New book: 'The Last Drop: Climate Change and the Southwest Water Crisis'

Stockholm Environment Institute: Water is already a major concern in the Southwest, where homes, businesses and farms use far more water than is produced by rain and snowfall, and groundwater reserves are shrinking.

This study quantifies the impact of climate change on the problem. It finds that without prompt action to reduce water usage, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah will face a combined shortfall of 1,815 million acre feet from population and income growth alone, plus 282 million to 439 million more from climate change – at a combined cost of as much as trillion.

And that's if the shortfall can be made up at all. As conventional water sources dry up, the Southwest could find itself facing serious water crises in dry years, with unexpected disruptions that could devastate agriculture and affect homes and businesses as well.

"Climate change is affecting Americans in many areas; the water crisis in the Southwest is one of the clearest examples," said Frank Ackerman, director of the Climate Economics Group at SEI-U.S. and lead author of the study. "Climate policy choices we make today are not just about exotic environments and far-future generations – they will help determine how easy or hard it is to create a sustainable water system in the most arid region of the country."

The authors also evaluate potential ways to meet the shortfall, including water imports, desalination and additional groundwater extraction, and conclude that none can solve the problem. To avoid serious water crises, they recommend, the Southwestern states should promptly implement substantial conservation and efficiency measures as well as price increases for both urban and agricultural users. They also advise phasing out low-value crops, some of which are worth less than the water used to grow them…

Sunrise in White Pocket in Arizona, not far from the Glen Canyon Dam, shot by John Fowler, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Malaysia's urbanites at nature's mercy

Lee Yen Mun: About 8.6 million Malaysians living in urban areas will be exposed to climate hazards within the next nine years, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study showed. The study projected that the number of people to be affected by the unpredictable global weather change is also expected to increase with time, up to an astounding 11.9 million by 2050. If the projection is accurate, Malaysia may see an 182.6% spike over 50 years (2000- 2050) in the number of its population placed at nature’s mercy.

Apart from coastal flooding, the report did not identify other environmental hazards that are expected to hit the country’s urban spots. “It is important to note that the impact of climate change on these population will be influenced not just by its nature and severity, but also by the ability of those population to bring resources to adapt to that change,” the ADB said in the report entitled Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific.

The study to be released next month is aimed at enhancing regional preparedness for migration driven by changing weather patterns. If the bad weather persists, Malaysia may also see an influx of migrants from its Asian counterparts dubbed by the report as “climate change hotspots”, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and southern Pakistan. These five countries are currently the primary providers of most low-skilled workers to Malaysia….

Miri City in Malayisa, shot by Mirilan, who has released it into the public domain

Arctic Oscillation brings record low January extent, unusual mid-latitude weather

National Snow and Ice Data Center: Arctic sea ice extent for January 2011 was the lowest in the satellite record for that month. The Arctic oscillation persisted in its strong negative phase for most of the month, keeping ice extent low.

Arctic sea ice extent averaged over January 2011 was 13.55 million square kilometers (5.23 million square miles). This was the lowest January ice extent recorded since satellite records began in 1979. It was 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles) below the record low of 13.60 million square kilometers (5.25 million square miles), set in 2006, and 1.27 million square kilometers (490,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average.

Ice extent in January 2011 remained unusually low in Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait (between southern Baffin Island and Labrador), and Davis Strait (between Baffin Island and Greenland). Normally, these areas freeze over by late November, but this year Hudson Bay did not completely freeze over until mid-January. The Labrador Sea remains largely ice-free.

...As in December 2010, the warm temperatures in January came from two sources: unfrozen areas of the ocean continued to release heat to the atmosphere, and the wind patterns accompanying the negative phase of the Arctic oscillation brought warm air into the Arctic. Near the end of January the negative Arctic oscillation pattern broke down and turned positive, which usually favors ice growth. It is unclear how long it will remain in a positive mode.

January 2011 had the lowest ice extent for the month since the beginning of satellite records. The linear rate of decline for the month is –3.3% per decade. Ice extent for the Arctic as a whole increased at an average of 42,800 square kilometers (16,500 square miles) per day through the month of January, which is about average.

In contrast, regional ice growth has been particularly slow compared to past years. Hudson Bay did not completely freeze up until mid-January, about a month later than normal according to Canadian Ice Service analyses. The Labrador Sea region is still largely free of ice, except in protected bays along the coast. Normally at this time of year, ice extends a few hundred kilometers from the coast all the way from Hudson Strait to Newfoundland.

Arctic sea ice extent for January 2011 was 13.55 million square kilometers (5.23 million square miles). The magenta line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that month. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center

Identifying large hurricanes through seismology

Science Daily: Storm-generated seismic signals may allow seismologists to detect large hurricanes at sea and track their intensity, adding useful data to the discussion of whether anthropogenic global warming has increased the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, including ones that don't reach land.

Ambient noise, or microseisms, is the pervasive background signal bathing the surface of Earth and is not produced by earthquakes. These surface waves generated by ocean storms are detected even in continental interiors far from source regions.

