Chesapeake region leads in sea level rise

Sabri Ben-Achour in WAMU.org: Communities across the globe are beginning to come to grips with climate change and sea level rise. One of the places where the water is rising especially quickly is right here in the Chesapeake Bay region. The Chesapeake Bay has areas which are experiencing among the highest rates of sea-level rise on the East Coast. This is because the ground in many areas is sinking.

Towns are starting to see the effects and they're bracing for it. But there's more than just climate change behind the rising tide. The beach in Ocean City is a major tourist draw, it stretches hundreds of feet from the board walk, with giant dunes studded with grasses a little farther south. This beach would probably not be here right now if it weren't for the fact that tons of sand are brought in every few years to replenish it, especially after major storms.

"Beach replenishment serves as storm protection for the town of Ocean City. It's the equivalent of the levees in New Orleans for us," says Terry McGean, the Ocean City beach engineer. "They dredge sand from a couple miles offshore, and we pump that material onto the beach and basically bring the beach back."

Storms and erosion aren't new, but there's something else going on here, that's making every storm a little more serious: Tidal gauges here have measured an increase in sea level. It's gone up seven inches over 30 years -- that's 5.5 millimeters per year, and almost two feet per century.

Dr. John Boon, a professor emeritus with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, says the sea level is rising throughout this region, and some parts have it particularly bad. "We have relative sea-level rise rates that are the highest on the U.S. East Coast," he says…

Ocean City, Maryland, in a US Army Corps of Engineers photo

Massive iceberg shears off New Zealand glacier after quake

Terra Daily via AFP: A 30 million tonne block of ice sheared off a New Zealand glacier just minutes after a violent earthquake devastated the city of Christchurch, officials said Wednesday. The huge iceberg crashed into a lake shortly after the 6.3 magnitude tremor rocked the South Island on Tuesday and created waves up to three metres high for 30 minutes which rocked two sightseeing boats on the lake at the time.

The enormous iceberg -- estimated to weigh 30 to 40 million tonnes -- began ripping off the Tasman Glacier at Aoraki Mount Cook National Park accompanied by a loud noise which sounded like a rifle shot, a local tourism official said. Aoraki Mount Cook Alpine Village tourism manager Denis Callesen said locals had been expecting a major iceberg to drop from the glacier for the past month, but the "curve ball" was that the event was caused by an earthquake.

"The earthquake that we felt here was a swaying motion for about a minute, then it stopped and then it swayed for about another minute," he told AFP. "Within about a minute of that happening, the staff at the lake heard from five kilometres away (from the glacier) a sound that sounded like a rifle shot and then over the next two minutes all the events started to unfold. "I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that the earthquake was the trigger."

The Department of Conservation confirmed that a "large chunk" of the glacier fell into the lake but was unable to say if this was caused by the earthquake, which was only felt lightly around Mt Cook some 150 kilometres (93 miles) from the epicentre. "You could argue whether the earthquake precipitated it or not -- the fact is that the terminal face was about due to carve anyway," area manager Richard McNamara told AFP....

The view across Tasman Lake to the rock-covered Tasman Glacier, New Zealand's longest glacier, with the Minarets (3040 m) visible in the distance. Icebergs float on the lake, and part of the lateral moraine projects into the lake on the left. The scour line left by the glacier in previous centuries marks the hillside to its right. Shot by Avenue, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Genetically modified crops on the rise

Seed Daily: The amount of the world's farmland utilized for growing genetically modified crops increase by about 10 percent last year, a biotechnology organization says. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications says it calculates more than 2.5 billion acres have been cultivated with GM crops since their introduction in 1996, the BBC reported Tuesday.

ISAAA is an organization partly funded by industry that promotes biotechnology in agriculture. "We can recount a momentous year of progress in biotech crop adoption," said Clive James, ISAAA chairman and founder.

However, critics of GM crops say this is still just 10 percent of the world's arable land area as defined by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Greenpeace, opposed to GM crop introduction, has presented a petition to the European Commission demanding it stop approving new GM varieties.

