Typhoons a growing threat because of climate change

Peter Hannam in Stuff (New Zealand): A warming planet is already stoking the intensity of tropical cyclones in the north-west Pacific and their ferocity will continue to increase even with moderate climate change over this century, an international research team has found.

A study covering 850 typhoons in the region found the intensity of the damaging storms has increased by about 10 per cent since the 1970s, said Wei Mei, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-author of the study published in the journal Science Advances.

Using 20 models and a mid-range projection of carbon dioxide emissions, the researchers found the peak intensity of storms such as super Typhoon Haiyan, which tore through the Philippines in November 2013, will become even stronger and more common. Such storms will be 14 per cent stronger by 2100, equivalent to adding another category to the current top severity rating of 5, the study found.

Research on tropical cyclones – known as hurricanes in the Atlantic basin – has sought to identify whether factors contributing to more powerful events such as warmer sea surface temperatures might be countered by changes to ocean or atmospheric circulation that may hinder the storms' genesis or force. Warming in the top 75 metres of the oceans will dominate other influences, the researchers found.

"This projected increase in typhoon intensity is largely due to [sea surface temperatures] warming," the study found, adding that the findings are "at the high end" of previous projections....

Typhoon Haiyan, November 7, 2013

South-East Asian haze increases risk of respiratory mortality

Research SEA: Since 1997, the massive burning of biomass in Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia, has affected neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Southern Thailand. The burning of biomass has generated a significant amount of haze that travels overseas, affecting the region’s economy and public health.

Haze resulting from forest fires is known to increase the concentration of toxic airborne particles that are smaller than ten microns in size, such as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone. Previous studies have found that airborne particles can cause serious respiratory effects. In 1997, South-East Asian haze increased the number of asthma attacks by 10.7% in Malaysia alone.

Professor Mazrura Sahani, an environmental epidemiology expert at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, recently conducted a follow-up study on this issue focusing on Klang Valley, the most populated and most affected area on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia. She analysed the association between mortality rates from respiratory illness in Klang Valley and 88 days of recorded haze events from 2000 to 2007. Haze events typically last for seven days.

Professor Sahani collected respiratory mortality data from Malaysia’s Department of Statistics and obtained environmental data from six continuous air quality monitoring stations in Klang Valley. Her results showed that South-East Asian haze has increased the risk of respiratory mortality in Klang Valley as a result of increased exposure to toxic particles during the haze days. By the sixth day of a haze event, daily mortality rates were higher than normal....

Haze in Kuala Lumpur, shot by Krisjohn, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike  2.0 Generic license

Natural disasters cost Asia-Pacific 60 billion dollars, 6,000 lives in 2014

Josh Butler in IPS: Natural disasters in Asian and Pacific nations cost almost 60 billion dollars and killed 6,000 people in 2014. There were 119 ‘disaster events’ recorded in the Asia-Pacific last year, including cyclones, storms, floods, landslides and earthquakes.

The most damaging single event was a river basin flood in India in September that killed 1,281 people and caused 16 billion dollars in damages, according to a report from the U.N.’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). ‘Disasters in Asia and the Pacific: 2014 Year in Review’ said the 6,050 people killed in Asia-Pacific natural disasters was well down on the 18,744 recorded in the region in 2013.

Almost 80 million people were affected by Asia-Pacific natural disasters last year, and a total of 59.6 billion dollars in economic loss was wreaked on the region.

Tropical Cyclone Hudhud caused 11 billion dollars in damage in India in October; the Ludian earthquake in China killed 617 and left six billion dollars in damage behind in August; landslides in Nepal killed 229; while 75 deaths and 5.2 billion dollars in damage resulted from Japanese tropical cyclones Lingling and Kajiki.

Floods, however, were the most damaging natural events, causing 3,559 deaths and 26.8 billion dollars in damage. ESCAP warns that the Asia-Pacific was “found largely unprepared in its response to cross-border floods and landslides,” and urged countries to implement better response strategies in future....

