The News Pakistan: A Bangladeshi disaster management expert, Khurshid Alam, on Friday emphasised the need for training the local community in playing an effective role in recovering from natural calamities and minimising the adverse effects of an emergency. Local knowledge should be incorporated in designing a disaster management plan. It is very important to learn [...]

CO2Science: The authors write that “currently there is much discussion regarding the impact of climate change and the vagaries of the weather, in particular extreme weather events,” which climate alarmists generally contend will increase in both frequency and severity in response to global warming. And in light of this significant climate of interest, plus the [...]

Farmers Weekly: The government’s chief scientific adviser has told Farmers Weekly that farmers should be convinced that global warming is a reality. John Beddington condemned climate scientists who refuse to accept that climate change is happening as all the evidence points towards climate change in a number of forms. “I would completely disagree with those [...]

Seattletimes: Environmentalists and several major insurers argue policymakers must move quickly to cut carbon emissions and devise strategies to adapt to climate impacts. WASHINGTON — Scientists are increasingly confident that the uptick in heat waves and heavier rainfall is linked to human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, posing a heightened risk to the world’s population, according to two [...]

IPS: By Stephen Leahy: CAIRNS, Australia, Apr 3, 2012 (Tierramérica) – Extreme weather is fast becoming the new normal. Canada and much of the United States experienced summer temperatures during winter this year, confirming the findings of a new report on extreme weather. For two weeks this March most of North America baked under extraordinarily [...]

Times of India: The number of extreme events of rainfall (very heavy rainfall) has almost doubled in the country in the last 50 years. On the other hand, there has been a decrease in low and moderate rainfall over central India, according to scientists of the India Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune. The scientists [...]

Business Recorder: Pakistan is losing cumulatively $1 billion per day due to the environmental degradation while the successive governments have never given serious attention to the issue. This was the crux of the seminar on “Strategic Environmental Assessment – in the context of Framework for Economic Growth – Taking the bull by the horns” organised [...]

The WeekEnd Leader: He made the glaciers move from the Himalayas and come closer home. By bringing glaciers to his village, Norphel Chewang helped Ladakh farmers till the land in summer – a privilege nature denied them. While Mahesh Bhatt captures the fabulous images in his camera, Anita Pratap catches up with the engineer. Chewang [...]

IPS: South Africa, Nov 30, 2011: Managing the impact of increased disasters due to climate change will only be possible if such efforts are led by local communities, say non-governmental organisations working in climate change. “We cannot use the excuse of money – or the lack of it – not to do anything. Yes, developed [...]

SciDevNet: This policy brief, published by the International Project Office of the Global Water System Project and produced to inform the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), outlines how scientists and policymakers can advance water security by focusing on interdisciplinary research, and ensuring that all stakeholders are involved in developing sustainable solutions to water problems. [...]

TIME: The Kingdom of Bhutan, tucked between India and China in the foothills of the Himalaya mountain range, is paying the price for global industrialization. Climate change is causing many Himalayan glaciers to melt in increasingly unstable ways, and there are concerns about the long term viability of the ice in a warmer world. Water [...]

Publication: Globalization is the process through which rich becomes richer and poor becomes poorer, irrespective of where they live. The degree of this effect varies with the strengths in the areas of technology, logistics, infrastructures, and finally on the quality of governance. This process is amplified further by economic reforms in India. The process of [...]

World Crunch: Melting glaciers in the Himalayas put the small Kingdom of Bhutan at risk. Not only are the “frozen reservoirs” a fundamental water source, but the melting can also cause GLOFS – aka: ‘mountain tsunamis’ – killer flash floods that occur when glacial lakes suddenly burst. The Kingdom of Bhutan, tucked between India and [...]

Reuters: Like oil in the 20th century, water could well be the essential commodity on which the 21st century will turn. Human beings have depended on access to water since the earliest days of civilization, but with 7 billion people on the planet as of Oct. 31, exponentially expanding urbanization and development are driving demand [...]

AlertNet: Wearing colourful traditional dresses with silver jewellery and bangles on their arms, the women of Tharparkar district look festive. But the empty earthen pots they carry tell a different story. “Walking for three miles and (hoisting) a … bucket filled with water through a wooden pulley from a 130-feet-deep well twice a day is [...]

