Thursday, November 21, 2002
Report: Global warmingthreatens West's water
LOS ANGELES -- Global warming will have a devastating effect on water availability in the western United States, a new climate forecast predicts.
The report, released today, involved more than two dozen scientists and engineers from around the country who undertook the study as a test of a national climate forecasting effort.
What they found doesn't bode well for the West.
Even the report's best-case scenario predicted water supplies would fall far short of future demands by cities, farms and wildlife, generating critical water-rights' issues that have already surfaced during the West's current drought.
"You'd like there to be some good news in there somewhere, but unfortunately there is not," said Scripps Institution of Oceanography research marine physicist Tim Barnett.
The study predicts overall precipitation levels are likely to remain constant, but warmer temperatures mean what would have fallen as snow will instead come down as rain.
Currently, the snowpack acts a natural reservoir, storing water through the winter so it will melt and be released during the spring and summer when demand spikes. If that precipitation falls as winter rain, however, it will fill rivers and streams at a time of year when demand is low.
The study results are expected to appear in a future issue of the journal Climatic Change.
Quake kills at least 20
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- An earthquake rattled a remote mountainous region of northern Pakistan today, killing at least 20 people, a government official said.
The magnitude 5.5 quake hit the Gilgit region, about 240 miles north of Peshawar, before dawn, and aftershocks rumbled through the region for several hours, said Jehangir Khan, an official with the government's Ministry of Kashmiri Affairs in Islamabad.
The epicenter of the earthquake was in the Himalayan province of Kashmir, Pakistan's Meteorological Department said.
At least four villages in the Astore valley were hit by the quake, which sent people fleeing from the houses as they crumbled.
"We are expecting the casualties may rise," Khan told The Associated Press. He said he did not have a count of injured.
Missionary slain
SIDON, Lebanon -- An American missionary who worked as a nurse in southern Lebanon has been shot dead, police said today.
An unidentified gunman knocked on the door of the clinic where Bonnie Weatherall worked in the port city of Sidon and shot her with a 7 mm pistol, police officers said on condition of anonymity. The attacker fled.
The killing took place around 8 a.m., just after Weatherall opened the clinic, police said. There were three bullet wounds in her head.
The officers said Weatherall, who is married to a British national, had been working at the clinic for three years. The building also houses a chapel.
A U.S. Embassy spokesperson confirmed an American had been killed and said the embassy was investigating.
It was not clear whether the killing was politically motivated.
Associated Press