Is it the end of the line for tuna?

Jennifer Rankin in European Voice.com: The European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) will be judged by what happens to bluefin tuna. The CFP's credibility will be badly damaged if the silvery-grey fish disappears from the waters of the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Scientists fear that bluefin tuna, having been overfished for decades, is at risk of disappearing for good. “Collapse could be a real possibility in the foreseeable future,” said a report last year by scientists for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the international body that manages the fish. The only thing protecting the fish in European waters is the EU's inspection and control regime, the teams of EU inspectors who check that fishing fleets are sticking to their quotas. The missions are more active than ever before, but not everyone thinks that they are enough to stave off collapse.

During this year's three-month mission (mid-April to mid-June) officials carried out more than 600 inspections and found 96 infringements of the rules. EU ships and planes patrolled the seas from the eastern Mediterranean as far west as the Azores.

…For Gemma Parkes, in the Rome office of the conservation organisation WWF, it is too early to judge how effective the EU mission has been. But she said “we know that the stocks are in dire straits and we know they are collapsing in real time as we speak”…

Northern bluefin tuna, shot by OpenCage, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

Typhoon Morakot lashes Taiwan, surges toward China

William Ide in Voice of America News: Taiwan officials and media reports say Typhoon Morakot has left at least six people dead or missing as it passed over the island and surged toward China's eastern coast. Already, more than 20,000 have been evacuated from coastal areas in China and nine fishermen have gone missing after their boat capsized.

Forecasters at Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau say Typhoon Morakot made land fall late Friday, bringing with it winds of up to 199 kilometers per hour, and dumping between 1 to 2 meters of water on some areas. The storm has downed power lines, damaged crops and forced the island's high-speed rail line to suspend operations.

Local television footage from northern and eastern parts of the island showed heavy waves lashing Taiwan's coast and some residents fleeing their homes as flood waters rose. Some were reportedly trapped and forced to wait for rescue workers to arrive. Lo Ya-yi, a forecaster at Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau says the eye of the storm has already passed over Taiwan and the system is now headed toward China's eastern coast…

The track of Typhoon Morakot, projected as of August 3, 2009

A disappearing French glacier

Science Daily: Located over 12 000 kilometers from the Alps, the Kerguelen Islands are home to the largest French glacier, the Cook ice cap (which had an area of around 500 km2 in 1963). By combining historical information with recent satellite data, the glaciologists at the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (Université Paul Sabatier / CNRS / CNES / IRD) have observed increasingly rapid shrinkage of the ice.

Over the last 40 years, the Cook ice cap has thinned by around 1.5 meters per year, its area has decreased by 20%, and retreat has been twice as rapid since 1991. Their work has been just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The Kerguelen Islands are located in the southern Indian Ocean, and numerous glaciers cover the highest areas of the islands. The first studies carried out in this exceptional natural laboratory for French research showed an initially slow retreat of the Ampère glacier (one of the outlet glaciers of the Cook ice cap) between 1800 and 1965, subsequently becoming much faster. Since 1974, in situ monitoring of the Cook ice cap has no longer been carried out. However, observations made from space between 1991 and 2006 have enabled scientists to collect data from this relatively inaccessible area.

…The glaciers in the Kerguelen islands were already retreating in the 1960s, and their decline over the past 40 years cannot be attributed only to recent warming partly due to human activities. Part of this retreat can in fact be explained by a delayed response of these glaciers to the natural warming that followed the Little Ice Age (a cold period that ended between 1850 and 1900). However, the recent acceleration of ice wastage is doubtless connected to high temperatures and low precipitation since the beginning of the 1980s.

Cook Glacier on Kerguelen Island, shot by B.navez, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Research breakthrough will lead to more accurate weather forecasts

Queens University Belfast: More accurate global weather forecasts and a better understanding of climate change are in prospect thanks to a breakthrough by engineers at Queen’s University Belfast’s Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT).

The ECIT team has developed a high performance electronic device - known as a dual polarized Frequency Selective Surface filter - that is to be used in future European Space Agency (ESA) missions.

The filters will be installed in instruments being developed by ESA for meteorological satellites it plans to launch between 2018 and 2020. The ESA instruments are used to detect thermal emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere. The data measures temperature, humidity profiles, and gas composition, which are in turn entered into operational systems and used to forecast weather and pollution.

Lead ECIT engineer Raymond Dickie said: “Measuring just 30mm in diameter and 1/100mm thick, the devices will help to provide a much more comprehensive analysis of conditions in the Earth’s atmosphere than has been possible previously.

“Up to now, spaceborne remote sensing instruments have only been capable of separating either the vertically or horizontally polarized components of naturally occurring thermal emissions from gases in the Earth’s atmosphere - but not both together at the same time. The invention of the new filter resolves this problem and will enable complex imaging of clouds to be undertaken for the first time at very short wavelengths.”…

Queen's University engineers Raymond Dickie (L) and Professor Robert Cahill (R) with their new filter which will improve the accuracy of weather forecasting

Volatile climate, politics jeopardize Madagascar’s access to food precarious

AllAfrica.com via UN News Service: Access to food for the people of Madagascar remains unreliable because of the impact of natural disasters, which routinely strike the island State, and continuing political tensions, a United Nations report warned today.

The joint Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) mission tasked with assessing crop and food security in Madagascar underscored the effect a run of cyclones on the east coast in 2008-2009 and several years of drought in the south has had on the country's crops.