"Today's European data show that GM crops are failing in the field and on the market; farmers and consumers are not falling for biotech industry propaganda," Greenpeace EU agriculture policy adviser Stefanie Hundsdorfer said. "GM crops are not more productive and are less resistant to extreme climate conditions than normal crops," she said. "They do, however, present a serious risk for our environment."…

A field in Calumet County, Wisconsin, with corn stover in the foreground, with no indication whether the crop is transgenic. Shot by Royalbroil, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

From Zimbabwe, a drought and climate change adaptation game

Bulawayo 24 (Zimbabwe): When we visited the Research and Intellectual Expo at the University of Zimbabwe last week, we saw some very interesting displays. One such display was at the UZ Soil Science and Agriculture Engineering department where a senior lecturer, Dr Emmanuel Manzungu, is developing a computer-based game that helps farmers and their advisors to make strategic decisions about responding to drought and climate change.

The game was demonstrated by a graduate agricultural engineer, Tinashe Nyabako, who is providing the technical expertise in the development of the game. The display at the research expo was the first for the game. Dr. Manzungu says the Windows desktop based game helps farmers and their advisors to make informed choices about what crops and varieties to grow in a particular agricultural season.

This has two advantages. First, unnecessary risk is avoided by better matching what is grown with rainfall characteristics of the season. Second, maximum possible crop output can be obtained. For example a farmer who grows a short season crop variety that is drought tolerant in a normal rainfall looses out on crop yield since the available genetic potential is not fully exploited. Conversely a farmer who plants a long season variety in a season where there is less than normal rainfall will incur low to zero yields. This is made possible by the game‘s ability to run different scenarios through the use of rainfall and socio-economic data such as family size.

According to Dr Manzungu inspiration came from the threat to food and economic security posed by drought and climate change that Zimbabwe and southern Africa faces. He added that the game makes use of widely available technologies and that gaming is part of people's everyday life…

USDA study confirms links between longer ragweed season and climate change

Ann Perry in the USDA News: Studies by a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist and cooperators have confirmed what many pollen-sensitive people already suspected: In some parts of North America, ragweed season now lasts longer and ends later. Ragweed pollen in some parts of the northern United States and Canada now lingers almost a month longer than it did in 1995, and these increases are correlated to seasonal warming shifts linked to climate change dynamics in the higher latitudes, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"One of the biggest challenges in studying climate change is finding out how the plant kingdom is adapting to increases in air temperature and other meteorological phenomena," said Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Administrator Edward B. Knipling. "Studies like this also show us that these ecological shifts don't stop at crop production. They can also have a significant impact on public health."

…Lewis Ziska, a plant physiologist with the ARS Crop Systems and Global Change Research Unit in Beltsville, Md., led a scientific team that identified 10 locations that had at least 15 years of data, from 1995 to 2009, on local ragweed pollen counts. These locations were along a north-south transect from Austin, Texas, to Saskatoon, Canada. The researchers compared the pollen data at each site to other site data, including latitude, the number of frost-free days, and delays in the onset of the first fall frost.

The researchers found that from 1995 to 2009, the number of frost-free days at higher-latitude study sites had increased, and so had the length of the ragweed pollen season. During that period, the pollen season lasted from 13 to 27 days longer than in 1995. They also found that a longer ragweed pollen season was strongly correlated with a delay in the onset of the first fall frost….

Common ragweed shot by Sue Sweeney, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Feb. 23 NASA mission to tote $28 million CU-Boulder instrument and tiny student satellite

University of Colorado at Boulder News: A $28 million University of Colorado Boulder instrument developed to study changes in the sun's brightness and its impact on Earth's climate is one of two primary payloads on NASA's Glory mission set to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Feb. 23.

Designed and built by a team from CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, the instrument called the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, will point directly toward the sun to measure both short- and long-term fluctuations in the sun's energy output as it reaches the top of Earth's atmosphere. Such measurements are important because variations in the sun's radiation can influence long-term climate change on Earth, said LASP researcher Greg Kopp, principal investigator on the TIM.

The Taurus XL rocket ferrying the Glory satellite also will be carrying a tiny CU-Boulder satellite designed and built by about 100 students, primarily undergraduates, who are participating in the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. The CubeSat satellite will be ejected from the rocket at about 400 miles in altitude to orbit the Earth and study new space communications techniques.