Aerial view northeast of Cheepurupalli in the aftermath of Cyclone Hudhud. Shot by the Indian Navy, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India license.

Asia’s cities poised to lead in climate change adaptation

Toral Patel at Asia Foundation:
With support from the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities challenge, a number of cities across Asia are beginning to confront the impacts of climate change. Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, recently selected as one of Resilient Cities’ newest member cities and home to 1.5 million people, is one. Due to its low elevation and proximity to the Mekong River, Phnom Penh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly heavy monsoons rains which can create disruptive urban flooding, while changes in precipitation patterns and increasing saltwater intrusion adversely affect the city’s water supply and coastal ecosystems.

Due to its low elevation and proximity to the Mekong River, Phnom Penh is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, particularly heavy monsoons rains which can create disruptive urban flooding. Photo/Flicker user Chun Yip So

Proximity to rivers and coastlines increases exposure to climate-induced hazards in many mega-cities like Bangkok, Dhaka, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila. Exposure alone, however, is not what makes these and other Asian cities vulnerable. Rather, it is their low capacity to adapt to new and existing hazards...

Phnom Penh in the evening, shot byMilei.vencel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Climate change: adapt now or perish

Bindu Lohani in Live Mint: Climate change will sow confusion and concern as it unfolds across South Asia in coming decades. Home to a quarter of the world’s population, this vast region will be hit harder than just about anywhere else. Sudden flooding, storms, droughts and other hazards will upend lives, livelihoods, and economies.

As this grim future takes shape, the price of global inaction is rising each year. Up to 9% will have been stripped annually from South Asia’s economy on average by 2100 if no further action is taken globally on climate change, says a new report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Assessing the Costs of Climate Change and Adaptation in South Asia. There’s an outside chance of those losses blowing out to 24% given the uncertainty surrounding climate change’s future impacts.

What can be done? The region’s countries have taken steps to cushion the impact of a warming world, but bolder action is needed. Given the slow pace of global mitigation efforts, the worst-case scenario of huge economic losses might end up being South Asia’s future by default. While only global action will halt climate change, countries should not wait on it before taking adaptive measures. They can be as straightforward as placing sand-filled geotextile bags along riverbanks to stall erosion as happened recently in low-lying Bangladesh, where an area up to twice the size of Shimla city is swallowed annually. Or they can be more wide-ranging, such as a recent initiative of the UK government, the Rockefeller Foundation and ADB to boost climate resilience at 25 cities in Asia by helping to integrate climate risks into city plans and develop resilient infrastructure.

Those efforts must now be mainstreamed into national development plans, with governments, the private sector and civil society working together. Moreover, as climate change ignores national borders, South Asia’s countries must respond cooperatively through a regional framework to promote technology transfer, dialogue, and sharing of best practices....

US Department of Defense photo of flooding in suburban Bangkok in 2011

Dust — and the microbes hitching rides on it — influences rain, climate

A press release from the American Chemical Society: Dusty air blowing across the Pacific from Asia and Africa plays a critical role in precipitation patterns throughout the drought-stricken western U.S. Today, a scientist will present new research suggesting that the exact chemical make-up of that dust, including microbes found in it, is the key to how much rain and snow falls from clouds throughout the region. This information could help better predict rain events, as well as explain how air pollution from a variety of sources influences regional climate in general.

...“We’ve learned that not all of the particles in the air at high altitudes have the same influence on clouds. We’re starting to think that these differences contribute to how rain gets distributed,” says Kim Prather, Ph.D.

Most of the dust that Prather’s team at the University of California, San Diego, detects in clouds and precipitation originates in Asian and Chinese deserts. It gets swept westward by the jet stream where it mixes with a variety of other airborne particles such as sea spray and smoke. Prather says that each of these types of particles — collectively known as aerosols — has its own, distinctive impact on clouds.

