SELMA, Alabama (The Guardian) – West Jefferson, Alabama, a somnolent town of around 420 people north-west of Birmingham, was an unlikely venue to seize the national imagination. Now, it has the misfortune to be forever associated with the “poop train”.
The storm made landfall in Mozambique on 14 March 2019, flattening the port city of Beira before moving inland to batter Malawi and Zimbabwe.
10 April 2019 (OECD) – Governments need to do more to support middle-class households who are struggling to maintain their economic weight and lifestyles as their stagnating incomes fail to keep up with the rising costs of housing and education, according to a new OECD report.
More information, including country notes for Australia, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, is available at Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class.
(The Washington Post) – President Trump’s opposition to aid for Puerto Rico has sparked a partisan standoff over a major disaster bill covering much of the United States, threatening to derail the legislation when it faces a critical Senate vote Monday.
The stalemate has caused days of acrimonious finger-pointing on all sides, with no resolution in sight. Now it threatens to indefinitely delay the bill, which provides more than $13 billion in much-needed recovery funds for everything from volcanic eruptions in Hawaii and wildfires in California, to hurricanes in Florida and Georgia and flooding in the Midwest, among other calamities.
But Democrats oppose the GOP legislation, contending that the $600 million it contains for Puerto Rico’s food stamp program ignores broader needs on the island. They are accusing Trump and the GOP of indifference toward Puerto Rico as the territory continues a nearly two-year recovery from Hurricane Maria, arguing the Trump administration has been slow to make funding available.
(Financial Times) – In the flat where I stayed in Cape Town last month, the bathtub felt like a relic of a lost civilisation. It may never be used again. Beside it was a shower containing an egg timer. The two-minute wash has been standard here since the recent three-year drought. In the city’s public bathrooms, a dribble comes out of the tap. Posters everywhere warn against wasting water.
This is what adapting to climate change looks like. Last year, Cape Town nearly became the first big city on earth to run dry. Daily water rations dropped to 50 litres per person per day, with the spectre of 25 litres if supplies ran out on “Day Zero”. The drought broke just in time, but the city’s planners now expect permanent water scarcity. Rationing, which initially felt like wartime austerity, has become normal.
An existential climate crisis creates almost instant consensus on action. I didn’t hear anyone in Cape Town dismiss climate change as an elite hobby, or argue against rationing. On the contrary, water was an almost automatic topic of conversation with people of all classes, well ahead of May’s South African elections. The only arguments were about how to access (and ration) water.
(The Washington Post) – We don’t know how many people have died since Cyclone Idai made landfall last Thursday on the coast of Mozambique before barreling west into Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Aerial photography and drone footage have shown the apocalyptic scenes left in the cyclone’s wake: Fields of crops were ruined, rising floodwaters tore bridges off their moorings, mudslides smashed roads and whole villages were swept away. Survivors found themselves trapped on new “islands,” surrounded by the brackish waters that obliterated their homes.
Aerial survey images show that the coast of central Mozambique where Idai made landfall suffered severe damage from all three of the major hazards of a tropical cyclone: wind, storm surge, and flooding rains. As Idai approached the coast, the stronger left eyewall of the storm moved over Beira (population 530,000) near the time of high tide, driving a large storm surge into the city. Beira is Mozambique’s fourth largest city, and second largest port. The city is very low-lying, with portions lying below sea level. The city has no power, no communications, and flooded access roads, though the airport has some limited accessibility.
A list compiled Monday by AFP from official sources puts the death toll from Idai’s landfall in Mozambique at 68, including 55 in Beira alone. These deaths are in addition to the 66 deaths recorded in northern Mozambique the week before Idai’s landfall, due to flooding from the tropical disturbance that developed into Idai. Flooding from that disturbance also killed 56 people in Malawi. Cuamba, Mozambique received 11.14” of rain in just 12 hours on March 7 from the tropical disturbance that become Idai.
Idai brought up to a foot of rain to eastern portions of Zimbabwe near its border with Mozambique. The resulting floods have killed at least 98 people, with 217 missing and 102 injured, said government officials on Monday. Zimbabwe’s death toll from Idai is expected to rise, since the hardest-hit district of Chimanimani remains inaccessible due to damaged roads and main access bridges that have been washed away.
(Bloomberg) – U.S. credit card debt hit $870 billion — the largest amount ever — as of December 2018, according to the data from the Federal Reserve. Credit card balances rose by $26 billion from the prior quarter.
GANDHINAGAR, 28 February 2019 (Press Trust of India) – Nearly 50 per cent of the country is currently facing drought with at least 16 per cent falling in the “exceptional” or “extreme” category, according to IIT Gandhinagar scientists managing India’s real time drought prediction system.
The real time monitoring system run by his team, which includes PhD student Amardeep Tiwari, collects weather and precipitation data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), which is then used to simulate soil moisture and other factors that contribute to drought.
“About 47 per cent of the country is facing drought — with 16 per cent facing extreme, or exceptional category of drought — which we show from our real time monitoring system that we have developed for the country,” said Mishra, who heads the lab.
“Arunachal Pradesh did not get good rain this year, and parts of Jharkhand, southern Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and northern part of Tamil Nadu are under drought,” Mishra said.
According to him, continuing drought will further burden the already depleting ground water resources of the country.
“We are not enhancing groundwater recharge. On the other hand, drought conditions are making us extract more and more water,” he said.
While famine like conditions are not expected, the drought will have a massive impact on the economy.
“It can create long-term stress, if not mortality for poor, marginalised farmers,” Mishra said.
“If our groundwater is not recharged and managed sustainably, we could face a very difficult situation in the coming years,” Mishra said, adding that groundwater is being used irresponsibly at present.
ABSTRACT: In the background of the expanding population and dwindling water resources together with the risks posed by climate change, it is essential to quantify available and potential water resources of the country and the possible impacts of climate change on the existing resources. Here we provide a brief account of different water resources, their availability, potential, the implication of climate change on water availability, demands, and water use in various sectors. We also study the projected changes in precipitation and air temperature under the warming climate in India and their potential implications. India is endowed with numerous surface water resources and groundwater aquifers. However, these resources are not effectively utilized leading to over exploitation in certain areas and under development in the rest. Climate change driven increase in extremes, droughts, and increased irrigation requirements, can further reduce the water availability in India. The existing reservoir capacity may not be sufficient to accommodate floods driven precipitation extremes under the warming climate. Similarly, groundwater storage is likely to get affected due to excessive pumping to meet increased irrigation water requirements. In the future, along with the agriculture sector, burgeoning water demand from the industrial sector and rapid urbanization may aggravate water stress in rapidly developing India. Moreover, a significant portion of our available water resources is severely polluted. To meet the future water demands, we need to come up with water-efficient technologies, reuse and recycling of wastewater, along with the strategies to sustainably use water resources.
(The Guardian) – The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yoghurt containers and other items into recycling bins.