Flooding in UK hits consumers

Mark King in the Guardian (UK): Major flooding across several towns and villages in Cornwall last night led to people being trapped in their cars and homes and left areas of St Austell and St Blazey impassable. While it is too early to estimate the cost to homeowners, the average cost of a household insurance claim for storm damage is £660, according to M&S Money. Met Office figures show the wettest month in the UK is December, with an average of 124.88mm of rainfall, while the windiest month is January with an average wind speed of 11.8 knots, so the worst could be yet to come.

Austyn Tusler of insurer Hiscox says ideally, consumers would, "understand the risk beforehand and prepare accordingly to minimise damage". But if the worst happens regardless, the uninsured will face a hefty bill, while those with cover need to know what to do to minimise the damage to their property and ensure their insurance claim goes without any hiccups.

Julie Owens, head of home insurance at moneysupermarket.com, says your insurer will expect you to make attempts to minimise your claim. It depends on the insurer how they define "attempts to minimise your claim" but Owens said you will be expected to ring your insurer immediately to inform it of the situation and to obtain advice and assistance.

Insurers should have loss adjusters on the ground and most will be able to offer temporary accommodation if a home becomes uninhabitable (depending on the cover you have), as well as direct suitable contractors to assist with cataloguing the damage and with the clean-up….

St. Mawes in Cornwall, shot by Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate crisis leaving its marks on Russia

RIA Novosti (Russia): Russia’s politicians and ecologists have been forced to address the issue of climate change for the second time this year as November temperatures break records in a number of regions. “Russia is getting warmer and warmer,” says Yelena Kravets of The Bellona Foundation, an environmental NGO based in Norway, with an office in St.Petersburg. “We are having shorter winters, which may be pleasant at the moment, but will have a greater impact.”

A record-breaking heat wave this summer caused a series of destructive wildfires and an unparalleled drought that destroyed crops so severely all grain exports had to be banned. Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, blamed the crisis on climate change and called for action.

“What’s happening with the planet’s climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us, meaning all heads of state, all heads of social organizations, to take a more energetic approach to countering the global changes to the climate,” Medvedev said. In 2009, ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Conference, the Russian government adopted a climate doctrine outlining the country’s response to climate change.

“Our government is very two-faced,” says Kravets. “They signed a climate doctrine in 2009, officially confirming that climate change is really taking place. But that’s just a declaration. It doesn’t mean anything until plans are drafted, and action is taken.”…

A star on the Kremlin, shot by KNewman, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

NERSC supercomputing center breaks the petaflops barrier

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: The Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), already one of the world’s leading centers for scientific productivity, is now home to the fifth most powerful supercomputer in the world and the second most powerful in the United States, according to the latest edition of the TOP500 list, the definitive ranking of the world’s top computers.

NERSC's newest supercomputer, a 153,408 processor-core Cray XE6 system, posted a performance of 1.05 petaflops (quadrillions of calculations per second) running the Linpack benchmark. In keeping with NERSC's tradition of naming computers for renowned scientists, the system is named Hopper in honor of Admiral Grace Hopper, a pioneer in software development and programming languages. The system, installed d in September 2010, is funded by DOE’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research.

Established in 1974, NERSC is located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and provides computing systems and services to more than 3,000 researchers supported by the Department of Energy (DOE). NERSC’s users, located at universities, national laboratories, and other research institutions around the country, report producing more than 1,500 scientific publications each year as a result of calculations run at NERSC.

"While we are elated to have entered the petascale performance arena, we are especially excited by the computational science potential offered by Hopper," said Kathy Yelick, Director of the NERSC Division and Associate Laboratory Director of Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab. "We selected Cray as the system vendor after a competitive procurement based in large part on how proposed systems performed running our application benchmarks. Now that the system is installed and operational, we will begin our acceptance testing in which we run some of the most demanding scientific applications to ensure that Hopper will meet the day-to-day demands of our users."

…The increasing power of supercomputers helps scientists study problems in greater detail and with greater accuracy, such as increasing the resolution of climate models and creating models of new materials with thousands of atoms….

New Tahoe analysis adds 'when' and 'how much' to climate change forecasts

UC Davis News: UC Davis scientists today issued the most detailed forecast to date of likely climate-change effects at Lake Tahoe, complete with estimates of when those effects might be seen and how big they might be. Their findings suggest that even under the most optimistic projections:

• The average snowpack in the Tahoe Basin will decline by 40 to 60 percent by the year 2100;
• Floods will increase in the middle of the century;
• Prolonged droughts will become more common at the end of the century; and
• A new threat to the lake's unique ecology, one that will come from the very bottom of the lake, will become important by the second half of the century.

The report was written for the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station. Its lead authors are Robert Coats, a UC Davis researcher and consulting hydrologist, John Reuter, associate director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, and Geoff Schladow, the center's director.

"Public dollars are funding restoration programs in the Tahoe region, which is a special place for millions of people," said Schladow. "For these programs to succeed, resource managers need to know what to expect in the coming decades.

"Will we have more or less snow, rain and runoff? Will the erosion controls and stormwater basins we are devising now still be useful in 30 or 50 years? What impact might climate change have for Lake Tahoe’s water quality and aquatic ecology?” Schladow said.

In recent years, UC Davis researchers have drawn on 100 years of data to describe changes in temperature and precipitation that have already occurred in the Tahoe region. The new report combines those findings with sophisticated computer models to produce detailed local projections out to the year 2100. The scientists considered two possible future carbon emission scenarios — one “business as usual” — in which population growth and national and international policies affecting global climate change remain unchanged — and the other “optimistic," assuming slower growth and aggressive climate action….

