OIC calls for long term floods rehabilitation help to Pakistan

Dawn (Pakistan): Secretary General Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) Prof Dr. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu on Thursday felt the need for long term efforts to overcome the devastation of floods in Pakistan. Talking to a private television channel the OIC SC said the Muslim world as well as international community should keep on assisting Pakistan to restore the normal life activities by reviving damaged infrastructure in the flood hit areas.

He said that as soon as the tragedy took place the OIC came fast to assist the suffering humanity adding the member countries donated $ 680 million with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran on the top. Some Muslim countries extended bilateral assistance to Pakistan for relief activities in the flood hit areas apart from OIC platform.

There is a network of NGOs working with OIC in the flood rehabilitation activities, he said. “After assuming my office on January 1, 2005 the first challenge I met was the Tsunami in Indonesia and at that time the OIC had no mechanism to deal with such human catastrophes”, he said adding after learning the lesson from that happening, the organization set up a permanent department of humanitarian assistance.

At its initial stage the department had performed effectively during the crisis period in the Muslim states, he said. He said that there exists full potential that OIC can extend effective services during the crisis period not only in the Muslim countries but entire world. The OIC had been extending remarkable humanitarian services throughout the world but its efforts were not duly propagated, he said. It was the responsibility of the Muslim media to highlight the humanitarian services of its own organization, he said….

Death tolls climb and more floods are on the way

Kathy Marks in the Independent (UK): The suffering in the southern hemisphere grinds on. Torrential rain triggered fresh flood warnings in four Australian states yesterday just as the clean-up began in the Queensland capital, Brisbane. Meanwhile, 10 more people were reported dead in Sri Lanka's floods, and in Brazil the death toll from floods and mudslides is now rising inexorably towards, and possibly beyond, 600.

Uncommonly heavy rainfall – Sri Lanka's hardest-hit area, the eastern port of Batticaloa, has had more rain in the past two weeks than its annual average – has saturated several parts of the southern hemisphere. Meteorologists have linked the floods in Australia and Sri Lanka with an unusually strong La Niña weather cycle, which has also been blamed for the current drought in Argentina.

In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology has also linked the current heavy rains in Queensland to La Niña, and said that 2010 was the third wettest year on record as a result. The miseries of Brazil, where much the largest loss of life due to flooding has occurred, are however not linked to the weather cycle. In fact, according to the Met Office, the country should be drier than usual.

The muddy waters that engulfed much of Brisbane last week had largely receded by yesterday, giving locals the chance to start cleaning up. On what the city's mayor, Campbell Newman, dubbed "Salvation Saturday", thousands of volunteers joined military personnel to shovel, mop and sweep away the thick, foul-smelling sludge left behind when the Brisbane River dropped.

The city's worst floods for more than a century had been forecast for Thursday morning, when the river was scheduled to reach its peak. While that prediction was not borne out – in the event, they were the worst since 1974 – scores of residential neighbourhoods were inundated, along with a large chunk of the city centre.

…While Brisbane dodged a bullet, the floods – Queensland's worst natural disaster – are not over yet. Vast swathes of the state remain inundated, and meteorologists warn that, with two months of the wet season left in northern Australia, and the effects of La Niña more pronounced, further serious flooding is a real possibility….

Caravan floating in the flooded Ipswich in Gailes, Queensland, shot by Martin Howard, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

In Ventura, a retreat in the face of a rising sea

Tony Barboza in the Los Angeles Times: At Surfers Point in Ventura, California is beginning its retreat from the ocean. Construction crews are removing a crumbling bike path, ripping out a 120-space parking lot and laying down sand and cobblestones. By pushing the asphalt 65 feet inland, the project is expected to give the wave-ravaged point 50 more years of life.

The effort by the city of Ventura is the most vivid example to date of what may lie ahead in California as coastal communities come to grips with rising sea levels and worsening coastal erosion. As the coastline creeps inland, scouring sand from beaches or eating away at coastal bluffs, landowners will increasingly be forced to decide whether to spend vast sums of money fortifying the shore or give up and step back.

State officials say the $4.5-million project in Ventura is the first of its kind in California and could serve as a model for threatened sites along the coast. "Managed retreat, as it's called, is one of the things that we're going to have in our quiver to deal with sea-level rise and increasing storms," said Sam Schuchat, executive officer of the California Coastal Conservancy, which helped fund the Surfers Point project.

…For years, the preferred solution to an eroding shoreline has been to build sea walls or dump imported sand to serve as a buffer. About one-third of the Southern California coastline and about 10% of the shore statewide have been fortified with sea walls and other hard structures.

Although artificial barriers may protect property in the short term, they often intensify the effect of waves, leaving beaches stripped of sand until they narrow or disappear, permanently altering surf patterns. As a result, beach-armoring projects are increasingly out of favor with environmentalists and coastal regulators….

A fisherman at the Ventura Pier, shot by Randy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Rising waters threaten the coast of North Carolina

Bruce Henderson in the Charlotte Observer (North Carolina): The sea that sculpted North Carolina's coast, from its arc of barrier islands to the vast, nurturing sounds, is reshaping it once again. Water is rising three times faster on the N.C. coast than it did a century ago as warming oceans expand and land ice melts, recent research has found. It's the beginning of what a N.C. science panel expects will be a 1-meter increase by 2100.

Rising sea level is the clearest signal of climate change in North Carolina. Few places in the United States stand to be more transformed. About 2,000 square miles of our low, flat coast, an area nearly four times the size of Mecklenburg County, is 1 meter (about 39 inches) or less above water.

At risk are more than 30,500 homes and other buildings, including some of the state's most expensive real estate. Economists say $6.9 billion in property, in just the four counties they studied, will be at risk from rising seas by late this century. Climate models predict intensifying storms that could add billions of dollars more in losses to tourism, farming and other businesses.

While polls show growing public skepticism of global warming, the people paid to worry about the future - engineers, planners, insurance companies - are already bracing for a wetter world. "Sea-level rise is happening now. This is not a projection of something that will happen in the future if climate continues to change," said geologist Rob Young of Western Carolina University, who studies developed shorelines….

