LAND & WATER - Global Drought Overview to March 2024  Overview: GDIS global indicators revealed dry conditions continued during February 2024 across northern and eastern parts of North America, Central America, Brazil to the northern coast of South America, southern parts of South America, much of southern Africa and parts of central to northern Africa, southeastern Europe to Southwest Asia, parts of Siberia, and much of Oceania from Southeast Asia to New Zealand. Most of the continents, except Asia, were much warmer than normal, making February 2024 the warmest February in the 1850-2024 NOAA/NCEI record, globally. The unusually warm temperatures increased evapotranspiration in many areas, exacerbating the drought conditions.

The Mediterranean region continued to be particularly dry. The European Union's Science Hub published a report by the EU's Joint Research Centre that noted long-lasting, above-average temperatures, warm spells and poor precipitation have led to severe drought conditions in the Mediterranean region, affecting numerous areas across southern Italy, southern Spain, Malta, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. In the midst of winter, the ongoing drought was already having critical impacts. This follows severe and prolonged drought events that impacted northern Africa during the last 6 years and Europe for over 2 years. According to an analysis tool of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, the Mediterranean region had the fourth driest year in 2022 and 25th driest year in 2023, based on 1940-2023 data; for temperatures, the region ranked warmest for 2023 and second warmest for 2022. A study published in Nature found the Amazon rainforest is approaching a tipping point, including a large-scale collapse, which would have devastating consequences for the world's climate system. The Climate Change Institute analysis tool ranks 2023 as the second driest and second hottest year for Brazil.                                          

A significant portion of the world's agricultural lands was still suffering from low soil moisture and groundwater levels, and satellite observations showed stressed vegetation on all continents. The GEOGLAM Crop Monitor indicated that agriculture was most threatened in parts of Central and South America, Africa, Europe, and southern Asia. The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNet) revealed significant food insecurity continuing in parts of Central and South America, Southwest Asia, and much of Africa....and much, much more    https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global-drought/202402

And in Canada -Residents stroll river bed in Prince George, BC amid drought. Families, pets explore the sand and rock normally buried under the Fraser, Nechako rivers' rushing water. CBC News Mar 31, 2024 "It's terrifying to see the river almost completely gone," John Grove, another resident, said."To be able to walk all around is just insane to me.... I would love to see more of a river here." The area they are walking is near the CN Rail Bridge, built by the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1914, which still has the ability to open to allow shipping vessels and sternwheelers to pass through, although there hasn't been a need in decades. It's also on the land of the Lheidli T'enneh, a First Nation whose name means "people of the confluence" — a reflection of the importance the joining of the Fraser and Nechako Rivers have had to the nation and the region for centuries.  Spring is when the city typically braces for flooding, as a melting snowpack sends water levels surging along the rivers — but this year, that is not going to be a concern for residents, says hydrologist Jonathan Boyd with the River Forecast Centre."The likelihood of any flooding this year [in Prince George] is very low if not just almost zero because of how low [the water level] is," he told CBC News With snowpack levels 44 per cent below normal in the Upper Fraser River Basin, which includes Prince George, Boyd says he fears drought could worsen this year. Currently, the basin has been experiencing drought level four on a five-point scale, where ecosystem or socio-economic impacts are likely to occur.               https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/dry-nechako-riverbed-in-prince-george-1.7159123            and there's more......click on the headlines      B.C. drought brings increased flood risks, far-reaching damage, experts warn        Low snowpack could impact power generation in B.C. in late 2024

George Monbiot.......Call me all the names you want – I won’t stop telling the truth about livestock farming 14 Dec 2023 12.33 GMT   Everything that makes campaigning against fossil fuels difficult is 10 times harder when it comes to opposing livestock farming. Here you will find a similar suite of science denial, misinformation and greenwashing. But in this case, it’s accompanied by a toxic combination of identity politics, nostalgia, machismo and the demonisation of alternatives. If you engage with this issue, you don’t just need a thick skin; you need the skin of a glyptodon. You will be vilified daily as a “soyboy”, a “hater of farmers” and a dictator who would force everyone to eat insects. You will be charged with undermining western civilisation, destroying its masculinity and threatening its health. You will be denounced as an enemy of Indigenous people, though generally not by Indigenous people themselves, for many of whom livestock farming is and has long been by far the greatest cause of land-grabbing, displacement and the destruction of their homes.

 industries on Earth......and there's a lt more        https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/livestock-farming-soy-soyboy  