A major key to what turns ordinary clouds into rainmakers in the first place is their ability to form ice crystals around the microscopic particles that invade and “seed” them, Prather said. Without ice crystals as a catalyst, rain development inside clouds can be impaired.   “The standard belief is the more ice you have in a cloud, the more likely you will get precipitation out of it,” she says. “Our goal is to catch the first stages of ice forming and find out what exactly the chemical constituents are that the ice is forming on.”

...Prather speculates that the microbes hitch a ride on bits of sand, iron and other debris swept aloft from desert regions. Microbes and biological components could also become mixed with the dust as it is transported across the Pacific. She and her team are eager to learn just how important these bioparticles are in the rainmaking process.

...“Long term, our goal is to be able to predict how much precipitation we can expect to form when certain aerosols such as dust are coming toward us,” says Prather. “That’s a lofty goal but we’re making headway.”...

Via NASA, a satellite view of a dust cloud over Asia

UN initiative strengthens drought monitoring and early warning in Asia-Pacific

UN News Centre: Although drought is a “silent killer” in Asia and the Pacific, access to scientific information and knowledge remain a challenge for many countries in the region, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) said today at a milestone forum on drought monitoring and early warning.

“Over the past three decades, it is estimated that droughts in the region have affected more than 1.3 billion people and caused damages of over $53 billion,” Shamika Sirimanne, Director of ESCAP’s Information and Communications Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction Division, said today in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The meeting, organized by ESCAP and the Sri Lanka Ministry of Technology and Research, drew senior Government representatives, regional experts and UN agencies to exchange good practices and discuss strategies to reduce the impacts of agricultural drought and help save lives.

...However, despite significant progress in monitoring agricultural drought, access to satellite-derived data and knowledge for improving early warning remains a challenge for many countries in Asia and the Pacific.

In 2013, ESCAP launched the Regional Drought Mechanism – a platform providing timely and free satellite-based data; products; and training to regional drought-prone countries – to enhance the capacity of Governments for agricultural monitoring and early warning. When combined with information collected on the ground, the data leads to more effective detection of potential drought conditions....

The Victoria Dam in Sri Lanka submerged Teldeniya city under a reservoir. A 2012 drought lowered the reservoir and exposed the city again. Shot by Hasindu2008, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Asia can show the way in building disaster resilience

Margarete Wahlstrom at the Thomson Reuters Foundation via UNISDR: Next week, 2,500 delegates from more than 39 countries in Asia and the Pacific are expected in Bangkok, Thailand, for the Sixth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, to shape future efforts to build more resilient communities and nations.

The outcome of the meeting will have long-term significance for the world at large, as the recommendations will feed into a new global agreement on disaster risk reduction which will replace the current Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted in 2005 by all U.N. member States following the Indian Ocean tsunami.

When Asia speaks on disaster risk management, the rest of the world listens. The region suffers more than 80 percent of the world’s disaster events. Nine of the world’s 10 most significant disaster events last year by fatalities occurred in the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Japan and China. Some 14,500 lives were lost in tropical cyclones, floods, heat waves, cold waves and earthquakes.

...The learning from the last nine years of implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action across the region tells us that while much progress has been made when it comes to reducing the risk of fatalities in the event of a disaster, countries still struggle when it comes to tackling the causes of risk creation and economic losses.

Many countries are forced to spend far too much of their budgets on disaster response, meeting the emergency needs of affected people and, in the longer term,  repairing roads, schools, health facilities and critical infrastructure which should have been disaster-proof in the first place.

If a percentage of response and recovery money were invested wisely in urban planning and land use to reduce the population’s exposure to risk, then the long-term savings would be significant. For every $1 invested in disaster risk reduction, the long-term savings are at least $4 to $8 - more money that can be spent on education, health and job creation....

NASA image of Cyclone Phailin in the Bay of Bengal, October 11, 2013

US urges ASEAN armies to prepare for more natural disasters

Terra Daily via AFP: US officials on Wednesday offered to help ASEAN countries prepare for the devastating effects of climate change, urging stronger cooperation among armies and emergency agencies.

Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel and other top officials discussed the danger posed by rising global temperatures with ASEAN defense ministers in Honolulu, home to a major US weather research center that tracks sea levels and tsunamis in the Pacific Ocean.

"The more we can understand the science behind these natural disasters the more we can coordinate and communicate our efforts to help each other," Hagel told his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Hagel said that cooperation among ASEAN militaries for humanitarian operations was steadily growing but that more collaboration was needed, as scientists predict more typhoons and other natural disasters will hit the region....

A scene during the 2011 flooding in Thailand, shot by DANIEL JULIE, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Water-energy nexus reaches crisis level in Asia

Parameswaran Ponnudurai in Eurasia Review:  A coal-linked project in China’s dry Inner Mongolia region has caused a local water table to plunge and a local lake to shrink. In neighboring India, a thermal power plant has been forced to shut down because of severe water shortages.

In Southeast Asia, impoverished Laos risks destroying the spawning grounds of migratory fish species that feed millions of people along the key Mekong River as it pushes ahead with the controversial Xayaburi dam project aimed at selling electricity to power-hungry Thailand. Wealthy Singapore, meanwhile, is consuming large amounts of of energy to overcome its water scarcity challenge even as the island nation’s progress toward water self-sufficiency is considered exemplary.

Decisions made in Asia for water use and management and for energy production are having major impacts on each other and serious repercussions for the region, according to studies highlighted on World Water Day last week. The nexus between water and energy is quite evident in the region largely because of poor and uneven access, and the cross use of the two resources for exploitation, officials say.

“Some of the statistics are quite startling,” Shamshad Akhtar, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said in a speech last week when commemorating a World Water Day event in Bangkok.

He said that while 4.3 billion people or about 60 percent the global population live in Asia, people in the region only have access to 38 percent of the world’s fresh water. As a result, Asia has the lowest regional per capita water availability in the world. In parallel, Akhtar said, Asia’s energy consumption also remains lower than the global average, but is expected to rise sharply in the next three decades, to drive the required pace of regional economic growth....

Inner Mongolian Desert, shot by Fir0002, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license 

Leaked UN climate change report paints grim picture of Philippines, rest of Asia

Eco-Business: Millions of people in vulnerable areas, such as some parts of Asia, will have to deal with a worrying scenario of conflicts, food crises, flooding, droughts and huge economic losses caused by climate change by the end of the century, according to the leaked draft of a forthcoming international climate report.

The latest report of the United Nations panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), looked at the growing threat of climate change and on how human and natural systems are expected to address the “ widespread and consequential” impacts.

The leaked document, which is yet to be finalized by hundreds of international scientists and is scheduled to be release by end of March 2014, is the second of the three reports of the IPCC’s scientific assessment on climate change.

The report also finds other alarming and devastating impacts from climate change revealing that hundreds of millions of people, mostly in Asia, will be forced to move due to coastal flooding and land loss as sea level rise.

By the middle of this century, Asia’s urban population will increase by 1.4 billion and will account for over 50 per cent of the global population, according to the IPCC report. Asia, which includes the Philippines, experienced the highest number of weather-and climate-related disasters in the world during the period from 2000-2008 and suffered huge economic losses, accounting for the second highest proportion (27.5 per cent) of the total global economic loss....

A street scene in Manila, shot by Ville Miettinen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Asia-Pacific failing to save forests and grasslands

Stian Reklev in Reuters: Asia-Pacific nations are failing to halt the loss of natural forests and grasslands, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday, robbing people of their livelihoods and worsening environmental problems like desertification and climate change.

Forests and grasslands make up 58 percent of the region's land mass, but each year 2 million hectares (20,000 square kms) are degraded and rendered useless, Patrick Durst, a FAO senior forestry officer told a food conference in Ulan Bator.

Across the Asia-Pacific, 400 million hectares (4 mln sq kms) - an area equal to the combined size of India and Myanmar - are now in bad need of restoration, he said. "We are already seeing strong negative impacts," Durst told Reuters at the conference.