Researchers at Northwestern University demonstrate that the August 1992 category 5 Hurricane Andrew can be detected using microseisms recorded at the Harvard, Massachusetts seismic station, even while the storm is as far as 1200 miles away at sea. When applied to decades of existing analog seismograms, this methodology could yield a seismically identified hurricane record for comparison to the pre-aircraft and pre-satellite observational record.

Hurricane Ike off the Lesser Antilles in 2008

Water shortages to force Mideast cooperation

Terra Daily: A report for the Swiss and Swedish governments warned on Thursday that water shortages in the Middle East were so alarming that opposing camps in the region would have little choice but to cooperate. Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey called for closer cooperation between Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinians and Israel on managing increasingly scarce water resources, arguing that water could also be used to forge a "blue peace."

"The report comes to an alarming conclusion; five of the seven countries are experiencing a structural shortage and debit of most of the big rivers has declined by 50 to 90 percent between 1960," she told journalists. "In the future the main geopolitical resource in the Middle East will be water more than oil," she added, warning that it was closely tied to peace efforts.

The report by an Indian thinktank, Strategic Foresight Group, highlighted huge depletion of major rivers such as the Jordan and Yarmouk in the past half a century, the punctual depletion of the Euphrates by drought and the shrinkage of the Dead Sea to a small lake by 2050….

The Euphrates River in central or Southern Iraq, shot by Jayel Aheram, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

European Space Agency's sharp eyes on coastal waters

European Space Agency: Our growing reliance on coastal waters for food, trade and tourism means that these delicate ecosystems need to be more closely monitored to guarantee their future sustainability. ESA's CoastColour project is helping scientists develop techniques to take full advantage of the unique capabilities of the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) sensor on its Envisat satellite.

With a resolution of 300 m, MERIS provides the sharpest view of coastal waters to date, and includes spectral bands specially designed to characterise the complex mixing of pollutants, suspended sediments and phytoplankton typically found in coastal zones. Stressing the need for information to help manage these ecosystems, more than 40 user organisations have already signed up to the CoastColour project, which is now processing MERIS data with state-of-the-art techniques over 27 high-priority coastal regions selected by users worldwide.

Arnold Dekker from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is working with CoastColour to develop techniques to monitor the health of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. During the wet season large plumes of sediment-laden river water flows into the reef lagoon. Sediments can smother corals and deprive them of the sunlight they need to survive, while river-borne nutrients may influence the frequency of naturally occurring algal blooms.

MERIS data are being used to monitor harmful algal booms along the west coast of South Africa in the Southern Benguela upwelling system. Red tides and algal blooms with extremely high phytoplankton concentrations frequently occur in the region’s bays, threatening fisheries and tourism. Dr Stewart Bernard of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research is developing systems aiming to integrate the satellite data with hydrodynamic models to monitor and predict harmful algal blooms operationally.

…In the Baltic Sea, the sustainable development of seaports requires shipping channels to be dredged every two years. Dredging mixes large amounts of suspended sediments into the water, affecting coastal water quality which is regulated by internationally agreed standards. Dr Liis Sipelgas of the Tallinn University of Technology is working with the Port of Tallinn, which runs four harbours on the Estonian coast, to understand the environmental impact of their dredging operations by mapping sediment plumes….

This Envisat image features the southern part of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia’s Queensland coast. Sediments are visible flowing into the world’s most protected marine area. This image was acquired by Envisat’s Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) on 8 November 2010 at a resolution of 300 meters. Image from ESA

Extreme weather batters the insurance industry

A few snips from a long article by Ben Berkowitz in Reuters: …One of the biggest problems for insurers is that they have to insure increasingly valuable properties in risky areas that, by and large, are not being built with disaster risk in mind. That in and of itself is driving their risk up dramatically. When an insurer writes a policy for a property, it takes various factors into account, such as the property's location, its age, the propensity of the region it's in to be affected by weather events and the potential cost of replacing the property if it is damaged or destroyed.

Those criteria have largely stayed the same over the years, but what changed is the value of the properties to be insured and the volume of them. People around the world love beachfront houses and developers love selling them. In most places, no one stopped to think whether building the houses was a good idea, or whether there were appropriate building codes in place, or how many billions of dollars would be at stake if a major hurricane blew through.

"Even if the baseline of activity from a natural hazards point of view stays constant, the level of losses you're going to see will certainly be increasing commensurate to the increases in economic activity and national wealth," said Bill Keogh, the president of Eqecat, another major global risk modeler.

Most people in the business of predicting risk agree with Keogh that the changes in the environment matter less now than the changes in the "built environment" -- the size, value and type of buildings being put in high-risk areas like Florida's coastal zone and geologically unstable areas of California. Stringent building codes would overcome much of those risks, but such things either do not exist or are not strictly enforced in many parts of the world, and even in the United States they are a state-by-state patchwork. In many cases, it takes a disaster for them to be updated to reflect modern demands….

