The story of workers obtaining "Edible birds nests" and the voyage of those materials into Michelin star restaurants as one of the world's most expensive ingredients. While a delicacy, the birds that make these nests are currently endangered (read more here: https://www.audubon.org/news/birds-nest-soup-more-popular-ever-thanks-swiftlet-house-farms).

Fly over the fall harvest season in the United Kingdom

Quick fun video takes you through and over the Hops harvest in Washington. Original caption:

Oh goodness. National Geographic and The North Face travel along with honey harvesters in Nepal who lower themselves down to gigantic, 2-3 meter sized bee hives formed on a steep cliff.

Drone exploration of wheat farming in Kansas

Well, every part of this sounds terrible.

A short tour through the Rice harvest and paddies in Vietnam, with limestone hills occasionally cropping out in the background

Of a drought, a civil war, and millions of fleeing refugees...with more to come in the future

One of the expected effects of global warming is an increase in drought in varying parts of the globe, and one example is the series which has been worsening in the Eastern Mediterranean region since 1998. This group of events have strained the resilience of the societies living there, and Syria was pushed beyond the breaking point by the record breaking event it sustained between 2005 and 2010, though the knock on effects of this conflict has also put all its neighbours and the European Union under major stress as well. While climate change is not the only factor in the ongoing civil war, political, religious and other strains being at the fore of the media debate, it is doubtful whether events would have taken such a tragic turn but for this drought, which recent tree ring research (broadly put wide ring good growth year, narrow ring bad growth year) shows to be the worst in 900 years.

When the drought started, Syrian society, however politically constrained, had a certain amount if inbuilt resilience through state, local, tribal and family networks to weather the first years. The country's aquifers were depleted however, due to misguided agricultural policies since the 1970's, and most farmers were dependent on rain for irrigation. Farms had yet to recover from the 1998-2000 drought when the 5 year one hit, creating a disaster.

Take away people's ability to earn a livelihood off the land, and sooner or later, the farmers have to move to seek employment elsewhere (as happened in the dust bowl in the US Midwest in the 1930's forcing many farmers to move west to California and Oregon). If this work isn't available in sufficient quantities for the displaced people (now living in concrete facility less slums at the edge of large cities like Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's urban population grew by 50% between 2002 and 2010) to feed their families, and food costs increase (as they did in the late naughties), you have a recipe for revolution, and evidence of a failing state that is unable to meet its people's needs. Since then we have had years of civil war whose complexity has risen as more and more actors and proxies enter the scene. Over 4.2 million have fled the country (mostly to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, also affected by the drought, though a mere million has seemingly managed to stall the entire European dream), and 7.6 million more remain internally displaced within Syria in an ever shifting mosaic that mirrors the ebbs and flows of battle.

The tree ring data was compiled from across the region, and revealed 900 years of information on wet and dry periods, and show that the current drought is well beyond the norms of natural climate variation during this period, implying that it is a clear signal of biting climate change. Research last year (linked below) showed that such events are three times more likely in a world with higher greenhouse gas levels.

Climate modelling suggests that this is only the start, and that the whole region, already deficient in water resources for its growing population will get drier as the century progresses as rainfall patterns shift in a warming world. The region is already under severe water stress, with conflicts over upstream diversion by Turkey of the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates simmering in the background and over the waters of the Jordan.

Worse droughts in the future, and the possible implosion of other countries under the strain, with all the attendant consequences are now a growing preoccupation of the world's military security apparati (the Pentagon calls global warming a threat multiplier that poses “immediate risks) and if they're worried, we should be too. As David Titley, director of Penn State's Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk and retired Navy Rear Admiral put it: “This paper points to the importance of resilience, and how spectacularly a society can break and fracture when climate-forced events exceed the capacity to adapt.”

Loz

Image credit: Graphic: NASA/Grace, Drought: Reuters, Civil war: Abd Doumani/AFP, Refugees fleeing: EPA

http://go.nasa.gov/23BIZQ2 http://bit.ly/217TeVM http://bit.ly/1pnRX0W http://bit.ly/1R3HvVz

original papers, paywall access: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/11/3241 http://bit.ly/1WUKEIJ http://bit.ly/22FP4Hb

El Nino at work: Droughts threaten hunger in 2016

One of the major effects of this global weather oscillation is a geographical redistribution of rainfall patterns, with some areas losing their usual annual irrigation while others receive an overabundance. Large swathes of Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, the northern end of South America and New Guinea are suffering from an increasing deficit as one of the strongest El Ninos on record cuts its swathes around the globe, and are facing a difficult start to the year as droughts begin to bite down hard.

Harvests are failing or being stunted in many countries and the price of food is increasing rapidly, creating shortages amongst the poor, while agencies such as Oxfam and the FAO are already calling for donations in the face of likely famines emerging. They warn that on top of existing commitments in many crisis stricken locations the emerging crisis is going to strain the world's humanitarian systems to the limit. They estimate that as many as 40 million will need food aid, and Ethiopia (where the drought is the worst in half a century), Haiti and Papua New Guinea are already in an emergency situation and that development gains built over many years may be wiped out by this event.

The situation is degenerating in Southern Africa, with the maize crop failing and livestock dying in South Africa and Zimbabwe, where several provinces have been declared disaster areas, with food shortages expected to peak in February. Malawi, Zambia (where the drought has also damaged power generation and the vital copper mining industry, already in the doldrums)and Kenya face the same situation by March, and the UN estimates an increase of 70 percent in numbers suffering from food insecurity across the continent. Across the Atlantic, countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua also have millions in need of aid, and potential floods may arrive early in the year to add insult to injury as El Nino fades into La Nina, where the rainfall patterns reverse.