The vessel Tahoe Queen on Lake Tahoe, shot by Ville Miettinen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Global warming could bring floods, drought and disease to Ukraine

Interfax: Global warming will bring more frequent floods, droughts and an increase in insect-borne disease to Ukraine, ecologists have warned. "Global climate change will bring about a general increase in air temperatures and more frequent natural disasters in Ukraine," the climate change program coordinator at the National Ecological Center of Ukraine Khrystyna Rudnytska said at a press conference on November 15.

According to her, western regions of the country will suffer from more frequent floods, while the country's eastern and southern regions will face droughts, problems with drinking water, and desertification. In addition, Ukraine might face a problem atypical for the region – the spread of diseases such as malaria. "There will be favorable conditions for the adaptation of insects that were formerly atypical for our country, and their being able to live on our territory," she said….

Ukrainian landscape, Herson region

Stormwater runoff disrupts urban stream life

Noreen Parks in Chemical & Engineering News: Urban streams commonly have low abundances and poor diversity of many freshwater insects that fish and other aquatic animals eat. Even after people have restored these stream habitats, the waterways often remain biologically impoverished, with diminished numbers of fish. New research reported Nov. 8 at the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) in Portland, Oregon, has identified a probable culprit: pollutants in stormwater runoff that flushes through the streams.

Scientists have demonstrated that increasing urbanization leads to declining stream health, but they have struggled to pin down the causes. Urban stormwater runoff is a leading suspect. The force of runoff water rushing into these streams can cause physical damage to the streams' habitats. In addition, stormwater carries pollutants from numerous sources including vehicle exhaust, industrial plants, homes, and construction sites.

Kate Macneale and her colleagues at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center decided to focus on water quality's effects on the biological habitat of urban streams. They ran experiments to observe how runoff affected 35 types of insects that generally indicate good stream health and serve as valuable prey for juvenile salmon.

… Even relatively brief exposures to urban runoff can alter the diversity and abundance of stream communities," Macneale says. "We need to consider water quality in restoring fish habitat."

Springtime overnight rains runoff into La Ballona Creek in Los Angeles in this picture taken from a kite. Mar Vista Gardens can be seen on the right as a cleanup crew works under the Inglewood Blvd. overpass. Photo by Joelorama, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

India floods, droughts worse by 2030

Bloomberg: India may endure floods 30 percent more severe in magnitude and heightened drought conditions by 2030 due to climate change, which could affect crop yields, damage dams and harm infrastructure, the government said today.

“There is no country in the world that is as vulnerable on so many dimensions to climate change as India is,” Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said in a climate-change report prepared by 220 scientists in the country.

Every India region is expected to see more rainfall by the 2030s, each with 5 to 10 more days annually of “extreme precipitation,” the report said. Flooding will have a “very severe implication for existing infrastructure such as dams, bridges, roads.”

Rising greenhouse-gas levels are projected to raise the average annual temperature across India, which with 1.2 billion people is the second-most populous nation after China, by as much as 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the 2030s, it said….

Relief effort during the 2008 Kosi floods, shot by Kumarrakajee, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Farmers left out in Indonesia's preparations

Made Arya Kencana and Fidelis E. Satriastanti in the Jakarta Globe (Indonesia): Scientists have criticized the government for failing to prepare farmers to adapt to the effects of climate change, which could have a major impact on the country’s food security. Unseasonal rains are expected to wreak havoc on the country’s rice, cocoa, rubber and palm oil production this year.

Dewa Ngurah Suprapta, president of the International Society for Southeast Asian Agricultural Sciences, said on Monday that funding for research into the issue had been woeful. “Compared to other countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is lagging,” he said on the sidelines of an ISSAAS seminar in Bali. “For instance, the research budget here is a hundredth of that in Malaysia.”

As a result, he said, the government did not have enough information to be able to advise farmers on what actions to take. “This year, the effects of climate change can be seen in the protracted rainy season, where we were still getting rain in May and September,” he said. “Given such conditions, the government should have put out advisories on planting patterns and what crops were suitable for those conditions.”

Dewa, who is also a professor of agriculture at Bali’s Udayana University, said addressing climate change would require an integrated approach through short-, middle- and long-term policies. “In the short term, we need to plant crop varieties that can withstand the given conditions,” he said. “In the long term, we need to develop new varieties that can withstand a range of weather changes.”…

From the Tropenmuseum Collection via Wikimedia Commons, a tea plantation on Sumatra, 1954

Imaging the earth

Space Mart: From monitoring vanishing glaciers to the accounting of forestry, hydropower and mining assets as steps to boost sustainable development here on Earth, the power of satellite remote sensing plays an increasingly vital role. These topics and others are highlighted in the Fall 2010 issue of the quarterly print and online publication - Imaging Notes magazine.

"Secure World Foundation in 2009 established a partnership with Imaging Notes magazine," said Dr. Ray Williamson, SWF's Executive Director. "A key focus of our organization centers on strengthening or developing the policies and institutions that improve the utility of space technologies in support of human and environmental security needs. We are pleased to be a partner with Imaging Notes to help support our objectives."

The just-issued publication includes articles centered on security and intelligence, sustainable development using Earth observations and the continuing growth of Community Remote Sensing, or CRS for short.

Imaging Notes and Secure World Foundation have taken a lead role in gauging the expanding use of CRS - a new field that combines remote sensing with citizen science, social networks, and crowd-sourcing to enhance the data obtained from traditional sources. It includes the collection, calibration, analysis, communication, or application of remotely sensed information by these community means. Other Imaging Notes articles delve into satellite camera systems that feed imagery to such users as Google Earth and the Weather Channel and information sharing incongruities in the intelligence community….

Satellite image of Bahia Engaño, Chubut, Argentina

Beijing to melt snow to address water shortage

Terra Daily via AFP: Beijing will collect and melt snow this winter in a bid to quench the water shortage that has plagued the Chinese capital for years, state media reported Friday.
Two vehicles with high-powered heaters capable of processing around 100 cubic metres (3,500 cubic feet) of snow and ice an hour will be sent to locations around Tiananmen Square, the Global Times said.