A house destroyed by Hurricane Ike in Shoreacres, Texas, 2008. Photo by FEMA

NASA's earth data system

Patrick Lynch in Space Mart: If you're distributing 412 million data products in a year to more than 1.1 million users, how do you ever make sure people are getting what they want? The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Project based at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., came up with a simple formula: They ask.

EOSDIS is the network of Earth science data centers that process, store, and make available the trove of data from NASA's past and current Earth-observing satellites. …Satellites have ushered in a new era of Earth science in the past few decades. A constantly orbiting fleet of NASA satellites keeps its sensors trained on our blue planet - capturing the intricacies of its atmosphere, the seasonal cycles of plant growth and sea ice, and the patterns in ocean circulation and temperature.

EOSDIS manages constant streams of data for scientists to dissect and discover new knowledge about how our planet's dynamic systems work and interact with one another. But before any scientific investigation can begin, the raw data itself must be received, stored, processed and made available.

It's a process that often occurs behind the scenes but ultimately enables all the NASA-related studies of Earth and its climate. EOSDIS manages this flow of information - from satellites in space to data processing facilities to a scientist's desktop - with a network of 12 Earth science data centers in the U.S.

...The wide-ranging effort essentially takes a long-term measure of the scope of Earth's land, atmosphere and ocean systems. While EOS is only about 15 years old, these data records will become more valuable as they capture a longer period of time and more natural and man-made variability in the various Earth systems….

Artist's concept of NASA's Aqua satellite launched May 4, 2002

Report paints grim scenario of impact of climate change for the Philippines

Manila Bulletin (Philippines): Hundreds of lives, thousands of homes, billions of pesos worth of property and livelihood, even government’s growth and revenue targets are at the mercy of a single extreme weather event if countries, including the Philippines, do not have an effective disaster prevention program in place.

This was the warning aired in “Natural Hazards, Unnatural Disasters: the Economics of Effective Prevention,” a recent report on the economics of disaster prevention jointly produced by the World Bank (WB) and the United Nations (UN), that was presented Thursday to the Senate.

“Climate-related hazards (extreme events) have resulted in an average of $59 billion (P2,596,000, 000,000) a year in global damages from 1990 through 2008 or 0.1 percent of world product in 2008. Tropical cyclones account for 44 percent and floods, 33 percent,” the report said. It said “there is a widespread concern that climate change could increase future damages from extreme events.’’

“We are fortunate that we are the second country in the world to receive this special briefing,” noted Sen. Loren Legarda, chairperson of the Senate climate change committee, which has been spearheading the adoption of disaster risk prevention programs.

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile has teamed up with Legarda in raising awareness in Congress and the national government that the world is now experiencing the bad effects of changing weather patterns. “As the Philippines seeks to pursue sustainable development, the lessons of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng have taught us that we should not train our sights merely on enhancing our capacities to rebuild after each and every disaster,” she said….

Typhoon Parma (Pepeng) in 2009

High salinity levels may hurt farming in British Columbia's Lower Mainland

Matthew Burrows in Straight.com (Vancouver): A Richmond agrologist believes climate change is affecting salt levels in Fraser River waters needed to irrigate crops. “Runoff is concentrating so heavily in the spring now because of climate change,” Arzeena Hamir, coordinator of the Richmond Food Security Society, told the Georgia Straight. “The melt is happening so early and so fast that—come later in the summer, as the river levels are starting to go down—what they call a ‘salt wedge’ is starting to come up the Fraser River.”

Hamir, a lifelong Richmond resident, is trying to get more farmers growing in her municipality, mainly through her role on the board of directors of the nonprofit Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project. She said she started hearing about higher salinity levels in the river water two years ago.

Salinity doesn’t affect traditional crops that don’t require irrigation, such as potatoes, she said, but there’s a long-term economic implication: a higher level of salt would restrict the type and variety of crops grown and would hit the bottom lines of new farmers in the region.

“If we’re trying to get young people back into farming, these [non-irrigation crops] are not the crops that they are interested in, because they are extremely low-value,” Hamir said in a phone interview. “Potatoes are, like, 29 cents a pound, and the same with squash. The return is very low.” Young people want to grow the “high-value salad crops”, Hamir said, because there is a greater return there, especially with the proliferation of farmers markets.

“And for that, you definitely need irrigation, and so again, the conundrum is there: if you want young people back in farming, they need access to water because the type of farming they want to do is fairly highly water-intensive.”…

The Fraser River delta in British Columbia, shot by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Leeds city centre flood scheme 'too costly'

Yorkshire Evening Post: A flood defence scheme designed to protect Leeds city centre from catastrophe stands no chance of being built unless its huge £190m price tag is dramatically reduced, a minister has said. Floods minister Richard Benyon likened the scheme to "a Rolls-Royce, where a reasonably priced family car might serve some of the purpose".

The project, which would be built along the River Aire and protect thousands of homes and businesses, was one of three Yorkshire schemes put on hold last week. The decision was yesterday put under the spotlight, first during exchanges in the Commons chamber and then later during a 90 minute debate in Westminster Hall.

