Stronger-than-usual trade winds are shifting water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, creating a La Niña effect that is expected to influence weather patterns through the winter and into the spring. Because La Niña impacts vary with the location, check out the maps in this article to see what might be in store for you: www.wsj.com/articles/la-nina-is-coming-to-shape-winter-forecasts-what-to-know-11636666122
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The world's tropical glaciers are melting away as air temperatures heat up. This article from Atlas Obscura introduces what was once the world's highest ski resort, with an elevation higher than Mount Everest's base camp. Chacaltaya Ski Resort, near La Paz, Bolivia, was closed in 2009 when the Andean glacier upon which it depended melted. www.atlasobscura.com/places/abandoned-chacaltaya-ski-resort
Argentina recently released data showing that more than 40% of the country's population is living in poverty, with nearly 11% of the population classified as destitute (extreme poverty). The country had been in recession since 2018 and coronavirus-related shutdowns caused Argentina's GDP to sink an additional 9.9% from spring 2020 to spring 2021, devastating the country's middle class and youth. Income inequality has long had clear geographic patterns in Argentina, with the highest rates of poverty in the north and the lowest rates in and around Buenos Aires. www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/klpiuh/persistent_poverty_rates_in_argentina_by/
Recent extreme weather, including both drought and frost, has damaged the current coffee crop in Brazil, which is both the world's largest coffee producer and the world's largest coffee exporter. Because coffee plants only thrive within a fairly narrow geographic band -- determined in large part by temperature, precipitation, and elevation -- scientists are on the hunt for ways to continue to grow coffee as temperatures climb. The dominant species of coffee (Coffee arabica) prefers average temperatures of 18-22◦C. Other species -- and there are apparently more than 120 other species of coffee -- have long been thought to have a worse taste or lower yield. Going back over records from nearly 200 years ago, though, a British botanist has tracked down a species of coffee, native to Sierra Leone, that tastes good and does well at temperatures as high as 26◦, giving growers hope for a new species or a crossbreeding option. www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/04/22/how-to-save-coffee-from-global-warming
A new study, from a team of human geographers, analyzed satellite imagery of 913 major flooding events around the world from 2000 to 2018 and then compared population estimates in these same locations and discovered the population in flood-prone areas has grown by up to 86 million people, 10x faster than previously thought. Much of the population growth in floodplains has been part of the rural-to-urban migration in the Global South. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/04/tens-millions-people-have-been-moving-into-flood-zones-satellite-imagery-shows/
"Extirpation" is one the biogeography terms my geography students learn in the course of their studies. This map shows the current range of the jaguar (in green) as well as its historic range, from which the jaguar has been extirpated (in yellow).
c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/photos/22252/images/magazine_medium/Jaguar_map2_WWfall2021.png (Map from www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/fall-2021/articles/restoring-the-jaguar-corridor.) As we are already seeing, changes in the climate do not have the same impact across all regions. This geo-graphic from Statista summarizes the changes in key elements of physical geography -- precipitation patterns and temperature -- forecast in this week's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by region. www.statista.com/chart/25511/scientific-consensus-climate-change-patterns-world-regions
And therein lies the rub: just days after the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its bleak report on global warming, the Biden White House asks the OPEC+ group to pump more oil to bring down gasoline prices, which are at or near a seven-year high. OPEC+ refers to the official members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, shown in dark blue on this map, and other major petroleum producers who often coordinate with OPEC but are not members of OPEC, shown in light blue on this map. www.insightsonindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Break_through.png
The primary case study in this New York Times article is Kobe, Japan, but the issues apply equally well to any coastal area in an earthquake zone, which includes much of the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Chile, Mexico, the South Pacific, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Pacific coast, among many others: how does one build -- and pay for -- new sea walls that will not fail during the next earthquake? www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/climate/san-francisco-sea-wall-earthquake.html
Although domestic tourism might be rebounding, the slow pace of vaccination in much of the world is expected to continue to depress international tourism. In fact, a recent UN report expects 2021 to be nearly as bad as 2020 in this regard, with estimates that global tourism will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023 or later. This geo-graphic shows the 10 countries that are expected to take the biggest hits to their economies in 2021 because of the lack of tourism. www.statista.com/chart/25202/gdp-losses-by-country-due-to-a-pandemic-related-reduction-in-tourism
Since the beginning of the civil war in neighboring Syria 10 years ago, Lebanon has hosted the largest number of externally displaced people on a per-capita basis. At one point, as many as one in four people in Lebanon were Syrian refugees. In 2020, the island of Aruba (technically part of the Netherlands) supplanted Lebanon as the host of the greatest per-capita number of externally displaced people, most of whom have fled nearby Venezuela. This geo-graphic, based on UN data, shows the eight countries hosting the most externally displaced people on a per-capita basis: www.statista.com/chart/3576/the-countries-with-the-most-refugees-per-capita
Brazil has been nicknamed the Saudi Arabia of water, but Brazil is currently facing a severe drought, brought on by a combination of La Niña weather patterns in the Pacific and deforestation in both the Amazon rainforest (a major source of the Amazon River) and the less well-known Atlantic Forest (a major source of the Paraná River). Low water levels are reducing hydroelectric power output (the source of two-thirds of Brazil's electricity), reducing or halting river transportation, threatening crops, increasing fire risk, and squeezing drinking water supplies. This is Brazil's third "once in a century" drought in the past 20 years. www.batimes.com.ar/news/economy/historic-drought-threatens-brazils-economy.phtml
Vice President Kamala Harris's recent trip to Guatemala to discuss illegal immigration reflects Guatemala's status as the #1 source country for people apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol trying to gain illegal entrance to the United States. This map shows the top 10 source countries in FY2019, which is the most recent annual data released by the U.S. Border Patrol showing citizenship. The top two countries, by far, are Guatemala and Honduras which, together, accounted for more than 60% of all apprehensions.