Ground Report: Production of tea in Assam – one of the world’s largest tea producing regions – is on a slow decline, thanks to changing climate in the Brahmaputra river basin. This has been revealed by Prof Chandan Mahanta, a leading scientist from Assam who has been studying climate change effect in the river basin [...]

WRI: The World Resources Institute and the Coca-Cola Company recently announced a partnership that made industry-leading global water risk maps publicly available for the first time. Coca-Cola has donated maps and data that they developed to help them towards the goal of understanding and managing their exposure to water risks in their facilities around the [...]

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay:Water as a resource from management perspective needs to be managed in the mountains very differently as compared to plains. This requires handling few uneasy questions. This essay attempts to see water management of the HKH debunked from global culture] If you live in Hindu Kush Himalayas, most likely you have grown stoic to [...]

Pabitra Mukhopadhyay: The importance of Climate Himalaya’s knowledge banking and outreach building efforts, one expects, should be portrayed in our essays. An appeal for a pan Himalayan co-operation is already expressed by Noreen, which apart from making good sense for Himalayan people shines a hope for redemption of the long troubled relationship of two neighboring [...]

Vimal Khawas: With the impacts of global warming becoming more apparent, Sikkim Himalaya is perhaps most in tune to the signs of change brought about by climate warming. The people across the towns and villages of Sikkim narrate revealing insights on how global warming is affecting their lives and livelihood. Those who are searching for [...]

Business Standard: There is a need to safeguard every water body, every channel, drain and nullah, and every catchment area. Even as I was writing this, my city, Delhi, was drowning. It had been raining since early morning and four hours of rainfall brought the city to a standstill. The Meteorological Department recorded 60 mm [...]

AssamTribune: The flow of River Brahmaputra during the last four decades has declined by less than four per cent. This has been attributed to the water resources development in the region. The Central Water Commission (CWC) has said that from the record and analysis of hydrological data available, it cannot be conclusively interpreted that the [...]

TheEpochTimes: Officials on Monday warned that landslides in Nepal caused by heavy rains will likely cause more deaths in the near future. The landlocked country, which is nestled in the Himalayan mountain range, is heading toward the end of its monsoon season, officials told the United Nations news service, IRIN. However, in recent days, the [...]

A new website dedicated to mountain weather in more than 9300 (and growing) major summits for climbers and mountaineers, provided for up to 5 different elevations. While this information may be indispensable in planning your ascent, please treat it critically and verify against other sources. Our weather algorithms are thoroughly tested and proven to work [...]

DAWN: With the prediction of heavy rains in upper parts of the Punjab on Saturday and Sunday, the Met Office issued a weather warning saying that the rains could cause flash floods in the local rivers and streams. According to the Met Office, rains and heavy showers are expected in various parts of the country [...]

Stuff.co.nz: Disastrous floods, heatwaves, storms and droughts are becoming more frequent because of climate change, and will continue to do so. Scientists say the world can no longer ignore the link between climate change and extreme weather events, and they are urging countries to face up to the growing risks ahead. New Zealander Kevin Trenberth, [...]

Business Standard: Wrong predictions keep affecting food prices. While predicting the monsoons is a tricky job, the IMD has got it consistently wrong and impacted food prices. The drought of 2009 still haunts the India Meteorological Department (IMD). “It was worse than we initially thought,” says IMD’s Director General Ajit Tyagi. “As the months progressed, [...]

BBC News: Although a normal monsoon has been forecast for South Asia this year, and rains have begun normally in many parts of the region, people are still anxious about the rainy season that lasts for four months. Their anxiety has to do with the uncertainties surrounding the timing of the monsoon in recent years. [...]

Business Standard: Climatic changes in the Brahmaputra basin in near future may affect tea production in Assam, experts feel. A “preliminary study” carried out by IIT-Guwahati on impact of climate change on water resources of Brahmaputra basin revealed that there will be significant changes in rainfall pattern and temperature of this basin. “High intensity rainfall [...]

Nations: After droughts ravaged his parents’ farmland, Sixteen-year-old Hassain and his two-year-old sister Sareye became some of the newest refugees forced from home by water scarcity. “There was nothing to harvest,” Hassain said through an interpreter during an interview at a refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya which is housing some 160,000 Somalis displaced by a [...]

