be a harbinger of doom for the region & the West


RT
Wed, 28 Jul 2021 12:49 UTC
Kazakhstan
© Reuters / Shamil ZhumatovFILE PHOTO. Altyn-Emel national park in Almaty region, Kazakhstan.
In a world plagued by a pandemic, some stories get left behind. One that has escaped headlines, probably understandably, is the Kazakh government's new six-month ban on exporting food for livestock, insisting produce stay at home.

The reason for this intervention, which has come after the resignation of an agriculture minister and against the wishes of some farmers and exporters, is a severe drought in much of the west of the country. Following on from a dry winter, it has lasted for months and already inflicted great damage to pastures, the livestock depending on them, and the communities who, in turn, need the livestock.

Comment: Rather tellingly, albeit unsurprisingly, the author forgets to mention the record breaking cold temperatures that are occurring with an increasing frequency across the planet; and, in failing to include them, he avoids having to explain why they were not predicted, nor can they be explained, by the much debunked theory of global warming for which he seems to show a preference.

That said, extreme weather of all kinds is on the rise, and it does pose a threat to life on our planet, but the drivers behind cyclical climate change are much greater than 'human emissions': And check out SOTT radio's:

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