Facing up to the rising value of water and how Britain will tackle this issue

Chris Bond in the Yorkshire Post (UK): …China, Kenya and even Australia have battled against droughts during the past 12 months. I say even Australia, because Queensland, in the north east, is in the grip of a flood crisis that has claimed 10 lives since tropical storms first battered the region at the end of November. Australian officials say the flooded area is the size of France and Germany combined and that more than 200,000 people have been affected.

…Leeds University has some of the world's leading water management experts and a group of researchers recently published a paper looking at the risks facing UK water security both now and in the future. Joseph Holden, head of physical geography at Leeds University and director of water@leeds, the university's water research centre, says our climate is likely to become more volatile. "During the 80s and 90s we were fortunate to have a rather quiet period, but all the indications are that in terms of climate change we are going to experience extreme weather on a more regular basis."

This includes the risk of further major floods. "The question is do we build bigger and bigger flood defences, and who should pay for and manage them, should it be the government, or the private sector? Or do we take a different approach and learn to live with floods? We can't prevent them from happening so we need an infrastructure that is more resilient."

Prof Holden says urban planners are already adapting local environments. "By the River Aire in Leeds all the new flats built there in recent years have car parks on the ground floor so if there is any flooding it doesn't hit people's homes."…

The River Aire (at the point where it also the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the Aire and Calder Navigation). Old barges can be seen on the river against a backdrop of new and renovated buildings. Shot by Tim Green aka atouch, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

From climate change to 'long drought'

Sid Maher in the Australian describes another attempt to sidestep denial, ignorance and self interest: The term "climate change" could be replaced by "climate challenges" if a federal commissioned marketing study is taken onboard. The study of attitudes to climate change among farmers, commissioned by the Agriculture Department, found only 27 per cent of those surveyed believed human activity was causing climate change, compared with 58 per cent of urban dwellers.

As well, primary producers are "very resistant to carbon trading". "It fills them with dread, and there were strong negative reactions towards it," the report says. Handed to the department late last year, the report warns that terminology that fails to take into account the attitude of primary producers towards human-induced climate change risks failure. The term "climate change" sets up negative reactions among primary producers for a number of reasons, from scepticism through to perceptions that they are being held solely responsible for causing climate change, it says. "Preferred terms such as 'climate challenges', 'prolonged drought' and 'risk management' are accepted, better understood and more likely to motivate change."

The report, prepared by Sydney-based marketer Instinct and Reason, was aimed at developing a communication strategy as the government seeks to sell its climate change message. It says many primary producers feel climate change and mitigation efforts are no more important compared with other significant challenges such as low prices, increasing costs, labour shortages and declining profitability.

"Many primary producers expressed the view that human-induced climate change is yet to be proven and dismiss the idea that it is behind the climatic situations they currently face. Instead, they prefer to see it as yet another period of drought or change in conditions that will eventually pass."…

Sign rendered pointless by the 2007/2008 Australian drought. Rawnsley park station , South Australia, shot by Peripitus, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate change may bring more skin disease

Sherry Boschert in Skin & Allergy News: Some of the effects of climate change are beginning to appear in dermatologists' offices, and there may be more to come. Expanded geographic ranges of tick and parasite vectors due to climate change already are pushing infectious diseases into unfamiliar territory, Dr. Sigfrid A. Muller said at a dermatology seminar sponsored by Skin Disease Education Foundation (SDEF).

Lyme disease has spread well into Canada, and leishmaniasis is moving north from Mexico into Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Ohio. Reports of Chagas disease are increasing in the United States and Central and South America. Peru and Ecuador are seeing more Carrion’s disease, he said.

Extreme heat, drought, and wide-scale fires, storms, and flooding, as well as other manifestations of climate change, will alter the incidence and severity of allergies, atopic dermatitis, and asthma, added Dr. Muller, a dermatologist in Las Vegas and chair of the International Society of Dermatology's Climate Change Task Force. The society, in 2009, declared climate change to be the defining dermatologic issue of the 21st century.

Global warming may be debated in the popular media, but there is little controversy about it in the scientific literature, he said. June 2010 was the warmest month on record (combining global land and ocean average surface temperatures) and the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th-century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration….

This 2007 photograph depicts the pathognomonic erythematous rash in the pattern of a “bull’s-eye”, which manifested at the site of a tick bite on this Maryland woman’s posterior right upper arm, who’d subsequently contracted Lyme disease. From the CDC

NASA image shows La Niña-caused woes down under

NASA: The current La Niña in the Pacific Ocean, one of the strongest in the past 50 years, continues to exert a powerful influence on weather around the world, affecting rainfall and temperatures in varying ways in different locations.

For Australia, La Niña typically means above-average rains, and the current La Niña is no exception. Heavy rains that began in late December led to the continent's worst flooding in nearly a half century, at its peak inundating an area the size of Germany and France combined. The Associated Press reports about 1,200 homes in 40 communities are underwater and about 11,000 others are damaged, resulting in thousands of evacuations and 10 deaths to date.

On Jan. 7, 2010, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft captured this image of the inundated city of Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia. With a population of 75,000, Rockhampton is the largest city affected by the current flooding. Torrential rains in northeastern Australia caused the Fitzroy River to overflow its banks and flood much of the city and surrounding agricultural lands. Both the airport and major highways are underwater, isolating the city.

In this natural color rendition, muddy water is brown, and shallow, clearer water is gray. Vegetation is depicted in various shades of green, and buildings and streets are white. The image is located at 23.3 degrees south latitude, 150.5 degrees east longitude, and covers an area of 22 by 28.1 kilometers (13.6 by 17.4 miles)….

Scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air and the ocean

Some geoengineering described in the Chemical & Engineering News: Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide affect nature in many ways, including warming temperatures and ocean acidification. New research points toward a solution that could kill two birds with one stone: Remove CO2 from a natural-gas-powered plant's waste gas stream using seawater and mineral calcium carbonate, and then pump the resulting calcium bicarbonate into the sea to neutralize it (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es102671x).

Roughly one-third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions come from burning fossil fuel in electricity plants. Most of the research on mitigating CO2 emissions from these plants has focused on carbon capture and storage. Yet most of those projects are still in the pilot stage and the technology is costly. In the new paper, Greg Rau, a senior researcher with the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, instead sequesters CO2 by building on a well-established technology known as wet limestone scrubbing, used by power plants.

Rau built a lab-scale scrubber that used seawater and mineral carbonate to remove CO2 from a simulated flue gas stream. The scrubber worked by pumping CO2 over or through a porous bed of limestone particles sprayed with a continuous flow of water. He found that the process removed up to 97% of the CO2 in the gas. Water hydrated the waste CO2 to produce carbonic acid, which then reacted with, and was neutralized by the limestone. As a result, the CO2 gas transformed into dissolved calcium bicarbonate.

Dumping the dissolved calcium bicarbonate into the ocean would provide a second benefit: The calcium bicarbonate can increase seawater alkalinity, Rau says, by speeding up a natural but very slow process known as carbonate weathering, which captures carbon in the ocean….

A variety of corals form an outcrop on Flynn Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef near Cairns, Queensland, Australia, shot by Toby Hudson, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Atmosphere's self-cleaning capacity stable

Terra Daily via AFP: An international team of researchers has found that the atmosphere's ability to cleanse itself of pollutants and other greenhouse gases, except carbon dioxide, is generally stable. The study, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, comes amid a fierce debate over whether, as some experts believe, the atmosphere's self-cleaning ability was fragile and sensitive to environmental changes.

The research team, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), measured levels in the atmosphere of hydroxyl radicals, which play a key role in atmospheric chemistry. Levels of the agent only fluctuated a few percentage points from one year to the next, not 25 percent as some studies had estimated, the researchers found.

"The new hydroxyl measurements give researchers a broad view of the 'oxidizing' or self-cleaning capacity of the atmosphere," said Stephen Montzka, the study's lead author, a research chemist at the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA's Boulder, Colorado laboratory.

"Now we know that the atmosphere's ability to rid itself of many pollutants is generally well buffered or stable... This fundamental property of the atmosphere was one we hadn't been able to confirm before."…

Adaptation measures in the Philippines

Michael Lim Ubac in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: In the wake of floods and landslides in various parts of Mindanao, Visayas and the Bicol region, Deputy Speaker Lorenzo “Erin” Tañada III sought the early passage of House Bill No. 3528, otherwise known as the “People’s Survival Fund (PSF),” on Friday. The proposed measure will help local government units (LGUs) adapt to climate change.

The bill seeks to establish a long-term, predictable fund dedicated to adaptation programs of local governments and communities. It aims to put up a "rewards" fund, which gives incentives to LGUs actively instituting local adaptation programs. Tañada said he preferred to call HB 3528 as the “Depensa (defense) Bill.”

In a statement, he pointed out that Nathaniel Servando, deputy administrator of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration, had attributed the abnormal weather pattern—which has caused flash floods in a large swath of Mindanao and Bicol, and caused landslides in Leyte—to climate change.

“Communities must be properly equipped and prepared to help themselves in order to respond to the disasters brought about by this phenomenon. It must also put forward a climate change adaptation strategy, which must be properly funded,” he said.

Heavy rains experienced in the Bicol region and the Samar-Leyte area have forced thousands of people to leave their houses in mountainous and low-lying areas for fear of flash floods and landslides. In the provinces of Southern Leyte and Eastern Samar, flooding spawned by non-stop rains displaced at least 4,253 families or 20,706 people from eight towns….

Mayon volcano in Bicol, shot by Barrera marquez, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Pharaonic palm at risk of extinction, again

Cam McGrath in IPS/IFEJ: Environmentalists have called for more efforts to protect the argun palm, a rare desert tree prized by the ancient Egyptians that is on the verge of extinction. Less than 400 argun palms (Medemia argun) are known to exist in remote desert regions of Egypt and Sudan. Environmentalists say urgent action is needed to protect the enigmatic fan palm, which is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.

"These palms may be the remnants of vegetation that covered the Sahara over 10,000 years ago when the area was much wetter than it is today," says Haitham Ibrahim, an ecologist at the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), the executive arm of Egypt’s environment ministry. "They are now critically in danger of extinction…(as a result of) climate change and human activity."

Archaeologists first learnt of the argun palm from ancient Egyptian texts, and its dried fruits were frequently found among the gold and offerings recovered from pharaonic tombs. But it was long assumed that the prized palm had vanished along with the pharaohs.

…But the future of the species was anything but certain. While more of these enigmatic palms were soon discovered in northern Sudan, by the early 1900s it had once more disappeared into obscurity. It was not until 1963 that the species was sighted again – this time in the arid hinterland of southern Egypt. Comprehensive surveys over the last two decades have revealed 30 individual argun palms in Egypt, and several hundred living in northern Sudan. "The argun palm survives, but its population is under heavy pressure," says Irina Springuel, professor of plant ecology. "Unless protected, the species could disappear – and this time for good." ….