In China and Mongolia, over-grazing and poor land management mean herders increasingly have to give up feeding their livestocks and instead look for new jobs in fast-growing cities. Lost grassland boosts desertification and helps cause massive sand storms that sometimes carry as far as eastern Canada....

A lone tree in Mongolia, shot by tiarescott, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Stepping up the fight against drug-resistant malaria in southeast Asia

IRIN: Efforts are being scaled up to stem a further spread of drug-resistant malaria in Southeast Asia.

“The emergence of resistance… threatens worldwide malaria control and treatment since there is no alternative to this drug if its efficacy decreases further and the resistance spreads outside the region,” wrote the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is providing some US$150 million for malaria prevention and elimination programmes in the Greater Mekong sub-region within the next two years.

The region includes southern China, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.

In 2008, artemisinin-resistant malaria was first discovered in Cambodia’s Pailin Province along the Thai border, which immediately alarmed health experts.

About 60 years earlier, malaria strains had also developed resistance against chloroquine, then the most common drug to treat malaria. A spread of resistance could not be stopped, and several years later, chloroquine was deemed useless globally…

CDC image of plasmodium falciparum

Rise in malaria forecast for tropical highlands

Maria Elena Hurtado in SciDev.net: More people may contract malaria in the tropical highlands of Africa, Asia and South America as global warming makes the climate in these areas more suitable for the disease’s transmission, according to a study.

While the study focuses on the effects of global warming, it notes that further studies will be needed to account for other factors that may influence the disease’s spread, including economic development, changes in human population patterns and adaptations in the mosquitoes that transmit malaria.

The authors of the paper, published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (3 February), used five existing malaria impact models to make predictions for the 2030s, 2050s and 208
0s.

The malaria models were run under four different carbon dioxide emissions scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The researchers examined how easily disease would be transmitted and how many people would be at risk under the different scenarios.

They found that each of the five models predicted an extended the disease transmission season in the highland regions of eastern Africa, South Africa, central Angola, the plateau of Madagascar, central America, southern Brazil and the border area between India and Nepal....

A bucket of skeeters, shot by the National Institutes of Health

Asian ozone pollution in Hawaii is tied to climate variability

Joanne Curcio in the Princeton Journal Watch:  Air pollution from Asia has been rising for several decades but Hawaii had seemed to escape the ozone pollution that drifts east with the springtime winds. Now a team of researchers has found that shifts in atmospheric circulation explain the trends in Hawaiian ozone pollution.

The researchers found that since the mid-1990s, these shifts in atmospheric circulation have caused Asian ozone pollution reaching Hawaii to be relatively low in spring but rise significantly in autumn. The study, led by Meiyun Lin, an associate research scholar in the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (NOAA) at Princeton University and a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, was published in Nature Geoscience.

“The findings indicate that decade-long variability in climate must be taken into account when attributing U.S. surface ozone trends to rising Asian emissions,” Lin said. She conducted the research with Larry Horowitz and Songmiao Fan of GFDL, Samuel Oltmans of the University of Colorado and the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder; and Arlene Fiore of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

Although protective at high altitudes, ozone near the Earth’s surface is a greenhouse gas and a health-damaging air pollutant. The longest record of ozone measurements in the U.S. dates back to 1974 in Hawaii. Over the past few decades, emissions of ozone precursors in Asia has tripled, yet the 40-year Hawaiian record revealed little change in ozone levels during spring, but a surprising rise in autumn.

Through their research, Lin and her colleagues solved the puzzle. “We found that changing wind patterns ‘hide’ the increase in Asian pollution reaching Hawaii in the spring, but amplify the change in the autumn,” Lin said.

...“This study not only solves the mystery of Hawaiian ozone changes since 1974, but it also has broad implications for interpreting trends in surface ozone levels globally,” Lin said. “Characterizing shifts in atmospheric circulation is of paramount importance for understanding the response of surface ozone levels to a changing climate and evolving global emissions of ozone precursors,” she said....

