Flood defences are essential for economic growth of UK's Cornwall

This is Bristol (UK): It's now nearly a month since devastating floods hit Cornwall, causing road and rail routes to be closed and cutting off towns and villages. And it's less than four years since flooding caused havoc in Gloucestershire. Flooding at Tewkesbury's Mythe water treatment works left 140,000 homes without clean water for days and Castle Meads's electricity sub-station was shut down, leaving thousands without power.

Flooding on the M5 trapped thousands, with many others stranded on the rail network. These incidents were caused by intense rainfall. While we can't prevent the rain, we can minimise the impact that flooding has. And we must minimise it, because thanks to climate change, it is going to happen more often.

It's not just rain we have to be mindful of. We've also seen snow and ice in recent weeks. When this melts, we are faced with surface flooding. The effects of floods can paralyse our critical infrastructure, particularly our transport networks. The South West is already in a vulnerable position in terms of transport with major routes into the region limited. We are dependent on the M4 and M5 but when these fail – as they did during the summer floods of 2007 – we must rely on the A30/A303, most of which is a single carriageway….

River Amble Dam. The green bank at the centre of the photograph is an earth dam across the mouth of the River Amble Valley where it joins the Camel Estuary. Shot by Tony Atkin, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Forecasts to warn of toxic algae along the Texas coast

Environment News Service: From now on, Texas officials and coastal managers will receive early notice of red tides and other toxic algae outbreaks that could threaten public health and affect beach and fishing activities along the coast. Currently, there is currently no indication of a harmful algal bloom along the Texas coast, or in Florida, the other coastal region where managers receive notice of harmful algal blooms. But when the algae do bloom, typically in late summer, managers will learn about them earlier than they have in the past.

Weekly bulletins generated by the Harmful Algal Bloom Operational Forecast System run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, are based on observations from state partners, coupled with models, imagery and data from NOAA's powerful tide and current and weather systems.

"Early notification of blooms is essential, and knowing that a bloom is occurring offshore provides our resource managers with sufficient time to coordinate with other responding agencies and formulate a plan before blooms hit the beaches," said Meredith Byrd, harmful algal bloom response coordinator for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

NOAA has had an operational forecast in the eastern Gulf of Mexico for harmful algal blooms off the Florida coast since 2004 and now, with the expansion of the operational system, analysts will be available to review conditions daily with coastal managers from all of the Gulf of Mexico states. The most common harmful algal bloom that occurs in the Gulf of Mexico is known as red tide and is caused by the algal species Karenia brevis….

Pilings on the beach in Galveston after Hurricane Ike in 2008, shot by P/\UL / Paul Randall, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Maps predict future floods for Australian coastal cities

123 ABC Newcastle (Australia): Rising sea levels are likely to cause serious and regular flooding in Australian coastal cities by the end of the century, according to maps released by the Federal Government today. The maps for low-lying areas in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Newcastle, the New South Wales' central coast and south-east Queensland show significant levels of inundation by the year 2100.

The maps show three different scenarios, with the lowest rise of 50 centimetres representing a situation which is likely to be unavoidable. The medium level map shows a rise of 80cm and the highest level of 1.1 metres shows the flooding risk identified in the most recent climate change research.

The Government says the flooding shown in the maps is likely to occur at least once a year.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet says the maps will help communities prepare for the effects of climate change. "The Government recognises that coastal areas of Australia are a priority for adaptation action, with many communities vulnerable to impacts such as erosion and sea inundation," Mr Combet said...

The map shows estimated inundation at the Port of Brisbane from a moderate sea level rise in the year 2100 (Department of Climate Change)

Nigeria flood kills 1,000, displaces 258,000 others

AllAfrica.com via the Daily Independent (Lagos): National Emergency Management Agency has confirmed that the 2010 flood has brought the number of people displaced in Nigeria to 258,044 while about 1,555 lives were lost to cholera epidemic due to contamination of drinking water as result of the flooding.

Director General of the agency, Mohammed Sani-Sidi, made this known on Tuesday during a meeting with a delegation of World Bank from Washington, which is in the country to assess flood damages in the country.

Sani-Sidi, in release signed by Head, Public Relations, Yushau Shuaib, said that the climate change which is also known as global warming has become a reality in Nigeria, adding that flood also brought along the cholera epidemic due to the contamination of drinking water.

He said that as at September 20, the collated data from NEMA, other relevant stakeholders, including World Health Organisation (WHO), indicated that 20,656 cases have been recorded in 17 states and about 1,555 lives were lost….

Drought highlights urgent need for New Zealand water storage

Voxy (New Zealand): Reliable irrigation is the way forward to ensure sustainable and resilient communities says Irrigation NZ as it highlights the urgent need for nationwide water storage. Agriculture Minister David Carter foreshadowed a major water package as part of the government's response to climate change when he spoke after meeting Northland's drought-affected farmers.

…While government has financially assisted the planning stages of community water storage projects, through the Community Irrigation Fund, none have yet proceeded to implementation stage. And that time can't come quick enough, says IrrigationNZ chief executive Andrew Curtis.

"Reliable Irrigation is the way forward to minimise boom bust scenarios and create wealth and opportunity for communities alongside resilience." Farmers get a risk management tool and it also enables them to undertake better environmental management, Curtis said.

Good Management Practice (GMP) irrigation keeps grass and crops growing optimally absorbing the applied nutrients. This enables farmers to proactively manage losses from the system, as opposed to a dry land scenario where there is no control over soil moisture and consequent plant growth, leaving outcomes unequivocally in the hands of the rain gods! Across the country it's shaping up to be a long summer and there is every likelihood other areas will soon find themselves in the same situation as Northland.