An 1878 image of a palm tree stand, exact species unknown

'Great garbage patch' in ocean stirs up controversy

Alison Brown in edie.net: Sections of the press have pounced on news this week that a US professor has said the plastic rubbish patch floating in the Pacific Ocean is not as large as has been claimed. This may lend weight to environment naysayers but the research points out that the size of the plastic rubbish patch is not insignificant and the plastic is toxic and causes environmental damage and the deaths of birds and sea life.

Angelicque White, assistant professor at the Oregon State University, underlines that her message is not to deny the potential harm of the rubbish but that exaggeration undermines scientists' work. She said: "There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world's oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists. We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don't need the hyperbole."

White came to these conclusions while researching the relationship between microbes and plastic. One discovery was that photosynthetic microbes were thriving on many plastic particles. She noted that while plastic may be beneficial to some organisms, it can also be toxic, absorbing toxins such as PCB….

Creeping tide set to drown Australian coast

Des Houghton the Courier Mail (Australia): Queenslanders had a glimpse of the future this week when 23 towns and cities were swallowed by floodwaters. The water will recede and a costly clean-up will begin. But brace yourself: it could start all over again with devastating effect, perhaps in coastal areas not yet hit. By the end of this summer there could be inundations to rival the great floods of 1893 and 1974 - so say scientists and historians I spoke to this week.

University of Southern Queensland professor of climatology Roger Stone does not want to buy into the climate change debate at the level of each weather event. But he warns that the turbulent La Nina cycle, not seen strongly in Queensland since the 1970s, is back. ''There is no reason we shouldn't see repeated episodes of this type of weather pattern over northern and eastern Australia over the next two or three months,'' he says.

But in the not-too-distant future, in low-lying coastal zones including the Gold Coast, Cairns, Hervey Bay and Moreton Bay, the waters will not recede. And the inundation won't be rainwater, but seawater. Professor John Cole, the director of the University of Southern Queensland's Centre for Sustainable Business and Development, says climate change and rising sea levels during the next century will mean so-called one-in-100-year severe weather events will happen far more frequently….

A 1925 flood in Fitzmaurice Street, Wagga Wagga, Australia

Decline of aspens swells population of rodents that carry sin nombre virus

Susan Milius in Science News: Recent diebacks of aspen trees in the U.S. West may end up increasing the risk posed by a lethal human pathogen, a new study suggests. A tree-killing syndrome called sudden aspen decline that has wiped out swaths of trees across the West in the past decade has also changed the kinds, numbers and interactions of creatures living around the trees, researchers have found — including some carriers of human disease. Deer mice at hard-hit sites in 2009 were almost three times as likely to carry sin nombre virus — which can be fatal to humans — compared with mice in less-ravaged aspen stands, Erin Lehmer of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., and her colleagues reported January 4 at the annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

The deer mouse Peromyscus maniculatus looks ironically cute in pictures at meeting presentations, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks it as the main rodent reservoir for sin nombre virus. Infected deer mice don’t show many symptoms, but people inhaling virus wafting from mouse urine or saliva can get quite sick with hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

…“Both plant diseases and animal diseases are rapidly emerging globally, and we should be looking for ways that the two might interact,” said Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., who studies Lyme disease transmission….

Transmission electron micrograph of the Sin Nombre Hantavirus. Hantaviruses that cause Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) are carried in rodent droppings, especially the deer mouse. Centers for Disease Control

Floods might become the norm for southeast Iowa

Heartland Connection: Flooded rivers may be something Southeast Iowans are just going to have to get used to. That is if a report by the Iowa Climate Change Advisory Council turns out to be accurate. The council, consisting of top Iowa scientists and economic development specialists, spent the last 18 months studying the issue of climate change in the state and recently released its findings.

The report claims that Iowans are already facing the effects of climate change. Some might seem pleasant like warmer winters or backyard plants flowering sooner. But some are more troubling like the long term trend toward more rain, particularly the extremely heavy summer rains like those that tormented the Hearltand last summer….

Iowa City, IA, June 16, 2008 -- Danforth Chapel on the grounds of the University of Iowa is surrounded by floodwaters from the Iowa River. Shot from FEMA

With REDD, could financial markets become species' extinction risk?

Mongabay: The emergence of a Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) mechanism for protecting forests could introduce new risks for biodiversity by linking conservation finance to exotic financial derivatives, warn researchers writing in the journal Conservation Letters.

Jacob Phelps, Edward L. Webb, and Lian P. Koh argue that REDD could effectively link the fate of some species to the short-term whims of the carbon market. Conservation projects funded primarily by REDD are most at risk of being undermined by declining in carbon prices or changing investor preference. The authors add that the short-term nature of REDD—which is seen as a stop gap measure of at most 30 years—may fail deliver benefits over the time-scale need to safeguard biodiversity.

"Conservation initiatives generally require long-term, stable sources of funding," they write. "Given the scale of REDD+ projects and financing, and the high expectations in some quarters that REDD+ will reform conservation finance and protect imperiled biodiversity, current and future projects tied to REDD+ financing might be exposed to significant risks."…

A hoatzin in flight in the Amazon rainforest, shot by Warren H, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

A dustier Tibet?

Eli Kintisch in New Scientist: Sediments taken from the bottom of a lake on the Tibetan Plateau suggest that changes in wind patterns caused by global warming may be making the area dustier. That trend could accelerate the melting of crucial glaciers in the Himalayas and affect already imperiled water supplies.

Jessica Conroy, a graduate student in paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues collected sediment cores from the bottom of Kiang Lake in southwestern Tibet using equipment suspended from rafts. The cores track the history of climate in the region back to 1050 C.E. According to Conroy, who presented the data here at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on 15 December, the amount of fine-grained dust in the lake sediment increased over the 20th century. Finer dust arrives from distant desert regions hundreds of kilometers away, suggesting stronger winds with the power to deliver the material.

