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KENT NEWS

While some producers are celebrating bumper crops courtesy of the early summer heatwave, others are advising producers look to embrace more exotic crops for long-term prosperity. Cherries are among this year’s big hits while wine producers are also raising a glass to the ideal conditions for their grapes. Although, ironically, it has proven too hot for some summer classics. Meanwhile, fruits traditionally associated with warmer parts of Europe – such as apricots, nectarines, and corn on the cob – are already being grown successfully here. There are even some variations on Kentish classics which are now blossoming. Apple varieties such as braeburn apples, which never used to survive in the UK, are already pushing out more traditional types. And scientists say it is all down to the effects of climate change.

Cheryl Martin, of Martin’s Organic Fruit Farm in Marden, said it had been a good year for cherries. “This year has been better than last year because we had all these long, hot days,” she said. She said the only problem to hit crops was the recent heavy downpours, which can cause ‘splitting’ on the cherries. Her farm sells produce wholesale to places including Choice Organic in London and Seasons in Forest Row. Biddenden Vineyards owner Julian Barnes said: “This year has been absolutely fantastic for us so far.” He said the warm, dry weather during flowering season meant that there were lots of grapes on the vines. The sun also creates more alcohol and of a better quality.

Severe and persistent drought held southern Russia in its grip in June and July 2010. Low rainfall and hot temperatures damaged 32 percent of the country’s grain crops, said Russian Agriculture Minister, Yelena Skrynnik on July 23. This satellite vegetation index image, made from data collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, shows the damage done to plants throughout southern Russia. A previously published image of land surface temperatures shows extreme heat in the drought region at the same time. The vegetation index is a reflection of photosynthesis. The index is high in areas where plants are dense, with plenty of photosynthesizing leaves. The index is low when plants are thin or not present. This image is a vegetation index anomaly image that compares photosynthesis between June 26 and July 11, 2010, to average conditions observed in late June and early July between 2000 and 2009. Below-average plant growth is shown in brown, while average growth is cream-colored. If there had been above-average growth in the region, it would have been represented in green. The land around the Volga River is brown in this image. Plants throughout the region were stressed, producing fewer leaves and photosynthesizing less between June 26 and July 11, 2010. The image is speckled brown. In the large image, which covers a broader region in more detail than the web image, the dots are clearly fields of crops. Here, the dots blend together to reveal a broad region of drought-affected crops. The Volga region is one of Russia’s primary spring wheat-growing areas. The vegetation index values shown here were the lowest late-June values seen in Russia’s spring wheat zone since the MODIS sensor began taking measurements in 2000, said an analyst from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural Service. Largely as a result of the drought, the USDA expected Russia’s overall wheat crop to be 14 percent smaller than in 2009. The drought affects more than Russian farmers. Russia is the world’s fourth largest wheat exporter. If Russia isn’t able to supply as much wheat, the world’s overall wheat supply will drop. With less wheat on the market, wheat prices will go up. As of July 23, wheat futures (the current price for wheat that will be harvested and delivered in September) had risen for four consecutive weeks because of the expected drop in supply of Russian wheat, reported Bloomberg.

Swdwmsri Narzary, 19, a nimble weaver, rests her fingers on her loom and gets a faraway look when asked to recall her last few years of struggle dealing with the pressures of climate change. Orphaned at an early age, Swdwmsri lived with her elder brother and his family in Bijni, a rural village in Assam province's Chirang district. But increasingly unpredictable weather conditions - drought one year, incessant and untimely rains the next - made life gradually harder as the family's crops repeatedly failed. With the family on the verge of starvation, Swdwmsri had to drop out of school. Her brother decided not to waste money sowing new crops and instead used his remaining cash to migrate to a nearby city, Guwahati, in search of a job.

Climate Change Is Beginning to Disrupt Agriculture

Climate variability has already affected rains, droughts and temperatures in several parts of the United States, said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "We are already seeing climate change." "We are seeing the expansion of drying," said Rosenzweig, as she brought up a slide showing precipitation measurements across the United States. The measurements, comparing values from 1958 through 2008, showed significant reductions in rainfall across large portions of the Northwest and Southeast. Idaho, Washington, Montana, Georgia and Florida had some of the most drastic changes in rainfall on the map. However, the opposite is not good either, she said, adding that increased soil moisture in some areas could potentially harbor insects and other pests. And, in general, "crops do not like to have their feet wet." Aside from concerns about rainfall, local temperature is also extremely important for crop performance. The reproductive development in many important grains is a process sensitive to temperature, said Paul Gepts, a professor of agronomy at the University of California, Davis. Some plants need cold winters One of the potential side effects of climate change is a trend toward milder winters in some regions. Vital plants, Gepts said, require a cold winter in order to properly develop their seeds for the next season. Rosenzweig agreed. Heat waves, at odd times of the year, affect the proper development of proteins within corn kernels, she said. "It is like scrambling eggs." Gepts also presented a number of well-known strategies for mitigating some of the possible economic effects of climate change on agriculture. Aside from breeding plants to be more drought-, heat- and pest-resistant, he also suggested varying the types of crops maintained on a particular site on the basis of environmental suitability.

