Displaying items by tag: drought

GATLINBURG — The National Park Service lifted a ban March 17 (the ban was originally issued March 13) on all campfires and charcoal use in Great Smoky Mountains National Park put in place during recent windy and dry weather. Campers and hikers should still be cautious with fires.

The original story continues below:

This fire ban will remain in effect until further notice on both the Tennessee and North Carolina sides of the park.

Campers, backpackers, and visitors using picnic areas may continue to use cookstoves with compressed gas canisters and gas grills that feature an on/off switch. Stoves and grills must be attended at all times.

The NPS is collaborating with multiple agencies in response to current and predicted weather and fuel conditions. Visitors are urged to exercise extra caution while on public lands, including national parks and national forests, in North Carolina and Tennessee when fire danger is elevated.

For the latest information regarding the fire ban in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, please visit the park's current conditions webpage.

-National Park Service

An area of high pressure lingered in the upper atmosphere over the U.S. Midwest and Northeast in June 2024. This pushed warm air toward the surface and trapped it there—a weather phenomenon meteorologists call a heat dome. The heat wave reached the Southern Appalachians, as seen in this model generated from NASA Earth Observatory data.  NASA

How climate change is heating up the weather, and what we can do about it

This article was originally published by The Conversation.

The heat wave that left more than 100 million people sweating across the eastern U.S. in June 2024 hit so fast and was so extreme that forecasters warned a flash drought could follow across wide parts of the region.

Prolonged high temperatures can quickly dry soils, triggering a rapid onset drought that can affect agriculture, water resources and energy supplies. Many regions under the June heat dome quickly developed abnormally dry conditions.

(The average temperature of June was about 7 degrees above normal in Knoxville as reported by Weather Underground).

The human impacts of the heat wave have also been widespread. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, emergency room visits for heat-related illnesses surged. Several Massachusetts schools without air conditioning closed to protect kids and teachers. In New York and New Jersey, electric wires sagged in the heat, shutting down trains into and out of New York City and leaving commuters stranded. 

Representatives from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute work together to rescue Barrens Topminnows imperiled by an exceptional drought in Nov. 2016.  Tennessee Aquarium

Drought conditions threaten some of the nation’s most-endangered fish species

Casey Phillips is a communications specialist at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

CHATTANOOGA — The endless parade of sunny, cloudless days in Chattanooga for the last two months may seem like the stuff of dreams to anyone planning an outdoor activity. However, this fall has turned into a blue-sky nightmare for aquatic species living in smaller creeks and streams.

“Some of those headwater pools are going to dry up, and we’ll lose large numbers of populations,” said Dr. Bernie Kuhajda, an aquatic conservation biologist at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute. “It just doesn’t look good for our headwater fish communities out there. They’re really getting stressed.”

Less than half an inch (0.42 inches) of rain fell in Chattanooga during a 72-day span between Aug. 30 and Nov. 9, according to meteorological data recorded at Lovell Field. That’s just 0.16 inches more than fell in Death Valley, California, during the same period, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

As of the latest weekly report by the government’s U.S. Drought Monitor, most of Hamilton County is now considered to be experiencing a D4 or “exceptional” drought, the Monitor’s most severe drought category.

Bad news for endangered fish species like the Barrens Topminnow and Laurel Dace.

Michael Bradley, a fly-fishing guide, on Raven Fork in the Oconaluftee area of the Great Smoky Mountains.  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Climate change could steal your fish

Dan Chapman is a public affairs specialist for the Southeast Region of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

CHEROKEE — The mountains of the Southern Appalachians were scraped clean a century ago. Headwater ecology changed as the canopy of trees disappeared that was shading the streams from all but the noonday sun. Rainstorms pushed dirt and rocks into the water muddying the feeding and breeding grounds of fish, amphibians and insects. 

Lower down the mountain, newly cut pastures edged right up to the creeks while cows mucked up the once-pristine waters. Invasive bugs killed hemlocks, ash and other shade-giving trees. Pipes, culverts and dams blockaded streams and kept animals from cooler water. 

The trout never had a chance.

Now they face an even more insidious foe — climate change. 

Flooding is seen outside a popular hotel in Pakistan following historic and devastating flooding linked largely to the melting of highland glaciers.  Wikipedia Commons

Global population growth promises a drastic spike in public health emergencies

This story was originally published by The Conversation. Maureen Lichtveld is dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. 

There are questions that worry me profoundly as an environmental health and population scientist.

Will we have enough food for a growing global population? How will we take care of more people in the next pandemic? What will heat do to millions with hypertension? Will countries wage water wars because of increasing droughts?

These risks all have three things in common: health, climate change and a growing population that the United Nations determined passed 8 billion people in November 2022, which is double the population of just 48 years ago.

Low-water challenges on the Mississippi River are evident at Memphis.  Dulce Torres Guzman/Tennessee Lookout

Despite the pump from Appalachian rainforests, the drought-stricken Mississippi River is the lowest it has ever been

This story was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.

MEMPHIS — John Dodson’s corn, cotton and soybean fields are fewer than 10 miles from the Mississippi River, the key transportation artery for West Tennessee grain farmers. But they might as well be a thousand miles.

Historically low water levels on the river are coming at the worst possible time for him. It’s peak harvest season, but he can’t get his crop to market. 

West Tennessee farmers have long relied on proximity to the Mississippi, delivering their crops directly from the field to the river. The ease of access has meant many farmers lack large grain storage silos that farmers in the Midwest and elsewhere rely on.  

While drought strangles transportation on the Mississippi, many of these farmers are now being forced to leave crops in the field and pray for rain to fall anywhere and everywhere else but above their harvest-ready crops.

The Dust Bowl of the 1930s resulted in the displacement of tons of soil in the midst of a drought similar to the one that grips the Southwest today. Library of Congress

Dirt is far from just dirt. It’s a foundation for life.

This story was originally published by The Revelator.

Look down. You may not see the soil beneath your feet as teeming with life, but it is.

Better scientific tools are helping us understand that dirt isn’t just dirt. Life in the soil includes microbes like bacteria and fungi; invertebrates such as earthworms and nematodes; plant roots; and even mammals like gophers and badgers who spend part of their time below ground.

It’s commonly said that a quarter of all the planet’s biodiversity lives in the soil, but that’s likely a vast understatement. Many species that reside there, particularly microorganisms such as viruses, bacteria, fungi and protists, aren’t yet known to science.

Western US in midst 20-year mega-drought

Read about it or listen to Randy Simon’s 2-minutedrought podcast on National Public Radio’s Earth Wise web page.

Alabama is home to remarkably diverse ecosystems: They face dire threats.

This story was originally published by The Revelator.

When longtime environmental journalist Ben Raines started writing a book about the biodiversity in Alabama, the state had 354 fish species known to science. When he finished writing 10 years later, that number had jumped to 450 thanks to a bounty of new discoveries. Crawfish species leaped from 84 to 97 during the same time.

It’s indicative of a larger trend: Alabama is one of the most biodiverse states in the country, but few people know it. And even scientists are still discovering the rich diversity of life that exists there, particularly in the Mobile River basin.

All this newly discovered biodiversity is also gravely at risk from centuries of exploitation, which is what prompted Raines to write his new book, “Saving America’s Amazon.”