Scientists have previously noted the rise of dust in the region but attributed it to the increase in agriculture, grazing, and other relatively local developments. Data Conroy presented showed that dusty periods coincide with summers when a Northern Hemisphere atmospheric phenomenon called the Arctic Oscillation is in a "positive phase." A positive phase of this pattern in the summer leads to stronger winds in desert areas to the north of the lake as well as south of the Himalayas….

Kiang Lake in 1938, from the Bundesarchiv

Oceanic "garbage patch" not nearly as big as portrayed

Terra Daily: There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims that the "Great Garbage Patch" between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to an analysis by an Oregon State University scientist.

Further claims that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, pointed out Angelicque "Angel" White, an assistant professor of oceanography at Oregon State. "There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world's oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists," White said.

"We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don't need the hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic."…

An albatross chick dead as a result of being fed plastic by its parents, shot by Duncan Wright of US Fish and Wildlife Service

Climate change threatens Sierra, delta

Kelly Zito in the San Francisco Chronicle: Two of California's most treasured natural settings are also among the most imperiled landscapes on Earth, as disruptive changes in climate patterns promise to melt glaciers, dry out rivers and set forests ablaze in coming generations, says a coalition of conservation, sporting and community groups.

Unless people significantly alter the way they manage water supplies and fuel their cars and homes, the Sierra Nevada and Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta will become increasingly hostile to already-dwindling wildlife and fish species, the Endangered Species Coalition said in a report released Wednesday. Likewise for the Hawaiian Islands, Southwest deserts, Arctic sea ice and shallow-water coral reefs around the globe.

"Climate change is no longer a distant threat on the horizon," said Leda Huta, executive director of the Washington group. "It has arrived and is threatening ecosystems that we all depend upon, and our endangered species are particularly vulnerable."

In the report, "It's Getting Hot Out There," the coalition ranks the top 10 "hot spots" for vulnerable species, mostly within the United States with a few beyond. No. 1 on the list: the Arctic ice sheets where polar bears, seals, walruses and sea ducks make their home. Tropical coral reefs were second. The delta is No. 5 and the Sierra Nevada No. 6 on the list….

East of Ward Mountain, LeConte Divide, John Muir Wilderness, shot by Tom Hilton, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

India urged to document indigenous knowledge on climate-resilient farming

The Hindu (India): M.S Swaminathan, agriculture scientist and M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation chairperson, on Wednesday called for the documentation of the nation’s indigenous knowledge on climate resilient farming.

In earlier days when there was no irrigation, farmers were prepared for floods and droughts. The climate resilient farming was a way of way in those days and the people went in for mixed cropping. The publication could cover topics including procedures adopted by the farmers and coping capacity. Dr. Swaminathan was addressing a symposium on climate change at the 98th Indian Science Congress in Kattankulathur near here.

Pointing out that 127 agro-climatic zones had been identified in the country taking into cropping and weather factors, Dr. Swaminathan called for setting up a climate risk management research and training centres in each zone. Alternative cropping strategies and methods of checking potential adverse conditions should be developed through the proposed centres….

Drying cow dung in Tiruparankundam in India, shot by Claude Renault, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

More rain on way as Australia sees third-wettest year on record

James Grubel in Reuters: Australia recorded its third-wettest year on record in 2010 due to a major La Nina weather pattern which is now causing record flooding and set to last another three months. With summer floods swamping much of the northern Queensland state, the Bureau of Meteorology said the second half of 2010 was the wettest on record, with La Nina conditions firmly established by July. The switch to the intense La Nina occurred quickly, replacing the drought-causing El Nino pattern at the start of 2010.

But the bureau said while 2010 was also the coolest in nine years, the decade to the end of 2010 remained Australia's hottest on record. "This underscored that the warming of Australia's climate continues, even though individual years may be cooler than other years," the bureau said in its annual climate statement for 2010 released on Wednesday.

La Nina conditions occur when tropical sea temperatures are cooler than average in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, and warmer in the western Pacific resulting in higher rainfall in Australia and parts of Southeast Asia….

North Rockhampton during the 1890 flood. Flooding of the Fitzroy River and tributaries during early 1890. Residents crossing by boat along the inundated bridge. From Lundager, J. H. (Jens Hansen), 1853-1930

Scientists find 'drastic' weather-related Atlantic shifts

Terra Daily via AFP: Scientists have found evidence of a "drastic" shift since the 1970s in north Atlantic Ocean currents that usually influence weather in the northern hemisphere, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday. The team of biochemists and oceanographers from Switzerland, Canada and the United States detected changes in deep sea Atlantic corals that indicated the declining influence of the cold northern Labrador Current.

They said in the US National Academy of Science journal PNAS that the change "since the early 1970s is largely unique in the context of the last approximately 1,800 years," and raised the prospect of a direct link with global warming.

The Labrador Current interacts with the warmer Gulfstream from the south. They in turn have a complex interaction with a climate pattern, the North Atlantic Oscillation, which has a dominant impact on weather in Europe and North America. Scientists have pointed to a disruption or shifts in the oscillation as an explanation for moist or harsh winters in Europe, or severe summer droughts such as in Russia, in recent years.

One of the five scientists, Carsten Schubert, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Acquatic Sciences and Technology (EAWAG), underlined that for nearly 2,000 years the sub polar Labrador current off northern Canada and Newfoundland was the dominant force. However that pattern appeared to have only been repeated occasionally in recent decades. "Now the southern current has taken over, it's really a drastic change," Schubert told AFP, pointing to the evidence of the shift towards warmer water in the northwest Atlantic….