In addition, the political crisis - involving the resignation of President Marc Ravalomanana in early March, amid a dispute with the mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, who now leads the country - combined with the global economic recession has had repercussions for public finances, exports, tourism, unemployment and the national currency, and a knock-on effect on the agricultural sector, according to the FAO-WFP report.

The report noted that food production varies widely across the Indian Ocean nation with good rainfall benefiting the 2008-2009 harvest in the centre, north and west of the country, as well as favouring rice-growing areas with an estimated 8 per cent increase in paddy production to over 4 million tons of rice. However, the drought devastated the south, home to some of the country's poorest communities, has caused national maize, sweet potato and cassava production to slump….

Typhoon Morakot's cloud top extent doubled in one day

Science Daily: Satellite imagery over the last two days has shown Typhoon Morakot to be a monster, and over the last two days, NASA satellites have confirmed the typhoon doubled its size!

"Our satellite scan swath width is 1700 kilometers (1,056 miles) and Morakot looks to be almost that much in diameter in the infrared imagery on August 5," said Ed Olsen, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Olsen provides images for the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on the Aqua satellite. "On August 4 Morakot was only about 1/2 the width of our swath width, near 850 kilometers (528 miles) in diameter!"

To put it into perspective, 1,056 miles is longer than the distance from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Orlando, Florida. Olsen said that it's important to know that satellite image represents the lateral extent of the cold cloud tops and that the winds definitely do not extend over an area 1,000 miles in diameter.

AIRS captured an infrared image of Typhoon Morakot tracking through the East China Sea on August 6 at 12:35 a.m. EDT (0435 UTC). At 11 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6, Morakot was closing in on Taiwan and was located 240 miles east-southeast of Taipei, Taiwan, near 23.2 north and 125.0 east. Morakot the monster has maximum sustained winds near 92 mph (80 knots) and was moving west near 14 mph.

AIRS provides visible, infrared and microwave images of tropical storms. AIRS also measures cloud top temperature and pressure and the profile of water vapor as functions of height. Infrared imagery shows the temperature of the cloud tops which gives a hint about the power of the thunderstorms in a tropical cyclone. The colder the clouds are, the higher they are, and the more powerful the thunderstorms are that make up the cyclone….

Morakot was a tropical storm on August 4, when this image was taken by US Navy personnel

Ecuador wants 'carbon bonds' to save forest

Carbon Positive: While the UN, World Bank and NGOs work away at creating a new international carbon payments mechanism to save the world’s remaining rainforests, Ecuador has been trying a variation on theme – carbon bonds. The bonds would be issued over a government guarantee that oil won’t be extracted from the Yasuni National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon and its forest and biodiversity preserved.

The project would deliver a total of 407 million tonnes of emissions reduction savings, primarily from the avoided extraction and burning of 850 million barrels of oil under the reserve, and the protection of forest. There would also be significant benefits in biodiversity conservation and protecting the way of life of two indigenous groups living traditionally in the forest.

Working in a similar way to tradable carbon offset credits generated in return for emission reductions, the Ecuadorian government envisages issuing Yasuni Guarantee Certificates linked to the price of offset credits on the European carbon market.

Revenue from bond sales would offset the royalties foregone to oil companies in locking up the reserve permanently. If the oil reserve were to be exploited at some future date, the bonds would be cancelled and the government would be legally bound to return the proceeds, plus interest….

RioPindo.JPGThe wooded banks of the River Pindo, in Pastaza province, Ecuador, shot by The lifted lorax, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Severn Barrage ‘will lead to flooding’ in Welsh cities

Sally Williams in Wales Online, via the Western Mail: The proposed Severn Barrage will lead to flooding in Cardiff and Newport, a leading Welsh coastal scientist warned last night. Professor Simon Haslett, director of the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the University of Wales, Newport, said a barrage would be on a “losing curve” of energy production and was not a “sustainable solution” because it is likely to create more problems than it solves.

The UK Government is keen to harness the power of the River Severn – which has the second highest tidal range in the world – to generate electricity as part of its commitment to source 20% of the UK’s energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Developers of the 10-mile, £14bn scheme, that would stretch from the Welsh coast near Cardiff to the English coast near Weston-super-Mare, say it could generate up to 8GW – 5% of the UK’s energy needs.

Bur Prof Haslett said: “The barrage is designed to create electricity and to stop sea floods. But its development will lead the sea level to rise by three metres in the estuary and that’s going to drown a lot of tidal mudflats that are currently exposed. “It will also increase groundwater levels around Newport and Cardiff, causing a higher risk of localised flooding.”…

I wonder how today's Severn Barrage plan differs from this 1921 diagram of a plan to harness tidal power on the Severn River in the UK. From Popular Mechanics

Study finds three US glaciers shrinking faster

Les Blumenthal and Erika Bolstad, McClatchy Newspapers: Climate change is shrinking three of the nation's most studied glaciers at an accelerated rate, and government scientists say that finding bolsters global concerns about rising sea levels and the availability of fresh drinking water.

Known as "benchmark glaciers," the South Cascade Glacier in Washington state , the Wolverine Glacier on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula and the Gulkana Glacier in interior Alaska all have shown a "rapid and sustained" retreat, according to a report by the U.S. Geological Survey that was released Thursday.

"They are living on the edge," Ed Josberger , a USGS scientist based in Tacoma, Wash. , said of the three glaciers. "We've crossed a threshold, and these glaciers along with those globally are shrinking."

