Guardian George Monbiot, 4th March 2024 There’s a flaw in the plan. It’s not a small one: it is an Earth-sized hole in our calculations. To keep pace with the global demand for food, crop production needs to grow by at least 50% by 2050. In principle, if nothing else changes, this is feasible, thanks mostly to improvements in crop breeding and farming techniques. But everything else is going to change. Even if we  set aside all other issues – heat impacts, soil degradation, epidemic plant diseases accelerated by the loss of genetic diversity – there is one which, without help from any other cause, could prevent the world’s people from being fed. Water.A paper published in 2017 estimated that to match crop production to expected demand, water use for irrigation would have to increase by 146% by the middle of this century. One minor problem. Water is already maxed out.

In general, the dry parts of the world are becoming drier, partly through reduced rainfall; partly through declining river flow as mountain ice and snow retreats; and partly through rising temperatures causing increased evaporation and increased transpiration by plants. Many of the world’s major growing regions are now threatened by “flash droughts”, in which hot and dry weather sucks moisture from the soil at frightening speed. Some places, such as the southwest of the US, now in its 24th year of drought, may have switched permanently to a drier state. Rivers fail to reach the sea, lakes and aquifers are shrinking, species living in freshwater are becoming extinct at roughly five times the rate of species that live on land and major cities are threatened by extreme water stress. 

Already, agriculture accounts for 90% of the world’s freshwater use. We have pumped so much out of the ground that we’ve changed the Earth’s spin. The water required to meet growing food demand simply does not exist. That 2017 paper should have sent everyone scrambling. But as usual, it was ignored by policymakers and the media. Only when the problem arrives in Europe do we acknowledge that there’s a crisis. But while there is understandable panic about the drought in Catalonia and Andalusia, there’s an almost total failure among powerful interests to acknowledge that this is just one instance of a global problem, a problem that should feature at the top of the political agenda. Though drought measures have triggered protests in Spain, this is far from the most dangerous flashpoint. The catchment of the Indus river is shared by three nuclear powers – India, Pakistan and China – and several highly unstable and divided regions already afflicted by hunger and extreme poverty. Today, 95% of the river’s dry season flow is extracted, mostly for irrigation. But water demand in both Pakistan and India is growing rapidly. Supply – temporarily boosted by the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush – will, before long, peak  and then go into decline.

Even under the most optimistic climate scenario, runoff from Asian glaciers is expected to peak before mid-century, and glacier mass will shrink by about 46% by 2100. Some analysts see water competition between India and Pakistan as a major cause of the repeated conflicts in Kashmir.....and still no real climate government and corporate action- they simply don't give a shit!      https://www.monbiot.com/2024/03/11/dry-run/

  How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods  BBC14 November 2024 Mark  Poynting and Esme Stallard     Parts of Spain have again been hit by torrential rain, just two weeks after the flooding that killed more than 220 people. Like other extreme weather events, episodes of heavy rainfall are becoming more common and more intense in many places around the world, driven by climate change. Here are four ways that rising temperatures are affecting weather extremes. 

1. More extreme rain. For every 1C rise in average temperature, the atmosphere can hold up to around 7% more moisture. With more moisture available, rainfall can become heavier. Scientists use computer models to simulate how individual extreme weather events unfold in two scenarios......today's world with around 1.2C of human-caused warming......a hypothetical world without human influence on the climate.That way, they can estimate how much a particular storm, heatwave or drought was affected by climate change. Between October 2023 and March 2024, the UK experienced the second-wettest such period on record. This level of rainfall was made at least four times as likely by human-caused warming, according to scientists at the World Weather Attribution group (WWA). 

In September 2024, deadly floods hit much of central Europe, including Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Austria and Italy. The intensity of the rainfall over four days in mid-September was made twice as likely by climate change, the WWA says. Climate change is also likely to have played a part in the heavy rainfall seen in Spain in late October and early November. Scientists point to the influence of rising temperatures, although a full study is needed to evaluate exactly how much of an influence climate change had compared with naturally fluctuating weather patterns. Globally, heavy rainfall events have become more frequent and intense over most land regions due to human activity, according to the UN's climate body, the IPCC. It says this pattern will continue with further warming. 

