More than 60 percent of U.S. in drought

STEELE, N.D. - More than 60 percent of the United States now has abnormally dry or drought conditions, stretching from Georgia to Arizona and across the north through the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist for the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

An area stretching from south central North Dakota to central South Dakota is the most drought-stricken region in the nation, Svoboda said.

"It's the epicenter," he said. "It's just like a wasteland in north central South Dakota."

Conditions aren't much better a little farther north. Paul Smokov and his wife, Betty, raise several hundred cattle on their 1,750-acre ranch north of Steele, a town of about 760 people.

Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta, bread or beer. What is left of the stifled crops has been salvaged to feed livestock struggling on pastures where hot winds blow clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.

Some ranchers have been forced to sell their entire herds, and others are either moving their cattle to greener pastures or buying more already-costly feed. Hundreds of acres of grasslands have been blackened by fires sparked by lightning or farm equipment.

"These 100-degree days for weeks steady have been burning everything up," said Steele Mayor Walter Johnson, who added that he'd prefer 2 feet of snow over this weather.

Scientists: Warming triggers 'dead zone'

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - Bottom fish and crabs washing up dead on Oregon beaches are being killed by a recurring "dead zone" of low-oxygen water that appears to be triggered by global warming, scientists say.

The area is larger and more deadly than in past years, and there are signs it is spreading north to Washington's Olympic Peninsula.

Scientists studying a 70-mile-long zone of oxygen-depleted water along the Continental Shelf between Florence and Lincoln City have concluded it is being caused by explosive blooms of tiny plants known as phytoplankton, which die and sink to the bottom.

The phytoplankton are eaten by bacteria, which use up the oxygen in the water. The recurring phytoplankton blooms are triggered by north winds generating a rollover of the water column in a process known as upwelling.

"We are seeing wild swings from year to year in the timing and duration of the winds that are favorable for upwelling," Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine ecology at Oregon State and a member of the Pew Oceans Commission, said from Corvallis. "This increased variability in the winds is consistent with what we would expect under climate change."

Drought-stricken Australia considers drinking recycled sewage

SYDNEY (AFP) - Residents of a drought-stricken Australian town will vote this week on whether they're prepared to drink water recycled from sewage -- the first such scheme in the country and one of only a handful in the world.

The controversial proposal has divided the town of Toowoomba in the state of Queensland, which has faced water restrictions for a decade.

Local Mayor Dianne Thorley, who is leading the "Yes" campaign, said that without drought-breaking rains the town's dams could dry up within two years.

She insisted the 73 million dollar (US 55 million dollar) plan to pump purified wastewater back into the main reservoir for drinking was safe.

"Somewhere, sometime we have got to stand up and change the way we are doing things," she told AFP as the town prepared for the July 29 referendum.

"Otherwise our great grandchildren are going to be living in something like the Sahara desert."

July hottest month in Netherlands in 300 years

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - July 2006 is on track to be the hottest month in the Netherlands since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Tuesday.

Average daily temperatures in the first 24 days of July were a record of 22.3 degrees Celsius (72.14F) compared with the previous record of 21.4 degrees in July 1994 and normal average temperatures of 17.4, the KNMI said.

"July 2006 is the hottest month ever," it said in a statement.

Dutch temperature records, launched in the beginning of the 18th century, are among the oldest in the world. Methodical thermometer-based records began on a more global basis around 1850.

Dutch meteorologists say they cannot make a direct link between global warming and the heatwave in Europe, although the KNMI has forecast a clear warming trend in the next 50 years and an increasing number of heatwaves.

Temperatures in the Netherlands rose as high as 36-37 degrees last week, when two people died during a walking event which was later canceled.

Europe sizzles in new wave of summer heat

PARIS (AFP) - Europe has sizzled amid a fresh onslaught of oven-hot temperatures as governments and charity groups mobilised to prevent further deaths from a heatwave that has already killed about 40 people across the continent.

In France, the health ministry appealed for help from medical students and retired doctors to cope with a possible surge in casualties, and there were warnings that the unseasonably high temperatures could damage crop harvests in some countries.