…At the beginning of the 20th century, when glaciers were at their last peak in terms of size, the mass, or volume, of the remote South Cascade Glacier was estimated to be half a cubic kilometer, or about 654 million cubic yards. By 1958, it had shrunk to half that size. The latest measurement, in 2004, found that it had shrunk by half yet again….

The South Cascade Glacier in 2000, USGS

Help Pacific or face the consequences, Australia told

Evan Schwarten in News.com.au: Australia must help its Pacific neighbours deal with climate change now or face a future stuck in the middle of constant regional conflict, the United Nations Asia-Pacific development chief has warned.

Ajay Chhibber, assistant secretary general for the United Nations Development Program, said it was vital for Australia to support its impoverished island neighbours through funding, emission cuts and lobbying fellow industrialised nations.

The consequence of insufficient action in the near future was dire, he told AAP. "It will mean there is more pressure on migration. It will mean more conflict around Australia," he said. "You don't want to be in a neighbourhood where you are surrounded by countries in perpetual conflict because you (will) have to deal with that more and more."

He praised the Rudd Government's decision to allocate $150 million to help island nations to cope with climate change but said the global cost of adapting to rising temperatures and sea levels would cost billions….

Psychological facts help explain slow reaction to global warming, says APA task force

American Psychological Association: While most Americans think climate change is an important issue, they don't see it as an immediate threat, so getting people to "go green" requires policymakers, scientists and marketers to look at psychological barriers to change and what leads people to action, according to a task force of the American Psychological Association.

Scientific evidence shows the main influences of climate change are behavioral – population growth and energy consumption. "What is unique about current global climate change is the role of human behavior," said task force chair Janet Swim, PhD, of Pennsylvania State University. "We must look at the reasons people are not acting in order to understand how to get people to act."

APA's Task Force on the Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change examined decades of psychological research and practice that have been specifically applied and tested in the arena of climate change, such as environmental and conservation psychology and research on natural and technological disasters. The task force presented its findings at APA's 117th Annual Convention in Toronto in a report that was accepted by the association's governing Council of Representatives.

… The task force said numerous psychological barriers are to blame, including:

• Uncertainty …
• Mistrust…
• Denial …
• Undervaluing Risks
• Lack of Control –
• Habit – Ingrained behaviors are extremely resistant to permanent change while others change slowly. Habit is the most important obstacle to pro-environment behavior, according to the report.

Daumier's lithograph of Gargantua

Shipwrecks wrecking coral reefs? A case study at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge

Science Daily: For the first time, researchers have definitively shown that shipwrecks and other man-made structures increase the potential for large invasions of unwanted species into coral reefs, even comparatively pristine ones. These unwanted species can completely overtake a reef and eliminate native corals, dramatically decreasing the diversity of marine organisms on the reef. Coral reefs can undergo fast changes in their dominant life forms, a phenomenon referred to as phase shift.

Scientists have speculated on many possible causes of phase shift, but this study is the first one to clearly show that a rapid change in the dominant life forms on a coral reef is associated with man-made structures.

In September 2007, USGS researcher Dr. Thierry Work, Dr. Greta Aeby from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, and Dr. James Maragos from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service studied a 100-foot vessel that wrecked in 1991 on isolated Palmyra Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. They found extremely high numbers of an invasive species related to anemones and corals, Rhodactis howesii, on and around the shipwreck site. The density of this species progressively decreased with distance from the ship, and it was rare or absent in other parts of the atoll. Likewise, the researchers confirmed high densities of R. howesii around several buoys installed on the atoll in 2001….

Turner's "Shipwreck of the Minotaur," which I can never resist using for a shipwreck story

Experts predict quieter Atlantic hurricane season

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: Weather experts on Wednesday reduced the number of projected hurricanes in the north Atlantic this season to four, two of them major hurricanes with winds above 178 kilometers (111 miles) per hour.

After one of the calmest starts to the hurricane season in a decade, the experts from Colorado State University said the development of an El Nino effect in the Pacific had caused them to scale back their projections for the Atlantic.

The El Nino phenomenon, which involves changes in atmospheric pressure in the southern Pacific, occurs every three to six years, disrupting global weather patterns. In the Atlantic, El Nino events are associated with decreased levels of hurricane activity, said Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University.

"We continue to call for a below-average Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2009. We also anticipate a below-average probability of United States and Caribbean major hurricane landfall," they said. They now project that there will be 10 named tropical storms this season, of which four will become hurricanes, and two of those major hurricanes….

That's Hurricane Wilma from 2005, a much more active year for cyclones

Climate trouble for coffee growers

Peter Baker in SciDev.net: How will climate change affect coffee production, and what should we do about it? Coffee is the world's most valuable tropical agricultural export — produced by about 20 million smallholder families — so these are important questions. The weather outlook for coffee growers over the next millennium is poor: it will be hotter everywhere, with prolonged dry spells in many places, interspersed with very heavy rain.

Coffee grows well within a limited climatic range. As temperatures rise, so will coffee — to higher altitudes and latitudes. But space is limited and there will be competition with other crops. Coffee farmers will experience climate change through greater unpredictability, with more droughts and floods — the last thing any farmer wants.

Climate change already seems to be affecting coffee production. It is difficult to attribute direct causality, but the changes we are seeing are entirely consistent with climate modellers' predictions.

Sometimes the effects are slow. For example, 50 years ago, nearly three-quarters of Indian coffee production was the premium bean, arabica; now it is less than half, with robusta coffee (a species that withstands hotter conditions) filling the gap….