A US Coast Guard map of the Labrador Current

Indonesia to emphasize adaptation in dealing with climate change

MCOT.net: The [Indonesian] Environment Ministry will emphasize adaptation in reducing the impacts of climate change as this measure had often been overlooked while the impacts were already a reality, its chief said. "We have often been prioritizing mitigation while overlooking adaptation although the impacts of climate change are already happening," Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said in an expose of his ministry's work plan for 2011 at the office of the Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare in Jakarta on Tuesday.

In general the work plan for 2011, he added, related to the major program of reducing green house effects by up to 26 percent until 2020, and the implementation of adaptation activities. Another big plan for the ministry to carry out in 2011 was to focus on the control of pollution by reducing the polluting burdens caused by 750 companies through stiffening supervision of the enforcement of environmental laws. "We will also revitalize the evaluation system for the presentation of the Adipura awards to the 404 districts and cities," the minister said.

On the control of environmental destruction, Hatta said that the activities to be implemented are those relating to the reduction of hot spots in eight provinces through preventive measures to avoid forest fires. The ministry would also effect the closure of more forested lands in 399 districts.

The program for recovery of the environmental functions for supporting green economic growth to be carried out in 2011 would be focused on recovering degraded lands in 24 locations and the improvement of regional master plans in 100 districts s and cities in 33 provinces….

Nepal has 11 hour blackouts as climate change dries up its rivers

Susan Kraemer in Clean Technia: The state-run Nepal Electricity Authority has had to cut power for 11 hours a day beginning this week, because river water levels have dropped dramatically, according to AllHeadlineNews. With its steep terrain topped by glaciers, Nepal has the greatest hydro power potential in the world, at 84,000 megawatts. To date, only a small portion of that has been developed, 600 megawatts – enough to serve a small population who live a much less energy-intensive life than people in the US. But, with warming, over the last few years, Nepal’s glaciers have already been retreating.

This reduces dry season flows formerly fed by gradual melt water throughout the spring and summer. Now river flow from glacier melt is much more unstable throughout the year, putting at risk both hydro power and agriculture. As glaciers melt, new glacial lakes are forming and overflowing making the flow erratic and unpredictable.

The increasing unpredictability of hydro power due to warming has already created chronic electricity shortages over the last few years, which has already impacted small business. A Small Factory Foundation Survey recently found that around 41 percent of medium-scale industries have had to close due to the ongoing electricity crisis, which has led to more blackouts in recent years. Last year saw 18 hour cuts during the dry season….

Behind the dam of Begnash Tal (lake) Pokhara, Nepal, shot by Dhilung Kirat, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flood victims in Pakistan in dire need of aid

Bernhard Schell in InDepth News: As the Gregorian calendar's New Year ushered in, millions of people in Pakistan -- mostly poor -- continued to be in need of assistance. However, only 51 percent of the $2 billion U.S. dollar appeal to aid flood victims had been funded. This was the largest-ever aid appeal launched by the UN and its partners for a natural disaster. The good news is that the inundated people are beginning to recover from the floods that swamped huge parts of the country during what is considered as one of the most challenging years for the South Asian country.

"With an estimated 20 million people affected by devastating floods, the country faced its biggest ever humanitarian crisis," Rauf-Engin Soysal, the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Assistance to Pakistan, and UN Resident Coordinator Timo Pakkala said in a joint message on December 31.

They added: "Millions of Pakistanis still require relief assistance and full recovery of livelihoods and infrastructure will take years," they added. "Through resilience and determination and with the support of national partners and the international community, the country will overcome this challenging period."

Also Valerie Amos, UN's chief for humanitarian affairs, called upon the international community to provide the resources needed to help those in dire need of vital aid. "There is a continuing need for a strong financial response and I want to see attention focused on this immense human tragedy," she told reporters following her second visit to the country since the disaster. "This is an emergency which will continue for months to come, and considerable relief efforts will continue to be necessary alongside recovery activities and development work," she said returning from her second visit to Pakistan early December….

Satellite image of flooding on the Kabul and Indus Rivers in August 2010

La Niña and monsoonal winds flood northern Australia

Wendy Zukerman in New Scientist: Blame the strong La Niña and a monsoonal low-pressure zone for the devastating floods in the Australian state of Queensland that have left towns and cities stranded this week. In some parts of the state flood waters are now slowly receding, while other areas continue to wait for river levels to crest. The region's Fairbairn Dam remains over capacity, spewing 99,705 megalitres of water over its spillway daily.

At its peak, early on 31 December, the dam was at 176 per cent capacity, with water overflowing at a rate of 373,016 megalitres a day. Pradeep Singh of Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says heavy rains early last month saturated central Queensland and raised stream levels above average. But the final trigger was a deluge on 26 and 27 December, which broke river banks and flooded half of Queensland's 1.1 million square kilometres. Flooding now affects an area larger than Texas, or the size of France and Germany combined.

Jonathan Nott, a geoscientist specialising in extreme natural events at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland, says pockets of heavy rain are common in the state. But this time the rain was unseasonably widespread and fell over the entire catchment area. "All of the tributaries that flow into the trunk stream, Fitzroy river, have been completely soaked," he says….

A deserted farmhouse on the outskirts of Maitland, N.S.W., when the town was ravaged by a flood, 1955, shot by Ern McQuillan

Invasive species stop new life

Terra Daily: An influx of invasive species can stop the dominant natural process of new species formation and trigger mass extinction events, according to research results published in the journal PLoS ONE. The study of the collapse of Earth's marine life 378 to 375 million years ago suggests that the planet's current ecosystems, which are struggling with biodiversity loss, could meet a similar fate.