The Cape Hatteras lighthouse

Soaked Australia focuses on flood clean-up

AP: Some Australian communities remained isolated by floodwaters and others braced for a new river peak Sunday as the nation's third-largest city struggled to clean up the putrid sludge left behind by the receding Brisbane River. More than 12,000 rubber-gloved volunteers hauled sodden debris from soaked homes, shoveled muck and swept and mopped muddy floors in some of the 30,000 homes and businesses that were flooded in Brisbane.

Officials have said the complete cleanup of the Queensland state capital would take months, and reconstruction up to two years. The floods have caused 26 deaths in Australia's northeast since late November, and 14 others are missing, most of them from a flash flood that hit towns west of Brisbane on Monday.

In the town of Grantham, described as the epicenter of the flash flood, 70 percent of the town remained cordoned off Sunday while searchers looked for the bodies of the missing. The wall of water that swept through the town left behind dozens of smashed cars wedged in trees or bogged in fields, houses slipped off their foundations and masses of muddied belongings piling up as debris in the streets….

Australia Zoo flooded staff area during 2011 floods, shot by ZooPro, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Disease threat for Sri Lanka flood victims

Terra Daily via AFP: The threat of disease loomed Saturday over the million-plus victims of floods in Sri Lanka that have left more than 30 people dead and devastated farmland in the island's rice bowl. Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said medical units had been rushed to the central and eastern regions, where hundreds of thousands have been forced to take shelter in cramped, state-run relief camps.

"We are very conscious of the fact that there can be water-borne diseases and we brought medical staff from other areas to help out," Amaraweera told AFP. "There are no reports of diarrhoea, but we are taking precautions."

More than one million people were initially displaced in the flooding triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rains in the past week....

Designing defences against climate change

Kara Santos in IPS: As the impact of climate change worsens around the globe, a disaster-resilient village is poised to be a solution for urban poor battling the constant floods and typhoons that hit the Philippines.

The concept village, submitted by Johanna Ferrer Guldager of Denmark, is designed around elevated housing clusters. Each house employs green building technologies, such as the use of sustainable materials like bamboo for the floors, walls and roof. Roofs are used as a rainwater collection system leading to a water conservation tank, while small gardens between houses ensure food production even in times of disaster.

The concept won the global architectural design competition dubbed Design Against the Elements (DAtE), which aims to build the first green, liveable, affordable and disaster-resilient village in the country.

A panel of international and local jurors picked the winning architectural design from among 119 entries submitted by professionals and students from 30 countries. "We were very impressed with the different ideas from all over the world," architect Eleena Jamil of Malaysia, who served as one of the jurors, told IPS.

Jamil, who designed a school made of bamboo that won the Millennium School Design Competition for disaster-resilient schools organised in 2008, said that the winner was chosen because of its sustainability and practicality. "The ideas in the winning design are very easy to implement but it considers a holistic approach. It considers the way people interact within the community and how they could grow their own food," she said….

Not an actual photo of the winning design -- just a treehouse

California 'other big one' occupies planners

US Geological Survey: For emergency planning purposes, scientists unveiled a hypothetical California scenario that describes a storm that could produce up to 10 feet of rain, cause extensive flooding (in many cases overwhelming the state’s flood-protection system) and result in more than $300 billion in damage.

The "ARkStorm Scenario," prepared by the U.S. Geological Survey and released at the ARkStorm Summit in Sacramento on Jan. 13 – 14, combines prehistoric geologic flood history in California with modern flood mapping and climate-change projections to produce a hypothetical, but plausible, scenario aimed at preparing the emergency response community for this type of hazard.

The USGS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the California Emergency Management Agency convened the two-day summit to engage stakeholders from across California to take action as a result of the scenario's findings, which were developed over the last two years by more than 100 scientists and experts.

"The ARkStorm scenario is a complete picture of what that storm would do to the social and economic systems of California," said Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project and architect of ARkStorm. "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes. The ARkStorm is essentially two historic storms (January 1969 and February 1986) put back to back in a scientifically plausible way. The model is not an extremely extreme event." Jones noted that the largest damages would come from flooding — the models estimate that almost one-fourth of the houses in California would experience some flood damage from this storm.

"The time to begin taking action is now, before a devastating natural hazard event occurs," said USGS Director, Marcia McNutt. "This scenario demonstrates firsthand how science can be the foundation to help build safer communities. The ARkStorm scenario is a scientifically vetted tool that emergency responders, elected officials and the general public can use to plan for a major catastrophic event to help prevent a hazard from becoming a disaster."…

January 15, 2005 -- The Ventura County Fire Department Urban Search and Rescue team captain Larry Brister surveys the USAR team as they stabilize a structure in La Conchita, California where winter storms caused fatal landslides that damaged homes and roads. Photo by John Shea / FEMA News Photo

More deaths feared as rain continues in Brazil

Robin Yapp in the Vancouver Sun via the Daily Telegraph: The death toll from mudslides and flooding in Brazil stood at 550 and rising on Friday night amid fears further rain could claim many more lives this weekend. People were queuing in cars to leave towns in the mountainous area north of Rio de Janeiro as forecasters warned that even continuous light rain could send tons more mud cascading down saturated hillsides.

More than 13,500 people have been left homeless. "It will keep raining until at least next Wednesday in the Serrana region of Rio de Janeiro. We are predicting a light but steady rain, which could lay the conditions for more landslides," said Luiz Cavalcanti, the head of Brazil's national weather institute.

The return of rain hampered the third day of rescue efforts in the two worst affected towns, Nova Friburgo and Teresopolis on Friday.…The extent of the damage exposed major flaws in emergency planning and disaster prevention in a country that aspires to attain developed-nation status in coming years.