A Crystal Project Icon by Everaldo Coelho (YellowIcon), Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License

Fires a warning sign?

Matt Kieltyka in Vancouver 24 Hours: As hundreds of firefighters battle dozens of wildfires throughout the province, the David Suzuki Foundation says the extreme conditions shouldn't be a surprise. Nicholas Heap, climate and energy policy analyst for the foundation, told 24 hours the fires are consistent with hotter temperatures and drier summers associated with climate change.

"This is the kind of fire season we should come to expect," Heap said. "It really is consistent with the weather we should be expecting in a world with climate change." While the foundation is calling for huge cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on an international level, Heap says communities also have to plan better for the risks that come with climate change….

Northwest Crown Fire Experiment, from Bunk S: World on Fire. PLoS Biol 2/2/2004: e54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020054, apparently from the US Forest Service

Warming peat could release megatonnes of carbon

Environmental Research Web: A one-degree warming of the world's northern peatlands could increase respiration enough to release 38–100 megatonnes of carbon each year. Such a rise is much higher than previously believed and would offset much of the European Union's target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts under the Kyoto Protocol, which is currently 92 megatonnes of carbon per year.

"Northern peatland soils store about one-third of the world's total amount of soil carbon, which has accumulated during centuries to millennia owing to the strongly adverse conditions for the breakdown of organic plant remains," Ellen Dorrepaal of the VU University Amsterdam in the Netherlands told environmentalresearchweb. This storage is equivalent to more than half the carbon in the atmosphere.

Together with colleagues from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the University of Sheffield, UK, Dorrepaal found that an increase in spring and summer temperature of around 1 °C stimulated ecosystem respiration rates by as much as 52–60%. "One of the striking results was that this strong stimulation was sustained for at least eight years (which was the last time we performed these measurements)," she said, "and therefore did not decline as has been observed in warming studies in other ecosystem types."...

A peat bog in Ireland, shot by Amos, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Officials worry that California faces worst wildfire season in years

Jared Grigsby in the Sacramento Bee, via AP: …Federal and state fire officials are warning that a third year of drought means California could face one of its worst wildfire seasons in years. Scientists say the danger could be heightened by global warming.

Peak fire season begins July 1, but Janet Upton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said a severe, early spring fire in Santa Barbara has fire officials concerned about the intensity of this year’s wildfire season.

“Experts believe that climate change may be influencing drought and therefore wildfire occurrences, but that’s an ongoing study,” she said. There already have been 2,959 wildfires this year in California, up from 2,354 a year ago at this time, Upton said.

Though the state has seen more fires this year, less area has been destroyed than during the same period last year. A total of 27.8 square miles have burned so far this year, compared to 530.2 square miles this time last year, according to state fire officials.

Upton attributed the decrease to the fast, effective response of fire crews, even though state budget cuts have reduced the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s coffers by $27 million this year. The amount includes funds for a proposed exclusive contract for a DC-10 airtanker…..

The Simi Valley fire of 2003

Desperate water shortage in Somaliland

AllAfrica.com via IRIN: The self-declared republic of Somaliland has been gripped by a drought that has left thousands of families and their livestock in desperate need of water, officials say. "The first thing people ask you is for water, because both the people and their animals [are] seriously weak and cannot reach water wells in the remote areas," Said Ahmed Du'alle Bullale, MP for Saraar region, told IRIN on 2 August.

The parliamentarian, who recently visited Saraar, Sool and Sanag regions, said many water wells had dried up. Those that still had water served very large populations. "About 100,000 [people] from Togdheer, Sool and Sanaag regions were displaced by the recent drought and no one is supporting [them]," he added.

The worst-affected areas included the main Saraar plains between Sanaag and Togdheer and Ba'ade, between Sool and Sanaag. "Most people have moved to places where some Gu' [long] rains were received, such as the mountains of Sanaag near Erigavo and the southeast district of Togdheer," the MP said….

A map of the Somaliland border dispute, uploaded by as Drieakko, Wikimedia Commons

NGO blames Ghana's floods on a neglect of prevention

Edmond Gyebi in the Chronicle (Ghana): The National Programme Manager of Action Aid Ghana, Mr. Michael Lumor, has blamed the frequent devastating floods and fire disasters claiming lives and properties in some parts of Ghana, on successive governments' inability to opt for disaster prevention policies, rather than disaster management.

According to Mr. Lumor, also the Human Security Focal Person of Action Aid, the disaster management policies of Ghana, over the years, have not been successful and beneficial, and must therefore be reviewed to allow for the introduction of prevention methods to ensure the total safety of the people. As the saying goes, "Prevention is better than cure."

It is against this backdrop that Action Aid Ghana, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) operating in Ghana and other parts of the world, has organised an Emergency Preparedness Workshop for its focal persons across Ghana to discuss the possible ways of mitigating the frequent emergencies and disasters affecting the people in its operational areas. The meeting afforded the participants the opportunity to take control of emergencies and any threats to human security in their respective areas….

China’s dust travels full global circuit

Naomi Lubick in Environmental Science & Technology: Researchers tracked a dust-storm cloud from China as it traveled all the way around the world, finally settling in the Pacific Ocean after a 13-day flight. This particular dust cloud stayed aloft much longer than any tracked before, according to a new study in Nature Geosciences... The work represents a technological jump in the ability to track dust as it travels around the planet and provides new insight into atmospheric chemistry and the transport of pollutants through the atmosphere.