…In terms of production, reliable irrigation demonstrates clear benefits. Due to the declared drought in Northland and the looming drought declaration in Waikato, these two regions, without reliable water supply, are falling well behind the central South Island in terms of production. For example, milk production in the upper North Island, including Northland, has this month (December 11 figures) dropped 8% on a daily basis compared to last season. Waikato has fallen 10.5% while the central South Island (Canterbury and North Otago) has increased 5.5%....

An aerial shot en route between Rotorua and Wellington, shot by Phillip Capper, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Soil erosion threatens to leave earth hungry

John Vidal in the Guardian (UK): Within 40 years, there will be around 2 billion more people – another China plus India – on earth. Food production will have to increase at least 40%, and most of that will have to be grown on the fertile soils that cover just 11% of the global land surface.

There is little new land that can be brought into production, and existing land is being lost and degraded. Annually, says the UN's food and agricultural organisation, 75bn tonnes of soil, the equivalent of nearly 10m hectares of arable land, is lost to erosion, waterlogging and salination; another 20m hectares is abandoned because its soil quality has been degraded.

The implications are terrifying. "The world is facing a serious threat of a major food shortage within the next 30 years. We are trying to grow more food on less land while facing increased costs for fertiliser, fuel and a short supply of water," says Professor Keith Goulding, head of sustainable soils at Rothamsted research station and president of the British society of soil science.

Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington, says it takes between 200 and 1,000 years to renew 2.5cm of soil. "The thin layer of topsoil that covers the planet's land surface is the foundation of civilisation. This soil, typically 6 inches [15cm] or so deep, was formed over long stretches of geological time as new soil formation exceeded the natural rate of erosion. But sometime within the last century, as human and livestock populations expanded, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation over large areas."

Soil erosion is not a high priority among governments and farmers because it usually occurs so slowly that its cumulative effects take decades to become apparent, says David Pimentel, professor of agricultural sciences at Cornell University. "The removal of 1 millimetre of soil is so small that it goes undetected. But over a 25-year period the loss would be 25mm, which would take about 500 years to replace by natural processes."…

Buried machinery in 1936 in Dallas, South Dakota, during the Dust Bowl

Latin Americans affected more than ever by climate change

ACN News Agency (Cuba): “According to the number of people affected by extreme temperatures, forest fires, droughts, and storms and flooding reached 5 million in the 1970´s and over 40 million in the last decade”, revealed the publication of the UN Environmental Program and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The publication was recently revealed during the Climate Change Summit held in Cancun, Mexico.

According to the report entitled “The vital graphics of climate change for Latin America and the Caribbean¨, the considerable increase of people affected is ¨a consequence of the increase of human settlements in the region, urban marginalized areas as well as the vulnerability of the coastal region in face of these events”. The number of storms between 2000 and 2009 multiplied by 12 compared to those that occurred between 1970 and 1979. In that same period flooding quadrupled.

The data of the study revealed that the estimated costs of the damages due
to the extreme climatic events in the last 10 years surpassed 40 million dollars in Latin America. The CEPAL expert and co author of the document, Luis Miguel Galindo said that the extreme climatic events show a correlation between global warming, increase in temperatures, intensification of hurricanes and a hike in the sea levels. For example, 36 hurricanes were registered between 2002 and 2009 in Meso America and the Caribbean while 9 to 15 hurricanes occurred in the 1980´s and 1990´s, respectively….

Hurricane Ike approaching Cuba, 2008

2010 'exceptional year' for weather disasters

AFP: Catastrophic floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia, hurricanes in Mexico: 2010 has so far been an "exceptional" year for weather disasters, German reinsurance giant Munich Re said Thursday. "This year really has been a year of weather records," Peter Hoeppe, an expert from Munich Re's Geo Risks Research department, told journalists.

"The first nine months of the year have seen the highest number of weather-related events since Munich Re started keeping records," he added. Hoeppe added that a clear pattern of continuing global warming was contributing to the natural disasters.

2010 has so far been the warmest since measurements began 130 years ago. New temperature records were set in Russia (37.8 degrees centigrade) and in Asia (53.5 degrees in Pakistan). Only last month, a new temperature record was set in Los Angeles, with the mercury hitting 45 degrees. "It is clear that global warming is getting worse," said Hoeppe….

Freshwater sustainability challenges shared by southwest and southeast US

Terra Daily: Water scarcity in the western U.S. has long been an issue of concern. Now, a team of researchers studying freshwater sustainability in the U.S. have found that the Southeast, with the exception of Florida, does not have enough water capacity to meet its own needs.
Twenty-five years ago, environmentalist Marc Reisner published Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, which predicted that water resources in the West would be unable to support the growing demand of cities, agriculture and industry.

A paper co-authored by a University of Georgia researcher and just published in a special issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers new support for most of Reisner's conclusions, using data and methods unavailable to him in 1986.

Although the paper focuses on freshwater sustainability in the Southwest, co-authors Tushar Sinha, a postdoctoral scientist at North Carolina State University; John Kominoski, a postdoctoral associate at the UGA Odum School of Ecology; and William Graf, a professor of geography at the University of South Carolina, said that the findings have important implications for the Southeast as well. "It turns out that the Southeast has a relatively low capacity for water storage," said Graf….

As Andean glaciers recede, region steps forward to adapt

Emilio Godoy in IPS via Tierramérica: The mountainous areas of South America's Andean nations supply water to the coastal cities, provide habitat to important biodiversity, and serve as natural barriers, but global warming threatens those regions, which are home to millions of people. "It is clear that the glaciers are receding, and some communities can see that the climate is changing. Precipitation is more unstable, and in the cities along the coast face water supply problems," Peru's Environment Minister Antonio Brack told Tierramérica.

In Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, the glaciers are a principal source of freshwater, and as they shrink, it means less water is available for the cities in the valleys and on the coast. Peru's total area of mountain ice fields has decreased 22 percent in the last 35 years, with a 12-percent reduction in the volume of water, according to that country's National Environmental Council.