It also highlighted the huge challenges that new President Dilma Rousseff faces as she strives to upgrade Brazil's creaking infrastructure before it hosts soccer's World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics two years later…

Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 may be twice what climate models show

Alison Hawkes in the Hot Zone blog in Astrobiology magazine: Climate modeling is an inexact science, and scientists have long known that the models don’t account for everything, even though precision and accuracy is a big goal. But the limitations of climate modeling may have caused scientists to underestimate the Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 by a factor of two, according to an analysis by National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Jeffrey Kiehl.

In a perspectives piece published in the journal Science this week, Kiehl says that the models have typically not factored in some of the long term feedback processes that determine the Earth’s temperature over the course of centuries or millennia, including ice sheet loss and processes related to vegetation and carbon cycle changes. He came to this conclusion by looking into periods of high CO2 levels in Earth’s history.

At current rates of CO2 emissions, the Earth is on a trajectory to reach between 900 to 1100 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere by the end of the century (right now we’re at 390 ppm). The last time the Earth experienced that concentration of CO2 was 35 million years ago, a world that has sea surface temperatures more than four times higher than the today. Based on this scenario, Kiehl calculated the net radiative forcing rate — or the difference between incoming and outgoing solar radiation — and compared that to estimates from other warm periods in the Earth’s history.

He found a similar magnitude of forcing in other past warm climate periods, and with confidence in those numbers estimated that the Earth was about 29 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than modern era pre-industrial levels, some 35 million years ago. “The conclusion from this analysis,” he writes, “is that Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 radiative forcing may be much greater than that obtained from climate models.”….

A image from The Wonderful Paleo Art of Heinrich Harder - Earth History Illustrations from the 1906 articles in Die Gartenlaube

Improved measurements of sun to advance understanding of climate change

University of Colorado at Boulder: Scientists have taken a major step toward accurately determining the amount of energy that the sun provides to Earth, and how variations in that energy may contribute to climate change. In a new study of laboratory and satellite data, researchers report a lower value of that energy, known as total solar irradiance, than previously measured and demonstrate that the satellite instrument that made the measurement—which has a new optical design and was calibrated in a new way—has significantly improved the accuracy and consistency of such measurements.

The new findings give confidence, the researchers say, that other, newer satellites expected to launch starting early this year will measure total solar irradiance with adequate repeatability – and with little enough uncertainty – to help resolve the long-standing question of how significant a contributor solar fluctuations are to the rising average global temperature of the planet.

…The new work will help advance scientists' ability to understand the contribution of natural versus anthropogenic causes of climate change, the scientists said. That's because the research improves the accuracy of the continuous, 32-year record of total solar irradiance, or TSI. Energy from the sun is the primary energy input driving Earth's climate, which scientific consensus indicates has been warming since the Industrial Revolution.

Lean specializes in the effects of the sun on climate and space weather. She said, "Scientists estimating Earth's climate sensitivities need accurate and stable solar irradiance records to know exactly how much warming to attribute to changes in the sun's output, versus anthropogenic or other natural forcings."…

NASA image of a solar flare

Brisbane flood clean-up starts as damage emerges

Terra Daily via AFP: The swamped Australian city of Brisbane on Friday began the heartbreaking task of cleaning up after its worst floods in decades, as searchers made the grisly discovery of another body. As the waters drained from the country's third largest city, revealing the full horror of the devastation wrought when the Brisbane River burst its banks, search teams recovered the body of a woman in the nearby Lockyer Valley.

Brisbane residents nervously returned to see what remained of their homes and businesses, as the muddy brown soup that had covered buildings up to their roofs dropped to reveal its aftermath. "There is a lot of heartache and grief as people start to see for the first time what has happened to their homes and their streets," Queensland state Premier Anna Bligh said a day after the river peaked. "In some cases we have street after street after street where every home has been inundated to the roof level, affecting thousands of people."…

An image from the 1893 flood in Brisbane, shot by Poul C. Poulsen

Mudslides kill 525 in Brazil

Environment News Service: At least 527 people have lost their lives as mudslides brought down by weeks of rain struck three towns in the Serrana region of southeastern Brazil on Wednesday. The death toll is expected to rise when search and rescue teams reach remote villages cut off by the slides.
Brazilian officials are calling the rains the biggest climate tragedy in the country's history. Floods and mudslides have swept away entire neighborhoods in towns north of the city of Rio de Janeiro and the downpours continue.

Rivers burst their banks and raged through residential areas built on steep hillsides, washing away hundreds of homes. Some 13,000 people have been left homeless. Power and telephone services along with bridges and roads have been severed by the slides, making it difficult for authorities to assess the full extent of the disaster.

President Dilma Rousseff, accompanied by Defense Minister Nelson Jobim and Rio Governor Sergio Cabral, flew over the mountainous region on Thursday to view the damage. "It's very overwhelming. The scenes are shocking," she said. "We saw areas in which mountains untouched by men dissolved. But we also saw areas in which illegal occupation caused damage to the health and lives of people," she said….

New farming method cuts emissions, improves yields

University of Missouri News Bureau: U.S. agricultural practices create 58 percent of nitrous oxide in the world, which is the third most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Scientists believe nitrous oxide contributes to global warming about 300 times more than carbon dioxide. New practices and products have been introduced to address this issue, but farmers do not have the time or profit margins to experiment with ideas that may ultimately hurt the “bottom line.” Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found methods to help farmers reduce those emissions while also increasing corn grain production.

At the University of Missouri Greenley Research Center in northeast Missouri, Kelly Nelson, a research agronomist and associate professor in the MU Division of Plant Sciences, monitored fields of poorly drained claypan soil that were planted with corn after soybean. One field was “strip tilled” with nitrogen fertilizer placed in a band in the soil, while another field was left untilled with a surface application of nitrogen fertilizer. The research team found that strip tillage and banded fertilizer significantly reduced the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per bushel of corn grain production, when compared to that of surface applied no-till treatments.

