Watching the corn

The extreme heat and drought in the US have cast doubt on the corn harvest, abruptly driving up prices. A useful reminder that, while the continental US comprises only 1.5% of the Earth's surface, we produce 10% of the world's wheat and 20% of the globe's beef, pork, and lamb. And last but not least -- fully half of the world's corn crop, which is America's single bestselling crop.

So this little spot of warm weather we've been having has serious potential consequences for food security around the globe. Which is the problem of global warming in microcosm; it would never be a good idea to radically alter the world's climate to something hotter than any time since we came down to from the trees. But to do so at a time when seven billion people are depending on a complex, interdependent global economic system -- a delicate clockwork mechanism to which we are applying a sledgehammer of abrupt, radial warming -- that is a special kind of idiocy. And we will all pay a price for it.

The USDA is going to release an updated harvest forecast tomorrow. Here's hoping for good news.

UPDATE (7/11): The news from the USDA is not good. They came out of their meeting projecting a brutal 146 bushels an acre, down 20 bushels (%12) in just the last month.

Nor is that all. Expected soybean yield were cut by 8%, and the estimated global wheat harvest was cut by 8 million tons.

GISS: +0.61C, 4th warmest August on record

From the third warmest July (+0.59C) to the fourth warmest August, the persistence of Nina-ish conditions does not seem to be helping cool this torrid summer. (H/t to the sharp eyes of Quark Soup.)

Have a kind thought for fire fighters in Texas, coping with the worst of all possible worlds: record heat (thanks to global warming), record drought (thanks to La Nina and, again, global warming), and vicious cuts to fire services that have left firefighters ponying up for their own gear (thanks to a jackass climate denier governor whose prayers for rain have gone unanswered -- apparently Perry is not familiar with the old saw that God helps those that help themselves.)

Dry areas have increased, ctd

Yesterday I pointed to this study, which found:

widespread drying over Africa, East and South Asia, and other areas from 1950 to 2008, and most of this drying is due to recent warming.

It was remiss of me not to translate the scientists' calm invocation of "widespread drying" into human terms. The Economist, always prompt, supplied my lack the day before, reporting on some of that "widespread drying over Africa":

Yet, after the worst drought in 60 years, more than 10m people in the Horn of Africa need emergency food aid. Livestock have been annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of people are streaming into refugee camps in search of help. Malnutrition rates in some areas are five times more severe than the threshold aid agencies use to define a crisis. Many children are already dying of starvation.

The areas most affected by the drought are northern Kenya, south-eastern Ethiopia, southern Somalia and Djibouti. The region’s last two rainy seasons were meagre. Rivers and boreholes are running dry, crops failing, traditional grazing land turning to dust. Up to 60% of cattle and goat herds, the main assets for many of the worst-affected people, have perished, their corpses and skeletons littering the plains.

Keep watching the food:

Soaring world food prices have made matters worse. In Somalia the cost of sorghum, the local staple, has risen 240% since last October. In Kenya the price of maize has tripled. Food hoarding is reportedly aggravating shortages—even where rain has been plentiful.

Bear in mind that humans don't usually respond optimally to crisis:

Soaring world food prices have made matters worse. In Somalia the cost of sorghum, the local staple, has risen 240% since last October. In Kenya the price of maize has tripled. Food hoarding is reportedly aggravating shortages—even where rain has been plentiful.

AGW Observer: World’s dry areas have increased and it’s going to get worse

A piece of research from AGWO's awesome weekly drive-by of new climate papers caught my eye:

Characteristics and trends in various forms of the Palmer Drought Severity Index during 1900–2008 – Dai (2011) “The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) has been widely used to study aridity changes in modern and past climates. Efforts to address its major problems have led to new variants of the PDSI, such as the self-calibrating PDSI (sc_PDSI) and PDSI using improved formulations for potential evapotranspiration (PE), such as the Penman-Monteith equation (PE_pm) instead of the Thornthwaite equation (PE_th). Here I compare and evaluate four forms of the PDSI, namely, the PDSI with PE_th (PDSI_th) and PE_pm (PDSI_pm) and the sc_PDSI with PE_th (sc_PDSI_th) and PE_pm (sc_PDSI_pm) calculated using available climate data from 1850 to 2008. Our results confirm previous findings that the choice of the PE only has small effects on both the PDSI and sc_PDSI for the 20th century climate, and the self-calibration reduces the value range slightly and makes the sc_PDSI more comparable spatially than the original PDSI. However, the histograms of the sc_PDSI are still non-Gaussian at many locations, and all four forms of the PDSI show similar correlations with observed monthly soil moisture (r = 0.4–0.8) in North America and Eurasia, with historical yearly streamflow data (r = 0.4–0.9) over most of the world’s largest river basins, and with GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite-observed water storage changes (r = 0.4–0.8) over most land areas. All the four forms of the PDSI show widespread drying over Africa, East and South Asia, and other areas from 1950 to 2008, and most of this drying is due to recent warming. The global percentage of dry areas has increased by about 1.74% (of global land area) per decade from 1950 to 2008. The use of the Penman-Monteith PE and self-calibrating PDSI only slightly reduces the drying trend seen in the original PDSI. The percentages of dry and wet areas over the global land area and six select regions are anticorrelated (r = −0.5 to −0.7), but their long-term trends during the 20th century do not cancel each other, with the trend for the dry area often predominating over that for the wet area, resulting in upward trends during the 20th century for the areas under extreme (i.e., dry or wet) conditions for the global land as a whole (∼1.27% per decade) and the United States, western Europe, Australia, Sahel, East Asia, and southern Africa. The recent drying trends are qualitatively consistent with other analyses and model predictions, which suggest more severe drying in the coming decades.” Dai, A. (2011), J. Geophys. Res., 116, D12115, doi:10.1029/2010JD015541.

This is really happening, folks. We're change the world, forever. We are expanding the borders of the desert. We are growing the tropical zone. We are melting the ice. These changes are coming harder and faster and eventually will reach and pitch when people will look around and say "Can't we unring this bell? Can't we take it back?"