The CU-Boulder solar instrument on Glory is the most accurate instrument ever made to study the energy output from the sun and will continue a 32-year-long data record of solar radiation by NASA and other agencies, said Kopp. NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, a $100 million satellite designed, built and operated by CU-Boulder's LASP and launched in 2003, is equipped with a first-generation TIM instrument as well as three other solar measuring instruments.

"We'd like to know how the sun's energy changes over both the short and long term," said Kopp. "This spacecraft is carrying extremely sensitive instruments for monitoring solar variability, which makes the mission especially relevant given climate change on Earth and the importance of determining the natural influence on those changes."

Glory will join five other NASA Earth-observing satellites as part of the Afternoon Constellation, or "A-Train," a tightly grouped series of spacecraft that circle the globe several times each day to gather information on Earth's biosphere and climate, including hurricane behavior and climate change. The A-Train spacecraft follow each other in close formation, flying mere minutes apart. The A-Train orbits Earth about once every 100 minutes….

Image of the Glory satellite from NASA

Vulnerability to heatwaves and drought -- a new publication

Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Climate change will, among other impacts, bring increased risks to health and well-being from more frequent and intense heatwaves, as well as increased droughts threatening the security of affordable water supplies in the UK.

This report: introduces the concept of vulnerability to climate change within the context of social justice; examines two early case studies of adaptation in the south-west of England: the implementation of the national Heatwave Plan; and the trend towards differential water pricing based on usage (including the trial of a rising block tariff for water); and highlights the need for a more systematic consideration of current and future vulnerabilities in local, sectoral and national adaptation planning. Key points…

• Assessments of who is 'vulnerable' to climate change are highly complex. Vulnerability is generally understood as a combination of someone’s exposure and sensitivity to climate hazards (e.g. heatwaves) as well as their ability to adapt.
• Social vulnerability differs for heatwaves and drought: People who live in poorly constructed homes in 'urban heat islands' (where built environments retain heat), work in hot conditions, suffer ill health, are older or very young, receive low incomes and/or are disconnected from social networks are more likely to be vulnerable to high temperatures.
• Low-income households unable to reduce their water use are more vulnerable to differential water charging, particularly those who do not qualify for support schemes. There are likely to be strong links between some existing forms of social disadvantage and vulnerability to climate change.
• Water companies are moving away from flat rate fees to new charging models that bill customers according to water usage. This could create affordability problems for low-income households. Schemes to support vulnerable households may help to improve water efficiency while providing affordable water to all.
• The Department of Health's Heatwave Plan details how the health and care sectors should respond to heatwaves. But it is difficult for local decision-makers to identify all who are vulnerable to high temperatures, which may limit the effectiveness of planned responses. A national cross-sectoral strategy is needed.
• The authors conclude that decision-makers need to consider how vulnerability will change over time in order to prepare strategically and build resilience to climate change in advance, to achieve adaptation that is socially just.

Water Fountain, St Pancras Old Church, London On Sunday, July 28th 1968, in the midst of recording sessions for the White Album, The Beatles decided to spend a Mad Day Out being photographed at seemingly random locations all over London. One of the locations was this old drinking fountain at St Pancras Old Church. The fountain had originally been presented on 22 August 1877 by William Thornton. Shot by Christine Matthews, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Biomes in Alaska shifting due to climate change

Woods Hole Research Center: A new study released today in the EarlyView of Ecology Letters addresses forest productivity trends in Alaska, highlighting a shift in biomes caused by a warming climate. The findings, conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center and three other institutions based in Alaska and France, linked satellite observations with an extensive and unique tree-ring data set. Patterns observed support current hypotheses regarding increased growth of evergreen forest at the margins of present tundra and declining productivity at the margins of temperate forest to the south. This study provides a regional picture of forest productivity which did not previously exist.

According to lead author Pieter Beck, a post-doctoral fellow at WHRC, “The results provide evidence for the initiation of a biome shift in response to climate change, and indicate that some ecosystem models may be missing fundamental changes taking place in the circumpolar region.” He adds that “while the findings contrast with some recent model predictions of increased high latitude vegetation productivity, they are consistent with longer-term projections of global vegetation models.”