Strip tillage is the practice of tilling a field in strips up to a foot wide and eight to nine inches deep, rather than tilling the entire field, so that crop residues can be left on the surface of most of the field. By planting corn into those strips, and adding fertilizer during the process, farmers can use less energy, reduce soil erosion and conserve soil moisture in a large area of the field. Additionally, the nitrogen stays deep in the soil, where it less susceptible to environmental loss.

“This tells us that more efficient fertilizer use is needed to maintain productivity and profitability,” said Nelson. “We saw grain yields increase, and this is important when it comes to nitrous oxide emissions and the amount of food produced.”…

Tilling away, in Roclincourt, Pas-de-Calais, France. Shot by Olivier, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

North America's environmental outlook -- nine topics to watch

Science Daily: What is the future for North America's environment? Much of the answer is up to us. A new report examines the major forces and underlying trends likely to shape the environment of North America in 2030 and outlines nine areas where decisions today will affect our environmental future in varying degrees. In fact, while the pressures on North America's environment will continue to increase over the next 20 years, the report emphasizes that it would be a mistake to assume that our choices today can't influence environmental quality down the road.

North American Environmental Outlook to 2030, released by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), scans environmental data and projections by the United Nations Environment Program, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and others to examine a range of different environmental scenarios for North America. The nine areas to watch fall under three categories:

Greatest potential for impact by 2030

• Energy use and associated emissions, especially from transportation and buildings
• Water use and treatment of wastewater

Most significant coming changes

• Continued and accelerated warming, especially in the Arctic
• Continued loss of terrestrial biodiversity
• Persistent ground-level ozone in urban areas

Issues deserving greater attention

• Growth in urban and built-up land area
• Freshwater quality and groundwater availability and quality
• The specific economic and health effects of environmental change
• The impact of consumption in North America on the environment in other regions and vice versa

"The year 2030 is well within our planning horizon. The scenarios examined in this report suggest taking actions to confront those changes we can best affect in the short term, preparing for environmental change that is almost inevitable but amenable to action in the longer term, and finally, strengthening our knowledge concerning emerging changes about which we know the least," said Evan Lloyd, CEC Executive Director….

Birds on wire, evening, Manzanar Relocation Center, 1943. Photograph by Ansel Adams

Lester Brown's new book is 'World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse'

The Earth Policy Institute announces a new book by Lester Brown: “Our early 21st century civilization is in trouble. We need not go beyond the world food economy to see this. Over the last few decades we have created a food production bubble—one based on environmental trends that cannot be sustained, including overpumping aquifers, overplowing land, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide,” notes Lester R. Brown, author of World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse (W. W. Norton & Company).

“If we cannot reverse these trends, economic decline is inevitable,” notes Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental research organization. “No civilization has survived the ongoing destruction of its natural support systems. Nor will ours.

…“The question is not whether the food bubble will burst but when,” says Brown. While the U.S. housing bubble was created by the overextension of credit, the food bubble is based on the overuse of land and water resources. It is further threatened by the climate stresses deriving from the excessive burning of fossil fuels. When the U.S. housing bubble burst, it sent shockwaves through the world economy, culminating in the worst recession since the Great Depression. When the food bubble bursts, food prices will soar worldwide, threatening economic and political stability everywhere. For those living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder, survival itself could be at stake.

…“The new reality,” says Brown, “is that the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos. It is time to redefine security. The principal threats to our future are no longer armed aggression but instead climate change, population growth, water shortages, spreading hunger, and failing states. What we now need is a mobilization to reverse these trends on the scale and urgency of the U.S. mobilization for World War II. The challenge is to quickly reduce carbon emissions, stabilize population, and restore the economy’s soils, aquifers, forests, and other natural support systems. This requires not only a redefining of security but a corresponding reallocation of fiscal resources from military budgets to budgets for climate stabilization, population stabilization, water conservation, and other new threats to security.”…

Current climate information insufficient, say world's financial institutions

UN Environment Programme: The availability of and access to climate change information remains insufficient, according to many of the world's leading financial institutions. A pioneering study launched today confirms the increasing financial relevance of climate change and the fact that insurers and lenders need better information regarding the physical and economic impacts of the world's changing weather patterns.

The report, sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, presents the results of an international survey undertaken by the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and the Sustainable Business Institute (SBI), Germany. More than 60 institutions, from both developed and developing countries, took part in the survey.

Financial service providers and their customers are increasingly affected by the impacts of climate change, such as extreme weather events. Moreover, the survey shows that insurers, reinsurers, lenders, and asset managers expect these kinds of risks to increase in the future.

Given that financial institutions are able to influence their clients and investee companies across all sectors of the economy, they can play a key role in accelerating the implementation of adaptation measures by the private sector.

But in order for the sector to manage climatic risks affecting their business portfolios and to give the best possible advice to their customers, financial institutions need access to applied information such as climate change predictions, modelling, analysis, and interpretation. Such information needs to be appropriate to the duration of contracts, the regions where customers hold assets or undertake operations and the hazards that are material to the operations of borrowers, investees, and the insured….

Local Ethiopians gather supplies on the taxiway from an Air Force C-130H Hercules aircraft delivering aid to flood victims in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Philip A. Fortnam

Preparing for storms on Pacific islands

Nic Maclellan in Islands Business (Fiji): Living from the land and ocean requires keen observation of nature and changes in weather and climate. But at a time when climate change may increase the frequency or intensity of natural disasters, can this local knowledge be used to better protect Pacific communities from storms, cyclones and other hazards?

On November 30, the Australian Red Cross launched a report on “Traditional knowledge and Red Cross disaster preparedness in the Pacific.” It’s one of a number of regional initiatives to combine scientific research with the ecological knowledge of local communities to improve disaster preparedness and environmental monitoring.

The report argues that existing skills and knowledge of Pacific communities—who are able to respond immediately after disasters before outside help arrives—have not been given sufficient recognition by many aid donors. According to Rebecca McNaught, senior programme officer for the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, “combining both western and indigenous scientific knowledge in disaster preparedness could enable communities to better survive disasters like cyclones and floods.”