Clean snow will also be dumped into dammed sections in three rivers that drift through the city to be used for road cleaning, irrigation and to supplement the rivers' water levels, it said. Additional snow-melting areas have been assigned citywide, it added.

For years northern China has been battling a water shortage that experts say is caused by global warming, drought and rising demand from tens of millions of people who live in Beijing and the booming areas around it.

Water consumption in Beijing, with a population of nearly 20 million and growing, rose to 3.55 billion cubic metres last year, compared with its water supply of 2.18 billion cubic metres, the Global Times said….

Rising CO2 raises allergen levels

Medical News Today: Bad news for 35 million allergy sufferers - ragweed, fungal spores and poison ivy are thriving due to rising carbon dioxide levels. At the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) in Phoenix, Nov. 11-16, allergists and scientists discussed the effects of rising CO2 levels and a changing climate on plant biology and public health.

"Plant-based respiratory allergies are on the rise and increased levels of ragweed pollen are in the air," said ACAAI symposium presenter Lewis Ziska, PhD, a plant physiologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. "Climate change is affecting plants and human health, especially allergy sufferers." Additionally, leaves fed by heightened levels of carbon dioxide enable fungi to reproduce more rapidly and spread more allergenic spores, leading to higher rates of allergies and asthma.

Climate change also affects allergen levels in homes, schools and offices. Not only are people allergic to outdoor allergies going to experience more symptoms, so are people with indoor allergies. "Climate change causes indoor humidity levels to increase, which may contribute to the proliferation of dust mite and mold - allergy triggers for many people," said allergist and ACAAI member Wanda Phipatanakul, MD. "Furthermore, people stay indoors with higher humidity levels and allergic individuals then have more exposure to indoor allergens."…

Report from New York task force on sea level rise

PR Newswire: New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ( DEC ) Acting Commissioner Peter Iwanowicz today announced the release of the draft report of the New York State Sea Level Rise Task Force for public comment. ...

The State Legislature created the Sea Level Rise Task Force in 2007 and charged it with preparing a report to assess the state's vulnerability to sea level rise and developing recommendations for a plan to protect coastal communities and natural resources. The Legislature directed the task force to "evaluate ways of protecting New York's remaining coastal ecosystems and natural habitats, and increasing coastal community resilience in the face of sea level rise, applying the best available science …"

…The draft report includes nine findings and 14 specific recommendations for action. The findings include projections of up to 55 inches of sea level rise by the 2080s in some coastal areas of New York. New York Harbor has already experienced an increase in sea level of more than 15 inches in the past 150 years, with harbor tide gauges showing a rise of between 4 and 6 inches since 1960.

According to the report, sea level rise will have dramatic implications for New York's coastal communities and their natural resources. Every community along the Hudson River, from the Troy to New York Harbor, and along Long Island Sound and the Atlantic coastline will be affected. The report also found that the combination of rising sea level, climate change and continuing development in high-risk areas has raised the level of New York's vulnerability to powerful coastal storms. Without meaningful action, this vulnerability will increase in area and magnitude over time. The report also finds that all of the utilities and infrastructure systems upon which our modern society relies-sewage, stormwater, fuel storage, energy generation, communication, solid waste management and transportation- could become vulnerable to coastal flooding.

George McCord's "New York Harbor"

Haiti sees spike in cholera deaths

Al-Jazeera.net: The death toll from Haiti's cholera outbreak has soared to 917 as officials struggled to contain the growing epidemic threatening the quake-ravaged country. The previous official toll announced two days earlier was 796. Authorities on Sunday said 14,642 people had been treated in hospitals since the disease took hold in the desperately poor Caribbean nation.

Officials fear the scale of the epidemic could increase exponentially if cholera infiltrates makeshift camps in the capital city of Port-au-Prince, where hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors live in cramped and unsanitary conditions.

A January earthquake flattened much of the capital, leaving more than 250,000 people dead and an estimated 1.3 million of Haiti's 10 million population displaced. International organisations have stepped up appeals for funds to bring in more doctors, medicine and water purification equipment. The United Nations is asking for $164m to fight the epidemic, which has gained strength over the past week….

Up to six more months of Pakistan flood water

AFP: A senior EU aid official warned Friday that flood waters could linger up to another six months in Pakistan, where he said the magnitude of the crisis meant people were still going without aid. "There is nearly water everywhere," Peter Zangl, the director general of the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), told a news conference in Islamabad after a five-day visit to Pakistan.

Unprecedented monsoon rains triggered catastrophic flooding across Pakistan in July and August, ravaging an area roughly the size of England and affecting 21 million people in the poverty-stricken country's worst natural disaster.

Parts of Sindh province remain under water in southern Pakistan, where people are still camping on roadsides after the floods washed away their homes and swallowed up rice and wheat fields. "The only perspective of getting rid of the water is evaporation. Depending on depth and climate conditions, this will take between two and six months," Zangl told reporters.

The displaced "need everything to survive and to live with minimum respectability and this situation will continue for several months," he said. UN and Western officials have described the floods as the biggest natural disaster to face the international aid community and Zangl said the magnitude of the crisis was "tremendous"….

US Navy photo of Pakistan flooding in September

Satellites provide up-to-date information on snow cover

Science Daily: The European Space Agency´s (ESA) GlobSnow project, led by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, can map the extent and volume of snow cover especially on the northern hemisphere. Launched at the beginning of November, the service provides almost real-time data on snow cover and snow depth. The purpose of this service, accessed through the GlobSnow website maintained by the Institute, is to create a global database containing the snow data gathered by satellites.

Snowfall impedes transport but also causes floods in many countries. The seasons affect snow cover the most on the northern hemisphere. The average snow cover in winter extends over an area of 20-40 million square kilometres; in other words, the snow contains as much water as one billion Olympic swimming pools.