Mr Benyon was warned that Leeds came within centimetres of a huge flood in 2000 and narrowly escaped widescale disaster during the extensive flooding of 2007. Leeds North East MP Fabian Hamilton and Leeds East MP George Mudie warned that the city's role as the economic engine room of Yorkshire would be threatened by a major flood….

The River Wharfe at Wetherby after September 2006 rains, shot by David Morris, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

China snowfalls bring some relief to drought-hit grain belt

Reuters: Snow across drought-hit parts of north and central China brought some relief from a drought threatening winter wheat crops that has raised speculation of higher global prices, state forecasters said on Thursday. The welcome, but so far limited, snowfalls came after the Chinese government said keeping up grain output was important to defeating inflationary expectations driven by rising food prices.

Snow was recorded in the capital Beijing, and parts of Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, some of which have suffered from months without precipitation, Sun Jun, a senior forecaster for China's meteorological service told state radio. "Because the precipitation will be concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, it will have a limited effect on mitigating the drought in northern areas," said Sun….

FAO raises alert on high flooding risks in parts of southern Africa

FAO: Thousands of hectares of agricultural land and crops have been damaged by floods and heavy rains in parts of southern Africa, and more damage may occur in the coming weeks if above normal rains persist. This is raising concern about the food security of the affected population in the poorer parts of the sub-region over the coming months.

With the rainy season still only half way through, and with the cyclone season due to peak in February, several agricultural areas along the rivers in southern African countries remain at high risk of flooding, including portions of Botswana, Lesotho Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

“Food insecurity levels are already critical in the affected areas of some of these countries and floods will only further worsen the ability of poor farmers to cope and feed their families in the coming months,” said Cindy Holleman, FAO Regional Emergency Coordinator for Southern Africa. FAO is working with regional and national early warning systems to monitor the evolution in major river basins and to assess the impact on food crops.

In Lesotho, for example, one of the poorest countries in the sub-region, an FAO assessment team found that in some of the flooded areas up to 60 percent of harvests have been lost and over 4 700 livestock, mainly sheep and goats are dead.

Localized crop losses are also reported along river banks in southern and central Mozambique. The government has declared a red alert for central and southern Mozambique as water flows in the major rivers are above alert levels.

South Africa has already declared a national state of disaster in many districts of the country due to the floods that have destroyed thousands of hectares of crop land, and caused damages estimated in the millions of dollars…

The Limpopo River flooded in Southern Mozambique in 2000

Report assesses Wisconsin's climate change impacts, adaptation strategies

University of Wisconsin-Madison: A statewide collaborative of scientists and diverse stakeholders is proposing a multitude of measures to help protect and enhance Wisconsin's natural resources, economic vitality, and public well-being as the state's climate becomes warmer and wetter. Their report, "Wisconsin's Changing Climate: Impacts and Adaptation," was released today by the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI). It is available online here.

"This report is the first comprehensive survey of climate change impacts in Wisconsin, and it provides information that will help decision-makers begin to plan for the kinds of changes we're likely to see in the years ahead," says Lewis Gilbert, associate director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and member of WICCI's science council.

Public officials, resource managers, business owners, and farmers are among the many groups expected to draw upon the new report's recommendations as they anticipate and address the impacts of current and future climate change across the state.

"We need to think about what climate change could mean for our natural resources and actively plan to address the issue," says Jack Sullivan, director of science services at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Sullivan coordinates efforts within the agency to evaluate how a changing climate may alter its management responsibilities and how to minimize negative impacts.

UW-Madison scientists already have documented changes in Wisconsin's climate that have occurred over the past 60 years, including a 1.3 degree Fahrenheit increase in the annual average temperature — 2.5 degrees in winter — and more frequent occurrences of heavy rainfall.

Using sophisticated computer models, the scientists also have projected that Wisconsin's average temperature is likely to rise an additional 4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century and that more total precipitation and more intense storms are highly probable in many parts of the state….

A (female?) juvenile Northern Harrier (Circus hudsonius) hovering over potential prey, shot by Dori, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Zanzibar study on drought-resistant maize seeds gets underway

Mwinye Sadallah in IPP Media via the Guardian: The government of Zanzibar has said that a research project on better maize seeds being conducted by scientists from five African countries will help to overcome drought and food shortages in the respective countries.

The remarks were made on Monday by Minister of State in the Second Vice-President’s Office Mohamed Aboud when opening a third meeting of scientists convened to assess the project, which focuses on getting better maize seeds that will withstand drought, known as Water-Efficient Maize for Africa (Wema).

He said since maize is being consumed in many African countries, obtaining drought-resistant seeds will help to increase production and overcome the problem of food shortages facing most countries in the continent.

“The government supports efforts being made by agricultural scientists in helping farmers to obtain better seeds, which would overcome climate change impacts, especially drought,” Aboud said.
He said the Isles government has started conducting research on getting better seeds for banana, coconut and fighting pests.

