The urgency of adaptation: Combating climate change in Armenia

Serouj Aprahamian in Asbarez.com:  The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will meet in Yokohama, Japan, on March 25-29 to discuss its latest and most comprehensive report on climate change. ... A draft of the upcoming report has already been leaked and the conclusions are downright frightening. Increased temperatures are expected to cause major damage to all aspects of the world’s food system within the next 20 years and displace hundreds of millions of people by the end of the century. Unless urgent action is taken, the report states, millions of people will be left without food and enormous strain will be placed on global security.

Such consequences pose a particularly grave threat to a country like Armenia, with its mountainous terrain, scarcity of land, arid climate, and economic dependence on agriculture. In fact, the World Bank identified Armenia as one of the most high-risk countries in Europe and Central Asia to changing climate extremes.

Over the last 80 years, there has been a marked increase in the country’s temperature and a greater frequency of extreme weather phenomena, such as hailstorms, mudslides, and spring frosts. These changing conditions are already affecting the lives of hundreds of farmers throughout the country.

“Fifteen to twenty years ago, you could easily grow ripe raspberries here,” says Lusine Cherkezyan, a farmer and mother of four in the northeastern Armenian village of Hovk. “I would collect 250 kilos of raspberries from my plot in one day alone. But due to changes in the climate we started seeing locusts and irreparable damage occurring. It’s impossible for people to grow raspberries here anymore.”

Lusine was forced to switch to alternative, less lucrative crops such as cabbage, carrots, or beans. She has struggled to adapt to the changes and it has been tough. Like many others in her village, her husband is forced to work in Russia for several months at a time just to put food on the table.

...Hailstorms have been another major issue for growers in the country. Last May, farmers in the region of Armavir made headlines when they blocked a main highway leading to Yerevan and demanded compensation from the government after their crops were destroyed by hail. A half an hour storm alone is enough to wipe out an entire community’s harvest for the year....

Basalt cliffs in Garni Gorge, Armenia, shot by MEDIACRAT or WOWARMENIA, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license. 

As drought punishes, some Americans reeling from billion-dollar hail damage

Robert Krier in InsideClimate News: While the nation is fixated on the punishing heat and drought gripping the United States, parts of the country are still coping with losses from another blast of extreme weather that battered their cities, towns and farms this spring: hailstorms.

The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said there were about 500 more reports of one-inch diameter or larger hail the first half of this year than the 2005-2011 average. Property damage from just two intense hailstorms that hit large cities could exceed $1.5 billion.

Is this year's hail onslaught a sign of things to come in a warming world? Much uncertainty remains about climate change's impact on future hailstorms, with some scientists saying there could be fewer of them, and others predicting even more damage in the future.

To call some of this year's hailstorms "extreme" might be putting it mildly. Here's a recap of just a few of them:

• On April 12, pea-sized hail pelted northern Texas near Amarillo. Nothing remarkable there—except the volume. There was so much, mixed with rain, that snowplows had to be called out to clear 4-foot-high drifts.
• Two days later, another high-volume storm, the likes of which long-time residents said they'd never seen before, inundated Norfolk, Neb., leaving 3-foot drifts in spots.
• On April 28, baseball- to softball-sized hail pummeled the St. Louis area. About 50,000 cars were damaged. Individual insurance claims, including for home roofs and sidings, could top 80,000 in Missouri, according to the property claims services unit of Verisk Analytics. Insured losses are estimated at $450 million, but the total loss should be much higher when uninsured damage is included....

After a hail storm, shot by quinn norton, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

High concentration of bacteria in center of hailstones

Science Daily: Researchers have discovered a high concentration of bacteria in the center of hailstones, suggesting that airborne microorganisms may be responsible for that and other weather events…. "Bacteria have been found within the embryo, the first part of a hailstone to develop. The embryo is a snapshot of what was involved with the event that initiated growth of the hailstone," says Alexander Michaud of Montana State University in Bozeman, who presented the research.

Michaud and his colleagues analyzed hailstones over 5 centimeters in diameter that were collected on the University campus after a storm in June 2010. The large hailstones were seperated into 4 layers and the meltwater from each layer was analyzed. The number of culturable bacteria was found to be highest in the inner cores of the hailstone.

"In order for precipitation to occur, a nucleating particle must be present to allow for aggregation of water molecules," says Michaud. "There is growing evidence that these nuclei can be bacteria or other biological particles."

Michaud's research is part of a growing field of study focusing on bioprecipitation, a concept where bacteria may initiate rainfall and other forms of precipitation including snow and hail. The formation of ice in clouds, which is necessary for snow and most rainfall events, requires ice nuclei (IN), particles that the ice crystals can grow around….

A field of hailstones shot by Soon Chun Siong, uploaded by Nerdybeng at en.wikipedia

A foot of hail falls in Colorado

Zachary Hoffman in Disaster News Network: More than a foot of hail accumulated in some areas of Colorado last night as sever thunderstorms tore through the state, according to the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) of Colorado.

Other than minor leaf damage, no damage was reported, though the amount of hail on some roads caused a few surprised motorists to slide off of the roads, according to CoCoRaHS. The build of hail lowered temperatures and created what is known as hail fog this morning.

CoCoRaHS and the National Weather Service (NWS) received reports of nickel and penny sized hail in Pueblo and El Paso counties, as well as Calhan, Denver, Franktown, Byers and Parker, CO….

Hailstones in Finland, shot by Qz10