At the same time, the snow cover is one of the most important factors affecting the global climate, meteorology and water systems. Long distances between observation stations, especially in the sparsely-populated regions of Eurasia and North America, have made it difficult to chart snow and its volume at global level.

The data produced by satellites are used in the forecasting of floods and in climate research. In the coming year, many countries will test application of the new material for making hydrological models and flood forecasts. GlobSnow also provides climate researchers with snow data extending over the past 30 years….

"Une route enneigee," by Bela Erdössy (1871-1928)

Sea level rise threatens Alexandria, Nile Delta

Dina Zayed in Reuters: Twenty years ago, Taher Ibrahim raced his friends across Alexandria's beaches, now rising seas have swept over his favorite childhood playground. Alexandria, with 4 million people, is Egypt's second-largest city, an industrial center and a port that handles four-fifths of national trade. It is also one of the Middle East's cities most at risk from rising sea levels due to global warming. "There were beaches I used to go to in my lifetime, now those beaches are gone. Is that not proof enough?" asked Ibrahim, a manager at a supermarket chain who is in his 40s.

Flooding could displace entire communities in Alexandria and the low-lying Nile Delta, the fertile agricultural heartland of Egypt's 79 million people. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that the Mediterranean will rise 30 cm to 1 meter this century. More than half of Egypt's people live within 100 km of the coast. A 2007 World Bank study estimated that a one-meter sea level rise could displace 10 percent of the population….

Oxfam's fantasy 'climate court' is both prescient and practical

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): Imagine an international court where the poorest people in the world could sue countries such as the US or Britain for failing to keep to agreements to reduce climate emissions or for knowingly causing devastating climate change.

It's some way off, but this week has seen an extraordinary tribunal being held in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, with more than 1,200 people including British lawyers, politicians and economists, listening to the testimonies of villagers living at the frontline of climate change. It was only a mock tribunal, organised by Oxfam, but it explored the growing idea that the largest carbon emitters should be bound by international law to protect the lives and livelihoods of those most at risk from the impacts of climate change.

Rushanara Ali, the newly-elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, who is already shadow minister for international development, was there along with Richard Lord QC, who will be looking at the legislation that is available for affected countries to pursue.

…The cries for climate justice are growing stronger by the day. In Latin America, President Evo Morales has formally proposed to the UN that an International Court of Climate Justice is established. It would have the capacity to restrain, prosecute and punish states, companies and people who, by act or omission, make major contributions to climate change.

…Of interest to Oxfam and even the UN could be a new paper from Field, the London-based Foundation for International Environmental Law & Development. This shows how there are many existing laws and principles available for states to sue one another for damage caused by climate change, and how this could pressure nations into stronger international action. Top of the list was the "no-harm rule", a widely recognised principle of customary international law, which Field's lawyers say is directly applicable to climate change….

Gaetano Gandolfi's "Allegory of Justice," painted in the 1760s. A cherub, no doubt working for a fossil fuel emitter, is attempting to fiddle with the scales

Warning over Haiti cholera outbreak

Press Association: A nationwide cholera epidemic could threaten the lives of thousands in Haiti if people do not receive sufficient health education, a leading British charity has warned. Aid agencies have recently stepped up efforts to combat the infection which has claimed the lives of more than 700 survivors of an earthquake which ravaged the country earlier this year.

But thousands more will die if people are not informed about how the illness is caught and spread, Save the Children said. Nick Ireland, who is leading the charity's cholera response in Haiti, said people were "key" to quashing the disease. "A huge number of people are already affected by this outbreak," he said.

"At this point, our best hope is to reduce the rate at which cholera spreads and the best way to do this is to arm people with health information, clean water and soap." Some 11,000 people in the stricken region are currently suffering from the infection which causes acute watery diarrhoea and can be fatal if left untreated….

NASA image of Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Managing agricultural inputs for climate change adaptation

Md. Lokman Hossain Mazumder in the Daily Star (Bangladesh): Climate change is changing most of our traditional agricultural practices as the seasonal cycle and rainfall pattern have changed, droughts have become more frequent, violent stresses of cyclones, earthquakes, prolonged floods, salt water intrusion are increasing day by day. The average temperature has increased in the summer while winter season has shortened. There are some projections about climate change that are matter of concern for Bangladesh such as: temperature would rise 1.30 C by 2030 and 2.60 C by 2070, the sea level rise would be up to three feet and a greater part of the costal area would be inundated. As a consequence 17 percent of total cultivable land would be affected…

... Bangladesh is seriously vulnerable to climate-induced hazards although there are so many controversies about climate change. Role of Bangladesh is very limited in this regard (change), but she will have to suffer and face the tremendous impacts of climate change. There is no panacea to overcome the problems. Therefore, it will be wise for us to adapt ourselves with the changing environment with our limited resources.

Lebanon faces severe water crisis by 2015

UPI: Lebanon, once considered to have an abundance of water, is threatened with acute shortages as the Arab world lurches toward severe water scarcity as early as 2015. For Lebanon, which has long neglected to take measures to conserve and manage its water resources, the crisis couldn't come at a worse time: The government is gripped by political crisis that many fear could lead to renewed civil war; the decision-making process has been paralyzed; and a 10-year water plan adopted in 2002 has ground to a halt.

The Cabinet, burdened with a $54 billion public debt, decided recently to delay all discussion on a proposal by Water and Energy Minister Jibran Bassil to build 11 dams on Lebanon's several rivers. Fadi Comair, general director of hydraulic and electrical resources, says that enlisting the private sector is the only way to solve the worsening water problem. "We cannot implement infrastructure projects if the private sector does not intervene," he told The Daily Star, Lebanon's English language newspaper. "Without the private sector we can do nothing."