Temperatures rose back above 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday from southern Spain to Poland after weekend storms and lower temperatures had brought a brief respite.

On Monday, the French state-run weather centre Meteo-France maintained its orange heatwave alert, the second-highest warning level, for about half of the country.

It forecast that temperatures could reach as high as 38 degrees Celsius this week before falling from Thursday onwards.

Massive blackout continues in St. Louis

AP - • ST. LOUIS (AP) — Nearly a quarter-million homes and businesses still had no electricity Monday as the city struggled to recover from last week's devastating thunderstorms.

The blackout has kept air conditioners from cooling homes since Wednesday, while temperatures outside soared into triple digits.

As of Monday morning, about 231,000 customers were still without power, according to Ameren Corp. That was down from the more than a half-million customers that lost power when the storms struck.

With about 4,000 utility workers from as far away as Arizona working around the clock to restore service, Ameren Vice President Richard Mark said 90 percent could have power again by Tuesday, with the rest expected to have electricity Wednesday.

The blackout has left emergency rooms across the region inundated with patients who rely on electricity for oxygen and other medical needs.

Heat prompts power emergency in Calif.

SAN FRANCISCO - Power companies worked to restore electricity to thousands of customers throughout California early Monday as a scorching heat wave threatened to push the state into a power emergency with the potential for more blackouts.

Authorities were looking into several deaths possibly related to the high temperatures, which hit the triple digits in some areas on Sunday.

With temperatures again expected to top 100 degrees, power demand was projected to reach an all-time high Monday and prompt some voluntary blackouts, in which some businesses agree to have their power shut off temporarily in exchange for lower rates, according to the Independent System Operator, California's power grid manager.

Those blackouts could become involuntary if customers don't conserve electricity, said ISO spokesman Gregg Fishman.

Warmer waters disrupt Pacific food chain

FARALLON NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Calif. - On these craggy, remote islands west of San Francisco, the largest seabird colony in the contiguous United States throbs with life. Seagulls swarm so thick that visitors must yell to be heard above their cries. Pelicans glide.

But the steep decline of one bird species for the second straight year has rekindled scientists' fears that global warming could be undermining the coastal food supply, threatening not just the Farallones but entire marine ecosystems.

Tiny Cassin's auklets live much of their lives on the open ocean. But in spring, these gray-and-white relatives of the puffin venture to isolated Pacific outposts like the Farallones to dig deep burrows and lay their eggs.

Adult auklets usually feed their chicks with krill, the minuscule shrimp-like crustaceans that anchor the ocean's complex food web.

But not this year. Almost none of the 20,000 pairs of Cassin's auklets nesting in the Farallones will raise a chick that lives more than a few days, a repeat of last year's "unprecedented" breeding failure, according to Russ Bradley, a seabird biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory who monitors the birds on the islands.

Scientists blame changes in West Coast climate patterns for a delay in the seasonal upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich waters from the ocean's depths for the second year in a row. Weak winds and faltering currents have left the Gulf of the Farallones without krill, on which Cassin's auklets and a variety of other seabirds, fish and mammals depend for food.

Researchers link wildfires, climate change

Scientists worldwide are watching temperatures rise, the land turn dry and vast forests go up in flames.

In the Siberian taiga and Canadian Rockies, in southern California and Australia, researchers find growing evidence tying an upsurge in wildfires to climate change, an impact long predicted by global-warming forecasters.

A team at California's Scripps Institution, in a headline-making report this month, found that warmer temperatures, causing earlier snow runoff and consequently drier summer conditions, were the key factor in an explosion of big wildfires in the U.S. West over three decades, including fires now rampaging east of Los Angeles.

Researchers previously reached similar conclusions in Canada, where fire is destroying an average 6.4 million acres a year, compared with 2.5 million in the early 1970s. And an upcoming U.S.-Russian-Canadian scientific paper points to links between warming and wildfires in Siberia, where 2006 already qualifies as an extreme fire season, sixth in the past eight years. Far to the south in drought-stricken Australia, meanwhile, 2005 was the hottest year on record, and the dangerous bushfire season is growing longer.

