Drought
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Attention

Europe's drought-induced crop losses tripled in 50 years, threatening future global food supply chain


RT
Fri, 02 Apr 2021 16:54 UTC
Drought illustration
© Pexels
New research has found that EU crop losses driven by heat waves and drought, as well as other extreme weather events, have tripled in 50 years, a startling figure which could upend food-chain supply dynamics around the globe.

The study examined agricultural production in 28 European countries (including the UK) from 1961 to 2018 and compared it with the prevalence of extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, heat waves and cold snaps alike, all four of which increased in frequency over the study period.

The researchers found crop losses of 2.2% of total crop yield between 1964 and 1990, which surged to some 7.3% in the period between 1991 and 2015.

To make matters worse, droughts were found to be intensifying and occurring more frequently, a phenomenon which previous studies have identified as a result of shifts in the jet stream.

Comment: Since 2015 Europe suffering worst droughts in two thousand years

Crop and cattle losses are on the rise everywhere, whether it is due to extensive drought, massive hail, epic flooding, huge dust storms, unexpected frosts, and even epidemics. See also:

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Water

Taiwan experiencing worst drought in half a century


CNA
Wed, 24 Mar 2021 18:52 UTC
Tourists visit the Baoshan second reservoir amid low water levels during an islandwide drought, in Hsinchu, Taiwan
© Reuters/Ann WangTourists visit the Baoshan second reservoir amid low water levels during an islandwide drought, in Hsinchu, Taiwan on Mar 6, 2021.
Taiwan will from next month ration water for more than 1 million households in the centre of the island because of a drought but the technology hub of Hsinchu will not be affected, Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua said on Wednesday (Mar 24).

Sub-tropical Taiwan is experiencing its worst drought in half a century, after rain-soaking typhoons failed to make landfall last year, with shortages most severe across a swathe of western Taiwan, where most people live.

Wang told reporters that from Apr 4, water supplies in parts of Taichung and Miaoli would be cut for two days every week, with water tankers being sent out to supply residents as needed.

Hsinchu, home to companies such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip manufacturer with clients including Apple and Qualcomm, would not be affected, she added.

Hsinchu's reservoirs are low but its supplies are being topped up by water being piped in from Taipei where water levels are plentiful, and also by desalination.

Comment: Parts of southern and eastern China are also facing their worst drought in 50 years as a result of months of reduced rainfall.

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Blue Planet

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Global deserts green as Africa's new crop grow zone emerges


Adapt 2030
Tue, 16 Mar 2021 13:54 UTC
Greening Sahara desert
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
New report from NASA shows the Sahara Desert has shrunk by 8% in the last 30 years turning greener, right in the exact areas that will be the worlds new agricultural growing zone. Now the conflict for control over the dams and electricity to power East Africa and the cryptocurrency stable coins that go along with that to build out the new agriculture areas.


Comment: As the Sahara Desert shrinks by a whopping 8%, since 2015 Europe is suffering the worst droughts in two thousand years.

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Mars

Since 2015 Europe suffering worst droughts in two thousand years

University of Cambridge
Archaeology News Network
Mon, 15 Mar 2021 02:00 UTC
dendrochronolgy tree
© Ulf BuntgenExample of a polished cross-section of an oak from the Czech Republic
An international team, led by the University of Cambridge, studied the chemical fingerprints in European oak trees to reconstruct summer climate over 2,110 years. They found that after a long-term drying trend, drought conditions since 2015 suddenly intensified, beyond anything in the past two thousand years.

This anomaly is likely the result of human-caused climate change and associated shifts in the jet stream. The results are reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.


Comment: The multitude of unexpected events and changes that we're witnessing on earth and throughout our solar system clearly shows these climate extremes are part of a much bigger shift, and that the drivers are much greater than CO2: Cosmic climate change: Is the cause of all this extreme weather to be found in outer space?


Recent summer droughts and heatwaves in Europe have had devastating ecological and economic consequences, which will worsen as the global climate continues to warm.


Comment: Except the climate, overall, is cooling: Global cooling to replace warming trend that started 4,000 years ago - Chinese scientists


Comment: Note that our planet is not only suffering extreme droughts, extreme flooding is also on the rise, and research shows that both of these patterns have occurred before, and it would appear that they're part of a cycle that is linked to ice ages; however, as revealed in the article, it would appear that, this time, it may be even more severe: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Water

330,000 facing drinking water shortages as drought hits southern and eastern China

Amber Wang
South China Morning Post
Mon, 08 Feb 2021 08:16 UTC
China drought
© Getty ImagesFarmers and experts fear the drought may damage harvests.
Hundreds of thousands of people in southern and eastern parts of China are facing drinking water shortages as a result of months of reduced rainfall, the central government says.

The Ministry of Water Resources said on Thursday that more than 500,000 hectares of arable land had been affected by the drought, leaving 330,000 people in rural areas without a sufficient supply of potable water.

Since October, rainfall in regions south of the Yangtze River had been 50 to 80 per cent lower than normal, it said.

About 2.4 million people in the provinces of Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian had already been affected by the drought, and concerns were growing in Guangxi, Hunan and Yunnan, the ministry said.

In Taizhou, Zhejiang, the residents of Sanmen county are dealing with their worst drought in 50 years, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV.

Comment: Meanwhile other parts of China experienced 21 large-scale floods last year setting historical records.