Scott Goetz, a senior scientist at WHRC, proposed the study and co-authored the manuscript. He says, “Most people don’t think of high latitudes forests as being drought stressed - and they are not in the traditional sense of having soils dry up and blow away - but their growth is negatively impacted by hot dry air masses and those have increased in recent years. This paper shows those drought impacts are captured in both the satellite and the tree ring record. Of course the tree rings go back in time much further than the satellite observations, which only extend about 30 years, but the changes that we observe from satellites are clearly supported not only by the tree rings but also by carbon isotope analysis of the wood.”

Beck adds that climate driven changes in the disturbance regime, which can rapidly alter forest dynamics and the ability of boreal forests to migrate into current tundra areas, will most likely shape the biome shift in the future….

These maps show trends in remotely sensed gross productivity (Prs) between 1982 and 2008 and trends in spruce growth since 1982 in Alaska (left) and the area around Fairbanks (right). White shading indicates sparsely vegetated or human modified land cover. Light gray shading indicates the trend in Prs from 1982 to 2008 was non-deterministic based on a Vogelsang significance test (a = 0.05), and dark gray areas had wildfires anywhere between 1982 and 2007. Green and brown shading in the symbols indicate increasing and decreasing ring widths, respectively, in unburned stands from 1982 to the year of sampling which ranged from 1994 to 2008. Map from the Woods Hole Research Center website

Cold winters mean more pollution

University of Gothenburg (Sweden): Differences in air pressure over the North Atlantic have meant that the last two winters in Gothenburg have been extremely cold. This has led to the air in Gothenburg being more polluted with nitrogen oxides than ever before. A new study from the University of Gothenburg shows that there is a strong link between climate and air pollution.

The winter weather in Gothenburg and large parts of North-West Europe is partly down to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), in other words the differences in air pressure over the North Atlantic. The NAO swings between positive and negative phases depending on the differences in air pressure between Iceland and the Azores. When the NAO is in a negative phase – as has been the case during the last two winters – the city has cold winters because the low pressure sits over southern Europe, while cold air from the polar region or Siberia sits over northern Europe.

In a study carried out in Gothenburg, a group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg investigated how the concentrations of nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2) in the air can be linked to the weather. Published in the scientific journal Atmospheric Environment, the study shows that the air quality standard has been exceeded more and more frequently during periods of a negative NAO even though emissions have fallen in the city centre since 2000 according to official measurements from the Environmental Administration.

“These extremely cold winters in Gothenburg, with high cold air, bring a clear deterioration in air quality,” says Maria Grundström from the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, one of the researchers behind the study. “With typical Gothenburg weather – low air pressure with precipitation and strong winds – the air pollution is dispersed more quickly on account of better air mixing.”…

Gothenburg in warmer weather, shot by Wigulf, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

50 million 'environmental refugees' by 2020, experts say

Terra Daily via AFP: Fifty million "environmental refugees" will flood into the global north by 2020, fleeing food shortages sparked by climate change, experts warned at a major science conference that ended here Monday. "In 2020, the UN has projected that we will have 50 million environmental refugees," University of California, Los Angeles professor Cristina Tirado said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"When people are not living in sustainable conditions, they migrate," she continued, outlining with the other speakers how climate change is impacting both food security and food safety, or the amount of food available and the healthfulness of that food. Southern Europe is already seeing a sharp increase in what has long been a slow but steady flow of migrants from Africa, many of whom risk their lives to cross the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain from Morocco or sail in makeshift vessels to Italy from Libya and Tunisia.

The flow recently grew to a flood after a month of protests in Tunisia, set off by food shortages and widespread unemployment and poverty, brought down the government of longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, said Michigan State University professor Ewen Todd, who predicted there will be more of the same. "What we saw in Tunisia -- a change in government and suddenly there are a whole lot of people going to Italy -- this is going to be the pattern," Todd told AFP.

"Already, Africans are going in small droves up to Spain, Germany and wherever from different countries in the Mediterranean region, but we're going to see many, many more trying to go north when food stress comes in. And it was food shortages that put the people of Tunisia and Egypt over the top….

