Environment

River Crisis

The flow of South America’s Paraguay River is nearing its third consecutive all-time low, threatening to cut off all river shipping from the Atlantic near Buenos Aires to Bolivia.

Three consecutive seasons of La Niña in the Pacific are blamed for ongoing low flows in the waterway.

The Paraguay is the only major river in South America that has not been dammed for hydroelectric power, meaning it can be used for shipping over long distances to provide an important trade corridor to the otherwise landlocked nations of Paraguay and Bolivia. While some urge that the river be dredged to improve flows, hydrology experts say only the return of regular and significant rainfall can resolve the problem.

Snowless Alps

As Europeans from Poland to France enjoyed sporting short-sleeved shirts around New Year’s Day, many ski slopes in the Alps were green with grass when they should normally be deep with wintertime snow. This has caused a crisis for some Alpine resort operators and threatened the World Cup skiing competition held at Switzerland’s Adelboden, which was run entirely on artificial snow.

French meteorologists say slopes above 2,200 metres have seen close to normal snowfall so far this winter, but snow is noticeably absent at lower elevations of the northern Alps and across the Pyrenees range that separates France and Spain.