To confront the threats hanging over the Andes, the region's nations have formed a consortium for sustainable development, CONDESAN, a member of the Mountain Partnership, created in 2002. To date, 50 countries, 16 intergovernmental organisations and 107 civil society groups make up the Partnership, which has the support of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

"We are implementing programmes to prevent fires in the highlands, to preserve wetlands, and to improve freshwater systems management," Marco Chiu, Ecuador's deputy minister for climate change, told Tierramérica. The protection of mountainous areas was a key issue at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP 16) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place Nov. 28 to Dec. 10 in the Mexican resort city of Cancún.

In the arid regions of Central Asia, Chile, Argentina and Peru, where there is little precipitation, the receding glaciers will have a much greater impact on water availability than in Europe or other Asian regions….

Urubamba, the sacred valley of the Incas, in Peru. The photo was taken in 2002 by Håkan Svensson (Xauxa).Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Standing up to the surge

Beth Daley in the Boston Globe: In the sunshine, Johnson & Wales University’s new Cuisinart Center for Culinary Excellence looks sleek and sharp; it’s a light-filled space on the Narragansett Bay campus. In a hurricane, a piece of the building may wash away — by design. Glass panels and a brick facade placed on the ground floor by the Cambridge architects Tsoi/Kobus & Associates would give way if floodwaters slam into the building.

The breakaway walls would allow water to flow freely past columns holding up the rest of the 82,000-square-foot building, ensuring it isn’t damaged by the ocean’s force. Nearby buildings would also be protected, because destructive floodwaters would not be redirected by any fixed walls.

Such designs have long been common for homes at the beach, where storm surges are so frequent that ground floors typically consist of little more than storage space or a garage. Now, architects are beginning to adopt them for far larger commercial and industrial buildings along the coast as climate change causes sea levels to rise.

“We were able to take advantage of creative construction,’’ said Chris Placco, vice president of facilities for Johnson & Wales. “And we basically built the building up on stilts.’’

...Boston is investing heavily in ways to adapt to and prepare for rising seas, including requiring large projects to consider climate change in their construction planning, said James Hunt, the city’s chief of environmental and energy services….

A storm surge during Hurricane Eloise, via NOAA

Ireland will devote $30 million to aid addressing climate change in developing countries

Cathy Hayes in the Irish Central: Ireland’s Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, has announced the details relating to the $30 million funding package to aid developing countries in addressing climate change. This funding is part of a commitment made in December 2009. Ireland agreed to make a contribution of up to $132 million towards a “fast-start” financing package for some of the world’s poorest countries.

Mr Gormley defended the Irish Government’s decision to provide this funding when Ireland is being forced to seek a bailout from the EU and IMF. He said, “It goes without saying that Ireland is facing severe economic difficulties, which are impacting on the lives of our people. But we also have to remember that climate change is threatening the lives and safety of many through drought, flooding, lower agricultural productivity and more frequent and severe heat waves and storms."

"Ireland has a proud tradition of giving and assistance. We recognize as a nation that there are others in greater need, and that we have a responsibility in this regard.”…

Family evicted from their farm during an Irish land war, 1879

Floods displace hundreds in Nigeria

AllAfrica.com via the Daily Independent (Lagos): Over 500 people were displaced as a result of the recent flooding that ravaged some part of the country, Mohammed Sani-Sidi, Director-General, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), has said. Sani-Sidi disclosed at a media session on Wednesday in Cancun, Mexico, that the widespread devastation was occasioned by the adverse effects of climate change.

…In recent months, heavy rains had led to devastating floods in states like Sokoto, Kebbi, Katsina, Jigawa, Ogun and Lagos, leading to displacement of many communities. He said that the agency was ready and willing to learn best practices on how to manage the impact of global issues as they affected Nigeria, adding that the unsavoury effects of climate change had gone beyond environmental and now bordered on socio-economic.

Sani-Sidi charged developing countries to adapt a strategy on how best to adapt to and mitigate the impact of climate change, stating that NEMA would be drive the process on Nigeria's adaptation initiatives. He said that, in order to drive the process, the agency would be more pro-active in its effort to enlighten residents of flood plains on the dangers of such habitation instead of waiting for disaster to occur….

Post-Cancun, how to adapt

Forex Pros via Reuters: Climate negotiators left this tourist city upbeat about a modest deal to control global warming, but the world still faces daunting choices on how to cope with rising seas, health woes and mass migration. Because nations are unlikely to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent climate change, world leaders must work out how developing nations will adapt to more severe weather predicted in coming years that will hit food and water supplies.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations surprised skeptics when they agreed a pact in Mexico to set up a new fund -- with a goal of $100 billion in a year from 2020 -- for measures to protect forests, share clean technologies and help the poor adapt.

Until now, most efforts have been on curbing greenhouse gases from factories, power plants and vehicles -- not on adapting to a changing climate of droughts, floods and a creeping rise in sea levels. The Cancun deal asks countries to submit ideas by Feb. 21 about steps to set up an "Adaptation Committee."

Adapting to climate change will affect rich and poor nations but it is the latter that are likely to be hardest hit and will have to seek money to fund everything from research into drought-resistant crops to barriers against rising seas. So deciding how to dole out limited donor funds among desperate nations will become increasingly difficult in the years ahead. Leaders will have to grapple with which climate battles they can fight and which are simply overwhelming.

"Adaptation will increasingly involve choices about what to preserve, since enormous amounts of resources might otherwise be wasted on the impossible," according to Dara International, a think tank that audited the impact of climate change around the world….

The beach in Cancun, shot by safainla, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

US governors from western states debate water laws

Cristina Silva in the Daily Democrat via Associated Press: Should thirsty California be allowed to drink from Wyoming's plentiful water bowl? If so, how big of a sip should the Golden State get? And who decides how much needs to be set aside for future Wyomingites? Governors from across the West sparred over water and how to make sure everyone is getting their fair share Tuesday during a policy conference designed to drive consensus.