Australia's peanut farmers are on the move and some are relocating nearly 2,400 kilometres away for better access to water; last year 88 people in Victoria died on the way to hospital as a result of the heat wave that preceded the disastrous bushfires in early February; the average temperature across the Australian continent has risen by more than 0.8°C in the past 60 years; the Great Barrier Reef is degrading; and more than 40% of the nation's farmers are seriously worried about the viability of their businesses in the face of climate change.These are just some of the effects of climate change unveiled by academics, scientists, social scientists and public servants from universities, research institutes and government agencies at a Universities Australia National Policy Forum held at Parliament House in Canberra in March. The contributors provided unequivocal evidence that climate change was occurring across Australia, that it was accelerating and that its impact on society and the national economy was already apparent. Universities Australia is the peak industry body representing Australia's 39 universities in the public interest, nationally and internationally. The forum was held at Parliament House to attract the attention of the politicians who, for the most part, have paid little mind to tackling the problems caused by climate change. Speakers at the forum backed the detailed measurements of climate change presented in a report released just before the forum by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Farmers are among the first to feel the impact of climate change. Already the peanut industry had assessed its future and a part had decided to move, said Professor Graham Baker and Dr Roger Stone from the University of Southern Queensland. They noted that the cotton industry was also undergoing a consultation process about where it was headed while the rice crop in the Riverina had dropped from a million tonnes a year to less than 50,000. The harvest date for wine growers has been moving a day earlier each year since 1980, according to data accumulated by Professor Snow Barlow of Melbourne University's school of land and environment. Snow is a professor of horticulture and viticulture and Convener of a primary industries adaptation research network. He said dry-land crops were being sown later and harvested earlier. This added to the evidence of changes in the timing of the life cycles of flowering plants and birds, according to his colleague, Dr Marie Keatley of the university's department of forest and ecosystems. "In many places in Australia, such as grain-cropping in the Mallee in northern Victoria, we are getting to the limits of adaptive management where farmers can change what they are doing within their existing system," Barlow said. "Given the climate data from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, it won't be too long before we have to consider changing our agriculture systems entirely." But not all the news was bad, said Professor Amanda Lynch from the school of geography and environmental sciences at Monash University in Melbourne: "By an accident of our geography, Australia is a country that is subjected to very large changes over a decadal time scale because of the El Niño phenomenon. "So we already have an agricultural sector and a water management sector that is used to large swings over long time scales. We are used to pragmatic, messy, contingent approaches."

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

Bolstered by mild winters and heavy spring rains, the poison ivy creeping across the Chicago landscape this summer is at bumper crop levels.The abundance of poison ivy and other invasive plants proliferating in Illinois and across much of the nation this year is a symptom of a scenario more serious than an itchy red rash, experts say.Elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere, although destructive to many plant species, are proving a boon for adaptive weeds such as poison ivy, said Lewis Ziska, a federal plant physiologist.

"We are up to our arms in poison ivy this summer," said Ziska, with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md. The higher CO2 levels, he said, also are contributing to an increasing abundance of kudzu, the legendary vine once limited to the South but was discovered lurking in central Illinois and as far north as Canada. Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director for the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, said recent studies show that poison ivy is not only more prevalent across the U.S. but more toxic, too. The rise in CO2 levels strengthens an oil in the plant that triggers itchy havoc when it touches the skin, he said. The heavy rains, warmer temperatures and rising CO2 levels that have disturbed plant chemistry also have increased pollen counts, leading to higher rates of asthma and allergies. "It's not an accident we're having this perfect storm," said Epstein. "Pests and pathogens thrive in extreme events, like floods or droughts. We need to stabilize the climate by reducing fossil fuel emissions dramatically." John Masiunas, an associate professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign, said he is unaware of any quantitative data tracking an increase in poison ivy taking root across the state. But, he said, "it makes perfect sense that higher CO2 levels will make these plants more efficient." The plant has "a survivor's ability" to grow in a variety of environments, Masiunas said, adding that climate change is also detrimental to endangered species such as native thistles and orchids that require specific soils and pollinators to thrive. "When climate change occurs … it is poor for these plants and contributes to the extinction of the species," Masiunas said. "When endangered plants are competing in an agricultural ecosystem, they start losing, and plants like poison ivy start doing better."