Aboud said in implementing the second phase of the Zanzibar strategy for growth and poverty reduction, agriculture has been given priority, including providing loans for farm implements to small-scale farmers to achieve the goal of strengthening agriculture….

Maps of San Diego coast show sea level rise projections by 2050

Khari Johnson in the Imperial Beach Patch (California): The San Diego Foundation put together a study published in 2008 that predicts local sea levels could rise 12 to 18 inches by 2050 due to climate change. Rick Gersberg from San Diego State University put together the maps and was one of more than 40 local university professors, non-profit organizations and public and private-sector entities who helped complete the Focus 2050 study.

"We had maps made because they didn't exist before," said Dr. Emily Young from the San Diego Foundation, who helped put together the report. New maps due out later this year will be part of the first California-specific sea level rise assessment report.

Put together by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the report will detail various scenarios of sea water rise in California in 2030, 2050 and 2100. "Now the state has become much more involved in this area so we can do more detailed maps in areas including Imperial Beach and San Diego," Young said. "This is going to be the authoritative assessment for the state of California for everyone to use."

According to the foundation's data and maps, sea level will rise the same amount from the U.S.-Mexico border to north San Diego, she said, but its impact depends on the area's elevation and geographic makeup….

View of Coronado and San Diego from the air, shot by Doug Letterman at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dougletterman/, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Fog diminished by climate change threatens Muir Woods' majestic redwoods

Mark Prado in the Mercury News via the Marin Independent Journal (California): Thousands of people visit Muir Woods National Monument every year to take in its grand redwood trees, but climate change could dissipate the cooling, wet fog that enables those trees to grow to towering heights. And it's not only Muir Woods that's in the dangerous path of climate change. Researchers warn the phenomenon could bring peril to many of Marin's natural wonders in the coming years as weather conditions change.

"It's trees at Muir Woods. It's a concern about sea level rise at Fort Baker. It's many things," said Alex Picavet, spokeswoman for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, part of the National Park Service. "But it's not only local. We are grappling with this across the country."

It could have no greater visible effect than in Muir Woods, where redwoods about 500 to 800 years old climb more than 200 feet toward the sky, providing a serene setting for visitors from Marin and around the world.

A report recently issued by the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association concludes climate change could affect the formation and presence of fog along the entire Pacific Coast, and that in turn could stunt the giant redwoods. "It's a concern that has been floating around the park service: How do you deal with the fog issue?" said Neal Desai, associate director of the National Parks Conservation Association Pacific Region. "The redwoods at Muir Woods are the iconic trees, and the fog is their lifeblood."

Another recent report issued by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization in Colorado looking at the impact on state parks comes to the same conclusion -- and says it's already happening.
It's fog that rolls over the trees and provides moisture -- nature's drip irrigation system -- that allows the redwoods to grow even in the driest of months. Branches covered with fine needles catch the fog's water particles, which then condense and fall to the forest floor below where their roots can absorb the water….

Redwood trees in Muir Woods, shot by Two+two=4, who has released the image into the public domain

Keeping forest dwellers involved in forest protection and REDD

Laurie Goering: It’s no coincidence that Latin America has had some of the best success protecting tropical forest. That’s because the region, led by countries like Mexico and Brazil, has put more forest land in the hands of indigenous groups and other forest residents than any other part of the developing world, according to the U.S.-based Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI).

Forest residents who own or otherwise control the land they live on have a strong incentive to protect it from illegal loggers and other destructive pressures, argues Andy White, head of the initiative, which works on forest policy issues, especially land tenure.

The proof? Brazil’s indigenous reserves have become the heart of that country’s Amazon forest protection effort, he says, and in Mexico, where communities own 80 percent of forest land, forests are more effectively managed and protected than in many parts of the world. Altogether, nearly a third of Latin America’s forests are owned or designed for use by indigenous communities, RRI figures show.

But in Africa, less than 2 percent of land is owned or controlled by forest dwellers – a major impediment to protecting forests in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where government-owned forests benefitted from years of war – which effectively kept out big logging companies – but are now coming under increasing pressure.

…That’s particularly important as the world pushes forward with REDD, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a UN-backed effort under which richer greenhouse gas emitting countries pay poorer tropical forest countries to protect standing forest as a way of curbing carbon levels in the atmosphere. REDD-plus, the latest incarnation of REDD efforts, seeks to ensure that forest dwellers have input in the structure of REDD deals and benefit from them.

But a growing number of multi-million-dollar REDD deals – between donor countries like Norway and beneficiaries such as Indonesia and Guyana – combined with growing world competition for resources like timber and minerals mean “forests have never been so valuable as they are now”, White notes. That presents a growing risk that forest dwellers could see efforts to gain legal rights to their land blocked or even lose rights they already have…

The Cloud Forest of Santiago Comaltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico is some the best conserved in the world, shot by Prsjl, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

One million Sri Lankans hit by floods, 14 dead

Terra Daily via AFP: Sri Lanka's monsoon rains spread to more villages and towns on Sunday, leaving at least 14 people dead and more than one million with flooded homes, officials said. The number of people in state-run shelters rose to 236,000 by Saturday evening, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) in Colombo said, adding that 1,053,000 people had had their homes inundated.