Federal experts urged state leaders to weigh water needs over water wants, while state leaders pleaded for less federal oversight and new flexibility on water agreements that detail how much water states get from a limited pool of resources. "Clearly for those of us in the West, water is a very significant issue," said Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican. "It's an emotional topic and sometimes so emotional that reasonable thought goes out the window."

The discussion opened the Western Governors Association's two-day conference in Las Vegas. Governors from 19 states, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands were invited. Water conservation and efficiency remained favorite solutions among government leaders eager to lap up the most use from fresh water sources.

…James Horne, Australia's deputy secretary for water, offered solutions from his homeland, where he said facilities in major cities help convert rain into usable water and farming communities thrive around efficient irrigation systems. "People have to stop thinking of it as a free good," Horne said. "We must recognize it as a scarce commodity and price it accordingly."

But Anne Castle, assistant secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior, said protecting the world's water supply from unnecessary growth could yield better results than simply urging people to turn off the sink. For example, she said government should weigh the projected water cost of any proposed development before approving construction….

Aerial view of Jackson Lake Dam on Jackson Lake in Teton County, Wyoming, US Bureau of Reclamation

Greenland warmer than ever

Ice News (Iceland):Despite freezing temperatures and snow lashing many parts of Europe, delegates at this year’s climate change conference say 2010 has been one of the hottest years on record. According to the latest data released by the World Meteorology Organisation (WMO) at the conference in Cancun, Mexico, warmer than usual temperatures have been recorded in Greenland, Canada and East Africa.

Sea and land surface temperatures have been among the highest since 1850 and final analysis early next year will confirm whether 2010 was warmer that the two previous hottest years, 1998 and 2005. “The deviation from normal temperatures ranged from 1-3 degrees centigrade which is very significant. This may be due to climate change induced by humans,” said the WMO’s Secretary General Michel Jarraud.

The report also indicated that the last decade has been the warmest in recorded history, prompting calls for faster action against climate change. Progress is, however, currently being hampered by disputes between developed and developing countries.

The WMO also reported an increase in extreme weather events such as floods and drought, and the highest level of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times. “Greenhouse gas concentrations have reached record levels despite the economic slowdown. They would have been even higher without the international action taken to reduce them,” said Jarraud….

Calving icebergs at Cape York, Greenland, shot by one of Carbon Based's favorite photographers, Mila Zinkova, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Floods in Sri Lanka

Gagani Weerakoon in the Daily Nation (Sri Lanka): The unprecedented heavy rains that have continued for a month as of today affected the day-to-day activities of the people immensely while leaving the likes of farmers, labourers, masons, fishermen and others employed in outdoors unemployed since November 11.

These unprecedented rains have not only affected the Colombo residents with flash floods but thousands of others around the country as well with 25 major reservoirs started to spill over perhaps for the first time in the recent past.

The torrential rains not only sabotaged the West Indies vs Sri Lanka cricket tournament but it was also predicted that it will delay the planned opening of expressway linking Colombo with the south next year as heavy rain has hampered construction work on low-lying sections. It was said that the opening of the first phase of the highway by next April as originally planned would have to put for July subsequently.

Greater part of the expressway goes through marshlands, which get waterlogged during periods of heavy rain. Heavy rains which had been continuing since November 11 had almost affected 164,183 in the country and nearly 10,800 had been displaced, recording six deaths according to the Disaster Management Centre.

According to the centre, a total of 10,811 flood-affected people have been already relocated at 59 IDP camps. Some 400 houses have been fully damaged while another 4,746 houses had been partially damaged affecting a total of 42,618 families….

Floodwaters still washing away lives in Pakistan

Mary Fitzgerald in the Irish Times: The world has moved on from the disaster, but in villages and camps the horror is still unfolding…More than four months after the beginning of the floods that wrought havoc as they washed down along Pakistan’s spine, from its mountainous north to the rich farmland of Punjab and on to Sindh, the waters have receded elsewhere, but here in Dadu’s desolate plains they refuse to go away. The road to Reejhpur is surrounded on all sides by waterlogged fields broken only by an occasional knot of trees. In the village some houses built on higher ground are still standing – many of which bear the tell-tale damp line left behind by 10ft-high floodwaters – but most of the traditional mud-walled homes are now nothing more than piles of bricks.

A quarter of Reejhpur’s inhabitants are still living in the camps they fled to when the waters first crept around the village. Those who have returned sleep under blue tents provided by aid agencies. All complain of being tormented by mosquitoes that swarm from the foul-smelling pools and creeks. Mothers talk of children constantly falling sick due to poor sanitation. Many villagers have worn the same clothes for months – they have nothing else but what they were wearing when they escaped the deluge….

Vulnerable agriculture in India

Sandip Das in Financial Express (India): Climate change is springing an unpleasant surprise on agriculture in India, catching both farmers and governments unprepared. The erratic and deficit rainfall pattern and rise in temperature in recent years has even forced farmers to change cropping patterns and several areas have been declared drought-hit.

Agricultural scientists acknowledge that even a mere one degree increase in average day temperature would adversely impact production of both wheat and rice crops (total annual production is close to 180 million tonnes). In fact, agriculture scientist MS Swaminathan says the total wheat production loss is estimated to be 8 million tonnes in case of one degree rise in mean temperature in northern India.

A model prediction by climatologists warns that India will suffer severe climactic changes, including longer drought, lesser amount of total rainfall, unequal distribution of rainfall with very heavy precipitation at shorter duration causing flooding, high temperature flux and higher incidences of tropical storms. Scientists have also called for speedy development of various stress-resistant varieties of rice for sustaining production in the future.