Vietnamese refugees in 1982, US Navy photo

Indonesia as a leader

Erik Solheim in the Jakarta Post: …the inconvenient truth is that commitment and action from developed countries alone would not solve the climate change challenge, even if all developed countries stopped all emissions today. Developing countries must act as well. Unless we all take large scale remedial action, huge damage worldwide will follow, wreaking havoc with much of the development progress of the last decades.

…Fortunately, even in the most difficult times, there are always alternatives. Tropical forest countries, like Indonesia, are endowed with rich natural resources that sustain essential life support systems both for the region and for the world.

Lasting economic growth can be built on sustainable land use and world class agricultural productivity. Effective and transparent land use planning and improved governance and transparency can be established at all levels of government. What the world needs is good examples of how this could be done: Indonesia is in the process of becoming such an example.
Private enterprise, moreover, benefit from the ecosystem services that standing forests and peatlands provide, and will suffer from the consequences of climate change, such as lack of water and unreliable rainfall patterns.

…Low emission development is a fundamental choice for a country that cannot be imposed from the outside. Norway has pledged to support Indonesia with US$ 1 billion over the next few years. However, the agreement between Indonesia and Norway only captures in writing what Indonesia under President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s leadership had already planned to do….

A brook in an Indonesia forest in 1929, from the Tropenmuseum Collection via Wikimedia Commons

New Deutsche Bank report: 'Investing in Climate Change 2011'

Deutsche Bank Asset Management: A DB Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA) report released today, "Investing in Climate Change 2011", examines the risks associated with climate change investing across different asset classes and provides a framework to understand how asset managers can manage these risks. In the report, DBCCA argues that a major shift in investor attitudes is taking place: leading institutional investors around the world to undertake this analysis because of a growing realization of the potentially profound impact climate change may have on their existing portfolios.

"Institutional investors are giving greater consideration than ever before to climate change in their assessment of asset allocation," said Kevin Parker, Global Head of Deutsche Bank's Asset Management division (DeAM) and a member of Deutsche Bank's Group Executive Committee. "I believe that we have reached a critical point in our industry at which all the talk about climate change begins to translate into action. Asset owners everywhere are starting to move and naturally their first impulse is to identify where in their portfolios the climate risk lies. To do so effectively and efficiently, they need a new intellectual framework and set of tools. And they need them now."

The report, DBCCA's fourth annual review of the climate change investment market, points out that 2010 was the largest year on record for investment in clean energy and globally, the investment opportunity steadily continues to improve.

…The report identifies eight key trends which will influence investors' capital allocations over the next year:

• The climate change megatrend persists.
• A more sophisticated exploration of climate change risk within portfolios.
• Policy is a key driver for cleaner energy.
• The ambitious scale, scope and commitment of Chinese leadership will foment structural change in clean technologies.
• Investors will look to US state projects rather than projects driven by Federal policy.
• Natural gas as a lower-emission transition fuel in the US.
• The risk-return profile in the climate change sector varies between asset classes.
• Global policy makers recognize the need for more in-depth dialogue to explore how public and private partnerships can support renewable energy scale-up in developing countries.

Victor Korniyenko created this global map of average temperature change, with a time frame of either "2000-2009" or "1950-1980". Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

California disaster scenario highlighted

Molly Davis in the San Bernardino Sun (California): Although most Californians picture a devastating earthquake when they think of a natural disaster, massive flooding is just as much of a danger, according to a recent scientific presentation. A presentation on the ARkStorm scenario, a disaster simulation, was given Friday at the Yucaipa Community Center.

Lucy Jones, the chief scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey's Multi-Hazards Initiative in Southern California and a nationally known expert on disaster preparation, talked about what would happen if a catastrophic storm system hit Southern California. "One-quarter of homes would be flooded," Jones hypothesized. "It would cause almost a trillion dollars in damages."

ARkStorm is a scientifically plausible, hypothetical storm scenario developed by the USGS to show natural disasters and their effects, and what the public can do to prepare. The simulation is patterned after the massive storms that struck California in 1861-62, flooding the Sacramento Valley, Los Angeles Basin, Orange County and the Mojave Desert.

