Climate Crisis, Biosphere & Societal Collapse

On a Tuesday afternoon in May, earth system scientist Thomas Gill was tracking yet more dust rolling through this border city. El Paso has experienced 10 dust storms this year, trailing only the Dust Bowl years of 1935 and 1936. The average is 1.8 storms per year, according to Gill.

There have been dust events on 34 days this year in the border city, the highest total since 1970-71. Gill has been fielding calls from reporters around the country as dust blows from West Texas as far as Des Moines.

The combination of a windier than average spring and extreme drought in the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico have created exceptionally dusty conditions. High winds lift loose, dry soil and sand, creating dust clouds that travel long distances. Much of the dust blowing into El Paso comes from Southern New Mexico and Chihuahua, including from dried lakes known as playas. With little rain in the forecast, the dust conditions show no sign of stopping.

Airborne particulate concentrations have soared to hazardous levels during the storms, impacting local health. Exposure to particulate matter pollution is linked to aggravated asthma, decreased lung function and heart attacks in people with heart disease. Dust means closed highways, cancelled sports events, deadly car wrecks and increased hospitalizations.

Residents of the Borderland region, including El Paso, Las Cruces, New Mexico and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, are accustomed to dust storms. But Gill said this year is different.

“We’ve thought of the dust as a nuisance to people’s lifestyle in the Borderland, but not something that’s going to affect their activities,” he said. “I think it’s gotten bad enough this year that people are realizing it does have consequences.”

https://archive.ph/6uHeI

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22612621

A mysterious, brown foam appeared on a beach an hour south of Adelaide. It was just the beginning of a toxic algal bloom that has now grown to thousands of square kilometres in size, killing precious sea life in its wake. Experts say it could be a sign of things to come.

The blame was placed on an “ongoing marine heatwave” which had seen water temperatures 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than usual.

I wonder what prciptated the marine heatwave /s

On Kangaroo Island, which reported its first fish kills in March, some beaches were so littered with dead sea life, the smell was overpowering.

Climate breakdown and wildlife loss are deepening the EU’s “chocolate crisis”, a report has argued, with cocoa one of six key commodities to come mostly from countries vulnerable to environmental threats.

More than two-thirds of the cocoa, coffee, soy, rice, wheat and maize brought into the EU in 2023 came from countries that are not well prepared for climate change, according to the UK consultants Foresight Transitions.

For three of the commodities – cocoa, wheat and maize – two-thirds of imports came from countries whose biodiversity was deemed not to be intact, the analysis found.

The researchers said the damage to food production by climate breakdown was made worse by a decline in biodiversity that has left farms less resilient.

archived (Wayback Machine)

archived (Wayback Machine)

The risk of flooding events along the U.S. Northeast coast has doubled since 2005. Now, scientists have discovered that up to 50% of these events occurred because key Atlantic ocean currents are slowing down.

In a new study, researchers found that a considerable portion of the increase in flood risk was linked to the deceleration of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) — a giant network of ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean that includes the Gulf Stream and brings heat to the Northern Hemisphere.

The AMOC relies on surface waters that have traveled north from the Southern Hemisphere sinking in the North Atlantic. Once they reach the seabed, these waters can ride back south on bottom currents. But climate change is blocking the sinking step by releasing meltwater from the Arctic and Greenland Ice Sheet into the North Atlantic. This dilutes the salt concentration and reduces the density of surface waters, keeping them at the top of the water column.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• Live Science article
• research cited

As destructive and deadly tornadoes bared down on Kentucky, National Weather Service officials triaged to provide life-saving forecasts and warnings amid federal staffing cuts.

At least 23 people in the state died from powerful tornadoes that ripped through overnight May 16, and Gov. Andy Beshear said the death toll was expected to rise.

Most of the deaths were concentrated in the eastern part of the state, which is served by the weather service's Jackson, Kentucky, forecast office.

The office is one of four forecast offices that no longer has overnight staffing because of a shortage of meteorologists, according to Tom Fahy, legislative director for the weather service employees union. Hundreds have left the agency amid cuts ordered by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, to slash the cost and size of the federal government.

Acute global food insecurity rose for the sixth year in a row in 2024, according to the 2025 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC), a collaborative effort coordinated by the Food Security Information Network.

The report shows that climate extremes, conflict, forced displacement and economic shocks continue to drive malnutrition and food insecurity around the world, with disastrous impacts on those living in many of the most vulnerable regions in the world.

archived (Wayback Machine)

Plenty of farmland to go around.