The other posts in this series: http://on.fb.me/1OSg0dH http://on.fb.me/1JEC5La http://on.fb.me/1SjYm8e http://on.fb.me/1PuX6OQ http://on.fb.me/1NUmrwU http://on.fb.me/1RT7l0M http://on.fb.me/1mtXgKv

Loz

Image credit: Rebecca Blackwell/AP 2: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko http://bit.ly/1Fqo1EK http://bit.ly/1On9uQ3 http://bit.ly/1QGdfR6 http://reut.rs/1mBCBod http://bit.ly/21g3fD3 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34779447 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34783604 http://bit.ly/1OXtvc7 http://bit.ly/1PxAQls

Europe's drought in line with climate predictions for a warming world

Between mid June and late July my home area in South West France saw no rain at all, the worst since the great 'canicule' (a French word meaning extreme heat, coming from cani cularis, the Latin for dog days, when that constellation is high in the sky during northern hemisphere high summer). I was watering every day, thanks to a stream passing through the garden, and sipping wine at 11pm at 38 Celsius for days on end. Rainfall was 20% of normal for those 8 weeks. While the excess mortality of the last great episode in 2003 did not repeat itself, thanks to many measures and government sponsored education over the last dozen years, it seems that people are more aware of the risks of dehydration and heatstroke.

While the human toll was light agriculture over a wide band stretching from western France to Poland was severely affected, with yields down on multiple crops at a time when the world's food security is at risk from climate change. Forests have also suffered as repeated heat stress damages trees and make them more vulnerable to a variety of diseases and parasites. The band affected is expected to become more chaotic in its weather as it lies where the weather systems of southern Europe and northern Europe meet. Already since the 90's unprecedented floods have struck areas such as Poland and eastern Germany several times, also in line with predicted changes using climate models.

Germany's grain harvest dropped 11%, France's 28 and the apple harvest in Germany some 21% compared to last year. The rivers were so low that archaeology started to emerge, including Jewish tombstones and World War 2 planes in the Vistula in Warsaw, where the photo of a picnicking couple was taken. The Elbe dropped 9cm below its previous low record. Soil moisture in parts of the country are the lowest since records began in 1951. Even my neighbour couldn't grow veggies on his allotment, since the wells ran dry. In a poor economy like the Dordogne where many are self reliant for chickens, eggs and vegetables, this makes a big difference to the annual budget.

While some rain in August has improved matters, we need several weeks of gentle downpours to return matters towards normality, or whatever passes for it in these days of disturbed weather. As climate change bites, these extreme summers are going to become the new normal, and agricultural practices and crop choices are going to change. Already the wine belts are moving north, with English sparkling wine enjoying record crops and increased acreage as the champagne houses seek a similar terroir that will resemble their current one in the coming decades. Above average temperatures and dry weather are predicted for September across the continent.

Loz

Image credit: Janek Skarżyński/AFP/Getty Images

http://bit.ly/1EotqPP http://bit.ly/1NAAfk6 http://bit.ly/1gvloJT http://bit.ly/1VqK6ur European Drought Observatory report: http://bit.ly/1hNVouy

Asian air pollution diminishing harvests Air pollution is one of the main causes of death in India and China, but its dangers to the region do not stop with respiratory ailments. Airborne dust an aerosols are also affecting the vital monsoon rains that feed the entire subcontinent by weakening the wind patterns that draw the moisture north over the last half century of swift population growth. Recent research in both countries shows that the persistent haze covering these tracts of our world is reducing the solar energy that reaches plants sufficiently to lower crop yields substantially, putting at risk the precarious balance between dense populations and increased food availability that is a serious worry in a region that has long teetered on the balance and is facing further disruptions due to global warming.  Some crops yields are being reduced by half in polluted areas compared with cleaner ones after researchers plotted them against pollution measurements, including staples such as wheat and rice. The latter is a major export, and we are entering an age where several crop failures and export reductions around the world (many linked to climate change) in the same year affect the calorific bottom line of millions, often trailing civil and political disruption in their wake (such as the civil war in Syria, which kicked off after 3 years of drought).  The main culprits are black carbon from rural stoves and dung fires, and low level ozone mainly from vehicle exhausts and industrial emissions. These two pollutants have increased massively in the last three decades and current date was matched with these increases and historical crop data to reveal the magnitude of the losses to food production. While there were strong regional disparities, the team concluded that average wheat yields are 36% lower than they would be were pollution still at the already high levels of the 1980's. Earlier research focussed on experimental data, looking at the impacts of ozone on plants in controlled environments to extrapolate potential losses, but this is the first ever study to use actual historical agricultural and emissions data to account for lower crop yields. The photo alone makes it obvious how much light is being lost to the plants below, and the implications for the region's future food security are worrying. The research also suggests that relatively large benefits could come from a concerted effort to diminish these two particular pollutants as fast as possible, and many simple measures such as diesel filters and better stoves are already available.  Meanwhile, across the Himalayas in China similar problems are coming to light, with warnings earlier this year that photosynthesis is slowing in polluted areas in an effect compared to a nuclear winter. Many vegetables in northern China are greenhouse grown, and the particles stick to the windows, further reducing yield.  Loz Dear Readers,  Most of our posts are not reaching you in your news feed due to fb's filtering system. If you wish to enjoy our posts more often, use the following for information on how to go about it: http://tinyurl.com/qgwac8k. Image credit:  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/03/india-air-pollution-cutting-crop-yields-by-almost-half http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/25/china-toxic-air-pollution-nuclear-winter-scientists http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/10/29/1317275111