This traditional knowledge often comes from people’s observations of their land over generations. Some knowledge is known only to a few elders, like the capacity to monitor wind or predict weather patterns by bird movements, the early ripening of fruit or blossoming of flowers. Other useful knowledge is more widespread in the community, based on common information about water supply, transport, food storage and available shelter….

Bay of Liku (Likuliku), Waya Island of the Yasawa Islands, Fiji. Shot by Evanwil, who has released the image into the public domain

La Nina blamed for Australia's floods

Terra Daily via UPI: The La Nina weather phenomenon is to blame for Australia's floods, experts say. Northern Australia was hit by what was referred to as an "inland tsunami" Tuesday night. In Brisbane, Australia's third largest city and the capital of Queensland, the Brisbane River could reach a record crest of 18 feet Thursday. Of the 2 million people living there, one-third were told to leave their homes.

"The Queensland floods are caused by what is one of the strongest -- if not the strongest -- La Nina events since our records began in the late 19th century," said Monash University Professor Neville Nicholls, who is president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, The Guardian newspaper reports.

La Nina conditions form when cold water in the South Pacific pushes warm waters hard against the east coast of Australia. As a result of the weather patterns, December was the wettest recorded in Queensland and the country experienced its third wettest year….

Record rains increase Sri Lanka's urgency of climate change adaptation

IRIN: Ongoing storms have dumped more rain in one eastern district of Sri Lanka than witnessed in a century, according to the country's Disaster Management Centre (DMC). Nationwide, storms have hit some two million people in the past seven months and hastened climate adaptation plans already under way, according to the government.

National climate scientist WL Sumathipala said recent storm activity had sped up the timetable to help residents cope with changing weather. "We have looked at weather patterns for a long period of time and it is only now that we are ready to make scientifically supported statements about climate change." Sri Lanka is in its winter monsoon.

Continuous rains since 26 December have caused rock slides and displacement, mostly in northern and eastern parts of the country, and closed schools. As of 11 January, about 33,330 families have been displaced to 351 relocation centres. Some 300km east of the capital, Colombo, Batticaloa District - which set the century's rainfall record - accounts for almost half of those families, according to DMC.

…A top official in the Ministry of Agriculture, who preferred to remain anonymous, told IRIN that experimentation had been under way to find highly resilient crop species, especially rice. "We are reverting to traditional knowledge. Sri Lanka has some 2,000 traditional rice varieties and [some] have a special capacity to withstand extreme weather." But production is slow and will take several years to bear results, he added….

For reconstruction of Pakistan's flood-affected areas, $20 billion

South Asia News Agency: Pakistan informed to the international community on Tuesday that $ 20 billion investment would be required for reconstruction of massive flood-affected areas of Pakistan. It was stated by the Planning Commission here in Planning Commission, Chief (Water), Planning Commission Naseer Ahmed Gillani during one-day international seminar “Integrated flood& drought Management for Pakistan” organized by the World Meteorological Organization in his presentation.

He informed the participants that the reconstruction process after the massive floods in the country requires $ 10 billion public sector investment and equal investment by private sector. He said that in the absence of expected peak flows the time, duration, frequency and location may cause the investment void.

Gillani said that the public investment for hydraulic structure for water augmentation may not provide the anticipated benefits due to reduced mean annual flows. Droughts may cause reduction in growth having impacts on agricultural production and livelihood. There is not much leverage or control to combat or de-accelerate the climate change by Pakistan; therefore it is mandatory to work on climate change adaptation….

'Water towers of Asia' show cracks

Keya Acharya in IPS: A concerted effort to formally document the magnitude and directions of climate trends in the Eastern Himalayas and thereby decide regional adaptation strategies is critical to ensure the region’s water security, according to water experts.

In Nepal, the Imja glacier is retreating almost 70 metres per year. In Bhutan, where glacial melt is the least perceptible currently, 25 of 677 glaciers are categorised potentially dangerous, with an ‘alarming’ glacial retreat rate of 20-30 metres per year, says G. Karma Chhopel of Bhutan’s National Environment Commission.

It is more important to gather statistics on the effects of climate change than to get preoccupied with China building dams in the region, says Professor Jayanta Bandyopadhyay of the Centre for Development and Environment Policy at the Kolkata branch of the Indian Institute of Management. "Building more dams when waters are anyway threatened due to climate change is accelerating the issue of water loss. It’s a bit like ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’," Himanshu Thakkar, of the New Delhi-based South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, told IPS.

Sharing of water is an important issue, says Thakkar. "India needs to leverage its huge trade dealings with China to form a water-sharing accord."

Bandyopadhayay says a conflict-resolution system is a ‘good idea’, "But we still don’t know the nature of changes in the region. What will the treaty be based on?" he asks. "I must again stress on the need for developing indigenous climate models for the region. Adaptation strategies will be very difficult without this," Bandyopadhyay told IPS. "The whole issue of Asian Development depends on this."

The Eastern Himalayan mountains - stretching 1,500 miles across Nepal, Bhutan, northern Myanmar, south-eastern Tibet and northeast India - and referred to as the ‘water towers of Asia’ are also known as the Third Pole due to their having the largest glaciated area outside of the two poles….

Natural-colour image of Imja Tsho and surrounding glaciers. Dirt and debris coat these rivers of ice; like the glaciers feeding it, Imja Tsho appears dull gray-brown. A thin trickle of water exits the lake on its western side, having carved through the natural earthen dam

Earth is twice as dusty as in 19th century

Lauren Gold in Cornell University Chronicle: … The amount of dust in the Earth's atmosphere has doubled over the last century, according to a new study; and the dramatic increase is influencing climate and ecology around the world. The study, led by Natalie Mahowald, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, used available data and computer modeling to estimate the amount of desert dust, or soil particles in the atmosphere, throughout the 20th century. It's the first study to trace the fluctuation of a natural (not human-caused) aerosol around the globe over the course of a century.