Although Earth has experienced five major mass extinction events, the environmental crash during the Late Devonian was unlike any other in the planet's history. The actual number of extinctions wasn't higher than the natural rate of species loss, but very few new species arose.

"We refer to the Late Devonian as a mass extinction, but it was actually a biodiversity crisis," said Alycia Stigall, a scientist at Ohio University and author of the PLoS ONE paper. "This research significantly contributes to our understanding of species invasions from a deep-time perspective," said Lisa Boush, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the research….

Early Devonian land flora, rendered by Eduard Riou (1838-1900) in The World Before the Deluge 1872, United States

New collaboration to research adaptation to climate change

South Bend Tribune via Notre Dame: … The question is not only how to slow or stop climate change, but how to adapt and live with the consequences of climate change—and that requires getting as complete a picture as possible by collecting research findings from experts around the world and allowing researchers to work together to solve climate change problems.

A Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) grant from the National Science Foundation's Office of CyberInfrastructure enables a new University of Notre Dame interdisciplinary project, the Collaboratory for Adaptation to Climate Change, to do just that.

The project's initial function is to collect survey data on expert opinion about adaptation to climate change, climate data, ecological data, legal and regulatory data and to develop novel computational tools that help researchers and managers grapple with the effects of climate change. The collaboratory will make the data and tools available and make research results searchable, and also will provide a database of regulations and laws that pertain to climate change adaptation. These tools will enable anyone interested in climate change—most likely scientists and field practitioners like conservationists—to make decisions about climate change adaptation.

… [S]tudies typically look at how to slow climate change—but considering how and why to adapt is also crucial. That's the collaboratory's niche, she says, and it allows access to research in real time—getting and distributing data as it is gathered instead of waiting years before action is possible. Accessing experts' research and their adaptation conclusions means that people can make decisions based on comprehensive, scientifically significant information….

Jeremy Bentham's 1791 plan for the Panopticon, presented here without any Foucaultian backchat

China makes gain in battle against desertification but has long fight ahead

Jonathan Watts in the Guardian (UK): China has gained a sliver of ground in its ancient battle against the desert sands, the government announced today, though it warned another 300 years may be needed to solve "the most serious ecological problem facing the country".

A survey showed more than a quarter of China's land remained either degraded or lost to sand and gravel due to a combination of a naturally dry climate, centuries of over-cultivation and decades of excessive demand on water and soil from the world's biggest population and fastest growing economy. Unveiling the results, state forestry officials said desertification had been stabilised, but recovery efforts would have to be stepped up.

Despite the world's biggest tree-planting campaign, the relocation of millions of "eco-migrants" and restrictions on herding and farming, the report noted the "desertification trend has not fundamentally reversed".

There were small signs of improvement. In the five years to 2010, the authors estimated the area of desert had shrunk by an annual average of 1,717 square kilometres. This was 40% better than the results from 2000-05, the first in China's history to ever show a gain. But 1.7m hectares - more than six times the area of the UK - is still covered in sand dunes or gobi gravel desert. An even wider swathe of land is plagued by wind and water erosion or salination….

Tennessee climate change is so subtle it's hard to gauge

Anne Paine in the Tennessean: The U.S. Department of Agriculture chief calls climate change "one of the greatest threats facing our planet," but little attention is being paid to it in Tennessee's farming world. More rain is falling in autumn in the Southeast than a century ago. Droughts have increased in spring and summer, and the temperature has made a slight move upward, particularly since 1970.

It's projected to continue to rise, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Increasingly extreme weather is likely, such as heavier downpours and more intense droughts in some areas. Yet change in Tennessee could be difficult to tabulate, according to Joanne Logan, an associate professor of biosystems engineering and soil engineering at the University of Tennessee.

"In Tennessee, everything is pretty subtle," she said, adding that research has not been plentiful when it comes to agriculture and climate change here. If small changes are occurring under the radar, a trigger point could be reached suddenly where ecosystems as a whole could fail, unable to make changes quickly enough to keep up, she said.

…It's difficult for Tennesseans to be alarmed when faraway tundra melts or oceans rise, she said. But there are things worth noting here. "Who would have thought fire ants would make it up this far north?" she said….

The summit of Inadu Knob in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in the southeastern United States. This view is from the high-altitude helicopter landing area along the Appalachian Trail. Shot by Brian Stansberry, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution 3.0 Unported license

Devising state-level climate change responses in Nigeria

Michael Simire the Independent Online (Nigeria): State governments in Nigeria appear to have taken up a campaign to address the impact of the changing global climate. If the outcome of a series of presentations at a recent forum in Lagos is anything to go by, indications are that a basketful of adaptation and mitigation initiatives has either been set in motion or in the pipeline waiting to be unleashed.

Faced with numerous environmental degradation measures (such as forest degradation, desertification, erosion, oil spillage, gas flaring and ocean surge) that have to a large extent aggravated the climate change phenomenon, no fewer than seven out of the nation’s 36 states have joined forces to turn around their fortunes. The states are Lagos, Niger, Cross River, Akawa Ibom, Delta, Anambra and Sokoto.

….According to Joseph Asuquo of the Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources, possible climate change causes in the state are bush burning, improper waste management, deforestation, gas flaring, construction activities and emissions from mechanical generators. He lamented the heavy and prolonged rainfall and porous nature of the soil, which he said had aggravated soil wash and accelerated formation of gullies in the state….