According to the East Valley Water District, which sponsored the event, storms of the same magnitude as the 1861-62 system are projected to become more frequent as a result of climate change. The goal of the presentation was to integrate hazards science with economic analysis and emergency response to increase community resiliency to natural disasters, the EVWD's news release said….

A 1998 FEMA photograph of a mudslide's aftermath in Rio Nido, California

China’s insurance regulator urges insurers to take active role in drought relief

Insurancenews.net via AM Best: The China Insurance Regulatory Commission has urged insurers to be well-prepared for agricultural insurance underwriting in 2011, ensuring they are providing sufficient coverage for domestic cultivation throughout the year to facilitate steady protection of food and rural manufacturing against drought.

The drought problem in China has come early this year and caused continuous problems for economic activities concentrated in drought-affected regions. "Underwriting must be taken actively for crops that meet the conditions for insurance in order to ensure adequate insurance coverage for the spring production," said the CIRC in a statement.

The CIRC has requested all insurance regulatory bureaus and property insurers in affected regions to set up task forces and strengthen communications among different level governments to draft action plans and provide relief against the financial impact. These regions need to submit their action plans to the CIRC on Feb. 17, said CIRC. Provinces including Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu are seriously affected by the droughts.

The commission also urged regional insurance regulatory bureaus and insurers to collect insurance-related drought data. "Insurers are required to process agricultural insurance claims rapidly and pay the compensation in full within 10 days of assessing the crop losses caused by the droughts," noted the CIRC.

Insurance experts warn that with climate change unfolding, catastrophic events such as hurricanes, floods and droughts are likely to increase further, hitting in particular emerging markets and development countries. "The economic costs of natural catastrophes have risen from an average US$25 billion per annum in the 1980s to US$130 billion in the 2000s," said reinsurer Swiss Re in a recent report….

Rice farming in Yunnan, shot by Guy Lebègue, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Effects of climate change in Lebanon to grow more severe

Sin-ming Shaw in the Daily Star (Lebanon): Lebanon must brace for more heavy rains and storms, coupled with long periods of drought and water shortages as the affects of global warming continue to take their toll, a Canadian climate expert has warned. Professor John Pomeroy, the Canada research chair in water resources and climate change at Saskatchewan University, believes that the recent extreme weather could be more than just a “blip” and may well be the knock-on effects of climate change making themselves apparent decades ahead of existing forecasts.

“The intensity of rainfall is getting greater but the time between rainfalls is also getting greater,” Pomeroy, who completed a lecturing tour of the Middle East last week, told The Daily Star. “This means that ironically we will have more rain but also more droughts. “It is terrible news for water management in Lebanon. Water, when it comes, comes too fast and causes erosion and floods,” he added.

Visiting at the request of the Water and Energy Ministry and the American University of Technology, Pomeroy has dedicated his career to studying the effects of climate change on snow and rain patterns. “The difficulty for Lebanon is that with climate warming the snowpack is much less likely to persist and could almost entirely disappear. That means that Lebanon will have to manage its water resources completely differently,” he said.

Existing climate models predict temperatures in Lebanon rising between 4 to 5°Celsius within the century. Such an increase will almost certainly cause snowfall in mountainous areas to turn to heavy rainfall. “This is happening faster than we predicted. We expected to see this kind of weather by mid-century, but it is happening now,” Pomeroy said….

New assessment of black carbon and tropospheric ozone's role in climate change

Science Daily: Black carbon (BC) and tropospheric ozone (O3) are harmful air pollutants that also contribute to climate change. The emission of both will continue to negatively impact both human health and climate. While our scientific understanding of how black carbon and tropospheric ozone affect climate and public health has significantly improved in recent years, the threat posed by these pollutants has catalysed a demand for knowledge and concrete action from governments, civil society, United Nations (UN) agencies and other stakeholders.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was requested to urgently provide science-based advice on actions to reduce the impact of these pollutants and the Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone is the result. Its main findings are:

