LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Triple-digit heat intensified across Arkansas on Monday, setting records in at least two cities and increasing the danger for wildfires.

Temperatures exceeded 100 in some areas, and are expected to stick around for much of the week. Low humidity also is settling in, increasing the threat for wildfires.

The daytime high reached 111 degrees in Little Rock, which not only broke the date’s record but marked the third-highest temperature ever recorded in the state’s capital city. The previous record for July 30 was 108 degrees in 1986.

Little Rock reached 114 degrees last year on Aug. 3, the city’s hottest day in 132 years of records. The city’s second-highest temperature on record occurred July 31, 1986, when it hit 112 degrees.

Also Monday, a record was set in Jonesboro, where the mercury peaked at 104, a degree higher than the record set in 1986.

National Weather Service senior forecaster Joe Goudsward warned that little relief from the high temperatures is expected soon.

“There will be some scattered thunderstorms pop up in the heat of the day but as far as anything organized or widespread, it’s not expected,” Goudsward said.

An upper-level ridge of high pressure is parked over the region. It’s expected to shift a bit to the west, but it may only shave five or six degrees off daytime highs, Goudsward said. After a brief cool-down, the ridge is forecast to rebuild, he said.

Arkansas’ all-time high is 120 degrees, set in Ozark on Aug. 10, 1936.

(Story distributed by The Associated Press)

The temperature exceeded the 30-degree mark in Tohmajärvi, Lieksa and Juuka in North Karelia, close to the Russian border.  But the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) says that a cooler weather front has already arrived in western Finland and will start moving eastwards soon, making the current heatwave quite short-lived. More storms thunder in Severe thunderstorms are expected to whip up very strong wind gusts on Monday, warns the FMI. Winds may reach speeds of 25 metres per second in North Ostrobothnia and western Finland, and elsewhere in the country gusts of some 15 m/s are expected. Additionally, heavy rainfall is forecast for various parts of Finland on Monday. Thunderstorms left thousands without electricity in different parts of Finland on Sunday. Most of them had been fixed by Monday afternoon. At 1pm, some 200 Fortum customers were still without power. Elenia (formerly known as Vattenfall) had about 1,200 customers without service at that time.

Drought and wild fires destroy Russian harvest

Russia is currently in the grips of an extremely strong heat wave. City and town residents are suffocating from the sweltering heat. For example, it is about 30 degrees in Moscow with prospects of the thermometer going up in the next few days. The heat wave situation is aggravated by wild fires producing clods of poisonous smoke. The wood rich Siberian taiga near Krasnoyarsk is fighting 83 fires on the territory of 12.130 hectares. As for rural Russia, that only last year was the world’s third-biggest grain producer, it suffers colossal damages. It threats to destroy a significant part of the crops. If last year’s harvest amounted to 94 million tons, this year it is a predicted at 80 to 85 million. Given the situation, earlier in July the Agriculture Ministry had to revise its harvest predictions.

As Rossiyskaya Gazeta writes, the hardest hit are the important grain-producing areas including Kuban, Stavropol, Volgograd, Volga, Rostov-on-Don, Lipetsk, Penza, Ulyanovsk, Kurgan and Altai. Nevertheless, Arkady Zlochevsky, president of the Russian Grain Union thinks that “The risks are there, but then there is a chance to avoid them.” Zlochevksy added that there will be 85 million tons of crops and the size of the harvest would depend on the weather. With the leftover stocks from previous harvests, the export potential will then be about 18-20 million tons. Although this is less than last year, when the country exported more than 26 million tons, it is still better than 2010, when the droughts and wild fires in Russia ruined about a third of all the grain harvested and the country had to impose an embargo on grain exports. The area of Russia’s irrigated fields is about 2.5 million hectares, and Russia has 44 million hectares of land under spring crops this year. “The biggest losses are not caused by the weather, it is rather the failure to comply with production rules in bad weather,” said Zlochevsky.

On the other hand Oleg Sukhanov, head of the market analysis unit at the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies, thinks that Russia may gather in only 77 million tons of grain. And, Sukhanov said, “that is not the worst-case scenario.”

His forecast is worrisome as Russia’s annual domestic consumption amounts to 67 million to 72 million tons. As is expected this year Russia may consume up to 68.5 million tons of grain and so, considering the remaining stocks from previous years, Sukhanov’s institute colleagues are putting the Russian grain export potential this year at a mere 13.5 million tons.

If so, that would be all we will be able to sell to our traditional buyers of grain in the Middle East and North Africa, and some Southeast Asian countries that joined them last year. “But this is not a long-term trend. Next season, Russia might have a good crop and again become a leader among world grain exporters,” Sukhanov said.