The left-wing candidate in Peru's hotly contested election this week, Pedro Castillo, is from Chota Province, an area in the Andes Mountains nearly 1,000 km north of the capital of Lima. Despite its distance from the Atlantic Ocean, Chota is both mountainous and part of the watershed of the Amazon River. Chota Province is shown in red on this map; the inset on the lower left shows the province's location within Peru: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a3/Location_of_the_province_Chota_in_Cajamarca.svg/375px-Location_of_the_province_Chota_in_Cajamarca.svg.png
The encrypted messaging app WhatsApp has been in the news recently because Facebook, which bought the app in 2014, required users to accept new terms of service, including a new privacy policy, earlier this month. This geo-graphic shows where WhatsApp is most popular: www.statista.com/chart/24855/share-of-respondents-saying-they-regularly-use-whatsapp
Because warmer air can hold more moisture, humidity is expected to rise along with global temperatures. A recent study published in Nature Geoscience suggests that the combination could push human life in the tropics to the breaking point. "Humans’ ability to regulate their body heat is dependent upon the temperature and humidity of the surrounding air. We have a core body temperature that stays relatively stable at 37C (98.6F), while our skin is cooler to allow heat to flow away from the inner body. But should the wet-bulb temperature – a measure of air temperature and humidity – pass 35C, high skin temperature means the body is unable to cool itself, with potentially deadly consequences. ... The research team looked at various historical data and simulations to determine how wet-bulb temperature extremes will change as the planet continues to heat up, discovering that these extremes in the tropics increase at around the same rate as the tropical mean temperature. ... This has potentially dire implications for a huge swathe of humanity. Around 40% of the world’s population currently lives in tropical countries, with this proportion set to expand to half of the global population by 2050 due to the large proportion of young people in region. The Princeton research was centered on latitudes found between 20 degrees north, a line that cuts through Mexico, Libya and India, to 20 degrees south, which goes through Brazil, Madagascar and the northern reaches of Australia. ... '“Theoretically no human can tolerate a wet bulb temperature of above 35C, no matter how much water they have to drink,' [Boise State climate risk expert Mojtaba Sadegh] added."