Rising temperatures extend record year: govt

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Temperatures will average above normal in most of the United States in August, extending what has been the warmest year on record so far, the U.S.

National Weather Service

National Weather Service said on Thursday.

"We've had record average warmth in 2006, and the outlook for August is above-normal for much of the country," said Edward O'Lenic, meteorologist for the NWS.

The heat in August will be focused on the southern and central parts of the country, with temperatures well-above normal over eastern Texas, according to the monthly forecast.

States brace for continued heat wave

CHICAGO - Temperatures soared into the upper 90s and higher Sunday from coast to coast, bringing out heat warnings, wilting athletes and driving others into the shade.

The choking heat was expected to continue for the next few days, and the hot air was moving toward the East Coast, meteorologists said.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Sunday the state would make more than 130 office buildings available as cooling centers beginning Monday. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty had ordered the National Guard out to help firefighters as temperatures even in the normally cool northern part of the state pushed 100 degrees amid very dry conditions.

National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for Las Vegas, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Tulsa, Okla., and parts of New Jersey, where thermometers made it into the 90s Sunday and were expected to reach 100 degrees Monday.

Scorching U.S.: First Half of 2006 Sets Heat Record

The average temperatures of the first half of 2006 were the highest ever recorded for the continental United States, scientists announced today.

Temperatures for January through June were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.

Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri experienced record warmth for the period, while no state experienced cooler-than-average temperatures, reported scientists from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. [Heat Map]

Scientists have previously said that 2005 was the warmest year on record for the entire globe.

Killer salinity rings Australia's desert heart

OUTBACK DESERTS GROWING

The outback deserts are also growing, due to climate change. Officially, lowland arid regions cover 3.6 million square km (1.4 million sq miles) of Australia's heart.

"Central Australia will get drier. And the periods of drought are likely to get more ferocious," says Professor Mike Archer, a longtime desert enthusiast and dean of science at the University of New South Wales.

Feral predators, tourists, grazing animals and big fires are all adding to pressures on Australia's deserts, after already making 20 or more mammal species extinct.

Black stumps from an earlier fence, decayed from the bottom up by salt, dance from wire strands in the biting wind.

"These sites are pockmarked across the southern tablelands," says Ive, shaking his head in despair at desertification of Australia's farmlands as underground salt rises to the surface.

Trees in Antarctic

This undated handout photo received in 2004 from Antarctica NZ shows part of the ice-free area in Antarctica "Dry Valleys." Trees could be growing in the Antarctic within a century because of global warming, an international scientific conference heard.(AFP/HO/File/Craig Potton)

SYDNEY (AFP) - Trees could be growing in the Antarctic within a century because of global warming, an international scientific conference heard.

With carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere set to double in the next 100 years, the icy continent could revert to how it looked about 40 million years ago, said Professor Robert Dunbar of Stanford University.

"It was warm and there were bushes and there were trees," he told some 850 delegates in the Tasmanian capital Hobart, the national AAP news agency reported.

The delegates are attending the combined meetings of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs.

Dunbar said climate experts were predicting a doubling of the levels of carbon dioxide by 2100, "but it actually looks like it's going to come sooner unfortunately."

Scientists blame greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil, for causing rising temperatures worldwide.

A THIRSTY PLANET

Climate change and falling water tables are having a dramatic effect on the world’s water resources, writes Satu Hassi MEP.

A few years ago, I read an article on mountains. It began by saying that we consider mountains to be something very robust, something that lasts forever, at least in human timescales.

But in fact, mountains belong to some of the most vulnerable ecosystems in the world because mountain glaciers are rapidly melting.

Half the world’s population depends on rivers starting from mountain glaciers as their freshwater source.

Himalayan glaciers feed seven great Asian rivers - the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Huang He - ensuring a year-round water supply for two billion people.

Greenland's glaciers

Scientists studying Greenland's glaciers say seasonal melting has increased, and was greater last year than at any time in almost three decades.
When the glaciers are in equilibrium, spring melting matches the added winter snow. But the glaciers have been shrinking with higher temperatures.

Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, observed from a plane as he headed home on his most recent research trip that six miles of the Jakobshavn Glacier had fallen into the fjord, The Los Angeles Times reported.

The glacier is the largest of the rivers of ice that flow out of the Greenland ice cap.

Studies of ice cores from Greenland have found a history of sudden climate shifts with average temperatures rising as much as 15 degrees in a decade.

Total melting of the Greenland ice cap would raise sea levels worldwide about 21 feet, although even with continued rising temperatures its total disappearance would take hundreds or even thousands of years, the newspaper said.

Wildfires linked to global warming

WASHINGTON -- The increase in the number of large western wildfires in recent years may be a result of global warming, researchers say.

An analysis of data going back to 1970 indicates the fires increased ''suddenly and dramatically'' in the 1980s and the wildfire season grew longer, according to scientists in Arizona and California.

''The increase in large wildfires appears to be another part of a chain of reactions to climate warming,'' said Dan Cayan, a co-author of the paper and director of the climate research division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Environment: Global warming a major threat

Two scientific reports last week were added to the mountain of evidence that global warming is real and can no longer be ignored by the Bush administration.

In the first, released Wednesday, marine life was found to be threatened by changes caused by burning fossil fuels, the lead cause of global warming. This added carbon dioxide is dissolving in the oceans, making them more acid, said the panel of the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Geological Survey.

"Ocean chemistry, pH, is changing and will continue to change as long as CO2 emissions are increasing. That is not debatable," said Joan Kleypas of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The second report, published Thursday in the journal Science, found the increase in the number of large Western wildfires in recent years "another part of a chain of reactions to climate warming."

Fewer Fish Leads to Jellyfish Explosion

In a region off the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, heavy fishing in recent decades has depleted fish stocks while leading to increased numbers of jellyfish.

Now with some hard data in hand, scientists are calling it a jellyfish explosion.

In fact the jellyfish are so numerous in the study area that they now represent more biomass than all the fish combined. Their numbers, ironically, are beginning to "significantly interfere with fishing operations," the researchers report in the July 12 issue of the journal Current Biology.

Overfishing and climate change might both contribute to the phenomenon. Jellyfish have few predators, the scientists say, so if fish are depleted and nutrients are available, the jellyfish do quite well.

Brokaw joins fight against global warming

On the Discovery documentary, producers travel great distances to make the case that man has contributed to a rapid warming of the planet's atmosphere that has already had noticeable effects and will potentially have much more.

A scientist in the Arctic explains how the increased melting of summertime sea ice is slowly starving the polar bear population. Rising sea water seeping through the ground threatens to eventually swallow entirely the South Pacific island of Tuvalu. Drought threatens the giant

Amazon rain forest.

More frightening are the scenarios that scientists can see for the future: increased sea levels swallowing cities like New York, more vicious hurricanes like Katrina, more land turning to desert. One expert even envisions half of the planet's species disappearing by the end of this century.

"By the year 2100, in the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, our world will be a drastically different place," Brokaw says in the documentary.

Coral reef death

Satellite image of Dry Tortugas National Park with Fort Jefferson's hexagonal shape standing out. In the azure waters of the remote Florida park, corals have been toppled by hurricanes and blighted by disease and a phenomenon known as bleaching. (Space Imaging/USGS/Handout/Reuters)

Global warming affecting Scottish birds?

EDINBURGH, Scotland (UPI) -- A survey of Scottish birds finds that global warming may be having an effect, with some once-common birds moving north.

The Breeding Bird Survey by the British Trust for Ornithology found that seven species are in marked decline in Scotland, The Scotsman reports. At the same time, other species are becoming more common as their ranges are also forced north into Scotland.

Generally, the declining species are those of higher elevations, the Scottish moors and uplands. Kestrels, lapwings, curlews, meadow pipits and oyster catchers have been placed on the amber warning list.

Numbers of swifts and hooded crows have dropped by more than one-third, the survey found. But because their declines have been observed over a relatively short time they have not yet been put on the warning list.