Past research has followed dust from the Sahara across the Atlantic Ocean and from China to the Pacific Northwest and even farther east. But researchers logging these dust packets have found they touch down in several days and only travel halfway around the world.

The new record was documented by an international team led by Itsushi Uno of the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics at Kyushu University (Japan). The group tracked a packet of dust from China’s Taklimakan Desert in May 2007 by analyzing data from CALIPSO, a satellite launched by NASA in 2006. The satellite uses remote optical sensing technology known as LIDAR to gather higher-definition data on the quantity and size of aerosol particles (dust) in the atmosphere…..

A 2001 dust storm in China, courtesy of NASA

Protecting the reefs of the Galapagos Islands

Science Daily: Some of the world's rarest and most fragile coral reefs and the economies that depend on them will be better protected thanks to a major international marine project led by the University of Southampton.

The three-year, Government-funded, Darwin Initiative project Galapagos Coral Conservation: Impact Mitigation, Mapping and Monitoring was led by Professor Terry Dawson, from the University of Southampton's School of Geography. The research is published in a special edition of the peer-reviewed journal Galapagos Research.

The aim was to assist the Ecuadorian Government in protecting the last remaining extensive Galapagos coral reefs of the northern Wolf and Darwin Islands and how they can be managed in a way that still supports the economic activities that are so important to the Galapagos Islands.

The coral reefs of the Galapagos Islands contribute significantly to species richness and diversity in the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). They support thousands of species, including many rare and endemic corals. In addition, these reef ecosystems are major hotspots with remarkable numbers of sharks, tuna, turtles, and dolphins all ecologically linked to the area's reef complexes....

The Galapagos Islands from space, via NASA

Greenpeace calls on Indonesia's president to help stop forest fires

Adianto P. Simamora in the Jakarta Post (Indonesia): Greenpeace called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to take immediate action to tackle the latest spate of forest fires that has hit Sumatra’s Riau Province as well as West and Central Kalimantan and parts of Sulawesi. It said that most fires were lit deliberately to clear land for palm oil and paper plantations.

…."President Yudhoyono … will be amongst the eight key world leaders who have the historic opportunity to lead the concerted global efforts to reverse the worst impacts of climate change at the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December." said Zulfahmi, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

"To show his intent, the President should ensure a 'fire-free' season this year and stop palm oil and paper companies from burning and destroying our forests. Only then forest protection funds can start to flow from developed countries to provide sustainable solutions to forests, the people and biodiversity that depend on them and help win the global battle against climate change."

A forest in Slurup, Indonesia, shot by ESCapade, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Vital Central Valley water sensors at risk from budget cuts

Matt Weiser in the Sacramento Bee (California): Dozens of critical sensors tracking temperamental Central Valley rivers could blink out next year because of California's budget problems. Some of the sensors, known as streamflow gages, have operated for more than 100 years, providing vital real-time data on river elevation and flow volume that are vital to flood safety, environmental protection and water supply.

Hydrologists, engineers and federal agencies spell the device used to measure water velocity and other measurement related issues as gage -- not gauge. All but six of the threatened gages are in Northern California, and most monitor rivers converging on Sacramento and the Central Valley.

"I'm just astounded by this," said Joe Countryman, president of MBK Engineers in Sacramento, a consulting firm that relies on data from the gages to design flood-control projects accurately. "To cut basic data when you have a budget crisis does not make any sense. You're sacrificing your entire future."

The devices are operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, but 60 percent of the money to keep them going comes from the California Department of Water Resources under an annual contract….

Albert Bierstadt, "Kern's River Valley, California"

Ticks move north, to Canada

Kings County Record (New Brunswick): Public health officials in Saint John are undertaking a pilot research project to examine the link between a changing climate and the spread of black-legged ticks and Lyme disease.

The Saint John region is the only Atlantic Canadian site participating in the Public Health Agency of Canada project concerning the community adaptation element of the climate change infectious diseases adaptation initiative. The project, which has been awarded funding of $125,000, will proceed over the next 14-month period. …The key areas the project will include:

• improving the understanding of changing health risks associated with Lyme disease;
• developing appropriate surveillance and response systems for Lyme disease; and
• developing tools, methods and mechanisms to improve local capacity to adapt to the spread of Lyme disease.

…."There are indications that black-legged ticks and Lyme disease are spreading in eastern Canada, including New Brunswick," said Dr. Jacqueline Badcock, a zoonotic disease consultant at the Department of Health….

Using darkfield microscopy technique, this photomicrograph, magnified 400x, reveals the presence of spirochete, or “corkscrew-shaped” bacteria known as Borrelia burgdorferi, which is the pathogen responsible for causing Lyme disease. Centers for Disease Control

Kenyan lake faces extinction

The Daily Nation (Kenya): The three rivers that feed the world-famous Lake Nakuru have dried up. This means that the salty lake is no longer a safe home for millions of flamingoes, which have made the lake a leading tourist attraction.

The drying of rivers Njoro, Makalia and Nderit has been blamed on the massive destruction of the Mau Forest Complex. River Molo, which also has its source in the Mau, no longer finds its way to Lake Baringo, another tourist destination.

River Perkerra, popularly known for the irrigation schemes in the arid lower parts of Baringo is also dwindling, no thanks to environmental degradation in the Mau….Other rivers that have been affected are Mara and Sondu.

Kenya Wildlife Service assistant director in charge of Central Rift conservation area, Ms Anne Kahihia, said the lake might be extinct in five years….

