Science Alert July 5, 2023 Concurrent weather extremes driven by a strongly meandering jet stream could trigger simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions, but so far this has not been quantified. The ability of state-of-the art crop and climate models to adequately reproduce such high impact events is a crucial component for estimating risks to global food security. An international team of researchers (USA – Columbia University, Germany) has found an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models. While climate models accurately simulate atmospheric patterns, associated surface weather anomalies and negative […]
Category Archives: Global catastrophe
Fungal Infections Could Obliterate Our Food Supply, Scientists Warn
Science Alert May 26, 2023 Hundreds of fungal diseases affect the 168 crops listed as important in human nutrition by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. According to an international team of researchers (UK, Germany) despite widespread spraying of fungicides and the planting of cultivars bred to be more disease resilient, growers worldwide lose between 10% and 23% of their crops to fungal disease every year, and another 10–20% post-harvest. The five most important calorie crops — rice, wheat, maize (corn), soya beans and potatoes — can be affected by rice blast fungus, wheat stem rust, […]
Researchers examine record-shattering 2020 trans-Atlantic dust storm
Phys.org May 26, 2021 For two weeks in June 2020, a massive dust plume from Saharan Africa crept westward across the Atlantic, blanketing the Caribbean and Gulf Coast states in the U.S. Researchers at the University of Kansas used satellite datasets to reconstruct the patterns that transported the dust from Africa to the Americas. According to the researchers the extreme trans-Atlantic dust event is associated with both enhanced dust emissions over western North Africa and atmospheric circulation extremes that favor long-range dust transport. An exceptionally strong African easterly jet and associated wave activities export African dust across the Atlantic toward […]
Scientists’ warning to humanity on insect extinctions
Science Daily April 6, 2020 According to an international team of researchers (Finland, Australia, Germany, South Africa, Austria, the Netherlands, UK, Singapore, Italy, Colombia, USA – Florida A&M University, University of Florida, Switzerland, Brazil, Philippines) with insect extinctions we lose abundance and biomass of insects, diversity across space and time with consequent homogenization, large parts of the tree of life, unique ecological functions and traits, and fundamental parts of extensive networks of biotic interactions. From pollination and decomposition, to being resources for new medicines, habitat quality indication and many others, insects provide essential and irreplaceable services. They recommend urgent action […]