…The World Bank recently urged major investment in Lebanon's ramshackle water infrastructure while noting that the tiny country's water resources are equivalent to 49,830 cubic feet per capita, one of the highest in the Middle East and North Africa….

A spring known as "Ain al Zarka" in the village of Batroumine in Lebanon, shot by ALBA-BALAMAND

Fast melting glaciers threaten Kyrgyz biodiversity

Pavol Stracansky in IPS/IFEJ: Kyrgyzstan's glaciers are receding at what scientists say is an alarming rate, fuelled by global warming. And while experts warn of a subsequent catastrophe for energy and water security for Kyrgyzstan and neighbour states downstream reliant on its water flows, devastation to local ecosystems and the effects on plant and wildlife could be just as severe.

"Animals and vegetation will not be unaffected and the risks for some species will be great," Ilia Domashov, deputy head of the BIOM Environmental NGO in Bishkek told IPS. More than four percent - 8,400 square kilometres - of Kyrgyzstan's territory consists of glaciers.

A natural process of water release from summer melting of the glaciers, which freeze again during the winter, feeds many of the country's rivers and lakes. Up to 90 percent of water in Kyrgyzstan rivers comes from glaciers, local experts claim. This flow of water is not just important to energy needs and farming, it also feeds interconnected ecosystems providing habitats for some of the world's most diverse flora and fauna. Kyrgyzstan's biodiversity is among the greatest in the region and stretches through a variety of climatic habitats, ranging from glaciers to subtropical and temperate ecosystems.

…In Kyrgyzstan's submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, published last year, it was predicted that the country's glaciated area would recede by up to 95 percent over the next century…

Glacier in Tian Shan mountain range, shot by Andrzej Barabasz (Chepry), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Experts hail 'breakthrough' university study in coastal river and sea flooding

This is Cornwall via the Western Morning News (UK): The threat of flooding in coastal areas could be dramatically reduced by a new discovery. Scientists at the University of Plymouth have analysed the way waves hit different types of beach materials, finding some surfaces respond differently in dissipating the strength of the sea.

They believe the findings from the three-year study could provide a breakthrough in protecting coastal towns from severe damage in the future without damaging the local environment. Dominic Reeve, professor of Coastal Dynamics at the university, said: "Protecting our coastline against the forces of nature is a hugely complex problem, but this research has the potential to help local councils manage beaches more effectively for the next 100 years".

The research found areas with shingle beach are most protected from the effects of flooding, whereas stretches of fine golden sand are most susceptible to being overrun during poor weather conditions. Parts of the Westcountry, including South Devon, are susceptible to coastal flooding, with areas such as Dawlish and Sidmouth already suffering while other places, such as Dartmouth, are being highlighted as potential problem areas for the future. The short- term disruption and long-term costs can be considerable.

The Environment Agency's Flooding in England report states as many as 65,000 buildings in Devon and Cornwall are at risk from river and sea flooding, with this risk considered "significant" for nearly half of these. Meanwhile the increase in flooding over recent years suggests climate change is having a considerable effect and it is widely understood more measures need to be taken to provide a solution….

Westcombe beach on the South Devon coast looking westwards, shot by Herbythyme, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Dutch aid Mekong Delta climate battle

Viet Nam News: Viet Nam and the Netherlands yesterday agreed to jointly draft a master plan for developing the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta which faces the imminent threat of climate change. Government officials and experts from both sides wrapped up a two-day forum for the purpose in HCM City, held under the auspices of the Partnership Agreement for mitigating sea-level rise in Viet Nam signed by the two countries' prime ministers in Brussels last April.

To co-ordinate the Vietnamese – Netherlands Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) on Water, they agreed at the forum to set up a joint Vietnamese and Dutch governmental committee, chaired by their respective deputy prime ministers. The Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment will work under the committee to manage four different aspects – the plan to develop the delta region; co-operation between Rotterdam and HCM City; exchange of knowledge; and the Vietnamese – Netherlands water forum.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai, who chaired the two-day meeting, said until next March the SPA will focus on the development plan for Cuu Long Delta. It is the most threatened by climate change in Viet Nam, especially by rising sea levels.

Lai said the Vietnamese side will soon set up a permanent office and four consulting groups – for environment and infrastructure, sectors that use water and land resources, developing long-term scenarios for the delta's development, and developing governmental institutions for the purpose. He sought Dutch prompt assistance in drafting criteria for selecting members for the groups, defining what needs to be done, and budgeting….

Storms damage budgets in Central America, Mexico

Patrick Rucker and Mica Rosenberg in Reuters: Heavy rains and storms this year have left Mexico and Central America with hundreds of millions of dollars in repair bills, a trend officials expect to be a perennial strain on budgets as climate change sets in. The unusually fierce hurricane season, which brought 19 major storms through the region, left local governments scrambling to find the money to rebuild roads, bridges and homes, forcing them to rethink tax cuts or seek outside aid.

Climate change models show the situation will only get worse as temperatures rise, taking a real toll on budgets across Latin America. Development banks and ratings agencies alike have urged the region to brace itself for severe weather and the resulting heavy repair costs. "This is our new life with climate change," said Gabino Cue, the incoming governor of Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca, which bore the brunt of heavy rains this season.

Oaxaca, one of Mexico's poorest states, could face a $163-million (2-billion-peso) tab to repair roads, bridges and other public works damaged by extreme weather this year. "The government has to redraw the risk map with this phenomenon," Cue said. …

A scene from the 2007 floods in Tabasco, shot by Huitzil, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Catastrophic drought looms for Bolivia’s capital

National Science Foundation: Catastrophic drought is on the near-term horizon for the capital city of Bolivia, according to new research into the historical ecology of the Andes. If temperatures rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above those of modern times, parts of Peru and Bolivia will become a desert-like setting.

