Word: droughts
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...Americans suffering through one of the worst heat waves of the century, a break in the weather can't come too soon. El Nino is at least partly responsible for the scorching drought and record temperatures that have been blamed for 50 deaths across the U.S., 30 of them in Texas, which has hit triple digits every day for two weeks. With El Nino's help, a high-pressure zone has been anchored over the South for several months, robbing places like Texas and Florida of the thunderstorms and cooling rains that usually bring relief at this time of year...
...corpses, authorities fear it may be closer to 3,000. And that may be compounded by the threat of disease as bodies lie unburied in the tropical heat and homeless residents, still in shock, find themselves without adequate food or a safe water supply. The tsunamis followed a yearlong drought in which thousands of people starved to death...
Fueled by stiff winds, the flames have jumped from treetop to treetop in a landscape made hospitable by a severe drought. Flames even shoot up through tree roots. Rotting vegetation sparks without warning, creating idiosyncratic wind patterns. Conflagrations then skip over bulldozed firebreaks and highways. "The fires make such rapid advances that it's not feasible to put men in there," says Steve Parsons of the Florida emergency-management agency. "We've got to get those long-term rains to get some moisture in the ground." Last week the Governor asked the state to pray for rain. The prayers...
...from killing tens of thousands of Albanian refugees, a larger humanitarian disaster is unfolding in the Sudan. International relief organizations estimate that 2.6 million people, many of them children, are in danger of starving to death in southern Sudan, which has been hammered this year by El Nino-induced drought and a long-festering civil war. "We've got a hellacious famine on our hands," worries ROGER WINTER, director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees. The U.N. and U.S. have been slow to react to the crisis. Washington, which has slapped trade sanctions on the extremist Islamic regime in Khartoum...
...seen a decline in rainfall this century, and why West Africa has lost one of two rainy seasons. Looming over all rain forests is the threat of global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Computer simulations suggest that the greenhouse effect will increase the frequency of drought in tropical areas...