It’s called the Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone (PICZ) and its activity brings roughly 4 meters of rainfall per year to the Pacific equatorial region. Tropical rainfall patterns greatly impact the livelihoods of more than a billion people. Historically, this zone appears to shift in tandem with cooling and warming trends in more northern latitudes. And, it may be on the move again.

This possibility is born out in the results from a recent, oceanographic research project detailing the southward movement of this zone in the past (Southward movement of the Pacific intertropical convergence zone AD 1400–1850, Sachs et al, Dept. of Oceanography/Atmospheric Sciences, Univ. of Wash., June 2009, Nature GeoScience), but which also suggest that, in the present era, a potential, northward movement of this important, climate-impacting zone may be underway.

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Drought is something we think of as being substantial and dramatic – months in which rain doesn’t fall, monsoons that never happen. But the truth about drought is that it is much more insidious – when average rainfall drops, crops fail even though rain happens and can appear plentiful.

Monsoon failure threatens farmers

In India, right now, the monsoon is failing to deliver. Yes, there has been rain most days between June and now, but the actual rainfall has been only a quarter of the usual vast deluge. Around 80% of India’s agricultural land is close to drought conditions, and the monsoon rains will end in September. The fear is twofold: that the rains won’t arrive, and that they will, telescoping immense rainfalls into the last few weeks of monsoon and causing flash floods and subsidence. This year’s rainfalls, so far, are the weakest since 2002, and 2002 was the worst year for Indian agriculture for more than fifty years. Food security is fragile in a country with a young population, greedy for consumer goods, and unwilling to spend hours on cultivating subsistence crops.

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Desert Rhubarb (Rheum palaestinum) grows in Israel and Syria, but was studied in the Negev desert by the University of Haifa. Desert Rhubarb is a perennial hemicryptophyte, that grows during the rainy winter in mountainous desert areas where the average annual rainfall is only 75 mm (just under 3 inches).

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Rainfall patterns altered by climate change and worsened by inequity in the water distribution system has led to a water crisis in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

This has led to a spurt in water related violence and conflicts so shocking, we thought they were predicted to take place only in the next 50 years. The local incident mentioned in the news report above was one among many where a mob of about six people killed a family for illegally drawing water from the municipal supply even as onlookers rushed back and forth to collect water before the pipe ran dry.

The incident, which occurred in a below poverty line (BPL) settlement, is yet another validation of how climate change is having much more impact on the poor, especially in the developing world.

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Magellenic penguins living on the Punta Tombo peninsula, 110 kilometres south of Argentina, are having to swim up to 50 miles further to find food than they did ten years ago.

The vast distances that adult birds are travelling to feed themselves, and their chicks, is translating into failed breeding – the colony is a fifth smaller than it was twenty years ago. A major reason for the increased pressure put on the birds is global warming which has meant the food sources the penguins rely on have become variable. Ocean currents have altered, moving fish stocks away from the colony in some years and leading to the double-marathon extra journey that birds must make to find food. Magellenic penguins take it in turn to incubate eggs and care for chicks, so while one parent is away for days or even weeks, the other fasts until his or her return with regurgitated food for stay-at-home parent and hatchling. The longer journeys to forage for food add to the risk of parent or chick becoming too weak from lack of food to recover when a meal is finally presented.

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A new experiment, being conducted at Imperial College London’s Silwood Park campus in Berkshire, will attempt to determine how the British plant ecosystem will be affected by future changes to climate and biodiversity.

With this experiment, however, there will be no computer simulations. Instead, scientists and researchers will be conducting the experiment outside, with 168 plots of grassland ecosystem at their fingertips. This will give a clear insight into how the ecosystems will hold up under a variety of different situations.

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And these just aren’t 8-month old babies. Kids as old as 16 years old are witnessing rain fall on their very heads.

That rain, according to the National Climate Center (NCC), is an indicator of what might be called the end of our drought. And for this, the entire nation is beyond thankful. We’ve moved all the way through in to … well, whatever is past thankful!

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