Russia's largest maker of combine harvesters and tractors, Rostselmash, said on Friday the demand for its machines has collapsed, forcing it to suspend production from June and cut costs, since farmers have no money to buy new equipment.

Rostselmash said it will send all its workers on mandatory leave starting in June, before the harvesting season begins, moving the leave forward from August and September as in previous years.

"The measure is a forced one and is due to the current economic context in the agricultural sector. Farmers do not have the funds to purchase the equipment they need, resulting in a significant market downturn," the company said in a statement.

Expensive loans add to other woes, such as high export duties and rising costs for fuel and fertilizers, making farming unprofitable in many regions and undermining Russia's ambition to be an agriculture superpower.

The central bank's tight monetary policy has rendered commercial loans, currently at rates around 30%, inaccessible for most farmers, who primarily use them to buy new equipment.

Rostselmash said sales by all Russian farming equipment manufacturers fell by 76% for grain harvesters, 49% for forage harvesters, and 48% for tractors, compared to the same period in 2021, an agricultural boom year.

The company has laid off 2,000 workers since the fall of 2024, its CEO Konstantin Babkin told Kommersant daily earlier this month.

In recent years, it had been a beneficiary of the Russian agriculture boom. It had also successfully pushed out foreign competitors, becoming an example of "import substitution," a strategy adopted by the Russian government to reduce dependency on foreign firms in the face of Western sanctions.

Arkady Zlochevsky, head of the Russian Grain Union lobby group, warned that if farmers are unable to upgrade their machinery they will be more susceptible to adverse weather. Modern machinery helps farmers to take advantage of favourable weather windows more efficiently.

Farmers also face high export duties and rising costs for fuel and fertilizers and despite lobbying from farmers, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev said duties would remain in place.

"This is the result of the desire to collect more money from farmers through export duties," parliament member and farmer Sergei Lisovsky said in response to Rostselmash's statement.

Reuters

China’s plans to build a massive hydro project in Tibet have sparked fears about the environmental impacts on the world’s longest and deepest canyon. It has also alarmed neighboring India, which fears that China could hold back or even weaponize river water it depends on.

Archived

A hydroelectric project at a remote river gorge in eastern Tibet, an ecological treasure trove close to a disputed border with India. Indian politicians have reacted angrily, saying it gives China the ability to release destructive “water bombs” across the border in any future conflict. They are planning a retaliatory dam on their side of the border that experts say could be at least as environmentally destructive.

Two Chinese dams will barricade the Yarlung Tsangpo, the Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra River, as it is about to flow through the world’s longest and deepest river canyon — think the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River, only three times as deep. Projected to cost $137 billion, the scheme will be the world’s biggest single infrastructure project, with almost three times the generating capacity of the world’s current largest hydroelectric dam, China’s Three Gorges on the Yangtze River.

Chinese ecologists say the canyon is one of the most precious biodiversity hotspots on the planet, containing some of Asia’s tallest and most ancient trees as well as the world’s richest assemblage of large carnivores, especially big cats. But India’s anger is geopolitical. Pema Khandu, the chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian state immediately downstream, called the project “a big threat” that could dry up the river through his state during routine operation and potentially be weaponized to unleash a flood in which, he said, hundreds of thousands could lose their lives.

[...]

The stakes are high, with tensions over scarce water resources in the region rising. India last month suspended its adherence to a treaty in operation for 65 years to share with Pakistan the waters of another great South Asian river, the Indus. Meanwhile the 30-year-old Ganges Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh is set to expire next year, with India widely accused of violating its terms.

“Weaponizing water is a perilous strategy that may backfire,” says Mehebub Sahana, an environmental geographer at the University of Manchester. “The weakening of water diplomacy in South Asia is not just a regional threat; it endangers global climate security.”

Tibet, part of China since 1951, is the water tower of Asia. Its vast glaciers sustain major rivers on which more than 1.3 billion people in 10 countries depend for drinking, irrigating crops, and hydropower. China, already the world’s leading producer of hydroelectricity, sees more dams on these rivers as a key to reducing its carbon emissions.

[...]

