“Threats from the US and China trade war, the growing risk of disease and extreme weather have threatened the global food price stability for 2019.
“While global food price environment remains relatively stable, ongoing geopolitical tension, the threat of El Niño weather system and diseases affecting livestock bring great uncertainty to the outlook for 2019.
“According to research from Rabobank, the specialist food and agribusiness bank, food producers face a “melting pot” of risks.”
“Vietnam’s ongoing coffee harvest and offshore oil exploration are under threat from tropical storm Usagi, which is headed from the South China Sea towards the Southeast Asian country’s coffee-growing region of the Central Highlands…
“At least 19 people were killed by a tropical storm last week in the southern resort city of Nha Trang.”
http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201811230029.html
“The amount of insured claims paid out for Typhoon Jebi, which made landfall in Japan on September 4, has reached close to $5.2 billion, making it the most costly Typhoon for re/insurers to ever hit the country. Data from the General Insurance Association of Japan shows that 825,091 insurance claims have been accepted as a result of Jebi; 108,928 were for automobiles, 694,310 from property fire insurance policies and 21,853 from other miscellaneous lines of business.”
https://www.reinsurancene.ws/typhoon-jebi-insured-losses-hit-record-breaking-5-2bn-still-climbing/
“Tragedy struck in the wee hours of Friday, November 16. Coastal and delta districts in Tamil Nadu were witness to the devastation of Gaja, a severe cyclonic storm, that left in its wake, a trail of destruction…
“A week after the tragedy, villages and hamlets that were worst-hit by the cyclone, are still picking up the pieces.”
https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/cyclone-gaja-story-devastation-pictures-92084
“Heavy rainfall overnight Wednesday in Kabul resulted in widespread flooding of roads throughout the city – posing enormous challenges to commuters on Thursday morning…
“…the hundreds of dirt roads and lanes that crisscross the city turned into mud baths, making it extremely difficult for residents to leave their homes.”
https://www.tolonews.com/afghanistan/kabul-streets-flooded-winter-rolls
“Overnight rain has flooded many camps and villages in northern Iraq and in the Kurdistan Region including a Yezidi camp in Duhok province.
“”This has been our life for three years. Nobody is helping us. We go to the manager [of the camp], he says go to the local mayor. Nobody recognizes us,” one Yezidi man said on Saturday.”
http://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/231120181
“Torrential rain and thunderstorms hit the province of Mecca [Saudi Arabia] this morning, disrupting the movement of the traffic to a standstill. Video recordings posted on social media websites showed rainwater flooding avenues and streets in various parts of the city. The Civil Defence General Directorate implemented the emergency contingency and rescued cars and vehicles which were trapped in flooding water.”
http://www.gdnonline.com/Details/442432/VIDEOS-torrential-rain-lashes-the-province-of-Mecca
“Israel’s Hadashot TV news reports that neighboring Jordan has requested that the Jewish state provided it with even more water than stipulated in the peace agreement between the two countries…
“A delegation of Jordanian officials visited the Galilee region on Monday to make the request, explaining that Jordan is suffering from extreme drought.”
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/35308/Default.aspx
“Despite the downpours in recent days [in Cyprus], rainfall so far this month is at 22 per cent of the November average.
“According to the Met Service, up until November 22, 11.9mm of rain fell, compared to the ‘normal’ quantity of 53.3mm for the entire month.”
“The Mediterranean island of Cyprus isn’t somewhere you might normally associate with record levels of waste… But a new study — and lots of digging — has found that beaches in northern Cyprus have the second highest amount of microplastics among beaches studied across the world.
“Only one other beach, in Guangdong, southern China, has recorded greater microplastic levels, researchers say.”
“Climate change is playing a major role in the Netherlands sinking more than expected, say researchers. A team from Delft University of Technology made the conclusion after publishing the first nationwide figures on subsidence.
“They used GPS and radar data as well as gravity measurements to produce a special subsidence map.”
“It felt like winter across parts of the western and northeastern United States on Thanksgiving Day as heavy snow and biting winds impacted the regions… The famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was the coldest on record with temperatures in the lower 20s throughout much of the morning in New York City… Providence, Rhode Island; Buffalo, New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Bangor, Maine, are just a sample of cities that experienced their coldest Thanksgiving on record with temperatures as much as 30 degrees below normal.”
“Record-breaking cold was reported in dozens of communities across Eastern Canada, including Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Environment Canada said more than 20 communities in Ontario experienced temperatures Thursday morning colder than they had ever recorded on Nov. 22… in Ottawa thermometers at the Canadian Department of Agriculture plunged to -18.7 C – more than four degrees colder than the previous Nov. 22 low, which was set in 1895.”
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/novem-brrrrr-chilly-weather-smashes-records-1.4188404
“Dust storms, raging bushfires, gale-force winds, heatwaves, thunder and snow, flash flooding and driving rain—Australia is enduring a bout of wild weather that’s hit all parts of the vast continent in recent days. Varied weather is not uncommon during spring in the southern hemisphere nation as summer beckons. But rare and dramatic scenes of red dust storms shrouding towns and thundersnow—lightning strikes in thunderstorms that produce snow—in the alpine regions have left some scratching their heads.”
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-australia-wild-storms.html
“China’s trade war with the United States has tended to dominate the news agenda in the past year. But a bigger challenge for Beijing could be the threat of a water crisis which would submerge the world’s second-largest economy and wash away growth.
“Earlier this week, Greenpeace released research showing that glaciers in the western China provinces of Qinghai and Gansu, as well as the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, are rapidly melting, causing natural disasters and reducing the drinking-water supply…
“Glaciers in the country’s western regions are the source of a network of rivers which supply drinking water to an estimated 1.8 billion people…
“Describing the situation in blunt terms, former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has warned that the lack of water threatens the “very survival of the Chinese nation itself” in the Chinadialogue report.”
http://www.atimes.com/article/water-crisis-puts-trade-war-into-perspective-for-china/
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