….Desert dust and climate influence each other directly and indirectly through a host of intertwined systems. Dust limits the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth, for example, a factor that could mask the warming effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. It also can influence clouds and precipitation, leading to droughts; which, in turn, leads to desertification and more dust. Ocean chemistry is also intricately involved. Dust is a major source of iron, which is vital for plankton and other organisms that draw carbon out of the atmosphere.

…Among their results, the researchers found that regional changes in temperature and precipitation caused a global reduction in terrestrial carbon uptake of 6 parts per million (ppm) over the 20th century. The model also showed that dust deposited in oceans increased carbon uptake from the atmosphere by 6 percent, or 4 ppm, over the same time period.

While the majority of research related to aerosol impacts on climate is focused on anthropogenic aerosols (those directly emitted by humans through combustion), Mahowald said, the study highlights the important role of natural aerosols as well. "Now we finally have some information on how the desert dust is fluctuating. This has a really big impact for the understanding of climate sensitivity," she said….

Graphic from the Cornell website

Interaction of knowledge, risk perceptions and action for climate events

Baylor University: New results from a Baylor University study show that different behaviors and strategies lead some families to cope better and emerge stronger after a weather-related event. Dr. Sara Alexander, an applied social anthropologist at Baylor who conducts much of her research in Central America, studied different households in several coastal communities in Belize. While climate change has been an emerging topic of interest to the world community, little scientific data exists on exactly how people respond to different climate-related "shocks" and events such as more intense hurricanes and prolonged drought.

Using a livelihood security approach, Alexander and her team identified vulnerable households in these communities and examined how they adapted and coped with major climate events and shocks such as droughts, hurricanes and floods. The Baylor researchers also developed tools to measure each household's long-term resilience, an area that has not been extensively researched, and identified specific behaviors and strategies that allowed some families to "weather the storm" better than others. The results indicate:

• …Perception about climate change and weather patterns played a key role in determining whether a household prepares adequately for a harsh weather event. For instance, 57 percent of households believed that storms today are more intense than they were five to 10 years ago, the household is more likely to prepare when weather forecasters predict threatening weather.
• Vulnerable and more secure households differ in coping strategies when dealing with weather-related events. Forty-nine percent of vulnerable households turn to their faith, 43 percent to their family, and 36 percent turned to their friends for emotional support. Only 19 percent turned to financially-based responses and only 8 percent made attempts to secure credit to gain resources to make repairs rebuild. Households that have the highest levels of security are more likely to use their savings or sell their assets to engage in a financially based response by repairing and rebuilding, many times finding emotional support through this work.
• A critical ingredient for reducing vulnerability and enhancing resilience is empowerment of marginalized groups and the associated access to resources.
• Although the capacity of households to adapt to harsh weather is a function of perception of risk and access to resources, resilience of communities depends on the ability of people to think and act collectively….

An allegorical 1874 political cartoon print, which somewhat unusually shows temperance campaigners (alcohol prohibition advocates) as virtuous armored women warriors (riding sidesaddle), wielding axes Carrie-Nation-style to destroy barrels of Beer, Whisky, Gin, Rum, Brandy, Wine and Liquors, under the banners of "In the name of God and humanity" and "Temperance League". The foremost woman bears the shield seen in the Seal of the United States (based on the U.S. flag), suggesting the patriotic motivations of temperance campaigners. The shoe and pants-leg of a fleeing male miscreant are seen at lower right. The background to this is that much drinking went on in male-only gathering places in 1874, and working-class men too often went straight from the factory gates to the saloon on pay-days, and drank away much of the money that their families needed to survive.

Water to be among a Texas mayor's top priorities this year

Kathleen Thurber in the Midland Reporter-Telegram (Texas): Creating a plan for Midland's future water source will be among the top priorities as Mayor Wes Perry begins his new term this year. Having been sworn in Monday morning, Perry said during a special session of the city council later in the day that creating a water plan for Midland by working in conjunction with other cities is something that needs to be accomplished.

….San Angelo has purchased a new aquifer system and Abilene is building a new lake, Perry said. The question for Midland is what it will do with the T-Bar Ranch property it owns. Assistant Director of Utilities Jill Reed said it's estimated the cost of getting water from T-Bar ranch, which was purchased in the 1950s, to Midland would be more than $100 million.

However, Perry said, what Midland would have to spend is less than other cities are spending and would create a source for future needs. "Having a water supply that is owned by the city is incredibly valuable," he said.

City Manager Courtney Sharp said by working together, cities in West Texas could create a water plan that has each municipality playing an integral role in providing resources to its citizens. "A lot of cities have individual pieces to the puzzle," Sharp said. "Let's find out what our puzzle piece looks like."

Scott Dufford, at-large councilman, said they've been talking about water being a priority since he and Perry both have been on the council and that he supports the mayor's goal of moving forward. "We better start taking some action, it's time," he said….

Brisbane braces for flood disaster

Selma Milovanovic in the Sydney Morning Herald: Large areas of Brisbane were bracing last night for a potentially catastrophic flood surge coming in from the Toowoomba region, where more than 20 people are now feared to have died in Monday's disaster. As dozens of people remained missing after the Toowoomba deluge, authorities warned that thousands of homes in Brisbane and the regional city of Ipswich were likely to be inundated over the next two days by the approaching flood, expected to be the worst on record.

Last night, the official death toll in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley stood at 10. Another 59 people were listed as missing. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh warned that grave fears were held for 15 of them. “With so many others outstanding and unaccounted for we still face very grim news as we continue the search and rescue activity,” Ms Bligh said.

Entire families were believed to be among the missing, and five children were among those confirmed dead in the wake of Monday's ''inland tsunami'', which turned city streets into raging rivers that swept away cars and houses.