“Future farming and food systems will have to be better adapted to a range of abiotic and biotic stresses to cope with the direct and indirect consequences of a progressively changing climate,” says TK Adhya, director, Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI). Adhya notes that rice varieties need to be developed that can deal with abiotic stress, which is caused because of high temperature, drought and submergence because of flood and salinity. Besides, varieties resistance to pests and diseases need to be altered….

Hillsides in the Nilgiris being prepared for planting vegetables, shot by Rafeek Manchayil, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Seeing REDD on climate change

Al-Jazeera.net: As climate change negotiations come to a close in Cancun, Birginia Suarez-Pinlac is seeing red. The environmental lawyer from the Philippines is worried that a plan for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) constitutes a land grab, transferring natural wealth from the poor to the rich under the auspices of saving the planet.

Last year, she says, an Australian coal company tried to forge an agreement with an indigenous tribe on Mindanao Island in the Philippines, a poverty stricken area known for its high mountains and lush green rainforest. "The company offered poor tribes people money in exchange for their atmospheric space. They don't want to cut their own emissions domestically. They want to find a way to profit from the carbon they produce."

Forests help take climate changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, reducing global warming - a human induced process linked to wild weather patterns including this year's deadly flooding in Pakistan and crop destroying wild fires in Russia.

…"The biggest buyers of REDD credits are the worst polluters - big oil and big coal," says Bill Barclay, the research director for the Rainforest Action Network in California. "They are looking for a cheap 'get out of jail free card' - it's basically green-washing."

In the Philippines, indigenous people "didn't understand that they were giving away their atmospheric space to Australians" when they were approached by a non-governmental organisation working with the coal miners, Suarez-Pinlac says….

Mt. Ugo, Cordillera Central, Luzon, Philippines; shot by anne_jimenez on Flickr, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Now can Israel talk about climate change?

Lucy Michaels in Ha’aretz (Israel): As the Carmel forest fires begin to die down, the public has inevitably begun to ask how the catastrophe happened, with accusatory fingers pointed at careless youths and negligent government officials. Playing the blame game, however, does not explain the whole story and also conveniently allows us to absolve our own role in this disaster.

….If there were a direct connection between a country's own greenhouse gas emissions and the immediate effects felt on its climate, we would have seen action by the major polluting countries a long time ago. But just because we are not directly experiencing the effects of our own emissions doesn't make us less responsible for the outcome.

While the fires raging on the Carmel were apparently triggered by human hands, it is also clear that the potent interaction between human action, natural hazards such as droughts and floods, and anthropogenic global warming confronts us with terrifying new threats that we are woefully unprepared to deal with. Perhaps without the amplifying effects of global warming contributing to a prolonged drought, the Israeli government could have gotten away with systematic neglect of the fire service. As it was, these conditions came together to create the perfect conditions for a small spark to cause a conflagration that quickly spun out of control.

…Israel now has a potent local and relevant image to associate with global warming. These join the plummeting water levels of the Kinneret, at their lowest for November since records began in 1929; rabbis praying for rain at the Western Wall last week; apples baking on the trees at the height of the August heat-wave, and now peach trees blossoming in December in the Golan; the astronomical price of fruit and vegetables; and the national butter shortage. As everything we previously took for granted begins to go topsy-turvy, perhaps now we can begin to have a serious conversation about climate change.

The big Carmel mountain fire, as seen from the southern areas of Haifa, Israel, few hours after it begun, shot by Boryak, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic license

Cancun shifts to adaptation

Chris Cermak in Monsters & Critics: Citizens of Kiribati have a simple but expensive demand for a sea wall to keep their small island from vanishing into the Pacific Ocean as global warming causes a rise in sea levels round the globe. Anote Tong, the island's president, said he always gives them the same answer: 'We don't have the resources.' Protection from rising sea levels could run in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

How countries should adapt to the existing consequences of a warming planet - and who should pay for it - was one of the central questions concerning the more than 190 environment ministers meeting in Cancun this week. It is also one of the areas where there has been the most movement in an otherwise stalled global climate process. Initiatives to help countries build up their defences against warming were likely to be one of the most significant outcomes of the Cancun talks when they wrapped up late Friday or early Saturday.

The shift comes as governments are increasingly recognizing that climate change is already happening, meaning resources can no longer be directed only to stopping global greenhouse-gas emissions. Only about 10 per cent of money going into climate change projects is currently directed to adaptation, according to aid group Oxfam. The rest is used to force even developing countries lower their pollution levels, but that is beginning to change.

…World leaders last year promised 30 billion dollars in climate aid to poor countries by 2012 and made a long-term pledge to step up financing to 100 billion dollars per year by 2020, marking one of the major outcomes of an otherwise failed Copenhagen summit. The money is to be divided equally between mitigation and adaptation….

That's Kiribati's coat of arms, which looks prophetic

Climate change, wildfires in vicious cycle

Fire Engineering via CBC News (Canada): Northern wildfires and climate change are fuelling each other, a new study shows. "Increasing temperatures â?¦ [are] going to result in increasing fire in both Alaska and Canada," says Merritt Turetsky, lead author of the study published this week in Nature Geoscience. "This results then, according to our data, in more greenhouse gas emissions, which then feeds back to climate warming through the greenhouse effect."

Turetsky, an ecology professor at the University of Guelph, and her collaborators found that the area of interior Alaska that burns each year has doubled and the amount of carbon dioxide released by wildfires has tripled over the past decade relative to the previous 50 years.

…In 2004 alone, Alaskan wildfires released 52 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over a season of three to four months. "That's equivalent to the amount of carbon released by all domestic airline flights in the United States for the entire year," Turetsky told CBC's Quirks & Quarks. While her study focused on Alaska, she said "very similar patterns are held across Canada."