The change would be disastrous for the water supply and agricultural capacity of the two million inhabitants of La Paz, Bolivia's capital city, scientists say. The results, derived from research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by scientists affiliated with the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), appear in the November issue of the journal Global Change Biology.

Climatologist Mark Bush of FIT led a research team investigating a 370,000-year record of climate and vegetation change in Andean ecosystems. The scientists used fossilized pollen trapped in the sediments of Lake Titicaca, which sits on the border of Peru and Bolivia.

They found that during two of the last three interglacial periods, which occurred between 130,000-115,0000 years ago and 330,000-320,000 years ago, Lake Titicaca shrank by as much as 85 percent. Adjacent shrubby grasslands were replaced by desert.

In each case, a steady warming occurred that caused trees to migrate upslope, just as they are doing today. However, as the climate kept warming, the system suddenly flipped from woodland to desert. "The evidence is clear that there was a sudden change to a much drier state," said Bush….

One view of La Paz, shot by marcalandavis, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Cholera fears in Benin's flooded city of Cotonou

BBC: Benin has not experienced such severe flooding for 47 years - when the rising waters were blamed on the traditional voodoo deities that many people in this small West African nation still worship. Some 680,000 people have been affected by the floods - and more than a quarter of the country has been under water since mid-September.

… "It is true that the flood has taken a huge toll on human and livestock casualties - apart from displacing great number of residents, but I do not believe that the gods are to blame," says Dr Adeyinka Adebayo. He has been helping with Cotonou's cholera outbreak, which has so far killed 60 people - although the official records only reflect those who died in hospitals. "I would rather say that it is a result of global warming which we have been hearing about for some time."

…This week, the government appealed again for aid, saying it needed $46m (£28.5m) as thousands of homes have been demolished, more than 80,000 head of livestock have been lost and many crops have been ruined. The UN refugee agency's Angele Dikongue-Atangana says so far about 20,000 tents have been distributed to the estimated 200,000 people who have been displaced - and more tents are being sent out daily….

Mangrove forests protect Bangladesh

ReliefWeb: On the first day of her official visit to Bangladesh, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark traveled to the remote island of Char Kukri-Mukri on the southeast coast. This island, with a population of around 20,000, is on the frontline of Bangladesh's work to adapt to climate change.

Sea levels on the coast of Bangladesh are expected to rise up to 23cm, directly affecting the lives of 38 million Bangladeshis living in coastal areas. Char Kukri-Mukri is already experiencing a marked increase in both the frequency and intensity of cyclones and accompanying tidal surges, disrupting agriculture and fishing, and also causing massive erosion. With about 70 percent of the population subsisting on crop agriculture and fishing, these changes are threatening a community already struggling below the poverty line.

To reduce the vulnerability of these communities to climate change and to help them adapt to its effects, UNDP began working with Bangladesh's Ministry of Environment and Forest on an innovative project. Char Kukri-Mukri was one of four sites chosen for this project which is establishing 6,100 hectares of mangrove plantations and 935 hectares of timber species and fruit trees. Women in Char Kukri-Mukri have been trained to grow mangrove saplings, as well as trees used for timber, such as bamboo, and in forest management. Mangrove saplings will soon be planted along the coastline to create mangrove forests containing over 2.5 million trees over the four sites.

Mangrove forests act as extremely effective carbon sinks, able to absorb 97.57 tons of carbon per hectare, or more than three times the absorptive capacity of non-mangrove forests. More importantly for Bangladesh's coastal communities, mangroves also provide physical protection, trapping sediment in their intricate root structure at such a high rate that they can potentially reverse the effects of sea level rise. Every year, millions of tons of sediment are washed through Bangladesh's river delta near Char Kukri-Mukri, offering one of the few natural lifelines the country can harness to protect itself against the impacts of climate change and combat coastal erosion…..

A mangrove forest in the Sundarbans, Bangladesh, shot by bri vos, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

'Natural disasters to cost $185 billion yearly by end of century'

The Economic Times (India): Annual global losses from natural disasters could triple to a whopping USD 185 billion by the end of this century, according to a new report. Climate change could add another USD 28-68 billion more in damages per year from tropical cyclones alone, said the report released today jointly by the World Bank and the United Nations .

The 250-page report tilted 'Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention' also said that the number of people exposed to storms and earthquakes in large cities could double to 1.5 billion by 2050. Targeted directly at the world's finance ministers, it stresses that "prevention pays but you do not always have to pay more for prevention".

It outlined a number of measures to prevent death and destruction from natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding. These measures are almost stunning in their simplicity and common-sense approach. For example, governments can make information about hazards and risks easily accessible.

It said: "Providing land titles reduces the possibility of eviction or demolition, and encourages individuals to invest in safer structures. Removing rent controls restores incentives for landlords to maintain buildings. And, reorienting existing public spending to prioritise day-to-day operations and maintenance -- mending pot-holes, painting steel bridges, keeping drains clear -- would increase prevention." …

Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a natural disaster

Global warming changes tropical cyclone patterns

Softpedia: Investigators have recently determined that climate change is also exerting its influence on the way tropical cyclones develop, by modifying the mean temperatures of the oceans. This means that the threshold future storms need to reach in order to develop is moving up on the temperature scale.

Hurricanes, tropical storms and typhoons can only develop when they pass above seawater that is how enough to allow for them to start swirling. If the ocean is cool, then there is a very small chance that the weather will get nasty.

In effect, hot water acts as fuel for these storms, augmenting their might until they become extremely dangerous for humans lying in its path. With climate change, seas get warmer, which means that the threshold determining how hot the water need to be in order to allow for the development of dangerous storms is also going up.

As a direct result, experts predict that future hurricane seasons will feature about the same number of tropical cyclones, but that the storm which will develop will be considerably stronger and more intense than current ones. “It is too difficult to say how our results relate precisely to the number of hurricanes, but our results do suggest that rising sea surface temperatures alone should not appreciably affect the number of tropical cyclones,” explains researcher Nat Johnson.