Flamingos in Lake Nakuru, shot by Lmwangi, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Greenroofs can save cities millions of gallons of water

Science Daily: … Many American cities are beginning to incorporate greenroofs into their planning ordinances because they recognize that, planting a rooftop garden can offset heat, increase city biodiversity and decrease stormwater runoff. This runoff can be problematic in cities where rainwater is funneled by streets and parking lots directly into streams, carrying with it chemicals and debris and increasing the risk of flash floods.

But the plants on greenroofs can absorb some of this water – "like a sponge being saturated," says Olyssa Starry, a graduate student at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. Starry studied a greenroof atop a Baltimore building in comparison to a similar building without a greenroof to determine how well the roof would absorb water from frequent storms. By measuring water flowing out of building downspouts, she found that the greenroof retained from 30 to 75 percent of water from storms, compared to a negligible amount retained by the building with no greenroof.

Although her results are preliminary, Starry thinks that cities can reap benefits from making greenroofs a part of their building requirements, as cities like Toronto and Berlin have recently done. Using GIS satellite imagery, she estimated the number and area of buildings that could hold greenroofs within one watershed in the Baltimore area. If all these roofs were greened, she says, the city could save the watershed 8 million gallons of water per year, or about 10 percent of its yearly water loss….

The greenroof atop Chicago's City Hall, shot by TonyTheTiger, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Pests spread with warming

Jeanne Roberts in Solve Climate: The Midwest's cold winters play an important role for farmers: They prevent devastating crop pests such as corn earworms and corn borers from becoming established in their fields. Corn earworm pupae, for example, can't survive more than about five days at temperatures below 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

As global warming continues, however, the range of crop pests and their ability to survive the winter increases. "Increases in temperatures, even summer temperatures, generally benefit these pests. An effectively longer season, or more days exceeding their minimum temperature range, provides them with additional time to feed, mate and reproduce," said Purdue University entomologist Christian Krupke, who studies the impact of climate change on crops pests.

The corn earworm is just one clear threat. It's already established in the South and has resistance to many of the current pesticides, making it tough to manage. Scientists expect climate change will similarly impact many types of crop production across the U.S. in the next several decades as deadly crop pests and fungi flourish in the warmer and, in some areas, wetter weather….

A corn earworm, Agricultural Research Service

The prospect of 75 million environmental refugees in Asia

Neena Bandhari in IPS: Pacific Islanders, aiming to secure their very survival, are calling for immediate commitments from the developed world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 45 percent by 2020. "For us, climate change is a reality. We have been experiencing high tidal waves, which has not been the case earlier," Pelenise Alofa Pilitati, Chairperson of the Church Education Director's Association in Kiribati, told IPS. "High tides and sea level rise will submerge our homeland. We don’t want to become environmental refugees."

Climate change could produce eight million refugees in the Pacific Islands, along with 75 million refugees in the Asia Pacific region in the next 40 years, warns a new report by aid agency, Oxfam Australia.

The report points out that "For countries like Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau, the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Federated States of Micronesia, climate change is not something that could happen in the future but something they are experiencing now."

The Oxfam report documents how people are coping with more frequent flooding and storm surges, losing land and being forced from their homes, facing increased food and water shortages, and dealing with rising incidence of malaria and dengue.

"First, we were refugees of the World War then phosphate mining pushed us out. We can’t be displaced a third time because of climate change," says Pilitati, whose family is from Banaba Island in Kiribati. "This time if we lose our home, we will lose our identity, our culture. It is unacceptable."….

Vostok Island, Kiribati, shot by Angela K. Kepler, who has generously released the image into the public domain

Neglect is casting Britain's once bright woodlands into darkness

Damian Carrington in the Guardian (UK): The gentle pleasures of a summer's woodland walk have become darker and duller, thanks to fertiliser from farms and the ancient art of coppicing dying out.

The discovery came after botanist Sally Keith retraced the steps of the pioneering ecologist Professor Ronald Good, who cycled the lanes of Dorset in the 1930s, recording in great detail the plants he found. Of the 1,500 woodland sites Good noted, Keith revisited almost 100, as close to the day and month of the original survey as possible.

She found that the unique character of each wood had vanished, and that the canopy of leaves was more dense. …"It's both fascinating and disturbing," said Professor James Bullock at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, who worked with Keith. "It's likely to be going on undetected elsewhere, but as we have Good's maps we can see it here. We are losing diversity on a large scale…."

…Keith believes there are two key reasons for woodlands becoming less distinctive. First is the end of coppicing, in which wood was harvested from different parts of a forest in rotation, creating bright clearings and letting in light to favour less common plants, such as red bartsia. In her study, 117 species had vanished, while only 47 new plants had arrived. "Traditionally, woodlands had glades, meadows and ponds, giving many more habitats and so many different things to see, rather than wall-to-wall trees," said Hetherington.

The other key reason is the increased run-off of nitrogen from farms, due to increased fertiliser use and intensive livestock rearing. Some plants, such as holly, thrive on high nitrogen levels; others do not….

A coppiced alder stool after one year's growth. Image by Naturenet, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Climate change and other stresses expected to affect entire populations of fish

US Geological Survey: Entire populations of North American fish already are being affected by several emerging diseases, a problem that threatens to increase in the future with climate change and other stresses on aquatic ecosystems, according to a noted U.S. Geological Survey researcher giving an invited talk on this subject today at the Wildlife Disease Association conference in Blaine, Wash.