A market in Sokoto, Nigeria, shot by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Australian floods submerge towns, coal exports hit

Daniel Munoz in Reuters: Military aircraft ferried supplies to an Australian town slowly sinking beneath swollen rivers on Monday, as record flooding in the country's northeast severed roads and ports, curtailing coal exports and devastating farmland.

Floods covering an area the size of France and Germany combined submerged the Capricorn Highway, the major traffic artery through Queensland state. …Floodwaters have brought most coal mining operations to a halt in Queensland -- the state exporting the majority of the coking coal produced in Australia. Sugar cane production was also hit as was -- to a lesser extent -- the grain harvest. The state's premier said recovery would take weeks….

Natural disasters 'killed 295,000 in 2010'

AFP: Haiti earthquake and floods in Pakistan and China helped make 2010 an exceptional year for natural disasters, killing 295,000 and costing $130 billion, the world's top reinsurer said Monday. "The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," said Munich Re in a report.

The last time so many people died in natural disasters was in 1983, when 300,000 people died, mainly due to famine in Ethiopia, spokesman Gerd Henghuber told AFP. A total of 950 natural disasters were recorded last year, making 2010 the second worst year since 1980. The average number of events over the past 10 years was 785.

And in terms of economic cost, insured losses amounted to approximately $37 billion, putting 2010 among the six most loss-intensive years for the insurance industry since 1980. "2010 showed the major risks we have to cope with. There were a number of severe earthquakes. The hurricane season was also eventful," said Torsten Jeworrek, the firm's chief executive.

…The American continent suffered the most disasters -- 365 in total -- with 310 in Asia. A total of 120 natural disasters were recorded in Europe, 90 in Africa and 65 in Australia and Oceania. In 2009, considered a "benign" year due to the absence of major catastrophes and a less severe than usual hurricane season in the North Atlantic, there were 900 "destructive natural hazard events", costing some 60 billion dollars….

A composite image of the 2010 hurricane season

Pakistan facing burden of infectious diseases

Muhammad Qasim in the News (Pakistan): Pakistan needs to work out an extraordinary strategy for the challenges ahead in 2011, as it continued to witness double burden of diseases, the infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases, in 2010. According to statistics, Pakistan had not been able to control the burden of communicable diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, typhoid, viral hepatitis, cholera and other infections caused due to floods in 2010, while at the same time there remained a rising trend of non-communicable diseases like heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension and cancer in the country.

Experts do believe that the concerned high-ups in the government should keep in mind the key public health issues of 2010, while developing strategies for the year 2011. Epidemic tobacco use, deadly tuberculosis, the link between social factors and health, unequal access to healthcare, and a rise in chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer in 2010, remained the issues to be resolved not only in Pakistan but also across the globe.

Experts say that though Pakistan put efforts to improve primary healthcare across the country, a lot is yet to be done. Even over 30 years after the Alma-Ata International Conference, striking inequities, and a lack of organization and investment in primary healthcare (in both rich and poor nations) is threat to global health.

Climate change, which continued to endanger health and food safety were among major health issues that needs to be given more attention. Experts say that Pakistan needs to invest a lot on research on most effective measures to protect health from climate change particularly in vulnerable populations such as women, children and elderly in the country….

The main building of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences in Islamabad. shot by Imran.doctor, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Trees enlisted in carbon control

Bobby Magill in the Coloradan: Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins are taking a look at how managing forests to promote carbon sequestration might help put a damper on climate change.

All those trees in the mountains absorb carbon in the air originating from vehicle tail pipes, which means the more trees there are in the woods, the more vehicle carbon emissions are trapped in the forest without contributing to climate change, said Tom Crow, manager of the Forest and Woodlands Ecosystem Program at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.

At the end of December, the research station released more than 300 pages of scientific analysis and research on carbon sequestration and the policy implications of managing federal forest land for combating climate change. Even as about 2,500 acres of forested land are lost each day in the United States, forests currently sequester between 14 percent and 19 percent of fossil fuel emissions, Crow said Thursday. But that number could diminish as more forests disappear.

"The No. 1 thing is to keep forest land and forest cover, that is absolutely essential," he said. "That's something that, quite frankly, we're not doing a very good job of doing." One of the challenges foresters are facing is putting a value on forests' ability to sequester carbon, he said.

…Managing forests to combat climate change has a tremendous impact on public policy because it forces lawmakers to ask themselves whether they want to convert agricultural land back into forests or change how stands of trees are managed in order to maximize the amount of carbon they store, he said…

Uncompahgre Gorge in Colorado, from the Colorado Department of Transportation

Is biochar a part of the climate change solution?

David Lee in the Jamaica Observer: … What are the beneficial attributes of biochar, as incorporated in soil? Detailed examination of terra preta suggests that pyrolysis by the Amazon natives had been done at relatively low temperature, perhaps 350 C, instead of about 500 C for charcoal nowadays. This would have resulted in the retention of presumably beneficial volatiles which would normally be lost in the high temperature process. It is also undergoing a parallel and comparable interest as a soil ameliorant.

The practical consequence of [its physical] properties, as reported by many accounts, is an almost "miraculous" ability to promote plant growth, in comparison with unamended soils as control, and also when, as control, conventionally fertilised soils were used.
Growth improvement, of course, is dependent on original soil quality, it being minimal where the soil is ideal in all respects, and very marked when it is poor.

Perhaps as important as the agricultural implications, is the promise of biochar for climate change mitigation. For each cycle of pyrolysis and at least partial use of the resultant char for soil amendment, part of the carbon that was a major portion of the ligneous material becomes sequestered for an indefinite period. It would take many cycles, on a vast scale, to effect significantly reduced levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But no schemes considered are free of this scale constraint.