Most of the flood victims had moved in with friends and relatives living on higher ground, officials said. Police figures showed that at least 14 people had been killed in flood-related incidents in the past week.

The DMC said that roads and fields were submerged across the east, centre and north of the island -- areas which had already been badly hit by an earlier wave of monsoon rains last month….

New discoveries improve climate models

US Geological Survey: New discoveries on how underwater ridges impact the ocean's circulation system will help improve climate projections. An underwater ridge can trap the flow of cold, dense water at the bottom of the ocean. Without the ridge, deepwater can flow freely and speed up the ocean circulation pattern, which generally increases the flow of warm surface water.

Warm water on the ocean's surface makes the formation of sea ice difficult. With less ice present to reflect the sun, surface water will absorb more sunlight and continue to warm. U.S. Geological Survey scientists looked back 3 million years, to the mid-Pliocene warm period, and studied the influence of the North Atlantic Ocean’s Greenland-Scotland Ridge on surface water temperature.

"Sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans were much warmer during the mid-Pliocene warm period than they are today, but climate models so far have been unable to fully understand and account for the cause of this large scale of warming," said USGS scientist Marci Robinson. "Our research suggests that a lower height of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge during this geologic age was a contributor to the increase of poleward heat transport."

"This is the first time the impact of a North Atlantic underwater ridge on the ocean circulation system was tested in a mid-Pliocene experiment," said Robinson. "Understanding this process allows for more accurate predictions of factors such as ocean temperature and ice volume changes."

Research was conducted on the mid-Pliocene because it is the most recent interval in the earth’s history in which global temperatures reached and remained at levels similar to those projected for the 21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Therefore, it may be one of the closest analogs in helping to understand the earth's current and future conditions…

Underwater at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, NSF/USAP photo by Steve Clabuesch

New UK publication, 'Engineering the Future' calls for major infrastructure changes due to climate change

The Royal Academy of Engineering (UK): In a report published today, an alliance representing nearly half a million engineers calls for a radical shake up of the way national infrastructure is planned, developed and protected. The report calls for a more joined up process of decision making in Government and a new approach to sharing information in the commercial sector. Without such approaches, the impacts of climate change could have severely detrimental effects on UK society and the economy by crippling vital services such as electricity, roads and broadband.

…The report, Infrastructure, Engineering and Climate Change Adaptation - Ensuring services in an uncertain future, examines vulnerabilities in energy, transport, communications and water systems and identifies vulnerabilities that affect the infrastructure system as a whole. It examines 'cascade failures', when failure in one service has a domino effect on others, will cause major disruption and have significant economic impact if action is not taken to build resilience into vital infrastructure networks. The report identifies ways to prevent and prepare for such events. The findings are part of a national programme that will eventually lead to the Government's adaptation strategy.

Speaking on behalf of Engineering the Future, Lord Browne of Madingley (President of the Royal Academy of Engineering) says "Climate change is a genuine risk. While efforts must continue towards mitigating its effects, we need to think very carefully about how we adapt to the changing climatic conditions that are anticipated over the coming century. In the long term protecting our critical national infrastructure is ultimately about protecting the UK economy and its future growth."

One of 20 findings in the report focuses on how the public may have to adjust their expectations regarding the continuity of services. The UK has already experienced the impact of flash floods and recent extreme weather has contributed to negative growth in the UK. Extreme weather events may occur with increasing frequency in the future. With the combined pressures of a changing climate, carbon reduction measures and increasing interdependencies placing different demands upon infrastructure systems, resilient services will come at a high cost. It is unlikely society will be willing to pay the increasing costs of "always on" services. So a debate is needed on the balance between acceptable levels of disruption verses higher costs….

A rail shed in North York, 1970, shot by Roger Cornfoot, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

NASA offers climate expertise to San Francisco Bay area cities

Aaron Selverston in the Palo Alto Patch: When Deborah Feng, Director of Operations at NASA Ames Research Center, was told that she needed start planning for the impacts of climate change, she knew it wasn’t an esoteric, fleeting request. Just weeks ago an intense storm system rumbled over Moffett Field—the flagship airstrip known best for its iconic Hangar One—dropping enough rain to inundate the north end of the runway and force the temporary closure of the entire field.

Elsewhere on the 1,800-acre campus, basements in two buildings have been shut down because seeping groundwater has fueled the growth of dangerous mold, creating too hazardous an environment for workers. “We have issues,” said Feng Friday at a NASA symposium called “Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change Risks.”

…“We need to work to have a regional plan for the entire Bay Area,” she said. “I don’t think it would serve a lot of people well to have a plan just for Ames Research Center.” And so it was decided: as NASA moves to protect its Ames facility, which houses over $3 billion in capital equipment and 2,300 workers, it will also offer its brain trust and federal lobbying muscle to local governments in order to develop, for the first time, a regional plan to help the Bay Area adapt to the impacts of climate change.