Despite the poor forecast for this year, Russia has ambitious plans for increasing its grain exports. The new edition of the national program for development of agriculture for 2013-2020, adopted in early July, set a target of a 115-million-ton grain harvest by 2020, which should bring Russia within reach of the United States, the traditional leader on the global grain market.

The current Russian predicament begins to tell on the world prices. Although there is no acute grain shortage in the world, other major grain producers, including the United States, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and China, are experiencing some problems. Forecasts in these countries account for the current high grain prices, about $330 per ton of food wheat. Sukhanov believes global grain prices could rise by another 10 percent before the year is out.

However, our experts do not believe that this will make a big difference in the prices of bread, meat and other staples because the share of grain in the end product is small. For example, in Russia, grain accounts for only 23 percent of a loaf of white bread.

So, as the saying in Russia went some 20 years ago, “the fight for the harvest is going on.”

More than 95 percent of Illinois is in a severe drought or worse, according to a national report Thursday that increased concerns about how the hot, dry summer is affecting farming.Most of Cook County is in a moderate drought, and other parts of the Chicago area are suffering through severe drought. But the central and southern portions of Illinois are experiencing even worse conditions that are classified as extreme or exceptional, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center.Surrounding states, especially Missouri and Indiana, have also been hit hard, with 55.5 percent of the Midwest experiencing at least a severe drought, compared with 45.6 percent of the country.The drought center’s new report doesn’t take into account the bit of rain the Chicago area received this week — about 0.55 inch fell at O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday and Wednesday — but it would take 3 inches or more to have made any significant improvement, said drought center climatologist Brian Fuchs.”In a lot of places in Illinois, this is the worst they remember,” said Emerson Nafziger, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois.

About 66 percent of the state’s corn crop is in poor to very poor condition, according to a report his week from the Illinois Department of Agriculture. In states that are major producers of corn nationwide, about 45 percent of the corn is poor or worse, though the total produced this year won’t be known until after September, when harvesting begins, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. During the same time last year, only 14 percent of corn crops nationwide were considered poor.

“We’re sitting here, watching the sky; it looks like it could rain,” Nafziger said in by telephone from near Vandalia. “People are kind of pessimistic.”

Nationally, almost 40 percent of agricultural land is experiencing at least a severe drought, which makes the 2012 drought more extensive than any other since the 1950s, according to the USDA.

Illinois Climatologist Jim Angel said July’s heat and lack of rain could make this drought its worst on record, especially because all across the state, farmers’ soil is showing signs of having very little moisture, something essential for plant health.

“In a normal season we rely on soil moisture to get you through August, but we don’t have that,” Angel said.

Less corn production usually means higher food prices, according to the USDA, though the full effect of a sparse corn harvest wouldn’t move through to grocery stores until at least 10 months from now. But grocery shoppers could see the price of chicken or eggs and other meats increase sooner than that, since farmers often scale back on their livestock when the cost of corn feed is high, which can happen when corn production is low, Nafziger said.

Still, some say there’s room for optimism. Angel said long-term forecasts show an increased chance of above-normal precipitation and more normal temperatures over the next two weeks. The heat and dry weather looks to be shifting to the west, maybe making the Midwest a little wetter and milder, Angel said.

“That’s good news if it pans out,” Angel said.

mmanchir@tribune.com

Western North America Faces 2st Century ‘Mega-drought’

CORVALLIS, Oregon, July 30, 2012 (ENS) – The climate’s “new normal” for most of the coming century will parallel the long-term drought that hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 – the most severe drought in 800 years – scientists report in a study published Sunday.

“The severity and incidence of climatic extremes, including drought, have increased as a result of climate warming,” the researchers said, adding that these long-term trends are consistent with a 21st century “megadrought.”

Crops and forests died and river basins dried, but as bad as conditions were during the 2000-04 drought, in the future they may be seen as the good old days, a group of 10 researchers warned Sunday in the journal “Nature Geoscience.”

Pinyon pine forests near Los Alamos, New Mexico, had begun to turn brown from drought stress in 2002, left. Another photo taken in 2004 from the same vantage point, right, show them grey and dead. (Photo by Craig Allen, U.S. Geological Survey)

Climate models and precipitation projections indicate this period will be closer to the “wet end” of a drier hydroclimate during the last half of the 21st century, the scientists said.

“Climatic extremes such as this will cause more large-scale droughts and forest mortality, and the ability of vegetation to sequester carbon is going to decline,” said Beverly Law, a co-author of the study, professor of global change biology and terrestrial systems science at Oregon State University, and former science director of AmeriFlux, an ecosystem observation network.