Asian pollution drifts east toward North America in 2010. Hawaii is denoted by the star. (Source: Nature Geoscience)

UN develops innovative early warning tool for drought prone Asia-Pacific regions

UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific: Senior officials from governments across the Asia-Pacific region today agreed on a set of collective priorities and ground-breaking initiatives that will build resilience to natural disasters and further enhance regional cooperation, at a meeting convened by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in Bangkok.

Faced with the continued, severe impact of natural disasters across the region, representatives at the Third Session of the Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction called on ESCAP to facilitate regional cooperation aimed at harnessing technological advances for resilient, inclusive and sustainable development.

In line with this, ESCAP's long-standing Regional Space Applications Programme for Sustainable Development (RESAP) announced the development and operationalization of a new regional mechanism on drought. With this mechanism, the monitoring and early warning capabilities of drought-prone countries will be significantly strengthened through the effective use of space-based information provided by service nodes in the region.

Every year in the Asia-Pacific region, droughts push millions of farmers into debt and deepen poverty and hunger but this new regional mechanism is capable of issuing early warnings before the drought is visible to the human eye. Its satellite sensors will detect warning soil and water conditions before the worst of the droughts take hold, so that early action can be taken.

Initially supported by Chinese and Indian space agencies, the regional drought mechanism will provide monitoring and early warning services and capacity building for drought-prone countries in the region. Mongolia is already piloting the mechanism, and Cambodia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka are expected to join soon as pilot counties....

North West Australia cyclone increase may have been caused by Asian forest fires

ABC (Australia): CSIRO research into the past and future climate of North West Australia's Pilbara region has uncovered a period of increased cyclone activity that may have been caused by Asian forest fires.PrintEmailPermalinkShare

When CSIRO research scientist Dr Don McFarlane looked at the Pilbara's climate history right back to 1910, there was one period of wet weather that really stood out. From 1996 to 2001 the region had an extraordinary period of cyclone activity.

"The period between about 1996 and 2001 was very much wetter and a lot more tropical cyclones came through that period," he says. It was the kind of climate change that you didn't have to be a meteorologist to notice.

"It had about a 50 percent increase in its average rainfall for that long period. And I think those people that were in the Pilbara at that time probably remember that period; a lot of the rivers were running," he says.

Dr McFarlane says research from the Indian Ocean Climate Initiative has indicated that air pollution from Asia may be the explanation for this anomalous weather. "Some of the wetting that has been occurring in the '90s and early 2000s might have been a result of forest fires and pollution generally coming down from that South East Asian or even East Asian area," he says....

Cyclone Narelle off the coast of Western Australia, January 11, 2013, shot by NASA

Melting glaciers bring energy uncertainty

Javaid Laghari in Nature: Running 2,000 kilometres from east to west and comprising more than 60,000 square kilometres of ice, the Hindu Kush–Karakoram–Himalayan glaciers are a source of water for the quarter of the global population that lives in south Asia. Glaciers are natural stores and regulators of water supply to rivers, which, in turn, provide water for domestic and industrial consumption, energy generation and irrigation.

Ice cover is decreasing in this region, as for most glaciers in the world, as a result of global warming. Between 2003 and 2009, Himalayan glaciers lost an estimated 174 gigatonnes of water each year, and contributed to catastrophic floods of the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers. Pollution is accelerating the melt. An 'Asian brown cloud', formed from the 2 million tonnes of soot and dark particles released into the atmosphere every year, mostly from India and China, warms the air and surface ice.

Seasonal meltwater serves as the main source of power for an increasing number of hydroelectric dams on the rivers served by the glaciers. But hydropower faces a difficult future in south Asia because of climatic, environmental and politico-economic factors. The region is starved of energy, and power shortages of up to 20 hours a day are stunting development. Importing oil and gas from the Gulf, Iran or Tajikistan is expensive or politically difficult. So countries are turning to indigenous hydroelectric power, and to other renewable energies such as solar and wind, for cheap, sustainable energy.