…The impacts of sea level rise, however, are of particular concern to regional planners and Ames scientists. …If you plot all the trend lines from the best models onto one graph, then draw a line through those trends, you get the magic number for sea level rise that planning agencies have settled on: 16 inches.

“This is what we’re facing at the center in the next 40 years,” said [NASA’s Max] Loewenstein, and by extension, what the Bay Area as a region needs to plan for….

Aerial view of the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California. From 1982.

Extreme weather conference in New Zealand

Voxy (New Zealand): Over the past decade, predicting the weather, and understanding the changes in climate, has emerged as one of the most important and topical areas of scientific endeavour. An international community of over 200 scientists will converge on Te Papa in Wellington this week for the Extreme Weather Conference, from 9 -11 February. The scientists will share information, and work to better understand extreme weather events such as recent damaging storms in New Zealand, and Cyclone Yasi, which hit northern Queensland last week with destructive winds reaching 290 kilometres per hour.

Cyclone Yasi demonstrated the importance of forecasting, and how, when combined with good preparation, this can dramatically reduce the impact of a cyclone….Conference presentations will cover six key areas:

• extreme weather in the Australasian region - from floods to droughts
• impact and meteorology of the main climate drivers (ENSO e.g. El Nio and La Nia,)
• using high-resolution models to understand local meteorology
• oceanography of the Australasian region
• climate change in the Australasian region
• impacts of natural catastrophes in the Australasian region.

Cyclone Yasi damage in Townsville, shot by Rob and Stephanie Levy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Water regionally abundant in Great Lakes Basin, but not always when and where it’s needed

US Geological Survey: Though the Great Lakes are the largest freshwater system on Earth, the basin has the potential for local shortages, according to a new basin-wide water availability assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey.

For example, though groundwater pumping has had relatively little effect on water in the basin as a whole, pumping in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas has caused local groundwater levels to decline as much as 1,000 feet. Moreover, if pumping were to increase as anticipated in the region, water levels in these areas are estimated to decline an additional 100 feet by 2040.

“While there is an abundance of water in the region, we may see local shortages or conflicts because water is not distributed evenly,” said Howard Reeves, USGS scientist and lead author on this assessment. “In some areas, the physical quantity of water may be limiting, and water availability in most of the Great Lakes Basin will be determined by social decisions about impacts of new uses on existing users and the environment.”

Water availability in the Great Lakes Basin is a balance between storage of surface water and groundwater in the system, flows of water through the system, and existing, sometimes competing, human and ecological uses of water.

Water use has a relatively minor effect on regional water availability, because of the large volume of water in storage, large annual flows and abundant, high quality groundwater. Development in the Great Lakes region also has had relatively little effect on basin-wide water availability, though surface-water diversions and pumping of groundwater have affected some flow patterns over large areas of the basin.

…Understanding the impact of climate variation on water use, lake levels, streamflow and groundwater levels was part of this five-year investigation. Results of the study will improve the ability to forecast the balance between water supply and demand for future economic and environmental uses….

Lake Huron, facing east on Mackinac Island, shot by Hgjudd, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Failure to act on crop shortages fuelling political instability, experts warn

Fiona Harvey in the Guardian (UK): World leaders are ignoring potentially disastrous shortages of key crops, and their failures are fuelling political instability in key regions, food experts have warned. Food prices have hit record levels in recent weeks, according to the United Nations, and soaring prices for staples such as grains over the past few months are thought to have been one of the factors contributing to an explosive mix of popular unrest in Egypt and Tunisia.

The crises in those countries have served as a stark example of what can happen when food prices spiral out of control and add to existing political problems, said Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute. "It's easy to see how the food supply can translate directly into political unrest," he said.

Richard Ferguson, global head of agriculture at Renaissance Capital, an investment bank specialising in emerging markets, said the problems were likely to spread. "Food prices are absolutely core to a lot of these disturbances. If you are 25 years old, with no access to education, no income and live in a politically repressed environment, you are going to be pretty angry when the price of food goes up the way it is."

He said sharply rising food prices acted "as a catalyst" to foment political unrest, when added to other concerns such as a lack of democracy. While food was not the biggest cause of the Middle East protests, there has been widespread discontent over rampant food price inflation that has left millions of poor families struggling to find enough to eat. Egypt is the world's biggest importer of wheat.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said this week that world food prices hit a record high in January, for the seventh consecutive month. Its food price index was up 3.4% from December to the highest level since the organisation started measuring food prices in 1990….

Stacking bags of USAID-donated wheat in Afghanistan

Honey bee collapse threatens global food security

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph (UK) makes use of spurious quote attributed to Albert Einstein in an otherwise factual report on a real worry: Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees. These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace.

The story of "colony collapse disorder" (CCD) is already well-known to readers of The Daily Telegraph. Some keep hives at home and have experienced this mystery plague, and doubtless have strong views on whether it is caused by parasites, or a virus, or use of pesticides that play havoc with the nervous system of young bees, or a synergy of destructive forces coming together.