A warmer climate causes ecosystems to dry out, leaving them more vulnerable to fires. Turetsky said the fires are burning more deeply into the forest floor, releasing stores of carbon from thick layers of moss and peat. A key uncertainty is whether, in the future, peatlands and muskeg, which hold tremendous amounts of organic matter, may also become vulnerable to burning, Turetsky said. Currently, they are protected because their soil is extremely wet and much of it is locked up in permafrost….

August 2009 fire in Flintridge, California outside Los Angeles, also known as the Station Fire -- a little too far south for a northern forest. Shot by mbtrama, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Vietnam remains in top group in new climate risk ranking

Thanh Nien News (Vietnam): Vietnam ranked fifth among the countries most affected by climate change from 1990 to 2009, according to a study released at a United Nations Summit being held this week in Mexico. The results are not surprising. In 2008, researchers from World Vision issued a report projecting that a one meter sea level rise would swallow 5 percent of Vietnam’s current land mass by the end of this century.

In 2009 alone, Vietnam ranked fourth among the world’s worst affected countries and territories, led by El Salvador, Taiwan and the Philippines, according to the Climate Risk Index (CRI) created by Germanwatch, a Germany-based non-governmental organization. "In 2009, surprisingly, Saudi Arabia and Australia were also among the ten most affected countries," said Sven Harmeling, author of the CRI at Germanwatch. "This shows that no country is immune to weather-related catastrophes, although poor countries are those which are affected the most, overall."

Harmeling said he made his ranking choices based on a wide range of factors, including the number of weather-related deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, and recorded losses per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Vietnam is one of the most affected countries in terms of the frequency of severe weather events with an average of more than 10 events recorded every year during the last two decades, the report said. Floods and storms made up for 189 out of 203 recorded weather events in Vietnam over the same period, he told Thanh Nien Weekly via email. The researcher claimed that Vietnam lost approximately 3,200 people and US$5 billion to storms alone. Floods cost the country an estimated $4 billion and nearly 6,000 lives, he added. He said his findings stress that disaster preparation should be a high priority for the government…

Climate change could to flood 13% of Dominican, Haitian coasts

Domincan Today: The impact of climatic change threatens “in a relatively brief period” the onset of flooding in 13% of the territory along the coasts in the island of Hispaniola, shared by Dominican Republic and Haiti, because of a rising sea level, with a devastating effect for the economy if corrective measures aren’t taken in time to mitigate the effects of global warming.

The gloomy forecast was delivered by vice president Rafael Alburquerque yesterday to delegates from 179 countries in the 16th Summit on Climatic Change. Alburquerque, who heads the Dominican delegation in the world conclave, said the country will have to spend more than US$8.5 billion to adequately deal with the impact of global warming in the areas of tourism, water and energy.

He warned that the effects of climatic change have been clearly felt in the island for a long time, and as an example cited the constant swelling of the lakes Enriquillo and Azuei, whose floods have left hundreds of thousands of acres of agro and pasture lands under water and forced hundreds of poor farming families from their homes….

Map of San Domingo in the island of Hispaniola, from a plate by Montanus, in 1671

Modeling the resilience of Greenland's ice

Michael Marshall in New Scientist: Greenland's vast ice sheets are proving surprisingly resilient. That means the glaciers will melt only slowly as the climate warms, provided it does so steadily. However, wild changes in the weather could make them melt much faster.

Greenland's ice sheets are shrinking already as the climate warms, and some glaciologists fear that they could accelerate their own destruction. If they all melted, they would raise global sea levels by 6.5 metres – though even in a world 8 °C warmer than now this might take 1000 years. The feared self-destruct device is water. As a glacier melts, water runs down to its base. In theory, this lubrication should accelerate the glacier's slide downhill and melt it sooner.

But this positive feedback is "limited", says Christian Schoof of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who has built a new model of glaciers that simulates how they respond to meltwater. He says glaciers can get rid of excess water because of the way their internal structure changes.

….Schoof's model could help explain what is happening to Greenland's glaciers, says glaciologist Roderik van de Wal of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who has found no sign of the feared feedback effect. "The melt has been increasing but glacier velocities have not," he says. "This is a physical explanation."

But there is one fly in this otherwise comforting ointment. Changeable weather can cause short-term spikes in water supply, adding more water than the glacier's drainage can cope with and temporarily speeding it up. "The variability of the weather is key," Schoof says….

A glacier in Greenland somewhere west of Tasiilaq, shot by Ville Miettinen, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

New global search to save endangered crop wild relatives

Science Daily: The Global Crop Diversity Trust has announced a major global search to systematically find, gather, catalogue, use, and save the wild relatives of wheat, rice, beans, potato, barley, lentils, chickpea, and other essential food crops, in order to help protect global food supplies against the imminent threat of climate change, and strengthen future food security.

The initiative, led by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, working in partnership with national agricultural research institutes, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), is the largest one ever undertaken with the tough wild relatives of today's main food crops. These wild plants contain essential traits that could be bred into crops to make them more hardy and versatile in the face of dramatically different climates expected in the coming years. Norway is providing US$50 million towards this important contribution to food security.

…Crop wild relatives make up only a few percent of the world's genebank holdings, yet their contribution to commercial agriculture alone is estimated at more than US$100 billion per year. One example dates back to the 1970s, when an outbreak of grassy stunt virus, which prevents the rice plant from flowering and producing grain, decimated rice harvests across Asia. Scientists from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) screened more than 10,000 samples of wild and locally-cultivated rice plants for resistance to the disease and found it in a wild relative, Oryza nivara, growing in India. The gene has been incorporated into most new varieties since the discovery.

"This project represents one of the most concrete steps taken to date to ensure that agriculture, and humanity, adapts to climate change. At a more fundamental level, the project also demonstrates the importance of biodiversity and genetic resources for human survival," said Erik Solheim, Minister of the Environment and International Development of Norway….

