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Still recovering from a 10-year drought on the world's driest inhabited continent, Australia is increasingly turning to the oceans that surround it for drinking water. Australia's five largest cities have embarked on a massive $13-billion plan to build desalination plants that can remove the salt from seawater and make it potable. By 2012, when the last plant is scheduled to be up and running, Australia's big cities will get 30% of their water from the oceans, The New York Times reported Sunday. The government says Australia's latest decade-long drought was largely caused by climate change and one official called the $13-billion desalination programme "the cost of adapting to climate change."

"We consider ourselves the canary in the coal mine in for climate change-induced changes to water supply systems,” Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association of Australia, told The New York Times.

In their overview of shifting climate in the region, Overpeck and Udall cite published findings of prevalent signs of change: rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought, plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation mortality and more large wildfires. "The West, and especially the Southwest, is leading the nation in climate change – warming, drying, less late-winter snowpack and drought – as well as the impacts of this change," said Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences and co-director of the Institute of the Environment. In the past 10 years, temperatures in almost all areas in western North America have surpassed the 20th century average, many by more than 1 or even 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming has decreased late-season snowpack, which serves as a water reservoir, as well as the annual flow of the Colorado River, the researchers said.

Those reductions, combined with the worst drought observed since 1900, haven't helped matters; water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, the largest southwestern water reservoirs, fell nearly 50 percent between 1999 and 2004 and has not risen significantly since.

In addition to water, vegetation is feeling the effects of climate change. Work by UA's David Breshears and colleagues have already showed that more than 1 million hectares of piñon pine have died in the Southwest in the last few decades from a lethal combination of record-high temperatures and uncommonly severe drought. In addition, the frequency of large wildfires has increased as snowpack has decreased.

China issued a fresh heatwave alert Wednesday as soaring temperatures -- some of them record highs -- were again forecast for large swathes of the nation, sparking concerns about power shortages.The National Meteorological Centre warned that large parts of northern and central China would again be hit by "sweltering heat and very little rain", with temperatures set to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).It set the heat alert at "orange" -- the second-highest rating on a four-colour scale.The extreme heat, which began at the weekend in most areas, has led to hospital wards packed with people suffering from heat-related illnesses, a surge in air-conditioner sales and even a plague of locusts in Inner Mongolia.

Zookeepers

used giant ice blocks to keep animals cool, the Xinhua news agency reported.In several cities including Beijing, where the temperature hit 40.6 degrees Celsius on Monday, authorities reported that overheated vehicles had caught fire, state media said.The heatwave comes after torrential rains in June, mainly in southern parts of the nation, caused massive floods and landslides that killed at least 266 people.The soaring temperatures have led to fears of power shortages in several provinces due to high demand for air conditioning, the state-run Global Times reported.In the southern city of Guangzhou, authorities had opened nearly 500 shelters equipped with air-conditioning units and water for people to escape the heat, the report said.Water demand has also soared along with the high temperatures.In Beijing on Monday, nearly three million cubic metres of water was pumped into the capital, the largest single-day usage since tap water was brought into operation in 1910, the China Daily reported.Authorities in the capital said they would double a "high temperature" subsidy for people working outside in the heat, or whose workplaces were hotter than 33 degrees Celsius.Those who work outside will now get an extra 120 yuan (18 dollars) a month, while people in hot indoor places will be paid 90 yuan, the report said.

AVAILABILITY of water in the country has been decreasing over the years due to a number of factors including increased demand. The Minister for Water and Irrigation, Prof Mark Mwandosya, said here on Wednesday that the shortage was also caused by climate change which led to a rise of temperatures, drought and decreased levels of lakes and rivers. He said according to studies, Tanzania's temperature has been rising by one degree for the past 60 years.

islands are coping with sea-level change, with higher waves and water depth supplying sand and gravel from coral reefs.

study shows the islands are coping with sea-level change, with higher waves and water depth supplying sand and gravel from coral reefs.

"In other words, they (the islands) are slowly moving ... migrating across their reef platforms," he said. "As the sea-level conditions and wave conditions are changing, the islands are adjusting to that."

Ongoing drought in Vietnam is constraining the country’s food security, and temperatures reaching upwards of 104 Fahrenheit have further compounded the problem. Roughly 46,000 hectares of cropland in the central north region and more than 25, 000 hectares of rice along the coastal provinces have been affected, the Thanh Nien Daily reports.