CANADA- Alberta’s Brutal Water Reckoning. Scientists who studied the region’s arid past warned this drought was coming. Thirst for growth won out. A Tyee special report.Andrew Nikiforuk 19 Feb 2024 The Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more.Alberta’s water reckoning has begun in earnest. Snowpack accumulations in the Oldman River basin, the Bow River basin and the North Saskatchewan River basin range from 33 to 62 per cent below normal. A reduced snowpack means less summer water for the fish and all water drinkers. Ancient glaciers that feed and top up prairie rivers in the late summer melted at record speeds last year, the hottest on global records. Many indomitable ice packs, such as the well-studied Peyto Glacier, are disappearing altogether, wasted by the desiccating hand of climate disorder. Fifty-one river basins from Milk River to Hay River report critical water shortages due to low rainfall and high temperatures, according to the provincial government. Groundwater levels in parts of Alberta have reached record lows. Wells in Rocky View County just outside of Calgary, for example, show steady declines and the lowest levels ever measured. Some 600,000 rural Albertans depend on groundwater. Most of the province’s water reservoirs sit five metres below their normal waterlines, boat launch docks projecting over baked earth like monuments from a lost civilization.The Oldman River Dam, a $500-million megaproject built for the irrigation industry, overlooks a desert of silt cut by a narrow canal of chocolate water. Its reservoir sits at 30 per cent capacity. Normally it ranges from 60 to 80 per cent full. St. Mary Reservoir normally was between 40 and 70 per cent full. Today, at 11 per cent capacity, it has become a ghost of a water body. The Spray Lakes Reservoir, high in Kananaskis country, reports 34 per cent of capacity. Lake Diefenbaker, from which the people of Saskatchewan get 60 per cent of their drinking water, received only 28 per cent of normal inflow last year from heat-stricken Alberta, a plummet scientists called “unprecedented.” With less water in the rivers and ground, the cottonwoods and willows that decorate the banks of prairie rivers are dying. Parched rural communities have even begun to question the huge thirst of the powerful oil and gas industry. A water commission that provides potable water to the municipalities of Innisfail, Bowden, Olds, Didsbury, Carstairs and Crossfield has banned treated bulk water supplies to the fracking industry, which permanently removes water from the water cycle. One study recently noted that water consumption by frackers “intensifies local water competition and alters water supply threatened by climate variability.” Yet the Alberta government has not declared an emergency. It says it is planning for extreme drought but hoping for snow and rain.                                                                                                                                                      Meanwhile Danielle Smith’s (Premier of Alberta) United Conservative Party government has appointed an advisory body with no known water experts. But it does include Ian Anderson, a promoter of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion that will transport bitumen from the oilsands to the Port of Vancouver, criss-crossing many dwindling rivers, creeks and streams as it does. Alberta’s water emergency, which is also a fire emergency, was foretold by scores of water scientists. They predicted that prolonged water scarcity would hit southern Alberta hard for stubborn geographical reasons. No one sounded the alarm more persistently and urgently than the late David Schindler, one of the world’s great water ecologists. Schindler never tired of reminding Albertans that their province has only 2.2 per cent of Canada’s renewable fresh water. Meanwhile its industries, government and residents behaved as though water came from ever-flowing taps instead of dwindling glaciers, rivers, aquifers and snowpacks. There’s another ignored reality. Eighty per cent of Alberta’s water flows north while 80 per cent of the province’s growing population lives in the drier portion south of Edmonton.                                                                                                                                                                        “Sometime in the coming century, the increasing demand for water, the increasing scarcity of water due to climate warming, and one of the long droughts of past centuries will collide, and Albertans will learn first-hand what water scarcity is all about,” warned Schindler nearly two decades ago. Schindler explicitly forecasted that collision when he and fellow researcher Bill Donahue wrote a paper on the impending water crisis facing the Canadian prairies for the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. It appeared in 2006 with much fanfare.    But extended wet periods aren’t normal on the prairies. In earlier centuries, long droughts made the land thirsty for decades at a time, and then the drought would recede like some hellish glacier. Tree ring data from 1,000-year-old limber pine shows some of the worst dry spells occurred in the 1500s and 1720s.  But extended wet periods aren’t normal on the prairies. In earlier centuries, long droughts made the land thirsty for decades at a time, and then the drought would recede like some hellish glacier. Tree ring data from 1,000-year-old limber pine shows some of the worst dry spells occurred in the 1500s and 1720s. But recent instrument records upon which modern water allocations are based provide a too-small window that leaves the region’s long, dry history out of consideration.....and then there's the fast receding glaciers that feed the rivers, like the Bow......read on                                https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/02/19/Alberta-Brutal-Water-Reckoning/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=230224     ......and......   “To a water expert, looking ahead is like the view from a locomotive, 10 seconds before the train wreck.” — The late scientist David Schindler on Alberta’s looming crisis

CANADA- Our water is under threat. A new global initiative wants to find solutionsIsaac Phan Nay | News, Climate Solutions Reporting, Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa | February 5th 2024   As climate change threatens global water systems, a new research initiative aims to leverage Indigenous expertise to manage cross-border water resources. Climate change puts people’s access to water in jeopardy. Extreme weather events like floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and extreme, damaging infrastructure and affecting water quality. Often, rivers, lakes and bodies of water affected by these crises cross international borders. Now, researchers across North America are coming together to help communities adapt. The new Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters is a team co-led by researchers from the University of Michigan and McMaster University. The team will work with Indigenous people to protect bodies of water that cross international lines — starting with the Great Lakes. Dawn Martin-Hill, a McMaster University researcher and member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, said for time immemorial, Indigenous people have known the environment is an important indicator of the health of the natural world. “The environment is always a metric for wellness, which health researchers are just now beginning to grasp,” she said. “Water is precious. Water isn't just water, the way the West looks at it as a resource… It impacts our lives in every conceivable way.” Last year, the National Science Foundation Global Centres— an initiative of science authorities from Canada, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. — granted the research team $3.75 million in funding. The centre launched in January. Gail Krantzberg, a McMaster University engineering and public policy professor and centre co-lead, said the group will research how to make communities more resilient to climate change. The centre will be working closely with the Six Nations of the Grand River near Caledonia, Ont., and Red Lake Nation in Minnesota. Through previous research, Martin-Hill found that First Nations, Inuit and Métis groups often lack sensors to monitor the quality of their local water sources. The University of Michigan and McMaster University have launched a new global centre for climate change that aims to incorporate Indigenous knowledge to address water crises across the world.“There was no data. They don't have sensors for reserves,” she said. “I found that to be incredibly distressing.”....READ ON      https://www.nationalobserver.com/2024/02/05/news/our-water-under-threat-new-global-initiative-wants-find-solutions