www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/08/global-heating-tropical-regions-human-livability This geo-graphic looks at extreme poverty around the world (measured as living on $1.90 per day or less). If one can believe the numbers, it is worth noting that China's extreme poverty rate is now the same as that of the U.S., Japan, Canada, and Norway, among others. The size of the circle in each band reflects the number of people in extreme poverty. howmuch.net/articles/extreme-poverty-around-world
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Commerce finalized its study of unfair trading practices on flat-rolled sheet aluminum imported from 18 countries (shown in aluminum-gray on this map :-)). New tariffs range from to 2.7% on Greek flat-rolled sheet aluminum to 243% on German sheet aluminum. (These come on top of the 10% aluminum tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, citing national security.) www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-aluminum/u-s-commerce-sets-anti-dumping-duties-on-aluminum-sheet-from-18-countries-idUSKCN2AU2S4?il=0
Until the U.S. passed the grim milestone of 500,000 COVID deaths recently, over the last month most COVID news in the U.S. has focused on aspects of vaccine rollouts. But as of earlier this week, the countries shown in red on this map have not yet been able to start COVID vaccinations: www.statista.com/chart/24242/status-of-global-vaccination-campaigns
Last week the Brazilian mining company Vale agreed to pay $7 billion to compensate victims of a mine tailings dam collapse that killed 270 people in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais two years ago. Tailings dams are earthen embankments designed to hold back the sludge resulting from mining operations. This map from The Wall Street Journal shows tailings dams in the U.S. and notes the proportion of dams in each state that are considered particularly likely to pose a "severe hazard" to nearby communities. (from www.wsj.com/articles/minnesotas-iron-range-likes-its-miners-a-deadly-brazil-disaster-is-giving-it-pause-11571064180)
The UN recently announced that outbreaks of ovine rinderpest, a highly contagious sheep and goat virus with a fatality rate of 30-70%, have fallen by two-thirds in the last few years following an aggressive animal vaccination campaign. According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, some 300 million families worldwide rely on sheep and/or goats for food and income. This Reddit map highlights the nine countries in which there are actually more sheep than people: preview.redd.it/kbcnvrb260d61.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=aa0e81d39c1284f17aba8bbfb617683bd94345c8
This article from Foreign Policy looks at the military, economic, environmental, and humanitarian implications of China's vast fishing fleet trawling international -- and other countries' -- waters:
"The Chinese fishing fleet only ventured further afield in 1985, when 13 trawlers were sent to plough northwest Africa’s fish-rich coastal waters. Today, according to a report by the British Overseas Development Institute, China’s blue-water fishing fleet is by far the world’s largest, and includes 12,490 unique vessels that were observed to have been fishing outside China’s internationally recognized EEZ in 2017 and 2018. That’s many times more than previous estimates, and very different from China’s own claim of having only 3,000 ships fishing international or other countries’ waters—but that’s only because China doesn’t recognize the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty’s demarcation of maritime borders. Though China isn’t alone in its destructive fishing practices, it stands apart by virtue of its sheer size and the extent to which it pushes its highly subsidized fleet across the world’s oceans. It’s also the only country whose fishing fleet has a geopolitical mission, taking over weaker countries’ waters and expanding Beijing’s maritime territorial ambitions. One of the malicious consequences of all this is that China’s monster fishing fleet robs poorer nations—from North Korea to the countries of West Africa—of desperately needed protein. "... But the real force driving this and other human-rights disasters is China’s hunger for seafood. China’s 1.4 billion people not only consume 38 percent of global fish production, but indulge in one of the highest per-capita consumption rates of fish and seafood, both wild and farmed, in the world—37.8 kilograms per person per year, up from only 7 kilograms per person per year in 1985, according to figures provided by China to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. While much has been written about Chinese overfishing, it’s only recently become possible to document its vast extent, thanks to new satellite technologies such as those providing data to Global Fishing Watch. The same tracking technology that is used to prevent vessels from hiding or circumventing sanctions shows that China’s fishing fleet appears engaged, often illegally, in the effort to haul in as much seafood as it can, as fast as it can, in as many places as it can—with little regard for how its practices affect malnourished people or diminish the stocks of their fish. This effort is not simply the sum of individual decisions made by skippers. It is government policy, because most vessels are in effect paid to fish by the Chinese government, which covers the fleet’s main operating expense: fuel. ... Besides its gigantic size and extreme level of subsidies, there is a third characteristic that sets the Chinese fishing fleet apart: its use by Beijing as a tool of expansion. ... China is the only country with a strategic fishing fleet. Of the crew on the vessels operating in the South China Sea, [China analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Greg] Poling said 'either they’re fishers paid to go fish somewhere, and that’s the only reason they do it, or they are officially in the militia, which means they never fish—they just use fishing boats to monitor other fleets, run supplies, or ram other boats.'" foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/30/china-beijing-fishing-africa-north-korea-south-china-sea Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the first documented trans-Atlantic journey by a mini-sub carrying narcotics -- in this case, 3 tonnes of cocaine worth $100 million -- from South America to Europe. (There likely have been previous journeys not thwarted by first bad weather and then authorities.) This map, from The Wall Street Journal, shows the sub's route, as re-created by Spanish police. (from www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-first-narco-submarine-caught-after-crossing-the-atlantic-11603033200)
A new addition to a series of petroglyphs created between 1500 and 2500 years ago and known collectively as the Nazca Lines was recently discovered in the Nazca Desert near the Pacific coast south of Lima, Peru. A giant cat, similar to those depicted in Paracas textiles from 2200 years ago, joins a spider, hummingbird, and dozens of other images. www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54593295
Gold prices have risen 25% since the beginning of the year. This map shows the world's major gold-producing regions, by tonnes mined. www.statista.com/chart/23053/gold-mines-by-tonnes-produced-annually
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