“Many of the people who are stranded or unaccounted for are families and young children,” Ms Bligh said. “This took everybody so unawares that there was no opportunity in most cases for people to get to safety so we do anticipate that those numbers [of dead and missing] are very preliminary.”…

Image of an 1893 flood in Brisbane. I haven't been able to find public domain photos of the 2011 floods, which is why you've seen so many older images here. Apparently the conditions are too extreme even to upload photographs -- a sign of how extreme the disaster is

Floods outpace armed conflict as source of Philippine refugees

Samar News (Philippines): Floods everywhere have dislodged armed conflict as the country's top generator of internal refugees, a governor from Mindanao said over the weekend. "Without playing down the perils of recurring armed conflict, we're afraid more Filipinos now risk being driven out of their homes and sources of livelihood due to harsh climate change," North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou "Lala" Taliño-Mendoza said.

Taliño-Mendoza also warned that massive flooding on one hand and intense drought on the other would expose a greater number of Filipinos to hunger, due to spoiled farm harvests and lack of ready access to affordable food.

…The Mindanao governor made the statement shortly after the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council reported that a total of 470,763 persons or 92,606 families have been severely affected by flooding and landslides that hit eight regions across the country. The disasters also left at least 26 people dead.

North Cotabato and other parts of Central Mindanao have had their share of recurring floods every time the 373-kilometer Mindanao River overflows on account of a heavy downpour.…"We also have to change the way we construct our roads and drainage systems so that during heavy rainfall some of the surface runoff gets purposely channeled to impounding structures and watersheds, instead of flowing into our river systems and draining into the open sea," she said….

The drainage basin of the Mindanao River

Statistical analysis can estimate crop performance

Seed Daily: Scientists at Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom, in collaboration with the International Center for Agriculture Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria have developed a method of accounting for spatial trend in single crop field trials. Spatial trend refers to the variations in crop yield and other characteristics observed when repeating this single crop field trial.

Usually plant breeders will grow several replicate plots to assess the breed line in different environments and then compare the results to commercial or standard varieties of the crop. When resources or seed are scarce, breeders will grow only a single plot of a test line alongside a number of other standard varieties acting as check plots.

"The results have shown that adjustment for spatial trend within the trials is possible and gives improved accuracy on the estimates of line performance," says Sue Welham, one of the authors of the study….

A plowed field near Eggington in the UK, shot by Jerry Evans, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Glacier shrinkage will hit European Alps hardest

Sylvia Rowley in the Guardian (UK): Glaciers in the European Alps could shrink by 75% by the end of the century, according to new research into the expected impact of global warming. The study, published in the journal Nature: Geoscience, concludes that, globally, mountain glaciers and ice caps are projected to lose 15-27% of their volume by 2100, although the extent of the damage varies widely. The analysis suggests glaciers in the Alps and New Zealand will shrink by more than 70% but shrinkage is predicted to reach about 10% in Greenland and high-mountain Asia.

The researchers argue this will result in "substantial impacts" on regional water availability, as well as a rise in sea levels. Retreating glaciers and ice caps threaten the water supplies of cities such as Kathmandu in Nepal and La Paz in Bolivia, which depend substantially on glacial meltwater for drinking and farming.

Scientists from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, who conducted the research, predict that melting glaciers and ice caps will be responsible for increases in sea levels of 8.7-16.1cm by 2100. This broadly confirms the range projected by the UN's climate change body, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

"What is surprising here is the contribution to sea level rises of up to 16cm just from the melting of small glaciers and ice caps. This may still be a low estimate as we did not include ice loss from calving – when a piece of ice breaks off into the sea," said Dr Valentina Radic, who co-authored the study with Prof Regine Hock.

Total sea level rise is likely to be considerably higher, however, due to the effects of melting Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets – which make up more than 99% of the water on Earth bound up in glacier ice – and thermal expansion in the ocean….

The Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, shot by Didier Baertschiger, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Supreme Court won't hear global warming case

Joanne Wojcik in Business Insurance: The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday not to review a pivotal global warming case brought by coastal residents seeking damages for property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

In Ned Comer et al. vs. Murphy Oil USA et al., a group of Mississippi property owners alleged that greenhouse gas emissions of Murphy Oil USA—through more than 100 oil, coal and chemical companies—contributed to climate change and furthered the property damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The plaintiffs sought damages under Mississippi common law, including public and private nuisance, trespass and negligence allegations. A federal district court in Mississippi dismissed the assertions on grounds that they presented a political question that could not be decided by the courts. However, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans reversed the lower court’s ruling in October 2009 and allowed the claims to proceed....

Floods continue to batter Australia

The Guardian (UK) via Associated Press: Flash floods swept through a Queensland community today, killing one woman, trapping others in cars and leaving some clinging to trees in a region battling its worst flooding in decades. The torrent of muddy water swamped the city of Toowoomba, west of the state capital, Brisbane, killing one female pedestrian, a state police spokeswoman said.

Video footage of the scene shows a man clutching a tree as the water sweeps down a street, pushing vehicles off the road, into each other and flinging one van into trees. "We've had multiple calls requesting urgent assistance from people caught in vehicles, caught on the street, caught in flood ways," Queensland's deputy police commissioner, Ian Stewart, said. "This has just evolved. There has been no warning of this event."

The state has been devastated by weeks of heavy rain and overflowing rivers. Eleven people have died since late November and about 200,000 have been affected by the floods. Roads and rail lines have been cut off, the coal mine industry has virtually shut down, and cattle farming across a large part of the state is at a standstill….

Children playing in a flooded street at Breakfast Creek, Queensland, in 1938

Rise in flood risk could make one million UK homes uninsurable

Andrew McCorkell in the Independent: Homeowners living near rivers and the coast face losing up to 40 per cent of the value of their homes as flood risk makes them uninsurable. More than a million homes and 300,000 businesses are at risk, including those in parts of London, Southend, Brighton, Reading, Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Middlesbrough, Blackpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh, the Environment Agency says.

The insurance industry points to evidence that climate change and rising sea levels will increase the likelihood of floods. It has an agreement with the Government – which runs out in 2013 – committing it to provide cover for customers, as long as flood risk is properly managed.

Insurers are expressing concern about cuts to investment in flood defences implied in the coalition's Comprehensive Spending Review, and the affect of funding cuts on extending the agreement – the UK is currently one of the few countries to provide flood coverage automatically through property insurance.

