CIHEAM Press Review

1 in 4 children will soon live in areas of very high water stress. But there are solutions that allow us to nourish communities in a hotter, drier world.

Adverse weather conditions and sudden shifts in temperatures have negatively impacted agricultural production and crops in Türkiye, whic

Harsh weather affecting major global exporters is reducing wheat output and cutting inventories that have already been projected to hit nine-year lows while fuelling a sudden uptick in prices.

Dryness afflicting suppliers from Russia, the world's biggest, to Argentina, is making food production vulnerable as recent Russian attacks on grain ships in the Black Sea rekindle concerns about the war limiting supplies.

Extreme heat, wildfires and drought have decimated much of the world’s olive harvest yet again, driving prices for olive oil to a record high of $9,000 per metric ton.

Egypt’s Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources is taking active measures to protect vulnerable low-lying coastal areas in the northern Nile Delta, a region highly prone to flooding due to the rising global sea levels caused by climate change.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation could collapse within a few decades or maybe even a few years.

Amid news of lethal heatwaves across the Northern Hemisphere comes the daunting prospect of a climate disaster on an altogether grander scale.

New findings published in Nature Communications suggest the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or Amoc, could collapse within the next few decades – maybe even within the next few years – driving European weather to even greater extremes.

Temperatures lingering above seasonal norms may lead to a decline in bee populations, as it creates an environment for viruses and bacteria and pushes bees to lay eggs earlier, according to an expert working at a research center in Türkiye's northwestern Düzce.

Around 1,500 firefighters were battling multiple forest fires and several bush fires in central and northern Portugal Sunday following a punishing heatwave, prompting the government to implement a "state of contingency".

Most people are familiar with flash floods, those sudden deluges triggered usually by downpours that can wash away homes and infrastructure seemingly in an instant. Flash droughts are less-known phenomena whereby dry spells can dessicate crops within days or weeks, wiping out crops and battering economies.

After a win­ter ranked as the fifth-hottest on Earth, Italy wel­comes the spring sea­son with two main con­cerns: the severe drought affect­ing its north­ern regions and the dis­tor­tion caused by the off-sea­son heat to reg­u­lar crop cycles.
According to the Italian agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, the aver­age win­ter tem­per­a­tures in the sec­ond-largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing coun­try in Europe have increased by 0.15 ºC since 1981.

The book, “Climate Change and Human Behavior,” draws on decades of research to explain how heat and extreme weather change the way people think and act. The authors say climate impacts can lead to individual violence, but also cause an escalation in political unrest, civil war and other forms of communal violence.

In many parts of Egypt, yields are expected to be between 50 and 80-percent below the average. However, producers are optimistic about the future.

In the last few days, several European countries were struck by an extraordinary wave of cold which lowered temperatures below freezing. Cities like Rome and Naples were blanketed in snow and, while authorities and civil protection were handling the special event with the necessary precautions, many took advantage of this to take a break and wage snowball fights in an unusual landscape.

Malcolm Borg, president of 'Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi', says a previously unknown mite was one of three likely reasons why the latest harvest was a poor one

The links between climate and health are well understood. As the world warms and extreme weather events increase in frequency and severity, threats to human health are increasing. That’s very clear at a conceptual level.

Last month was the hottest September on record by an "extraordinary" margin as the world flirts dangerously with breaching a key warming limit, the EU climate monitor said on Thursday.
Much of the world sweltered through unseasonably warm weather in September, in a year expected to be the hottest in human history and after the warmest-ever global temperatures during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

Europe is recovering from last year's severe drought thanks to this spring's rain. But under the ground, aquifers are still at a very low level.

A wetter-than-usual spring has caused crops like tomatoes, onions and grapes to spoil because of an “explosion” of mould.
Last month was the most humid May in a decade and June has had an equally steamy start, according to the Meteorological Office. Malcolm Borg, co-ordinator of Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi, says the unseasonal rain and humidity of the last few weeks has not been welcomed by farmers.

There have been significant increases in dust storm intensity and length in the Middle East in the last few decades. Driven by increased desertification and changing global atmospheric conditions, dust storms present considerable health threats and disruption.

Many regions in France face a pro­longed drought that is impact­ing water avail­abil­ity, soil mois­ture, and farm­ing activ­i­ties.

Forecasts show that most French depart­ments will have to cope with a long dry sum­mer which will exac­er­bate the effects of the drought in sev­eral areas.

A sandy beach in Marsaxlokk has been completely covered in empty shells over the past few days in what a marine biologist has described as a very rare phenomenon.
Abroad, there are numerous bays which are covered in seashells but on Maltese coastlines it is quite rare and, when it does happen, it is never at the large scale we see here in Marsaxlokk,” Alan Deidun told Times of Malta.

Atmospheric rivers, a term first coined in the mid-1990s, carry huge volumes of water from low to higher latitudes. The impacts of these ‘rivers in the sky’ on the coastal regions of the US and Europe have been studied extensively, but little is known about how they affect land far from the oceans, such as in the Middle East. Amin Dezfuli , a hydrometeorologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, explains what we currently know and why it is important we learn more.

Vegetable prices in Egypt soared over the past week as a result of unusually cold weather patterns that have negatively affected crop yields, according to several industry insiders. The inflated prices are just the latest consequence of erratic weather fluctuations caused by climate change that have troubled Egypt’s agricultural industry in recent years.

Heavy rains, hail­storms and other extreme weather events have wreaked havoc in Italy over the past few weeks, caus­ing severe dam­age to olive trees, grape vines and a num­ber of other crops.
In the north of the coun­try, thou­sands of olive trees have been dam­aged by strong storms. Citing data pro­vided by the European Severe Weather Database (ESWD), the Italian farm­ing asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti, said that the coun­try has expe­ri­enced up to nine storms per day, severely impact­ing many farm­ing oper­a­tions across the coun­try.