Bales of alfalfa, shot by Gary D Robson, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Invisible invasive species are all around

Terra Daily: While Asian carp, gypsy moths and zebra mussels hog invasive-species [attention]…, many invisible invaders are altering ecosystems and flourishing outside of the limelight.A study by Elena Litchman, Michigan State University associate professor of ecology, sheds light on why invasive microbial invaders shouldn't be overlooked or underestimated.

"Invasive microbes have many of the same traits as their larger, 'macro' counterparts and have the potential to significantly impact terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems," said Litchman, whose research appears in the December issue of Ecology Letters. "Global change can exacerbate microbial invasions, so they will likely increase in the future."

The public and scientists seem to be well-informed of the spread of Asian carp, zebra mussels and gypsy moths - all invasive macroorganisms. But what about exotic cyanobacteria, also called "blue-green algae," which have found their way into North American and European lakes? Or a nitrogen-fixing rhizobium, a soil microorganism that has emigrated from Australia to Portugal?

In the Great Lakes, a brackish diatom (a microscopic alga), has colonized Lake Michigan probably via ballast-water discharge and is now the largest diatom in the waterways. How will it change the ecosystem? What changes has it caused already?...

Various diatoms, imaged by Rovag, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution 3.0 Unported license

Nigerian public health and modeling data

IRIN: A joint pilot study by Nurses Across the Borders, a Nigerian health NGO, and SeaTrust Institute, a US- based scientific and educational non-profit organization, will collect data to help map the impact of global warming on malaria in the West African country. “The nurses will note if malaria is recorded in any area where it usually isn’t, and all this information will be fed into a climate model which will help prepare health-related climate change projections for the country,” said Dr Lynn Wilson, executive director of the Institute.

About 500 nurses in Lagos, Nigeria, will participate in the pilot project starting in 2011, officials of the organizations announced at a side event at the UN climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico. The initiative will also create awareness about the links between health and climate change at the community level. Peters Omoragbon, who heads Nurses Across the Borders, said nurses were the primary healthcare givers in Nigeria and often the first point of contact during a disease outbreak.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected that the already high burden of disease and vulnerability in Africa meant climate-related health impacts could be more severe than in other parts of the world. Higher temperatures and altered rainfall patterns could potentially lead to an increase in the incidence of vector-born diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, onchocerciasis or river blindness, and trypanosomiasis or sleeping sickness, the IPCC said in its last assessment.

The scientific body also noted that in Africa “little evidence exists of causal changes in disease transmission and climate”, but this did not mean these changes did not exist; “rather, it may reflect the lack of available epidemiological data as a result of poor or absent surveillance and health information systems”….

The Colorado-Russia water connection

John M. Barbieri and Deborah A. Palmieri in the Denver Post argue for something a whole lot more elaborate and expensive than conservation: Colorado, the western United States, and much of the world face long term water scarcity. Russia has vast water resources and a huge surplus of fresh water. Is there water cooperation in the future between this western state and the world's largest country?

Water shortages in the American west are well documented and worsening. There is a long history of "water wars" dating to our pioneer history, and as Mark Twain quipped, "Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting for."

…At the same time, the Russians are flush with water. As a country with the most prolific untapped water reserves, Russia, can meet not only their own demand but that of much of the world. Russia has 22 percent of Earth's fresh water resources. Rivers including the Volga, Lena, Yenisey, Ob' and Amur, and lakes including Baikal (the largest in the world), Ladoga and Onega comprise much of these reserves. Russia's six percent of global population consumes less than two percent of its water.

Russia's position as a water superpower is not lost on the Russians. The President of the State Duma (Parliament), Boris Gryzlov, has stated that Russia should become a country that leads the way in creating a worldwide market for fresh water supplies. "Since we have such reserves, we could play a key role on this market as we do on the oil and gas market," he said.

…The key to linking Colorado's water needs and Russia's water surplus is through ocean transportation, which already carries over 95 percent of world trade. Russian water would be delivered to southern California. This new source for California, which has long exceeded its legal allocation of Colorado River water, would allow The Golden State to relinquish supplies long "borrowed" from other user states, including Colorado. This type of land-based "water transfer" is commonplace throughout the western United States today…

Horseshoe Bend Arizona. Horseshoe Bend is the name for a horseshoe-shaped meander of the Colorado River located near the town of Page, Arizona, in the United States. It is located slightly downstream from the Glen Canyon Dam. Shot by Smtunli, Svein-Magne Tunli - My photo gallery, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Environmental changes challenge Vietnam

John Ruwitch and Ho Binh Minh in Reuters:…Cropland salination represents just one of the many increasingly acute environmental challenges in Vietnam, exacerbated by climate change, that are testing the government's ability to coordinate countermeasures. While negotiators in Cancun work to lay the foundation for a deal to try to turn down the global thermostat, or at least slow its rise, Vietnam is in the early stages of cobbling together plans to adapt to changes already starting to take place.

Study after study flag Vietnam as one of the most vulnerable countries on earth to the effects of climate change, such as a sea level rise and volatile weather. The Mekong Delta is particularly at risk. Nearly half of the country's rice is grown in the Delta, including almost all that Vietnam sends abroad to make it the world's second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand. A fifth of Vietnam's 86 million people live there, and it is one of earth's most biodiverse regions.

The government said in a report last year a third of the Mekong Delta could be submerged if the sea rose by 1 meter (3 ft). Other parts of the beach-lined country will be swamped, volatile weather patterns will hurt flood- and drought-prone areas and warmer temperatures will trim rice yields.

A study by the International Food Policy Research Institute this year estimated that a sea level rise of 17 cm (6.7 in) accompanied by other changes in climate could slash rice yields country-wide by as much as 18.4 percent by 2030….