Nick Starling, of the Association of British Insurers, said: "We must ensure that our spending on flood defences and flood management is targeted to those areas where it is needed the most, and that the Government implements a long-term flood management strategy."…

A giant wave breaking over the breakwater with the The Big Green Bagel, a sculpture also known locally variously as the Donut / Doughnut / Seasick Doughnut Sculpture. Shot by Dominic Alves, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

The future of food riots

Gwynne Dyer in the Straight.com (Vancouver): …The food riots began in Algeria more than a week ago, and they are going to spread. During the last global food shortage in 2008, there was serious rioting in Mexico, Indonesia, and Egypt. We may expect to see that again this time, only bigger and more widespread.

Most people in these countries live in a cash economy, and a large proportion live in cities. They buy their food, they don’t grow it. That makes them very vulnerable, because they have to eat almost as much as people in rich countries do, but their incomes are much lower.

The poor, urban multitudes in these countries (including China and India) spend up to half of their income on food, compared to only about 10 percent in the rich countries. When food prices soar, these people quickly find that they simply lack the money to go on feeding themselves and their children properly—and food prices now are at an all-time high.

“We are entering a danger territory,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, chief economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization, on January 5. The price of a basket of cereals, oils, dairy, meat, and sugar that reflects global consumption patterns has risen steadily for six months. It has just broken through the previous record, set during the last food panic in June 2008….

In Algeria, what looks like a wheat field, shot by Clapsus, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Climate-induced mayhem likely to start in Bangladesh

Malathi Nayak in the Miami Herald: Nowhere is the potential threat from climate change more worrisome than in Bangladesh, a country strategically sandwiched between rising superpowers China and India, and which also acts as a bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia. Already, Bangladesh is beset by extreme poverty, overcrowding and flooding that frequently renders large numbers of people homeless. The country's Muslim majority is the target of Islamist radicalization.

Over the next two generations, those problems are likely to grow worse if climate change, as predicted, raises sea levels and temperatures. By 2050, rising oceans are projected to cost the low-lying country 17 to 20 percent of its land mass. That in turn is expected to render at least 20 million people homeless and decimate food production of rice and wheat, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The potential for internal unrest to spill into neighboring India is great. "That is a frightening scenario," said Maj. Gen. A.N.M. Muniruzzaman, a retired Bangladeshi military officer who heads a research center called the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies. "Given the complications of conflict relations in South Asia, any destabilization of a regional border can have very severe consequences."

Many Bangladeshis already try to flee to India, either to escape the periodic floods or to seek jobs. The deluge of humanity is so great that the Indian government has built a massive border fence to keep them out - and plans to electrify it….

Red Crescent increases aid to flood victims in Pakistan

Gulf News (United Arab Emirates): The UAE Red Crescent Authority (RCA) says it is intensifying its efforts to assist people affected by the floods in Pakistan. The RCA distributed large amounts of food and relief materials such as blankets and tents, as well as heating equipment to thousands of families in the Dadu and Johi districts in the Sindh region of Pakistan.

The RCA said it intensified its efforts to provide more relief to people affected by the floods during the winter season. It is also considered the only humanitarian organisation still present in these areas and continues to provide aid despite the difficult terrain and bad climate conditions.

Saleh Al Jaberi, official in charge of RCA operations in Pakistan, supervised the distribution of rice, flour, cooking oil, lentils, canned food and dates, as well as the distribution of winter clothing, blankets and heating equipment to needy families….

In best case scenarios, climate change to continue to year 3000

Science Daily: New research indicates the impact of rising CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, causing researchers to estimate a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea level of at least four metres.

The study, to be published in the Jan. 9 advanced online publication of the journal Nature Geoscience, is the first full climate model simulation to make predictions out to 1000 years from now. It is based on best-case, 'zero-emissions' scenarios constructed by a team of researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (an Environment Canada research lab at the University of Victoria) and the University of Calgary.

"We created 'what if' scenarios," says Dr. Shawn Marshall, Canada Research Chair in Climate Change and University of Calgary geography professor. "What if we completely stopped using fossil fuels and put no more CO2 in the atmosphere? How long would it then take to reverse current climate change trends and will things first become worse?" The research team explored zero-emissions scenarios beginning in 2010 and in 2100.

The Northern Hemisphere fares better than the south in the computer simulations, with patterns of climate change reversing within the 1000-year timeframe in places like Canada. At the same time parts of North Africa experience desertification as land dries out by up to 30 percent, and ocean warming of up to 5°C off of Antarctica is likely to trigger widespread collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, a region the size of the Canadian prairies….

In Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctic, shot by BrucePL, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The end for small glaciers

Richard A. Lovett in Nature News: In the most comprehensive study of mountain glaciers and small ice caps to date, a team of US and Canadian scientists has projected that most of the world's smaller glaciers will be gone by 2100. The finding confirms that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the scientific group assessing climate risk — was correct in estimating that by that date, complete or partial melting of smaller glaciers will contribute about the same amount to sea-level rise as meltwater from the giant ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. The study also confirms that the IPCC was wrong in stating that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

The study, in Nature Geoscience, found that half of the world's smallest glaciers, with a surface area less than 5 square kilometres, will disappear entirely, with possible implications for communities dependent on them for water supplies. Overall, the melting of small glaciers and ice caps alone will contribute about 12 centimetres of sea level rise by 2100, based on an average of ten global climate models.

"While the IPCC review process clearly failed in the Himalayan instance," says IPCC member and forest ecologist Steve Running of the University of Montana in Missoula, "the estimate of overall mountain-glacier contribution to sea-level rise was about right." Earlier studies used by the IPCC had found approximately the same result, but were forced to extrapolate from a relatively small number of glaciers. The new study was based on a total of 120,229 mountain glaciers and 2,638 ice caps…

Franz-Josef Glacier in New Zealand, shot by Alexander Klink, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license