Disasters

"You might assume that home prices would decline in an area recently wrecked by a hurricane, but a new study finds the opposite is true, and post-storm price hikes could be a major driver of what’s known as climate gentrification."

"When plague struck black-tailed prairie dogs in the Thunder Basin National Grassland in Wyoming in 2017, a huge die-off followed. It spelled disaster for the burrowing rodents. But for researchers, it provided an opportunity for a “natural experiment” in the consequences of a single species’ collapse."

"Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door. Then the water got cut off."

"Three years of drought have dried up Tunisian reservoirs, threatening harvests that are critical to the North African country's battered economy and pushing the government to raise tap water prices for homes and businesses."

"After recovering from Saddam Hussein’s campaign to drain them, Iraq’s Mesopotamian Marshes are disappearing as a regional drought enters its fourth year and upstream dams cut off water flows. Marsh Arabs, resident for millennia, are leaving, and biodiversity is collapsing."

"The US endured a particularly painful year as communities wrestled with the growing impacts of the climate crisis, with 18 major disasters wreaking havoc across the country as planet-heating emissions continued to climb."

"Governments must get to grips with the links between the climate crisis and the plight of migrants around the world, experts have said, as increasingly extreme weather is a mounting danger to already vulnerable displaced people, and is potentially pushing more people to flee their homes."

"The latest in a series of intense winter storms continued to lash Northern California on Tuesday, bringing thunderstorms, heavy rain, wind and hail to the waterlogged region as the death toll from the extreme weather climbs."

"The raft to Bannon Island does not inspire confidence. But Dyrone Woods climbed aboard the piece of crumbling Styrofoam secured to the remains of a wood pallet anyway."