The 2000-04 drought had the effect of amplifying climate change as vegetation withered and could no longer take up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

This drought cut carbon sequestration by an average of 51 percent in the western United States, Canada and Mexico, the scientists calculate, although some areas were hit much harder than others. As the plants died, they released more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, with the effect of amplifying global warming.

“During this drought, carbon sequestration from this region was reduced by half,” Law said. “That’s a huge drop. And if global carbon emissions don’t come down, the future will be even worse.”

The effects are driven by human-caused increases in temperature, with associated lower soil moisture and decreased runoff in all major water basins of the western United States, researchers said in the study.

Drought has affected Colorado farm lands near Strasburg, Colorado, July 21, 2012. (Photo by Lance Cheung, USDA)

It is not clear whether or not the current drought in the West and Midwest, now being called one of the worst since the Dust Bowl, is related to these same forces, Law said. This study did not address that, and there are some climate mechanisms in western North America that affect that region more than other parts of the country.

But in the West, this multi-year drought was unlike anything seen in many centuries, based on tree ring data. The last two periods with drought events of similar severity were in the Middle Ages, from 977-981 and 1146-1151. The 2000-04 drought affected precipitation, soil moisture, river levels, crops, forests and grasslands.

Flash Flood in USA on Monday, 30 July, 2012 at 10:45 (10:45 AM) UTC.

Flood in Costa Rica on Monday, 30 July, 2012 at 03:00 (03:00 AM) UTC.

Floods force evacuations in Costa Rica

(CNN) — Heavy rains in central and eastern Costa Rica have triggered floods that have forced evacuations and may be responsible for at least one death, relief workers said Sunday.

Four people are missing, down from eight earlier, according to Freddy Roman, a spokesman for the local Red Cross.

The government has declared a “yellow alert” in various parts of Cartago, a central province where one person was reported dead, said Roman. The person was rescued after a landslide, but died on the way to the hospital from injuries and heart failure, he said.

A yellow alert is also in effect for parts of Limon, an eastern province.

More than 1,500 people have taken refuge at shelters and others are waiting to be rescued, according to the Red Cross.

“We have reports of people trapped in their houses that have been flooded by overflow from the Chirripo River, also of several communities that are isolated in other parts of Limon,” said Guillermo Arroyo, director of operations of the Costa Rican Red Cross.

Heavy rain is typical this time of year in Costa Rica, where the rainy season runs roughly from May-November.

Dozens of wild peacocks have died suddenly in Pakistan, prompting experts to fear an outbreak of the highly contagious Newcastle disease.

Officials on Monday confirmed the deaths of at least 60 peacocks in Thar desert, part of southern Sindh province, over the last week. Local media reports say more than 100 of the exotic birds have died.

The wildlife ministry said tests were being done to diagnose the cause of death, but said the wild peacocks had been weakened by starvation, deforestation and a lack of safe drinking water blamed on delays to the annual monsoon rains.

“Wild peacocks have become susceptible to bacterial and fungal attack, which further suppressed the immunity of the birds that paved the room for viral attack,” it said.

Experts are alarmed by the number of deaths, suspecting they may have been afflicted with Newcastle disease, known locally as ranikhet.

“We are vaccinating wild peacocks protectively for suspected viral disease, as in 2003 when a few peacocks died from the same symptoms that later proved to be ranikhet,” said Lajpat Sharma, an official in the provincial wildlife ministry.

Tahir Qureshi of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) also told AFP that he suspected ranikhet was to blame.

Newcastle disease is a worldwide problem among birds and sporadic outbreaks can occur frequently. Affected birds suffer from loss of appetite, coughing, sneezing, diarrhoea, and in severe outbreaks a high proportion die.

The wildlife ministry said it was supplying fresh water to peacocks in affected areas.

Sharma said there are at least 30,000 wild peacocks in the Thar desert, but Qureshi said the numbers were declining, because of poaching and lack of effective conservation.

Monday’s massive power cut is reportedly the first of its kind in more than a decade, affecting nearly 30% of India’s population in nine northern states. At the root of this is the severe energy crisis facing India today.

The country is facing a huge supply shortfall this summer. A shortage of coal (most of India’s energy is thermal), loss-making state electricity boards, the theft of power, a lack of transparency in fixing electricity charges and underperforming private distribution agencies mean that vast swathes of India live without electricity for several hours a day.

PM Manmohan Singh pushed through the civilian nuclear deal with the US to help meet India’s soaring energy but plans to set up new reactors have been embroiled in controversies about safety and the acquisition of land.