…Only Belize, it seems, of the English-speaking Caribbean countries, is presently participating in biochar studies. It should behove us to have a local investigation into the topic for the reasons already stated, and also for the implications for the local agricultural situation, which benefits that biochar potentially offers….

That's Amazonian terra preta on the right, shot by Bruno Glaser or Rsukiennik, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

“Mining” groundwater in India reaches new lows

Mason Inman in National Geographic: Nearly a third of India is suffering from chronic water shortages, and making up for it with "the world's largest groundwater mining operation," according to experts. A band of land stretching across northern India, at the foot of the Himalayan Mountains, is one of the most heavily populated and intensely irrigated regions in the world. The area is chronically short of water. But the region still has a limited supply of it in underground aquifers, according to water resources expert Shama Perveen of Columbia University.

According to a new study by Perveen and her colleagues, Upmanu Lall and Naresh Devineni, some parts of India are using groundwater three times faster than it’s being replenished. The team's new analysis draws on a 100-year record of daily rainfall in India, reflecting how much water has been available in various parts of the country as its residents endured both droughts and floods.

By estimating water needs over dry spells and across decades, and comparing the estimate with actual rainfall, they found that many areas have been falling chronically short for many years….

A well in Kerala, shot by was MANOJTV, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Record floods swamp Australia's northeast

Daniel Munoz in Reuters: Large parts of Australia's coastal northeast disappeared under floodwaters on Sunday in a spreading disaster that has brought some of the highest floods on record and forced thousands from their homes. Queensland State Treasurer Andrew Fraser described the floods as a "disaster of biblical proportions" and said the ultimate cost would exceed A$1 billion (1.02 billion).

As forecasters predicted months of more rain, hundreds of residents in the town of Rockhampton, 600 km (370 miles) north of the Queensland state capital Brisbane, fled homes amid rising waters which are expected to reach over 30 feet deep in coming days.

Local Mayor Brad Carter said the town was "like an island." Across the state, the floods have affected around 200,000 people and inundated thousands of properties. "You can look down a street for a kilometer and see nothing but water," Carter told Reuters by telephone from Rockhampton, a town of 77,000 people. "You see people in boats moving their material in and out of houses."

One person was confirmed dead in the floods on Sunday, while an intense search was under way for a second missing. Floodwaters were receding in some areas, leaving a mammoth cleanup job, but other areas were still collecting runoff from the Christmas deluge brought by the La Nina weather pattern….

A flooded street in Townsville, Queensland, from over a year ago. Shot by Rob and Stephanie Levy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Improving nitrogen use efficiency lessens environmental impact of crops

Science Daily: Most agricultural crops require large quantities of nitrate-rich fertilizer to realize optimal yields. The dilemma for growers is finding ways to balance the amount of nitrogen needed for production while minimizing potentially harmful nitrates that can leach into ground and surface waters. Increased interest in environmentally beneficial "low-input" approaches is challenging researchers to identify genotypes that have a characteristic called "high nutrient use efficiency," or NUE.

Using vegetable types with high NUE could help growers lessen environmental impacts while maintaining high crop yields. A new study reported on improved NUE traits that resulted from grafting melon plants onto commercial rootstocks.

Scientist Giuseppe Colla from the University of Tuscia and colleagues published the research in HortScience. The researchers evaluated a "rapid and economical" methodology for screening melon rootstocks for NUE using two experiments. In the first experiment melon plants, either ungrafted or grafted onto four commercial rootstocks grown in hydroponics, were compared. The second experiment was designed to confirm whether the use of a selected rootstock with high NUE could improve crop performance and NUE of grafted melon plants under field conditions….

Australian floodwaters rise as bushfire threat looms

The Guardian (UK) via Reuters: Floodwaters have risen across a vast area of north-east Australia, affecting 22 towns, forcing 200,000 residents out of their homes and closing an important sugar export port. Flooding has already shut coal mines and the biggest coal export port in Queensland, forcing companies such as Anglo American and Rio Tinto to slow or halt operations.

The worst flooding in about 50 years has been caused by a "La Niña" weather pattern, which cools water in the eastern Pacific and has produced torrential rain in the past two weeks across north-east Australia. In the southern states of Victoria and South Australia, meanwhile, soaring temperatures and tinder dry conditions have sparked bushfires.

Authorities warned of possible "catastrophic" fires if conditions worsened, and holiday travellers were asked to prepare evacuation plans. South Australia rural fire chief Andrew Lawson said: "We're asking people to have a plan, how they're going to get to where they're going ... a plan to get away ... if a bushfire happens to threaten."…

A flooded street in Toowomba, Australia, from 1906

Indonesia picks Borneo for forest preservation scheme

Terra Daily via AFP: Indonesia has chosen its Borneo island to conduct a pilot project aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, as part of a deal with Norway, an official said Thursday. Norway agreed in May to contribute up to a billion dollars to help preserve Indonesia's forests, in part through a two-year moratorium on the clearing of natural forests and peatlands from 2011.

"Central Kalimantan (Borneo) is a province with large forest cover and peat land and has faced a real threat of deforestation," the country's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) head Kuntoro Mangkusubroto said in a statement.

Mangkusubroto said the provincial authorities are expected to manage the project properly, ensure its transparency, tackle any corruption and enforce the law against illegal loggers…

A huge log being placed on a railroad car at Batottan, British North Borneo, in 1926, shot by Lieutenant (j.g.) Leonard Johnson; United States Coast and Geodetic Survey