Vietnam is the second-largest exporter of rice in the world. The agricultural industry employs more than 22 million Vietnamese. By the end of June over 400,000 tons of rice, worth an estimated $US131.7 million, had been lost, officials told the Thanh Nien Daily. So far the state has granted about $US15 million for drought relief, the Asian Times reports.

The Mekong Delta, the final recipient of the waters from the Mekong River before it empties into the South China Sea, produces more than half of Vietnam’s rice. But the Mekong is the lowest it has been in more than 50 years, Voice of America News reports. Low rainfall has caused increased salinization in the Mekong Delta, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development predicted in March that more than 100,000 hectares of farmland in the region are in jeopardy.

Quebec is already seeing economic effects of climate change, said Economic Development Minister Clement Gignac. On Lac St. Jean, extremely low water levels forced sailboat owners to remove their craft from the lake, while Rio Tinto, which owns hydro dams in the area, has had to ask Hydro-Quebec for electricity."I know scientists like to be prudent, and they need proof, but there is an accumulation of meteorological anomalies in our weather -heat waves, low precipitation -that have significant economic impact," said Gignac.

HEAVY RAIN and deadly landslides have left 132 people dead and scores missing in southern China, authorities said yesterday, and over a million residents have been evacuated to safety. More storms are forecast and the death toll is expected to rise.More than 10 million people in south China’s nine provinces have been affected by severe floods, the ministry of water resources said, with power cuts, collapsed reservoirs and damage to roads also taking their toll.

Flooding is an annual event in China along the banks of the Yangtze river, which divides north and south China, and the Pearl river delta, which forms the focus of China’s economic powerhouse in Guangdong province. But this year’s floods have been heavier than usual and follow an intense period of drought in the region in the south and eastern seaboard, which left millions without drinking water and destroyed more than 12 million acres of crops.

The intense rainstorms started in mid-June in the provinces, which include Fujian, Jiangxi and Hunan, and the state-run CCTV station broadcast footage of rescues by boat and helicopter as the People’s Liberation Army rescue teams arrived at the site.

World’s largest rice exporter, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta which accounts for more than half of its output is hit by drastic climate changes, resulting huge losses of crops. Drought caused by a hot spell over the past month has hurt rice fields in the region with nearly 100,000 hectares destroyed or partly destroyed. A total of 25,000 hectares of rice was ruined and yields on another 70,000 hectares will drop sharply, the report said, giving no forecast for output losses.

The hot weather hit northern and central provinces from early June. On June 16 state forecasters said the temperature in Hanoi reached an average 34.6, the highest since 1961, leading to a surge in demand for electricity and widespread power cuts. While delta farmers cope with drought, they are also challenged by sea water intrusion, which experts also link to climate change. Over the past 50 years the sea level has already risen by 20 centimeters along Vietnam's coast

the glaciers that melt into the Ganges are shrinking, according to the most detailed analysis yet of how climate change will affect key Asian glaciers.

the 100-metre-thick glaciers that feed the Ganges are thinning, at a rate of 22 centimetres per year.

Speaking at the Asean Energy Business Forum Ministers-CEO Dialogue in Vietnam last Friday, Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said the need to “climate-proof” the region’s energy sector was now more pressing, given the visible impact of climate change on various aspects of energy production.

He explained that the energy sector was very vulnerable to the effects of climate change, using as an example the Philippines’ experience during the extended El Niño weather phenomenon. Mindanao experienced daily rotating power interruptions, sometimes lasting 10-12 straight hours, due to severe lack of water to power the main grid’s hydropower facilities, from which the bulk of the region’s power supply came.

Apart from hydropower generation, Almendras related that wind power generation was also highly affected by climate change. “Wind power generation is susceptible to variations in ambient temperatures, humidity, and precipitation. The primary determinants of wind power availability are wind speed statistics, consisting of mean wind speeds and gustiness. Wind speeds are subject to natural variability on a wide range of time scales, and they may be affected by climate change,” he explained. To help respond to the effects of climate change, he said the country had adopted a holistic approach of combining mitigation with adaptation.

June ended with below average rainfall and updated provisional figures show that January to June had average rainfall of around 362.5 mm, making it comparable with 1953 which had 361.1 mm. 1929 had the driest first six months of a year, when 275.7mm of rain was recorded.