He said climate change, which is already beginning to exacerbate variations in weather patterns - some parched climates may become even drier in the future, wetter ones rainier - makes that task even more pressing.
At the same time, the parched desert climate was becoming increasingly drier.
When extreme weather events like Hurricane Sandy batter coastlines or extended heat waves leave cities and towns parched, some climate justice activists have sought to find a silver lining amidst the grime news.
[Jim texts his fiancée briefly, then returns his full attention to the dinner party.] TOM: I have a two-drink limit that I have no problem adhering to, as I'm rarely parched in this controlled climate.
In California's economic climate — also fairly parched — Bohemia Ecological Preserve is that rarest of specimens: a recently opened park.
It's a picture of a shrinking, sweltering malaria-plagued island inundated by climate refugees from the parched parts of the world that have been rendered increasingly uninhabitable.
But the climate of Kansas and Nebraska reverted to parched, and the drought-stricken debtors trudged back East or to the West Coast in wagons emblazoned, "In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted".
Witness the devastation of the Midwest this past summer, the devastating rains, winds and floods of Irene and Lee, cycles of drought, wildfires burning out of control across parched, once-verdant farmland -- evidence of climate change above and beyond El Niño and La Niña.
The new findings forecast a more parched future for the Amazon rain forest than the climate report released last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the study authors said.