“However, most tropical cyclone studies do project that the total number of tropical cyclones will change little but the number of intense tropical cyclones will increase,” adds the expert, who holds an appointment at the University of Hawaii in Manoa (UHM) International Pacific Research Center….

Katrina's eyewall viewed from a Hurricane Hunter aircraft, 2005, from NOAA

Groundwater depletion rate accelerating worldwide

American Geophysical Union: In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use. These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life and agriculture in many regions, while also sustaining streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and resisting land subsidence and salt water intrusion into fresh water supplies. Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find.

Soaring global groundwater depletion bodes a potential disaster for an increasingly globalized agricultural system, says Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and leader of the new study. “If you let the population grow by extending the irrigated areas using groundwater that is not being recharged, then you will run into a wall at a certain point in time, and you will have hunger and social unrest to go with it,” Bierkens warns. “That is something that you can see coming for miles.”

He and his colleagues will publish their new findings in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

… The new assessment shows the highest rates of depletion in some of the world’s major agricultural centers, including northwest India, northeastern China, northeast Pakistan, California’s central valley, and the midwestern United States. “The rate of depletion increased almost linearly from the 1960s to the early 1990s,” says Bierkens. “But then you see a sharp increase which is related to the increase of upcoming economies and population numbers; mainly in India and China.”…

Global map of groundwater depletion, where 1000 on the legend is equal to one cubic kilometer of depletion per year. From the AGU website

Nigerian ICT and climate change

Hamzat Bala Lawal in AllAfrica.com via the Daily Trust (Nigeria): Information and Communication Technology (ICT) plays major roles in climate change mitigation and adaptation. This is increasingly being recognized within the climate change technology transfer negotiations because according to the World Development Report 2010, the use of ICT is predicted to reduce total greenhouse gases by 15 per cent by 2020.

Beyond climate change mitigation, ICT has a prominent role to play in realizing Nigeria's Vision 2020 mandate of building a large, diversified, sustainable and competitive economy that harnesses the energies and talents of its people and guarantee high standard of living and quality of life for its citizens. The convergence between climate change mitigation and meeting growth targets is particularly important to Nigeria.

Overtime, the impact of ICT on sustainable development has often been underestimated by policy makers. The importance of this sector can be felt in the construction of ICT enabled energy efficient buildings and electric appliances, manufacturing, logistics and power grids. Others include ICT enabled business models, markets and lifestyles. It plays essential roles in monitoring, modeling, administration and dissemination of climate change information and technology.

It has other indirect positive impact on the environment, for instance, through its role in increasing general per capita wealth through productivity, GDP growth and boosting the social well being of the populace. It also helps in addressing the poverty situation in the country. It is clear that ICTs, as both general purpose and specific technologies, are necessary in order to monitor, model, administrate and disseminate climate change activities….

Fish stocks dwindle as trawlers empty Asia's seas

Terra Daily via AFP: Overfishing in Southeast Asian seas has left garoupas and sea bass in dire straits, searching for mates on denuded seabeds, according to experts alarmed by ever-declining catches. Marine scientists and fishermen say that popular fish species -- especially the large and valuable ones -- have been caught indiscriminately, causing numbers to plunge dramatically.

For big fish "finding a mate is a difficult task. They have to swim a long distance to find one," said Edward Allison from the World Fish Center in Malaysia's northern resort island of Penang.

One of the culprits is bottom trawling, which involves dragging huge, heavy nets along the sea floor. Large metal plates and rubber wheels attached to the nets move along the bottom and crush nearly everything in their path. Allison said the habitat for young fish, or fry, is also shrinking because the mangrove swamps which provide food and protection are being obliterated by coastal development including tourist resorts.

Demand for top-quality seafood, from Southeast Asian nations themselves and from Hong Kong and China, is another major factor behind the emptying of the seas. According to World Fish data, there were 10 times more fish in the Gulf of Thailand in 1965 than 30 years later…

Bonito Fishing on Choshi Bay (Province of) Shimosa, by Shotei Hokujiu, between 1820 and 1830

African governments urged to consider climate change in disaster planning

George Fominyen in Reuters Alertnet: Governments in West and Central Africa should learn from this year's flooding - which has disrupted the livelihoods of nearly 2 million people - by urgently factoring climate change into their disaster prevention and response plans, aid groups say.

Extreme weather linked to climate change, including heavy rainfall, is expected to cause increasing damage in the region. In West Africa alone this year, the number of people who lost their homes and property due to floods doubled from around 800,000 in 2009 to 1.6 million.

Aid workers say governments could have done more to protect vulnerable communities. "There has been excess rainfall, but it seems authorities in some of these countries did not have proper forecasts and could not take the necessary action to handle these problems," said Yvon Edomou, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in West and Central Africa.

This year, floods have washed away crops in Chad and Niger, which were already struggling to recover from drought and food shortages, and disrupted the lives of 680,000 people in the coastal state of Benin. Ghana and Nigeria have also been badly affected….

Global scheme to boost rice yields while reducing damage to environment launched

Science Daily: One of the world's largest global scientific partnerships for sustainable agricultural development has launched a bold new research initiative that aims to dramatically improve the ability of rice farmers to feed growing populations in some of the world's poorest nations. The efforts of the Global Rice Science Partnership, or GRiSP, are expected to lift 150 million people out of poverty by 2035 and prevent the emission of greenhouse gases by an amount equivalent to more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

An initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and led by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and its partners, GRiSP was launched in Hanoi November 10 at the 3rd International Rice Congress. The new global initiative will lead scientists to embark on the most comprehensive attempt ever to deploy rice's genetic diversity. Cutting-edge research aimed at discovering new rice genes and deciphering their functions will feed into accelerated efforts to break the yield barrier in rice and to breed new generations of "climate-ready" rice with flooding tolerance and other traits that are essential for adapting production in the face of climate change. The initiative is expected to boost supplies enough to reduce anticipated increases in rice prices by an average of at least 6.5% by 2020, and at least 13% by 2035.