Rice terraces in Vietnam, presumably somewhat safe from sea level rise, shot by Casablanca1911, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Widespread suffering if climate change is not forestalled

Ohio State Research News: One of the world’s foremost experts on climate change is warning that if humans don’t moderate their use of fossil fuels, there is a real possibility that we will face the environmental, societal and economic consequences of climate change faster than we can adapt to them. Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, posed that possibility in a just-released special climate-change edition of the journal The Behavior Analyst. He also discussed how the rapid and accelerating retreat of the world’s glaciers and ice sheets dramatically illustrates the nature of the changing climate.

It is the first time in a published paper that he has recommended specific action to forestall the growing effects of climate change. During the last three decades, Thompson has led 57 expeditions to some of the world’s most remote high altitude regions to retrieve cores from glaciers and ice caps that preserve a record of ancient climate.

In the past Thompson has let his research data and conclusions speak for him but in this paper, intended for social scientists and behavior experts, he voiced his concern regarding the risks that ignoring the evidence of climate change may bring.

“Unless large numbers of people take appropriate steps, including supporting governmental regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, our only options will be adaptation and suffering,” he wrote in the concluding paragraph. “And the longer we delay, the more unpleasant the adaptations and the greater the suffering will be.”

…His opinion isn’t hyperbole, he said, but instead is based on a “very clear pattern in the scientific evidence documenting that the Earth is warming, that the warming is due largely to human activity, that warming is causing important changes to many of the Earth’s support systems, and that rapid and potentially catastrophic changes in the near future are possible….

Israeli fire typical of climate change

Joshua S. Hill in Planetsave: Recent fires to sweep through the Carmel Mountains near Haifa in Israel are a typical example of the effects of climate change and a bitter taste of the future according to Dr. Guy Pe’er.

Pe’er and other members of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of the Environmental Protection have prepared Israel’s first report to the United Nations on climate change. Entitled “Israel’s National Report on Climate Change”, the report notes that the frequency, intensity, and the extent of fires will increase due to the extension of droughts, the increase in water evaporation, and an increase in the number of intense heat waves….

Mount Carmel forest fire in Israel, 2010, shot by Hanay, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Pakistan floods released stored toxic chemicals

Catherine Brahic in New Scientist: The floods that tore through Pakistan earlier this year, affecting 20 million people, released some 3000 tonnes of dangerous chemicals into the environment. A report due to be published next year will warn that the event was not a one-off. Its findings were presented at the climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, yesterday.

The long-lived chemicals, known collectively as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), include several banned pesticides and the insect repellent DDT. They are dispersed around the planet by atmospheric patterns, do not degrade naturally, and are linked to hormonal, developmental and reproductive disorders, and increased risk of diabetes, cancer and dementia.

Climate Change and POPs Inter-Linkages, published by the UN Environment Programme, is the first study to look at how climate change will affect POPs, which are regulated under the UN Stockholm convention. It found that climate change increases the risks posed in several ways. Both measurements and models show that as evaporation increases with warmer temperatures, more of the chemicals are released from the land masses, rivers and lakes where they are stored. Once in the atmosphere, they can travel great distances.

Likewise, glaciers lock away POPs, preventing them from causing more harm. But data shows that as they are melting with global warming, their toxic load is being re-mobilised….

New modeling work shows plants slowing warming

NASA: A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.

The cooling effect would be -0.3 degrees Celsius (C) (-0.5 Fahrenheit (F)) globally and -0.6 degrees C (-1.1 F) over land, compared to simulations where the feedback was not included, said Lahouari Bounoua, of Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bounoua is lead author on a paper detailing the results that will be published Dec. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Without the negative feedback included, the model found a warming of 1.94 degrees C globally when carbon dioxide was doubled.

Bounoua stressed that while the model's results showed a negative feedback, it is not a strong enough response to alter the global warming trend that is expected. In fact, the present work is an example of how, over time, scientists will create more sophisticated models that will chip away at the uncertainty range of climate change and allow more accurate projections of future climate. "This feedback slows but does not alleviate the projected warming," Bounoua said.

To date, only some models that predict how the planet would respond to a doubling of carbon dioxide have allowed for vegetation to grow as a response to higher carbon dioxide levels and associated increases in temperatures and precipitation.

…."This is what is completely new," said Bounoua, referring to the incorporation of down-regulation and changed leaf growth into the model. "What we did is improve plants' physiological response in the model by including down-regulation. The end result is a stronger feedback than previously thought.”…

Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Credit: National Park Service

Climate change increases vulnerability to persistent organic pollutants

Environmental Expert via UNEP: Climate change increases the planet's vulnerability to persistent organic pollutants (POPs), a UN research team concluded in a major study previewed in Cancun, Tuesday. The study, 'Climate Change and POPs Inter-Linkages', was conducted by climate and chemical experts from 12 countries, and is the first systematic and authoritative review of the impact of climate change on the release of POPs into the environment, their long range transport and environmental fate, and human and environmental exposure.

POPs are substances that are persistent and toxic and can affect generations of humans. Exposure to POPs is known to effect health and can be the source of cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders and cancer. Some POPs are also considered to be endocrine disrupters and by altering the hormonal system, can also damage human reproductive and immune systems.

Climate change, and the changes in temperature, impact the exposure of humans and wildlife to POPs and will also affect biodiversity, ecosystems and vulnerability. Among the major conclusions of the study, increased emissions and the increased availability of POPs to enter the food chain leads to bio-magnification which happens when certain chemicals become concentrated in organisms as they move into and up the food chain, threatening the health of humans and animals.

'Climate change increases the planet's vulnerability to persistent organic pollutants, by increasing emissions and the bio-availability of POPs, and thus the potential for bio-magnification through the food chain, one of the chief pathways of human exposure to POPs,' said Katarína Magulová, Programme Officer of the Secretariat of the Stockholm Convention….

Dandelion lifts concrete, shot by Nino Barbieri, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license