2. Hotter, longer heatwaves......Even a small increase in average temperatures makes a big difference to heat extremes. As the range of daily temperatures shifts to warmer levels, hotter days become more likely and more intense. In April 2024, temperatures in Mali rose above 48C during an extreme heatwave across the Sahel region of Africa which was linked to increased hospitalisations and deaths. This level of heat would not have been possible without human-caused climate change, according to the WWA. Such temperature spikes will become more common in many places as the world continues to warm......read on- there's more             https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58073295   ........And Checkout...... A simple guide to climate change

Australia- Renewed bushfire warnings for NSW, Victoria and WA as heat forecast to return for the new year. BoM says light winds are expected to temper the fire danger despite high temperatures, especially inland.Guardian Mostafa Rachwani Sun 29 Dec 2024  Scorching temperatures and elevated fire dangers are forecast for the coming week as Australia rings in the new year – but light winds could protect towns from blazes becoming too severe.Perth was the first hit by the heatwave, with a high of 34C recorded on Sunday, and maximums above 32C forecast for every day until Friday. An out of control fire in Western Australia’s midwest, just south of Geraldton, had burned through about 1,800 hectares by Sunday afternoon. Sarah Scully, senior meteorologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, said the conditions were expected to stretch out over much of the continent’s south-east and midwest as the week went on. “The main areas of concern were the midwest regions of Western Australia, where gusty winds along with hot and dry conditions are elevating fire dangers,” she said.

“As we head into next week, there’s generally a high fire danger extending across southern parts of the country, apart from eastern Victoria and Tasmania.”The high fire danger will remain active for much of New South Wales over the next week and into the new year, fuelled by ongoing high temperatures. High temperatures and strong winds are forecast for towns in the region over the next few days, with nearby Dongara seeing highs in the low 30s through to Friday. Much of the southern and central regions of the state face high fire danger through to New Year’s Day. The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said on Sunday morning that assessments of the damage were still continuing, and the full impact of the blaze was not yet clear. She thanked those in the path of the fire for listening to warnings and taking action to stay safe. But she reminded Victorians that it was only the “start of a dangerous summer period”.....read on       https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/29/bushfire-warnings-nsw-victoria-tasmania-wa-heat-forecast-new-year  

• Climate crisis deepens with 2024 ‘certain’ to be hottest year on record,Average global temperature in November was 1.62C above pre industrial levels, bringing average for the year to 1.60C. Guardian Damian Carrington  Mon 9 Dec 2024 This year is now almost certain to be the hottest year on record, data shows. It will also be the first to have an average temperature of more than 1.5C above pre industrial levels, marking a further escalation of the climate crisis. Data for November from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service(C3S) found the average global surface temperature for the month was 1.62C above the level before the mass burning of fossil fuels drove up global heating. With data for 11 months of 2024 now available, scientists said the average for the year is expected to be 1.60C, exceeding the record set in 2023 of 1.48C. Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of C3S, said: “We can now confirm with virtual certainty that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first calendar year above 1.5C. This does not mean that the Paris agreement has been breached, but it does mean ambitious climate action is more urgent than ever.” The Paris climate agreement commits the 196 signatories to keeping global heating to below 1.5C in order to limit the impact of climate disasters. But this is measured over a decade or two, not a single year.Nonetheless, the likelihood of keeping below the 1.5C limit even over the longer term appears increasingly remote.
• The CO2 emissions heating the planet are expected to keep rising in 2024, despite a global pledge made in late 2023 to “transition away from fossil fuels”.Fossil fuel emissions must fall by 45% by 2030 to have a chance of limiting heating to 1.5C. The recent Cop29 climate summit failed to reach an agreement on how to push ahead on the transition away from coal, oil and gas. The C3S data showed that November 2024 was the 16th month in a 17-month period for which the average temperature exceeded 1.5C. The supercharging of extreme weather by the climate crisis is already clear, with heatwaves of previously impossible intensity and frequency now striking around the world, along with fiercer storms and worse floods. Particularly intense wildfires blazed in North and South America in 2024, the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams) reported last week. The fires, driven by severe droughts, affected the western US, Canada, the Amazon forest and particularly the Pantanal wetlands.......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/09/climate-crisis-deepens-with-2024-certain-to-be-hottest-year-on-record