"Given that rice is a staple food for more than half the global population and in most of the developing world, there is no question that availability of rice is equated with food security," said Dr. Robert Zeigler, Director General of IRRI, a member of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers….

Reflections of the clouds at sunset over the rice terraced mountains of the Hani people in Yuanyang County, Yunnan, China, in wintertime, when the paddies are left filled with water until planting in Spring. A beautiful shot by Takeaway, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

South Florida water managers weigh costly consequences of sea level rise

Andy Reid in the Sun Sentinel (Florida): For millions of South Floridians, life on a peninsula means melting icecaps in Greenland aren't just something for polar bears to worry about. South Florida's coastal flood-control structures, counted on to protect low-lying communities from getting swamped, already are at risk from sea level rise due to climate change, according to scientists for the South Florida Water Management District.

In the coming months, the district's governing board will be asked to endorse more scientific studies and potentially costly flood-control construction projects aimed at preparing for the rising sea levels expected to come.

A district proposal outlined Tuesday calls for the agency over the next five years to buy more land for flood control, design improvements for 50-year-old drainage structures and start building pumps that could keep discharging stormwater out to the ocean even as sea levels continue to rise.

While politicians and world leaders debate the causes of climate change and how to respond, district scientists are adopting a "no-regrets strategy" to get ready, even if the worst-case scenarios don't come to pass. "This is an issue of global importance that will have regional impacts," said Jayantha Obeysekera, who is leading the district's response to climate change and sea level rise. He briefed the district board Tuesday. "All aspects of water management would be impacted."…

Storm surge flooding from Hurricane Alberto, 2006, image from NOAA

NASA study shows role of melt in Arctic sea ice loss

NASA/JPL: A NASA analysis of satellite data has quantified, for the first time, the amount of older and thicker "multiyear" sea ice lost from the Arctic Ocean due to melting. Since the start of the satellite record in 1979, scientists have observed the continued disappearance of older "multiyear" sea ice that survives more than one summer melt season. Some scientists suspected that this loss was due entirely to wind pushing the ice out of the Arctic Basin -- a process that scientists refer to as "export." In this study, Ron Kwok and Glenn Cunningham at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used a suite of satellite data to clarify the relative role of export versus melt within the Arctic Ocean.

Kwok and Cunningham show that between 1993 and 2009, a significant amount of multiyear ice -- 1,400 cubic kilometers (336 cubic miles) -- was lost due to melt, not export. "The paper shows that there is indeed melt of old ice within the Arctic basin and the melt area has been increasing over the past several years," Kwok said. "The story is always more complicated -- there is melt as well as export -- but this is another step in calculating the mass and area balance of the Arctic ice cover."

The results have implications for understanding how Arctic sea ice gets redistributed, where melt occurs in the Arctic Ocean, and how the ocean, ice and atmosphere interact as a system to affect Earth's climate. The study was published in October 2010 in Geophysical Research Letters.

….They found that over the 17-year period, an area of 947,000 square kilometers (365,639 square miles), or about 32 percent of the decline in multiyear sea ice area, was lost in the Beaufort Sea due to melt. A similar calculation using thickness estimates from NASA's ICESat from 2004 to 2009 show a volume loss of 1,400 cubic kilometers (336 cubic miles), or about 20 percent of the total loss by volume….

A mosaic of satellite images shows the movement of fragmented ice away from ice edges, which scientists use to track the loss of multiyear ice due to melt. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Sewage flowing past Australian desal plant

Amos Aikman in the Australian: The current off Sydney's $1.9 billion desalination plant takes sewage from an outflow only 2.5km away directly past its intake about a third of the time. The environmental study used to justify the Kurnell plant's location relied in part on an assumption that because the prevailing current runs south, there would be little danger of E.coli from the sewage being sucked into its inflow, to the north.

But CSIRO scientists who monitor the current yesterday told The Australian that it sweeps north about a third of the time, and yesterday was one such day. It has been established that on some days, the amount of E.coli in intake water is more than double the guidelines for safe bathing.

The current has been flowing north for the past week. The east Australian current, which normally carries sewage from the Cronulla near-shore outfall, is currently involved in a cold-core eddy that has reversed its direction, CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin said yesterday.

…Data managed by the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water also confirms the current flows north about 30 per cent of the time. But Sydney Water's environmental project manager, Susan Trousdale, said data showed the current flowed southwards "well over 80 per cent of the time".

As reported yesterday, professor of infectious diseases and microbiology at the Australian National University, Peter Collignon, has claimed poor water quality at the Kurnell plant could create a public health disaster if filtering systems were ever to fail….

Shot of e. coli by Mattosaurus

Malaria threat looms large in Rwanda as rainfall diminishes

Aimable Twahirwa in Reuters AlertNet: Low rainfall, extended dry spells and warmer weather in parts of Rwanda are creating ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes, raising the prospect of severe outbreaks of malaria. Rwanda has drastically reduced malaria cases in past years through the use of treated mosquito nets, widespread distribution of anti-malarial medicines and improved services to expectant mothers, including improved medical check-ups, but medical practitioners fear a season of low rainfall could undo much of the progress.

When rainfall is low, lakes and rivers dry up, forming smaller pools of standing water - a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes. Rwanda's southeast is particularly hard hit by malaria and dryer weather - linked to climate change - is expected for the region.

The southeast is forecast to receive little rainfall between now and December, according to the central African country's meteorological service. Rainfall in the region could drop to as low as 10 millimetres a year, compared to a national average of 700 mm. Temperatures are also rising, another factor that encourages mosquitoes to breed….