TheNews Pakistan: The rapid climate change and increasing global warming are the major reasons of early onset of monsoon rains in the country, Chief Meteorologist Ghulam Rasool said on Wednesday. Talking to APP, he said the diverse changes in weather patterns are causing early start of monsoon rains for the last one decade.Usually, the monsoon [...]

Independent UK: Scientists to end 20-year reluctance with study into global warming and exceptional weather events. Scientists are to end their 20-year reluctance to link climate change with extreme weather – the heavy storms, floods and droughts which often fill news bulletins – as part of a radical departure from a previous equivocal position that [...]

Hindu: No indication of any strong weather system developing: IMD The monsoon activity over the country may remain weak for the next two weeks, the India Meteorological Department warned on Friday. Though the seasonal trough, now running close to the foothills of the Himalayas, is likely to shift back southwards to its near normal position [...]

Telegraph India: The weather department has forecast heavy rain for the sub-Himalayan Bengal and Sikkim in the next two days and asked the government to be prepared to meet any eventuality. The warning has been issued at a time a large number of villages in north bengal are under water because of incessant rain for [...]

Independent Media Centre Australia: An extreme shift in weather in June across much of southern and eastern China has been put down to the effects of global warming and climate change. Usually light rains start in June in the middle and lower Yangtze valley leading in to the summer monsoonal rains and typhoon season, but [...]

Ecocentric Blog: Most of us learned about “the plague” or “the Black Death” a long time ago – reading Boccaccio and Petrarch, sitting in high school history class, and even from that debate about the nursery rhyme “ring-a-ring of roses.” But scientists have uncovered a link between this historic threat to human health and one [...]

The authors write that “the study of precipitation trends is critically important for a country like India, whose food security and economy are dependent on the timely availability of water.” And since they say that “according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007), future climate change is likely to … increase the risk [...]

The Institute of Strategic Studies organized a seminar on “Climate Change: Challenges in the Pakistani Context” on May 24th 2011. Ambassador (Retd) Shafqat KakaKhel, former deputy executive director of United Nations Environment Programme, began his speech by thanking the Institute of Strategic Studies and Director General of ISSI for the introductory comments. He discussed at [...]

Central China’s worst drought in more than 50 years is drying reservoirs, stalling rice planting, and threatens crippling power shortages as hydroelectric plants lie idle, state media said Wednesday. Rainfall levels from January to April in the drainage basin of the Yangtze, China’s longest and most economically important river, have been 40 percent lower than [...]

Shafqat Kakakhel, former deputy executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has said that climate change is a ‘gift’ of western civilisation but all countries of the world will feel its effects. He was delivering a public talk on ‘Climate Change: Challenges in the Pakistani Context’ organised by the Institute of Strategic Studies [...]

Last year, a lingering spring dry spell in the Southwest helped create prime conditions for the 15,000-acre Schultz fire. The flash floods from intense rains that followed easily washed through the charred forest and devastated Timberline. That apparent anomaly of last year’s dry spring and late, intense summer monsoon, scientists say, could be a future [...]

Recommendations could help the Bay Area adapt to rising seas, heat waves and unpredictable rainfall. Dozens of government agencies will receive suggested to-do lists Wednesday from a San Francisco nonprofit after it spent years studying the likely impacts of climate change. A comprehensive “plan of action” included in “Climate Change Hits Home,” a 40-page report [...]

Dunai, Nepal – Dhnakumari Dangi and her family will probably have to wait another six months before they can get enough to eat. Dangi lives in Jhuphal village in Dolpa, one of Nepal’s poorest districts, at an altitude of 2,987 metres on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. The area is ranked one of the [...]

Background: In light of global warming projections made by models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authors write that several scientists have suggested that “ocean temperature patterns in the tropics and subtropics will change in ways that will lead to noteworthy changes in rainfall patterns.” Reference: Joshi, M.K. and Pandey, A.C. [...]

KATHMANDU: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) handed over hydrological and meteorological equipment worth Rs. 20 million to the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DoHM). Director General of DoHM Dr. Nirmal H. Rajbhandari received the sophisticated equipment from ICIMOD Director General Dr. Andreas Schild amid a function at the ICIMOD premises in Khumaltar in [...]

At least seventeen children were killed and more are feared trapped under the debris of a school building that collapsed following a cloudburst in Uttarakhand’s Kapkot village. It is not known as to how many children were in the school at the time of tragedy. The bodies of seventeen children have been recovered and rescue [...]