Add this one to the year’s lengthening list of natural disasters — a bumper crop of poison ivy. It’s flourishing this summer, which, The Wall Street Journal says, “is shaping up to be one of its most virulent and unpredictable seasons.”

Long term, it seems that poison ivy responds positively to global warming, especially the increase in carbon dioxide, which produces bigger and more irritating plants.

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.

Some experts call the genocide in Darfur the world's first conflict caused by climate change. After all, the crisis was sparked, at least in part, by a decline in rainfall over the past 30 years just as the region's population doubled, pitting wandering pastoralists against settled farmers for newly scarce resources, such as arable land.

Agricultural economist Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley and his colleagues have analyzed the history of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa between 1980 and 2002 in a new paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We find that civil wars were much more likely to happen in warmer-than-average years, with one degree Celsius warmer temperatures in a given year associated with a 50 percent higher likelihood of conflict in that year," Burke says. The implication: because average temperatures may warm by at least one degree C by 2030, "climate change could increase the incidences of African civil war by 55 percent by 2030, and this could result in about 390,000 additional battle deaths if future wars are as deadly as recent wars."

New Weather Patterns Threaten U.S. Breadbasket

The Midwest climate has already become wetter and warmer, said Gene Takle, an atmospheric scientist at Iowa State University.

One of Takle's studies used Iowa's experience to show the stress already showing up in the Midwest states, which are major food exporters to other countries as well. For example, precipitation has risen gradually in Iowa over the past century, but can vary widely from year to year. Springs now are wetter, and autumns drier. That can make corn-planting difficult, but dry the grain more quickly in the fall. Records show a rise in absolute humidity, threatening crops with a higher risk of disease and harmful fungi.

July 26 (Bloomberg) -- Muscovites sweltered as the temperature soared to a record 37.4 degrees Celsius (99.3 Fahrenheit), and the number of Russians who drowned trying to beat the heat reached about 2,000.

Today’s temperature in the capital was the hottest since records began 130 years ago, the Hydrometeorological Monitoring Service said on its website. It surpassed the previous high of 36.8 degrees set in July 1920 during the Civil War. The mercury may rise to 38 degrees on July 29, according to Gidromettsentr, the state weather service. Unusually high temperatures have contributed to record deaths by drowning across Russia, which increased by 688 in the past three weeks, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported on July 23, citing Emergency Situations Ministry data. Most of those who drowned were intoxicated, the government’s newspaper of record said. Another 39 people died yesterday, the ministry said on its website.

The heat wave has also hit Russia’s economy, with drought damage to 10.1 million hectares, or 32 percent of all land under cultivation, Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said on July 23. The ministry has declared weather-related emergencies in 23 crop-producing regions. Russian food grain prices may double in 2010 from last year because of the drought, the Grain Producers’ Union said in an e- mailed statement today. OAO GAZ, the van and truck maker controlled by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, halted production for two weeks because of the heat. Workers were sent home today on a “corporate vacation” through Aug. 8, spokeswoman Natalya Anisimova said by telephone.

In Guatemala, the people first realized they were experiencing climate change after Hurricane Mitch left 12,000 people dead in 1998, says Naty Atz Sunc, the general co-ordinator for the Association of Community Development and Promotion (CEIBA). Since then Tropical Storm Stan in 2005 and Agatha in May have left thousands of people in temporary shelters. Although, there were storms before, what Guatemala is experiencing is much more extreme now, Sunc explained with Rachel Warden from Kairos translating. There has been devastating loss of crops, including grains and entire families have been displaced because of landslides. “For the first time, we’ve experienced hail in Guatemala,” she said.

In an ominous sign of climate change hitting home, India has seen accelerated warming in the past few decades and the temperature-rise pattern is now increasingly in line with global warming trends. The most up-to-date study of temperatures in India, from 1901 to 2007, has found that while it’s getting warmer across regions and seasons, night temperatures have been rising significantly in almost all parts of the country. The rise in night temperatures — 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade since 1970, according to the study — could have potentially adverse impact on yields of cereal crops like rice. The paper also finds that warming has been highest in post-monsoon and winter months (October to February).

‘‘Until the late 1980s, minimum (or night) temperatures were trendless in India. India was an odd dot in the global map as most regions worldwide were seeing a rise in night temperatures in sync with growing levels of greenhouse gases. Our analysis shows the global trend has caught up with India,’’ said K Krishna Kumar, senior scientist and programme manager at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, and one of the authors.

