Climate report warns of drought, disease

The harmful effects of global warming on daily life are already showing up, and within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say next month at a meeting in Belgium.

At the same time, tens of millions of others will be flooded out of their homes each year as the Earth reels from rising temperatures and sea levels, according to portions of a draft of an international scientific report obtained by The Associated Press.

Tropical diseases like malaria will spread. By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone. Pests like fire ants will thrive.

For a time, food will be plentiful because of the longer growing season in northern regions. But by 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the report, which is still being revised.

India's 'wet desert' hit by global climate change: scientists

Rainfall in the unique "wet desert" of India's northeast has become unpredictable and the dry season longer in a disturbing sign of major changes in global weather patterns, scientists say.

Cherrapunji, in northeast India's tiny Meghalaya state, has long been a top contender for the world's wettest spot, with approximately 12 metres (40 feet) of rainfall annually, most of it in the summer monsoon season.

But a group of Polish and Indian scientists who have been studying the unusual ecosystem -- it falls on a latitude known for some of the world's driest areas, including the Sahara and Gobi deserts -- said that was changing.

Rainfall steadily lessened in the last half of the 20th century, they said.

At the same time, fluctuations increased, meaning the wet years were frequently wetter and the dry years dryer.

U.S. report sees steady rate of emissions

The Bush administration estimates in a report being completed for the United Nations that U.S. emissions of gases that contribute to global warming will grow in the next decade at a rate nearly equal to that of the past 10 years, The New York Times reported in Saturday editions.

According to the United States Climate Action Report, a copy of which was obtained by the newspaper, the administration's climate policy will result in emissions growing 11 percent in 2012 from 2002, compared with an 11.6 rate in the past decade, the Times said, citing the Environmental Protection Agency.

The report, which is more than a year late, also describes growing risks to water supplies, coasts and ecosystems around the country from anticipated temperature and precipitation changes driven by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the Times said.

Scientists watch polar areas for changes

Are we really heading for an ice-free Arctic? More than 50,000 researchers hope to find an answer during a massive study of how global warming and other phenomena are changing the coldest parts of the Earth - and what that means for the rest of it.

Scientists formally kicked off the International Polar Year on Thursday, the biggest such project in 50 years. It is unifying researchers from 63 nations in 228 studies to monitor the health of the polar regions, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines. The project ends in March 2009.

Schoolchildren in Oslo, Norway, many with signs that said "Give us back winter" or "We want snow," built snowmen on the City Hall square to mark Thursday's launch.

The director of the Norwegian Polar Institute described seeing glaciers melt at an accelerated rate in recent years at his Arctic outpost of Ny-Alesund.

The polar year is important because it is "pooling the resources of many countries in a coordinated effort to solve a major scientific problem of our time," Kim Holmen said by telephone.

Global warming "is the most important challenge we face in this century," Prince Albert II of Monaco said in launching the project in Paris. "The hour is no longer for skepticism. It is time to act, and act urgently."