“A generation ago, we couldn’t have imaged the explosive growth in disease issues facing many of our wild fish populations,” said Dr. Jim Winton, a fish disease specialist at the USGS Western Fisheries Research Center. “Most fish health research at that time was directed toward diseases of farmed fish.”

In contrast, said Winton, recent studies in natural aquatic systems have revealed that, in addition to being a cause of natural death, infectious and parasitic fish diseases can produce significantly greater mortality in altered habitats leading to population fluctuations, extinction of endangered fish, reduced overall health and increased susceptibility to predation.

… “The scientific community is increasingly concerned that global trade, extensive habitat alteration, accumulations of contaminants and other human-caused stresses stressors, including climate change, will affect the distribution or severity of fish diseases and contribute to increasing population-scale losses in these important natural resources,” Winton said.
Chinook salmon1.jpg

Chinook salmon in the fish ladder at the Hiram M Chittenden Locks. Shot by Josh Larios from Seattle, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License

Are jellyfish increasing the ocean's capacity to absorb carbon?

Susan Kraemer in Eco Worldly: ….[J]ellyfish may be working to save us from our excesses. The massive new blooms of jellyfish might be burying more carbon dioxide deep under the ocean by pumping cold water to the surface with every meal. When they return, ferrying CO2-laden warm water down into the depths of the sea. In the process, they may be changing the overall carbon balance in the atmosphere.

The finding is the latest in a decades-old debate over whether swimming animals have much effect on ocean mixing, the process by which warm water on the surface combines with the cold water far below.

Carbon dioxide in the air dissolves in the ocean, reducing greenhouse gases in the air. Shellfish and corals are already at their absorption limits of how much CO2 we are pumping out. There are real limits to how much can be stored in oceans, and most scientists think we have reached those limits, but stirring it up by mixing it with deep water could increase the size of the ocean “storage tank.”…

Rodent size linked to human population and climate change

University of Illinois (Chicago): You probably hadn't noticed -- but the head shape and overall size of rodents has been changing over the past century. A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist has tied these changes to human population density and climate change. The finding is reported by Oliver Pergams, UIC research assistant professor of biological sciences, in the July 31 issue of PLoS One.

Pergams said that such size-and-shape changes in mammals, occurring around the world in less than a century, are quite substantial. He had done earlier studies on a century's worth of anatomic changes between two geographically isolated rodents -- Channel Island deer mice from coastal California and white-footed mice northwest of Chicago -- and noted fast change among both.

"I suspected they weren't unique examples," he said. "I wondered whether these changes were occurring elsewhere, whether they were global in nature, and what some of the causes may be."

Pergams examined specimen rodents from museums around the world, including the big collections held at Chicago's Field Museum and the Smithsonian in Washington. Altogether, he recorded more than 17,000 body and skull measurements from 1,300 specimens from 22 locations in Africa, the Americas and Asia. The animals were collected from 1892 to 2001, and Pergams compared those from before 1950 to those collected after.

…While Pergams' study was by no means comprehensive, it was the first attempt of its kind to examine data on mammals from many global locations to find links between morphological change and variables such as population density and changing climate….

The northern roofs of the Cathedral Notre-Dame in Amiens, France conceal this sculpted rodent from the ground. Shot by Eusebius (Guillaume Piolle), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Unabated use of groundwater threatens Arizona's future

Shaun McKinnon in the Arizona Republic: Thirty years after Arizona tried to stop cities and towns from using up their groundwater, the state still can't shake its thirst for one of its most finite resources. The steady drain on underground reserves grows out of two realities: Canals and pipelines don't reach far enough to deliver surface water to everyone, and laws don't reach far enough to stop people from drilling.

If the groundwater addiction continues unabated and under-regulated, the effects will be broad and potentially disastrous: Scarcer supplies could push rates higher and create uncertainty about water availability, discouraging new business and slowing economic growth. If wells start to run dry and aquifers collapse, the landscape could be dotted with fissures and sinkholes.

Lawmakers adopted some of the nation's most progressive water-protection laws to avert such crises, but the laws excluded rural areas and allowed changes that let cities and subdivisions resume well-drilling, further depleting exhaustible aquifers...

Storm over Arizona's Painted Desert, National Park Service

New El Niño threatens world with weather woe

Michael McCarthy in the Independent (UK): A new El Niño has begun. The sporadic Pacific Ocean warming, which can disrupt weather patterns across the world, is intensifying, say meteorologists. So, over the next few months, there may be increased drought in Africa, India and Australia, heavier rainfall in South America and increased extremes in Britain, of warm and cold. It may make 2010 one of the hottest years on record.

The cyclical phenomenon, which happens every two to seven years, is a major determinant of global weather systems. The 1997-98 El Niño combined with global warming to push 1998 into being the world's hottest year, and caused major droughts and catastrophic forest fires in South-east Asia which sent a pall of smoke right across the region.

At present, forecasters do not expect this El Niño to equal that of 1998, but it may be the second-strongest, and concerned groups, from international insurance companies to commodity traders, to aid agencies such as Oxfam, have begun to follow its progress anxiously. Its potential for economic and social impact is considerable….

A Jean Tinguely fountain in Basel, Switzerland, shot by Norbert Aepli, Switzerland (User:Noebu), Wikimedia Commons, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

Residents in the US clean up following storms

Jim Skillington in Disaster News Network: Tornadoes and severe wind damage clean-up was the order of the day in several eastern U.S. communities this weekend while in the northeast residents braced for yet more rain Sunday in areas that had been under flash flood warnings earlier in the weekend.