Technical details about the project have yet to be published. But Chinese government media say it will have a generating capacity of 60,000 megawatts, almost 30 times that of the Hoover Dam. But the two proposed dams don’t need to be even as high as the Hoover Dam, says Gamble. “This is more a mega-project than a mega-dam.” The site’s unique geography will do the work, as the water rushes downward for thousands of feet through 12-mile-long tunnels to deliver unprecedented power to turbines at the bottom of the canyon, before discharging the flow back into the river close to the border with India. “Indian soldiers will overlook the project from their bunkers,” says Gamble.

Indian scientists believe that operating the dams to meet China’s electricity needs will change the river’s strongly seasonal flow. “Reduced water flow in the dry season, coupled with sudden releases of water during monsoons, could intensify both water scarcity and flooding, endangering millions,” says Sahana.

The project could also impact sediment flows in the river. Erosion in the canyon currently supplies 45 percent of the total volume of sediment that flows downstream on the Brahmaputra, says Robert Wasson, a geomorphologist at James Cook University, in Australia. Bypassing the canyon could reduce sediment supply to the lower reaches and damage the river’s vast delta, says Sahana. “Any disruption to the balance of sediment could accelerate coastal erosion and make the already low-lying [delta] area more vulnerable to sea-level rise.” But this outcome is far from clear, says Wasson, as too little is known about sediment movement on the river.

[...]

The geopolitics of international rivers in South Asia has long been fraught. India itself has often been accused of being an upstream bully — notably on the Indus River, which flows out of the Himalayas and through India to Pakistan.

[...]

Last month, tensions soared again when India unilaterally suspended its adherence to the treaty, as part of its retaliation for a terrorist attack. Pakistan’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif responded by warning that if India tried to block the river’s flow it would be met with “full force and might.”

The parallel between this standoff on the Indus and the threat posed to India by the Chinese project on the Brahmaputra is compelling, but not exact. There is no treaty governing the management of the Brahmaputra, for instance. But the power of upstream countries over their downstream neighbors is central to both disputes. In each case, the hydrological and political stakes are high in a region with a troubling history of belligerent rhetoric, unilateral actions on shared rivers, and taking up arms over disputed waters.

https://democracynow.org/

Bananas are the world’s most consumed fruit – and the fourth most important food crop globally, after wheat, rice and maize. About 80% of bananas grown globally are for local consumption, and more than 400 million people rely on the fruit for 15% to 27% of their daily calories.

And the climate crisis is threatening the future of the world’s most popular fruit, as almost two-thirds of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean may no longer be suitable for growing the fruit by 2080, new research has found.

Rising temperatures, extreme weather and climate-related pests are pummeling banana-growing countries such as Guatemala, Costa Rica and Colombia, reducing yields and devastating rural communities across the region, according to Christian Aid’s new report, Going Bananas: How Climate Change Threatens the World’s Favourite Fruit.

(mostly about the US)

• Climate change is colliding with land use practices, deforestation and biodiversity loss to drive a rapidly growing threat of crop pests.
• Future warming of 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels (likely by the 2040s or 2050s, according to current projections) could see substantial losses of staple crop yields for wheat (an estimated 46% loss), rice (19%) and maize (31%) due to pest infestations, according to a recent paper.
• Temperate regions are likely to see the greatest increases in crop pests as warming creates conditions for migrating subtropical species to establish themselves in previously unhabitable areas.
• The authors underline the need for more pest monitoring, diversification of farmland crops and biotechnological solutions to meet this growing threat.

Note that future warming is likely to be up to 50% greater than stated in this article.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• Mongabay article
• research cited

The rhetoric of “hopium” is failing as ecological overshoot deepens. “Hopium”, a colloquial term that is a blend of the words “hope” and “opium” (as though it were a drug), represents a faith in technological and market-based solutions to address our multiple reinforcing crises, despite evidence to the contrary.

Note that this analysis may underestimate climate sensitivity.

Abstract

There is increasing concern that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may collapse this century with a disrupting societal impact on large parts of the world. Preliminary estimates of the probability of such an AMOC collapse have so far been based on conceptual models and statistical analyses of proxy data. Here, we provide observationally based estimates of such probabilities from reanalysis data. We first identify optimal observation regions of an AMOC collapse from a recent global climate model simulation. Salinity data near the southern boundary of the Atlantic turn out to be optimal to provide estimates of the time of the AMOC collapse in this model. Based on the reanalysis products, we next determine probability density functions of the AMOC collapse time. The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59±17%.

(…) the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2100 is very likely to be underestimated in the IPCC-AR6 and needs to be reconsidered in the IPCC-AR7.

archived (Wayback Machine)