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23 December 2019
Monitoring conflict and climate could help stop famines before they happen
Deaths due to famine have fallen precipitously in recent decades, but undernutrition, which affects one in five children worldwide, remains rampant. Now, researchers are using satellite imagery and social media to detect food-scarce regions before they become full-blown crises.
28 August 2019
Upper Nile will experience more water scarcity due to hotter, drier periods
An increase in hotter, drier years in the coming decades due to climate change may worsen water scarcity issues in the Upper Nile Basin. These impacts are likely to cause an increase in agricultural failure in Ethiopia and may potentially lead to civil strife, according to the authors of a new study published in Earth’s Future, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
6 August 2019
How the Pacific Ocean influences long-term drought in the Southwestern U.S.
New research explores what conditions in the ocean and in the atmosphere prolong droughts in the Southwestern U.S. The answer is complex, according to a study published Aug. 6 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
27 June 2019
Study finds increased moisture facilitated decline in African fires in Africa
The amount of area burned across Africa declined by 18.5 percent between 2002 and 2016, according to a new study.
3 June 2019
Loss of Arctic sea ice stokes summer heat waves in southern U.S.
Over the last 40 years, Arctic sea ice thickness, extent and volume have declined dramatically. Now, a new study finds a link between declining sea ice coverage in parts of the Canadian Arctic and an increasing incidence of summer heat waves across the southern United States.
22 May 2019
Domino Droughts
New research finds one drought can amplify or cause another. Decreased moisture recycling and transport impacts how droughts form and move across continents.
13 May 2019
La Niña’s effect on droughts can be traced back to U.S. Civil War
The Civil War drought – one of the worst to afflict the U.S. in centuries – occurred in the mid-1850s to the mid-1860s. That drought is infamous for its effects in the U.S. Southwest and parts of the Great Plains, where it led to the near extinction of the American bison and played an important role in changing the course of the Civil War by causing food and water shortages, slowing the advance of part of the Confederate army in 1862.
28 March 2019
California ‘browning’ more in the south during droughts
Like a climate chameleon, California turned brown during the 2012–16 drought, as vegetation dried or died off. But the change wasn’t uniform. Large areas of the northern part of the state were not severely affected, while Southern California became much browner than usual…
19 March 2019
Western droughts caused permanent loss to major California groundwater source
According to new research, the San Joaquin Valley aquifer in the Central Valley shrank permanently by up to 3 percent due to excess pumping during the sustained dry spell.
1 October 2018
Half-degree of warming could have big impact on water availability
Approximately 117 million more people could face water shortages if global temperatures increase 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels compared to a 1.5-degree Celsius increase in temperatures, a new study suggests. The world’s water cycle, including evaporation and precipitation, is expected to intensify with global warming, according to the study. This could affect the distribution of freshwater and constrain the global water supply, which poses risks to national food security, economic prosperity and societal well-being.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.