More than 51,000 customers including a major Baltimore area hospital lost power for several hours Friday night after high winds and a tornado downed trees and damaged homes northwest of the city. A tornado was also reported in Frederick County, in western Maryland.

A much more severe storm hit the Memphis area Thursday, damaging more than 100 homes in Olive Branch and Cordova. According to the National Weather Service, the Olive Branch twister was an EF-2 (third strongest on the six-phase intensity scale) and was approximately a quarter-mile wide and stretched nearly six miles. At least six other tornadoes were reported in the Mid-South on Thursday.

Tornadoes were also reported this week in Wantage Township, NJ and in the Pocono Mountains in PA. In New Jersey, the tornado destroyed a barn and in Pennsylvania the roofs were torn off several homes….

A 1973 tornado in Union City, Oklahoma

Fight against deforestation shouldn't neglect biodiversity, say scientists

Rhett Butler in Mongabay: Schemes to mitigate climate change by protecting tropical forests must take into account biodiversity conservation, said two leading scientific organizations at the conclusion of a four day meeting in Marburg, Germany.

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) and the Society for Tropical Ecology (GTOE) jointly issued a "Marburg Declaration" highlighting the dangers of excluding biodiversity from emissions mitigation strategies like the proposed Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism, which could direct billions of dollars annually to forest conservation initiatives. The risk is that REDD developers may focus efforts where land is the cheapest and most carbon-dense, leaving other biologically-rich ecosystems exposed to degradation or destruction. In some cases REDD could even bias conservation decisions against low-carbon ecosystems that are important reservoirs of plant and animal life.

…"The most critically endangered species are not in Amazonia," said Priya Davidar, current ATBC president and a professor at the University of Pondicherry in India. "They're in the last surviving scraps of forest in places like the Philippines, Magagascar, India, West Africa, and the Andean Mountains of South America. These places are biodiversity hotspots—final refuges for thousands of endangered plants and animals."…

The diverse forest canopy on Barro Colorado Island, (Darien Jungle) Panama, shot by Christian Ziegler, Wikimedia Commons via a Public Library of Science Journal, Beyond Neutrality—Ecology Finds Its Niche. Gewin V, PLoS Biology Vol. 4/8/2006, e278 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0040278, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license.

Climate threat to Australia's heritage sites

Josh Gordon in the Age (Australia): The Federal Government has warned that Australian icons such as the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu National Park, the Tasmanian wilderness, Carlton Gardens and the Sydney Opera House could be damaged irreparably if the Coalition fails to support Labor’s emissions trading scheme.

Less than two weeks before a Senate vote on the Government’s climate change legislation, a government report to be released today has found Australia’s 17 world heritage sites could be devastated by lower rainfall, rising sea levels, higher sea and land temperatures, ocean acidification and extreme weather events.

It warns that the Opera House, which is 3.5 metres above sea level, could be swamped by high tides. Eighty per cent of Kakadu’s freshwater wetlands could be lost and the Great Barrier Reef would face "catastrophic" coral bleaching by 2050.

A senior Labor source said the report would mark the beginning of a campaign to pressure Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull on climate change and emissions trading. "We’ll be pulling every policy lever and using every means at our disposal to argue a case to protect jobs and protect the environment by tackling climate change," the source said….

Mist at Yellow Water billabong - Kakadu, shot by Tourism NT, which can be found at http://www.travelnt.com

Heaviest rain in 70 years floods 3,000 Shanghai households

Xinhua: The heaviest rains in 70 years hit China's largest city, Shanghai, Thursday, flooding 3,000 households and more than 70 roads. No casualties have been reported.

Rainfall reached 80 to 140 mm in most areas of the city. The water was 10 to 30 cm deep on the roads and 5 to 10 cm in households in Luwan, Huangpu, Zhabei and Jinshan districts. Some vehicles were damaged by fallen tree branches, according to the municipal headquarters of flood control. More than 500 workers are clearing away the water.

Sunset over Shanghai, shot by Jakub Hałun, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Namibia's flood damages top US$241 million, climate change effects imminent

The Economist (Namibia): The director-general of the National Planning Commission, Peter Katjavivi, has said that, apart from facing the challenges posed by the current financial and economic crises, Namibia is faced with the direct consequences of climate change.

Katjavivi said in a speech delivered in London that in terms of its arid environment, recurrent drought and desertification, Namibia is extremely susceptible to the negative effects of climate change.

He said the government recognises that this phenomenon is considered one of the most serious threats to the country’s environment, human health and well being, as well as its economic development, which is very dependent on agricultural production. He said a vulnerability and adaptation assessment to climate change was recently carried out.

“These climate change-related vulnerabilities present an immense challenge to Namibia. This threat is immediate and grave,” Katjavivi said. He pointed out that as a result of the changing weather patterns, the country’s northern and north eastern parts (six out of thirteen regions) were devastated by the severe floods of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, exacerbating the impact of the international financial and economic crisis on the overall economy.

“Preliminary assessment undertaken by a team of experts headed by the World Bank, and including the UN, EC, USAID, working closely with the Namibian government, estimated the damages and losses to be US$241 million,” he said. The most affected sectors include infrastructure, agriculture, and small and medium scale industries, which are at heart of the affected regions, he said….

An aerial photo of Zambezi River at the junction of Namibia, Zamibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, shot by Brian McMorrow, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License