The Caribbean, Asia’s Indo-Gangetic Plain and West Africa are three regions known to be extremely vulnerable to climate variability and change, particularly to droughts, extreme weather events and stresses on food production, water resources and coastal areas. A new five-year project jointly led by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society and the University of Arizona aims to strengthen climate resilience in these regions using strategies in the sectors of water resources, hazard risk management and coastal planning and management.
Last year was one of the warmest on record, according to analyses of global temperature data by NASA and NOAA. Both federal agencies placed 2013 among the top 10 warmest years since records began in 1880, continuing a longer-term trend of global warming.
From warmer temperatures to natural disasters such as flooding and drought, changing patterns of climate are having billion-dollar impacts on our food-growing systems. But scientists are struggling to find ways to measure and predict what may happen in the future—and to translate that into policies to help feed a bulging world population.
Catastrophic, tragic, disastrous: these are all words that have been used to describe the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is impossible to deny that these words apply – thick, goopy crude has already coated the beaches and estuaries of the Gulf, contaminating more than 120 miles of coastline. The spill is [...]
As of last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a new leader. The U.S. Senate named Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D. Administrator of NOAA on March 19, 2009. As the first woman and the first marine ecologist to fulfill this position, Dr. Lubchenco is committed to using science to create sound policy. Her specific [...]