Update on Australia: Australian bushfires killed at least 14 people in the southern state of Victoria on Saturday as a heatwave sparked more than 40 blazes across the state and neighboring New South Wales, police said.
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It seems the issue of drought is spreading.
Millions of people and cattle in north China face shortages of drinking water because of a severe drought, the government said on Saturday, promising to speed up disbursement of billions of dollars of subsidies to farmers.
State television quoted disaster relief officials as saying 4.4 million people and 2.1 million cattle lacked adequate drinking water. Official media have described the drought as north China's worst in half a century.
However, meteorological officials said there were signs that better rainfall in coming weeks would ease the crisis. Rainfall is forecast for the next 10 days, the official Xinhua news agency quoted the China Meteorological Administration as saying.
Xiao Ziniu, director of China's National Climate Center, was quoted as saying most of north China's wheat belt was expected to receive slightly less than or nearly normal rainfall in March.
Australia has been suffering its worst heat wave on record, the first time temperatures exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit for three days running. It's been so hot that on Thursday, the low at Melbourne airport was 87 degrees F.
Melbourne is the capital of Victoria state, where three rural towns were under threat from wildfires spreading quickly in the furnace-like conditions, Country Fire Authority deputy chief fire officer Geoff Conway said.
Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, is regarded as highly vulnerable. A study by the country's blue-chip Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation identified its ecosystems as "potentially the most fragile" on earth in the face of the threat.
But it's not just Australia who has to be worried.
Extreme drought is likely to increase from under 3% of the globe today to 30% by 2100 -- areas affected by severe drought could see a five-fold increase from 8% to 40%.
Experts worry that Australia, which emits more carbon dioxide per head than any nation on earth, may also be the first to implode under the impact of climate change.
Even with recent record rains and tropical cyclones, harvests and livestock are suffering; and so is their economy.
The presence of such high concentrations of greenhouse gases is altering the Earth's climate, raising temperatures and impacting on the landscape.
A recent Reuters article shows that rising sea levels are eroding Sydney beaches. By 2050 there is a risk portions of the beach will disappear altogether. The beaches in danger are those which are very low-lying and they are up against higher landforms behind them, they will become narrower.
The coastline will move inward. What is now currently a vegetated dune may become the beach. An expected recession of the coastline of a sandy beach of about one meter for every centimeter rise in sea level.
This article came about after a Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) study, commissioned by the Department of Climate Change. The reports showed an overall impact of global change "will pose some very significant risks to the sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture in Australia". The worries are that in 50 years times the Sydney shoreline in Australia will be in so much disarray the city will become unsustainable.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed that human activity has increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide - in 2007 at its highest level for 650,000 years.
The collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the Antarctic has been confirmed as a consequence of warming in the Southern Ocean.
