Center for Investigative Reporting

With volatile weather, farms must adapt or wither

On the front lines of climate change, California’s agriculture industry faces a new landscape with less water, warmer winters, unexpected rain and rising salinity.

Our new “Heat and Harvest” series with KQED explores the challenges that farmers in the state are facing due to volatile weather conditions. Find out what’s at stake for this $30 billion-dollar industry — and your grocery bill.

Photo: Almond trees show signs of poisoning by exposure to salt. Rising salinity levels in irrigation water has farmers alarmed. Credit: Serene Fang/CIR

What are the other hidden costs of hamburgers? Find out by watching our new animation.

good:

Hybrid Sharks Show How Nature Adapts to Climate Change

Off the coast of Australia, researchers have found a new breed of shark cruising the deep blue. The first hybrid shark is a genetic mashup of the common black tip and Australian black tip. The result is a more robust breed of shark with a timely adaptation: an increased coastal range. The researchers speculate that the interbreeding may help ensure the survival of the shark species in the face of climate change or fishing pressures. (Long live Shark Week.)

Read more at GOOD→

jtotheizzoe:

Climate to wreak havoc on food supply, predicts report

This map represents the density of children in food crisis over the next 40 years should climate change continue on its present course.

According to a team of Stanford University researchers, furnace-hot temperatures soon may become the summer norm for North America. Nations in more tropical zones could experience “the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat.”

And the researchers say this is not a centuries-long forecast.

They’re talking about the next 20 years.

“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, lead author of the report and Earth system science researcher at Stanford. Read full story.

Photo by bredgur via Flickr

seaofgreen:

Iran’s Lake Urmia (Oroumieh), the largest lake in the Middle East and the third largest salt water lake on earth, is turning to salt. Urmia is “home to some 212 species of birds, 41 reptiles, 7 amphibians, and 27 species of mammals, including the Iranian yellow deer.” According to a new report by AP, the lake “has shrunken by 60 percent and could disappear entirely in just a few years, experts say — drained by drought, misguided irrigation policies, development and the damming of rivers that feed it.”

Photo: An abandoned ship is stuck in the solidified salts of the Oroumieh Lake, some 370 miles NW of Tehran, Iran, April 29, 2011. (Vahid Salemi)

Via Slate:

What do 28,000 time-lapse photos tell us about Everest’s melting glaciers?

Everest, the Earth’s highest peak, is sometimes called the water tower of the world, because as many as 2 billion people rely on its glaciers as a source of water, Balog explains. Aside from their visual appeal, time-lapse photographs also help scientists to map changes in the position and surface of the ice, which in turn helps them to determine how much snow accumulates during the year and how fast the glaciers are melting.

(Photograph courtesy the Extreme Ice Survey, originally published by Slate)