Jul 09
PERTH (Reuters) - Australia could experience more severe droughts and they could become more frequent in the future because of climate change, a government-commissioned report said on Sunday.
Droughts could hit the country twice as often as now, cover an area twice as big and be more severe in key agricultural production areas, the Bureau of Meteorology and Australia’s top science organization, the CSIRO, said in a joint report.
The study also found that temperatures currently defined as “exceptional” were likely to occur, on average, once in every two years in many key agricultural production areas within the next 20 to 30 years, while spells of low rainfall would almost double in frequency from current figures.
Australia, suffering its worst drought in 100 years, has seen its wheat exports tumble in the past two years.
The Pacific nation is normally the second-largest wheat exporter in the world, but the harvest has been decimated to just 13 million tonnes last year because of drought.
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Tags: Australia, Climate Change, crops, Drought, earth changes, Environment, Food, Global Warming, weather, wheat
Jun 17
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian air force planes dropped a 25-kg (55-lb) sack of cement on a suburban Moscow home last week while seeding clouds to prevent rain from spoiling a holiday, Russian media said on Tuesday.
“A pack of cement used in creating … good weather in the capital region … failed to pulverize completely at high altitude and fell on the roof of a house, making a hole about 80-100 cm (2.5-3 ft),” police in Naro-Fominsk told agency RIA-Novosti.
Ahead of major public holidays the Russian Air Force often dispatches up to 12 cargo planes carrying loads of silver iodide, liquid nitrogen and cement powder to seed clouds above Moscow and empty the skies of moisture.
A spokesman for the Russian Air Force refused to comment.
June 12 was Russia Day, a patriotic holiday celebrating the country’s independence after the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Weather specialists said the cement’s failure to turn to powder was the first hiccup in 20 years.
The homeowner was not injured, but refused an offer of 50,000 roubles ($2,100) from the air force, saying she would sue for damages and compensation for moral suffering, Interfax said. Continue reading »
Tags: cloud seeding, Russia, weather, Weather Modification
Mar 14
GENEVA — The current La Nina weather phenomenon may just be a partial cause of South China’s freeze-up at the start of 2008, said the United Nations World Meteorological Agency (WMO) Monday.
The latest La Nina pattern, which began in the third quarter of 2007, has picked up strength in the past three months, with sea surface temperatures now about 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius colder than average over large parts of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific Ocean, said the latest report issued by the WMO.
A rescuer carries an 80-year-old woman out of Jinlian village in Longnan county, East China’s Jiangxi Province, Feb. 3, 2008. After being trapped for days in frozen weather and without electricity and water supply, 1,761 people in the village were rescued successfully on Sunday. [Xinhua] Continue reading »
Tags: China, earth changes, global, La Nina, weather, WMO