The rising night temperatures are a major cause of worry. Said Jagdish K Ladha, principal scientist in the India chapter of International Rice Research Institute, ‘‘Minimum temperatures have a link with rice fertility. At higher than normal night temperatures, rice grains aren’t properly filled up, leading to a drop in yield.’’

For the past four weeks temperatures across western Russia have topped 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit), killing scores of people and creating what is thought to be the worst drought since 1972.

Many farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy, while a state of emergency has been declared in 17 Russian regions. Nearly 10 million hectares of crops have been destroyed by drought.

"Such long periods of summer drought have been registered before, for instance, in 1936, but over the past few years they have become more frequent," Alexei Kokorin, the head of WWF Russia's climate program, told RIA Novosti. "This is a reaction of the climate system to man-made changes in atmospheric chemistry," he said.

Another community likewise affected equally, if not more, by climate change is the one which inhabits the Tropics in the Sunderban forests. Straddling the massive delta of Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna on the Bay of Bengal spreading across India and Bangladesh, Sunderbans are spread over an area of more than 10000 square kilometres. More than half of it has the world’s largest mangrove forests which have been declared as two different World Heritage Sites for the two countries. The forests are a

Another community likewise affected equally, if not more, by climate change is the one which inhabits the Tropics in the Sunderban forests. Straddling the massive delta of Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna on the Bay of Bengal spreading across India and Bangladesh, Sunderbans are spread over an area of more than 10000 square kilometres. More than half of it has the world’s largest mangrove forests which have been declared as two different World Heritage Sites for the two countries. The forests are also home to a substantial population of the threatened Royal Bengal Tiger.

A 2007 report of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (UNESCO) said that a 45 centimetres anthropogenic rise in the sea level by the end of the current century is likely to destroy 75 per cent of the Sunderban mangroves within the current century. However, certain inhabited islands have already disappeared having been overtaken by the sea. Among them are Lohachara and the New Moore islands. Another island, Ghoramara, has lost around half of its landmass turning more than half of the Island’s population of 12000 into climate refugees. They have all fled – some to the mainland and others elsewhere in Sunderbans. The remaining have had to give up cultivation in the fertile soil or gathering honey from the jungle and have taken to fishing. Researchers have heard the same story retold everywhere in the Sunderbans. As the sea-water comes in floods it destroys the crops, the soil takes on the sea’s salinity and renders it unproductive. Moving away and looking for a safer place is the only alternative to cope with the rising sea. Of late, such movements have, however, had to become devastatingly more frequent, stressing the once-simple rhythm of life of these poor people.

As more studies reveal findings of an increase in climate extremes in Mongolia, scientists are particularly concerned about the rapid spread of desertification caused by global warming and land degradation due to overgrazing. Presidential advisor on environmental policy, Mr. Zorigt. E, spoke recently revealed some of the most recent and alarming data about the impact of climate change across the country. Zorigt. E – Ecology and environmental policy advisor to the President of Mongolia (M): Twenty percent of all rivers have gone, according to the last count. Many other rivers and lakes are close to disappearing. Seventy-five percent of all territory has been affected by desertification. The northern part of the desertified area includes the capital city. Such an actual process already has become reality. Now we have to wake up and pay attention to it.

High temperatures, which rose to a record 37.4 Celsius (99 Fahrenheit) yesterday in Moscow, have damaged 32 percent of land under cultivation and forced Russia to declare states of emergency in 23 regions. Grain prices may double this year because of the drought, according to the Grain Producers’ Union.

Inflation may quicken to 8.1 percent by December, compared with the government’s annual forecast of less than 6.5 percent, according to Yaroslav Lissovolik, Deutsche Bank AG’s head of research in Moscow. That will put pressure on the central bank to raise its benchmark rate by year-end for the first time since December 2008, said Natalia Orlova, Moscow-based chief economist at Alfa Bank, Russia’s biggest private lender.

Higher rates “may cause a correction in short-term sovereign bonds and, later, in long-term sovereign bonds,” said Evgeniy Nadorshin, senior economist at Trust Investment Bank in Moscow and an adviser to Economy Minister Elvira Nabiullina. The government, which plans to sell 1.2 trillion rubles ($39.3 billion) of bonds on the domestic market this year to finance its budget deficit, may increase that figure to pay for subsidies and contain the drought’s fallout, Nadorshin said.

Wheat prices have staged the most drastic rise in more than 50 years, as a drought in Russia fuels growing worries that it could lead to a global shortage of the grain. Harsh heat and a lack of rain in Russia have killed half of the crop in some hard-hit areas. The slump in production in one of the world's most fertile breadbaskets has pushed prices up 62% since early June, and last month saw the biggest and fastest increase since 1959.