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Attention

Best of the Web: World hammered by record 50 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2020

Jeff Masters
Yale Climate Connections
Mon, 25 Jan 2021 08:56 UTC
National Guard troops respond in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana
© Josiah PughNational Guard troops respond in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Laura was Earth’s most expensive tropical cyclone of 2020, with $18.2 billion in damage.
Earth was besieged by a record 50 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2020, the most such disasters ever recorded after adjusting for inflation, said insurance broker Aon (formerly called Aon Benfield) in its annual report issued January 25. The previous record was 46 billion-dollar weather disasters, set in 2010 and 2011. The annual average of billion-dollar weather disasters since records began in 1990 is 29.

The combined economic losses (insured and uninsured) from all 416 weather and earthquake disasters cataloged by Aon in 2020 was $268 billion (2020 USD). Most of the 2020 total, by far, came from weather-related disasters ($258 billion), 29% above the 2001-2020 inflation-adjusted average. Those numbers make 2020 the fifth costliest year on record for weather-related disasters.

The year was the most expensive ever for severe weather (including severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail), with $63 billion in damage (previous record: $53 billion in 2011). More than 80% of the severe weather damage occurred in the U.S. in 2020, including the costliest severe weather outbreak in world history, according to Aon: an August 2020 event that featured a violent derecho in the U.S. midwest that caused $11 billion of the $12.6 billion in damage of the outbreak, the balance caused by tornadoes, hail, and other severe thunderstorms.

Insured damage from wildfires in 2020 was $12 billion - the third highest on record, behind only 2017 and 2018. The year 2020 marked the third time in the past four years that global insured losses from wildfires exceeded $10 billion - a threshold never crossed prior to 2017. Remarkably, wildfire has caused more than $70 billion in insured losses since 2000, 75% of that in the past five years alone.

Comment: It is becoming more apparent that erratic seasons, extreme weather patterns and natural disasters are increasing, which is not a consequence of "human-caused climate change" (formerly known as man-made 'global warming') as parroted relentlessly by the MSM, but part of a natural cycle.

See also:

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Attention

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Global grain shortages begin to manifest


Adapt 2030
Thu, 19 Nov 2020 06:08 UTC
Sahel food growing region
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
Several consulting and agribusiness firms have stated the same facts after the Global Grains Geneva meetings, we have reached the point of no surplus on the planet for corn, soybeans and wheat. The world needs to find 24 million new acres to grow grains moving forward. What we grow is what we have from this point forward. Sainsbury closes all deli counters for fish, meats.


Comment: As well as natural disasters devastating crop growth, the insane response to the coronavirus crisis and losing value of currency in Western nations in particular, have made the production, availability, purchasing and distribution of food - a MAJOR global issue the likes of which we haven't seen in generations.

See related articles:

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Info

Adapt 2030 Ice Age Report: Reset vibes and electrogravitics craft spotted


Adapt 2030
Wed, 04 Nov 2020 18:32 UTC
Wine production down
© YouTube/Adapt 2030 (screen capture)
Its official the stay at home economy as 75% of CEO's in the US rent less office space as wine yields down but champagne sales crash 33.3%, interesting number in the media. A look at craft spotted from the ISS look remarkably like functional electrogravitics propulsion systems. New book you may want to find, Farming and Gardening Survival Book S.E USA.


Comment: See also:

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Sun

US corn crops are becoming increasingly sensitive to drought

Stanford University
Phys.org
Wed, 28 Oct 2020 11:05 UTC
corn
© Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Like a baseball slugger whose home run totals rise despite missing more curveballs each season, the U.S. Corn Belt's prodigious output conceals a growing vulnerability. A new Stanford study reveals that while yields have increased overall — likely due to new technologies and management approaches — the staple crop has become significantly more sensitive to drought conditions. The research, published Oct. 26 in Nature Food, uses a novel approach based on wide differences in the moisture-holding capabilities among soils. The analysis could help lay the groundwork for speeding development of approaches to increase agricultural resilience to climate change.

"The good news is that new technologies are really helping to raise yields, in all types of weather conditions," said study lead author David Lobell, the Gloria and Richard Kushel Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. "The bad news is that these technologies, which include some specifically designed to withstand drought, are so helpful in good conditions that the cost of bad conditions are rising. So there's no sign yet that they will help reduce the cost of climate change."


Comment: Yield is one thing, quality of product is another. YouTuber Ice Age farmer has reported that numerous farmers are also documenting increasingly poor quality yields that are only good for animal fodder, meaning less product available for consumers. Also bear in mind that what an animal eats will impact the nutritional quality of its meat and, in turn, will lead to a deterioration in the health of the consumer.


Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Attention

Floods, drought are destroying crops and sparking food inflation

Fabiana Batista, Agnieszka de Sousa and Mai Ngoc Chau
Claims Journal
Fri, 23 Oct 2020 16:24 UTC
Wheat harvest
Wild weather is wreaking havoc on crops around the world, sending their prices skyrocketing.

On wheat farms in the U.S. and Russia, it's a drought that's ruining harvests. The soybean fields of Brazil are bone dry too, touched by little more than the occasional shower. In Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, the problem is the exact opposite. Torrential downpours are causing flooding in rice fields and stands of oil palm trees.

The sudden emergence of these supply strains is a big blow to a global economy that has been struggling to regain its footing after the shock of the Covid-19 lockdowns. As prices soar on everything from sugar to cooking oil, millions of working-class families that had already been forced to scale back food purchases in the pandemic are being thrust deeper into financial distress.

What's more, these increases threaten to push up broader inflation indexes in some countries and could make it harder for central bankers to keep providing monetary stimulus to shore up growth.

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index, a gauge of nine crop prices, has risen 28% since late April to its highest level in more than four years. Wheat earlier this week was the most expensive since 2014.

"The fundamentals have changed dramatically since May," said Don Roose, president of brokerage U.S. Commodities in Iowa. "The weather is bubbling to the top, and we have demand chugging in a bull market."

Comment: See related articles:

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