The bee crisis has been treated as a niche concern until now, but as the UN's index of food prices hits an all time-high in real terms (not just nominal) and grain shortages trigger revolutions in the Middle East, it is becoming urgent to know whether the plight of the honey bee risks further exhausting our already thin margin of food global security.

The agri-business lender Rabobank said the numbers of US bee colonies failing to survive each winter has risen to 30pc to 35pc from an historical norm of 10pc. The rate is 20pc or higher in much of Europe, and the same pattern is emerging in Latin America and Asia.

Albert Einstein, who liked to make bold claims (often wrong), famously said that "if the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live". Such "apocalyptic scenarios" are overblown, said Rabobank. The staples of corn, wheat, and rice are all pollinated by wind.

However, animal pollination is essential for nuts, melons and berries, and plays varying roles in citrus fruits, apples, onions, broccoli, cabbage, sprouts, courgettes, peppers, aubergines, avocados, cucumbers, coconuts, tomatoes and broad beans, as well as coffee and cocoa.

…The reservoir of bees is dwindling to the point where ratios are dangerously out of kilter, with the US reaching the "most extreme" imbalance. Pollinated crop output has quadrupled since 1961, yet bee colonies have halved. The bee-per-hectare count has fallen nearly 90pc…

A honey bee, shot by Baytownbert, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Survey to probe Arctic ice melt

Richard Black in the BBC: Scientists and explorers will shortly set off on an expedition aiming to discover how Arctic sea ice melts. This year's Catlin Arctic Survey will focus on the thin layer of water immediately under the floating ice.

Arctic ice is melting faster in summer than many computer models predict. Survey data could improve forecasts of the region's future, and also show how likely it is that the flow of warm water in the North Atlantic, known as the Gulf Stream, will switch off.

This would bring colder weather to the UK and other parts of western Europe. "The Arctic is one of best barometers of climate change, where we see big changes taking place today," said Simon Boxall from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) at the UK's University of Southampton.

…In early March, four explorers will set off on foot from the geographic North Pole, trekking across the ice and ending up 10 weeks later in Greenland. They will make regular stops to drill holes through the floating ice and lower a package of instruments into the water on the end of a piece of rope - instruments that measure the water's temperature, salinity and flow.

This data will allow scientists to calculate the rate at which the water is sinking. "We're measuring the critical 200m layer of water between the ice and the deep ocean beneath," said Dr Boxall, who conceived the project. "The hypothesis has been that the layer stays there, trapped, acting to insulate the cold ice from the warm salty water below.

"On the other hand, the water might be taken away more quickly - and that might accelerate the rate of Arctic melting." Even in the era of Earth observation satellites and automonous ocean floats, the old-fashioned approach - sending people across the ice to take readings by hand - is really the only one available for this kind of work, he noted. The findings could prove to be crucial in terms of projecting the future for Arctic sea ice….

Map from Book 12 of the 4^th edition of Meyers Konversationslexikon (1885–90)

La Nina: Girl on the rampage

B. Khan in Dawn (Pakistan): Australia, Brazil and Sri Lanka are still reeling from the devastating effect of La Nina and it comes as an extremely bad news indeed that they, along with South Africa, will receive more heavy rainfall over the coming weeks, possibly even months if some climate experts are correct.

La Nina, Spanish for ‘Little girl’, is the ‘cool’ phase of the slighter better known El Nino or ‘The boy’ which represents the ‘Southern Oscillation’ in its ‘warm’ phase. The combined effects of the two are generally referred to as Enso and this is, broadly speaking, a periodic climate pattern previously known to occur in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean zone every five years or so with El Nino generally being of longer duration than his little sister.

The arrival of an El Nino event is announced by the ocean surface warming in this particular area by at least 0.5C above average and La Nina by a reduction of a similar degree. This, along with alterations in surface pressure over Australia, Indonesia and the Indian Ocean and corresponding changes in the ‘trade winds’ serve as an early warning system that one or the other face of Enso is about to make an impact. Each separate event can last from nine months to two years and, until as recently as 20 years ago, was relatively easy to predict but all this changed in 1986 when a completely new phenomenon arose.

The traditional Enso, centred on ocean surface temperature anomalies in the eastern Pacific Ocean could very well have been pushed aside by what has been christened El Nino ‘Modoki’, this word meaning ‘different’ in Japanese, which arises in the central rather than the eastern Pacific and which has some new ingredients including the formation of an increased number of Atlantic Ocean hurricanes.

This new version, the Central Pacific El Nino/La Nina, has occurred six times since first being observed in 1986 with the strongest one running from 2009-10 in its El Nino phase and from around June 2010 until either the summer of 2011 or the early months of 2012 depending on which climatologist is correct, in the shape of La Nina.

It is this La Nina being experienced right now which is causing cooler ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific and strengthening trade winds thus causing heavier precipitation in Australia, Sri Lanka and Brazil….

The La Nina state of ENSO, from NOAA