Hydroelectric power must play a part in south Asia's low-carbon energy future. But to be effective, governments around the Himalayas need to work together to measure and model glacier retreat, changing river flows and their impact on hydroelectric power generation. Political obstacles to dam construction and watershed management must also be overcome.

Glaciers feed thousands of miles of rivers in Pakistan. The largest, the river Indus, depends on glacial waters for half of its flow. But near the river's source, in mountains in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, the glaciers are thinning at an alarming rate of 0.7 metres per year. The Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers in India and Bangladesh are similarly threatened by glacial melting in the regions of their headwaters....

Durung Drung glacier and Nun-Kun twin peaks (7100m), Zanskar, Jammu & Kashmir, India, shot by BasinField, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Lessons on adapting to climate change

Indian Express: Representatives from 20 cities from  across South Asia will come together in Kochi on Wednesday to learn from each other on the issue of adaptation to climate change at the seminar on  Asian Cities Adapt: Learning Exchange, co-organised by ICLEI South Asia and Kochi Corporation.

The two-day workshop, will present an impressive line-up of high-level local representatives from India, the Philippines, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal, who will discuss solutions on how cities can adapt to climate change, together with climate experts and other practitioners from India, Southeast Asia and Europe. The civic representatives from other cities include Male city (Maldives) Mayor Maizan Ali Manik, Mongla Mayor Zulfikar Ali, and Singra (Bangladesh) Mayor Shamim Al Razi, and Shimla Deputy Mayor Tikender S Panwar.

“With the recently released fifth  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment confirming that climate change is a reality and an increase in temperature and sea-level is therefore unavoidable, cities in Asia - one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change - must act, and must do so fast,” warn experts.

According to them, many cities attending the workshop have already witnessed the impact of changing weather patterns - the workshop will provide them with lessons and other approaches and experiences to understand consequences and identify suitable local responses better.

“Researchers from internationally-renowned institutions as well as expert agencies like German Cooperation Agency (GIZ ), Cities Development Initiatives for Asia (CDIA) and BBC Media Action will offer different perspectives on the issue, presenting the latest research findings and current initiatives at the seminar,” according to a release.

The workshop is organised as part of the ‘AsianCitiesAdapt - Impacts of Climate Change in Target Cities in India and the Philippines and Local Adaptation Strategies’....

A view of Kochi, Kerala, India. Photo by Adam Jones Adam63, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

A new look at air pollution sources and atmosphere-warming particles in South Asia

A press release from the Desert Research Institute: When Rajan Chakrabarty, Ph.D., an assistant research professor at the Desert Research Institute, began looking into the regional inventories of human-produced sources of carbon aerosol pollution in South Asia, considered to be a climate change hot spot, he knew something was missing. “Current emission inventories do not account for cultural burning practices in Asia as aerosol sources,” said Chakrabarty, who is originally from the Northeastern region of India.

Teaming up with Shamsh Pervez, Ph.D., a professor of Chemistry at the Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University, India and a 2011 Fulbright fellow to DRI, Chakrabarty designed and executed a comprehensive study to investigate the nature and impact of pollutant particles emitted from the widely-prevalent cultural practice of open-air funeral pyre burning in India and Nepal.

...Open-air burning of funeral pyres is an age-old and deep-rooted custom in South Asia. More than seven million pyres, each weighing around 550 kilograms, are burned every year throughout India and Nepal. In total, these pyres consume an estimated 50 to 60 million trees annually.

Chakrabarty and colleagues found to their surprise that funeral pyre emissions contain sunlight-absorbing organic carbon aerosols known as brown carbon. In the past, numerous studies have identified black carbon aerosols emitted from combustion of fossil fuels and residential biofuels as the dominant light-absorbing aerosol over South Asia. The researchers estimate the mean light-absorbing organic aerosol mass emitted from funeral pyres to be equivalent of approximately 23 percent of the total carbonaceous aerosol mass produced by anthropogenic burning of fossil fuels, and 10 percent of biofuels in the region....

A funeral pyre on the banks of the Bagamati, Assam, India, shot by Gregor Younger, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license