Sao Paolo, Brazil, May Be the First City to Dry Up and Blow Away.

It has come to my attention that Sao Paolo, the largest city in Brazil, is losing residents due to a water availability crisis that was brought on by a years-long drought caused by global warming and the deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest, and by poor management by the privatized water company.

Hat tip to apneaman at Robertscribbler.

As Brazil's Largest City Struggles With Drought, Residents Are Leaving.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2015/11/22/455751848/as-brazils-largest-city-struggles-with-drought-residents-are-leaving?sc=nd

It happened slowly at first. The reservoir's water level dropped, so the resort extended the boat launch ramp.  Then they had to add another extension.  Eventually, the water dropped so much that business dried up — along with the lake.  "For this coming weekend, there's not one reservation. This business was 98 percent dependent on the water. Now that the water's gone, the customers are gone as well," says Francisco Carlos Fonseca, the manager of Marina Confiança.

Francisco Carlos Fonseca is the manager of Marina Confiança, a resort located on the banks of the Cantareira reservoir system. Behind him is a boat ramp that once led to a lake that he says used to be more than 100 feet deep.

The resort is located on what were once the banks of one of Sao Paulo's most important reservoir system, called Cantareira.  A drought has been devastating the region for the past two years.  Unless there is more rain, some water conservation groups estimate there is only enough water to last about five months.

Renata Trindade, 26, lives in a northern neighborhood of Sao Paulo with her boyfriend.  She says the government has been rationing water, so she sets aside dirty dishes to conserve water for bathing and flushing toilets.  On weekdays, she gets water from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. and on weekends, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. 

For her and many other Sao Paulo residents, this is the new normal.

And this city is not alone. Brazil's second largest city, Rio de Janeiro, is also facing water troubles, as are other coastal areas. It's been an enormous shock to Brazilians, who are used to their country being called "the Saudi Arabia of Water" — historically, it has had as much water as that Middle Eastern country has oil.

Some people are already deciding to pick up and move their lives completely, in search of more irrigated pastures.

More here.

Mega Dust Bowl by 2100. And a Refugee Crisis the World Has Never Seen.

As Joe Romm writes in this here article at Think-Progress, by 2100 continued fossil-fuel combustion will cause vast stretches of North America to become a massive dustbowl. Basically, everything from Panama to the the western and central US, and Canada's breadbasket, will be impossible to live in because of centuries-long drought.

Remember that the Medieval Warming period eventually caused a two-century long drought that killed off the Anastazi Indians' culture. They all had to leave, it was so bad.

SOIL MOISTURE

The darkest areas are equivalent to the 1930s USA Great Plains' dustbowl.

From Joe Romm's article:

"The Syria conflict has triggered the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II,” explains the European Commission. As Climate Progress has been reporting for years, and as a major 2015 study confirmed, “human-caused climate change was a major trigger of Syria’s brutal civil war."

But the unprecedented multi-year drought that preceded the Syrian civil war is mild compared to the multi-decade megadroughts that unrestricted carbon pollution will make commonplace in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and Central America, according to many recent studies.

Given the current political debate over immigration policy, it’s worth asking two questions. First: if the United States, through our role as the greatest cumulative carbon polluter in history, plays a central role in rendering large parts of Mexico and Central America virtually uninhabitable, where will the refugees go? And second: will we have some moral obligation to change our immigration policy?

If we don’t take far stronger action on climate change, then here is what a 2015 NASA study projected the normal climate of North America will look like. The darkest areas have soil moisture comparable to that seen during the 1930s Dust Bowl.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/09/08/3699165/refugees-dust-bowl-mexico/