• A small number of emissions reduction measures targeting black carbon and tropospheric ozone could immediately begin to protect climate, public health, water and food security, and ecosystems. These measures target fossil fuel extraction, residential cooking and heating, diesel vehicles, waste management, agriculture and small industries. Full implementation is achievable with existing technology but would require significant and strategic investment as well as institutional arrangements.
• The identified measures complement, but do not replace, anticipated carbon dioxide reduction measures. Major carbon dioxide reduction strategies mainly target the energy and large industrial sectors and therefore would not necessarily result in significant reductions in emissions of the black carbon or ozone precursors; methane and carbon monoxide. Significant reductions of black carbon and O3, require a specific strategy, as emissions come from a large number of small sources.
• Full implementation of these measures would reduce future global warming by 0.5 degrees C (within a likely range of 0.2-0.7 degrees C). If the measures are implemented by 2030, this could halve the potential increase in global temperature which is projected for 2050. The rate of regional temperature increase would also be reduced.
• Both near-term and long-term strategies are essential. Reductions in near-term warming can be achieved by control of black carbon and O3 whereas CO2 emission reductions, beginning now, are required to limit long-term climate change. Implementing both reduction strategies is needed to improve the chances of keeping Earth's global mean temperature increase to within UNFCCC's 2 degree C target.
• The implementation of the identified measures would have substantial benefits in the Arctic, the Himalayas, and other glaciated and snow-covered regions.
• These measures are all in use in different regions around the world. Much wider implementation is required to achieve the full benefits identified in this assessment.

A power plant's smokestack in Turku, Finland, shot by Karri Palmroos, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Dust from Africa may increase risk of seafood poisoning

Richard Gray in the Telegraph (UK): Researchers have found that harmful bacteria found in seawater flourish in the presence of dust that comes from the Sahara desert in western Africa, as well as other areas of continent. They warn that as climate change causes such desert areas to grow, the risk of seafood poisoning could rise around the world.

At the same time, rising sea temperatures could further increase the chances of these bacteria occurring in shellfish caught in British waters. Huge quantities of the dust can be carried long distances across the sea by the trade winds. Although much of it is deposited in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean, some reaches northern Europe and the UK, where it can sometimes be found forming a thin layer on car windscreens.

Dr Erin Lipp, from the University of Georgia, said that species of harmful bacteria including Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Vibrio alginolyticus, Vibrio vulnificus and even cholera showed significant growth spurts two days after African desert dust was added to the water they grew in. She said: "We focused on desert areas in western Africa that are likely to grow over the coming century due to climate change. Dust storms in these areas are also projected to increase and with them, the transport of dust across the Atlantic Ocean basin."
Dr Lipp, who presented the findings at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington on Saturday, added: "Our results suggest that in addition to rising sea surface temperatures, increased global production and oceanic deposition of desert dust may have a significant affect on key marine pathogens and may ultimately increase exposure rates and infection risk in humans. "We saw a 10 to 1,000-fold growth in Vibrios, including one strain that could cause eye, ear, and open wound infections, and another strain that could cause cholera."

Desert dust can lead to huge booms in sea life as it helps to nourish the water but the new findings could also now be used to help predict when shellfish from different regions are most at risk of causing food poisoning outbreaks…

A dust plume off the coast of West Africa

Saudi Arabia wants cut of $100 billion adaptation fund

Mridul Chadha in Clean Technica: Saudi Arabia needs special treatment in the disbursement of funds from the $100 billion climate change adaptation fund, this is the proposal that the country has submitted to the United Nations. Saudi Arabia, the largest oil exporter, says that it faces economic vulnerability due to fluctuations in the global oil prices.

Decision to form an international climate change adaption fund was taken during the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 to provide financial help to developing and poor countries to set up clean energy infrastructure and aid technology transfer. United Nations had set a deadline of February 21, 2011 for providing comments and input from all parties involved. Saudi Arabia has said that it would need help develop solar power infrastructure and financial aid to diversify its energy options.

Saudi Arabia says that its economy would feel the pinch of an international climate change resolution as it would impact oil consumption around the world.

Saudi Arabia has has a long history of selfishly looking for its own gains, supporting any step which results in the world’s continued addiction for oil and has vehemently opposed almost all international efforts to curb global carbon emission output and increased use of renewable energy technologies. During the COP10 held at Buenos Aires in 2004, Saudi Arabia had opposed the very aid package for developing countries which it wants a share of now.

In 2009, the OPEC General Secretary said that use of oil is not responsible for climate change and that it is the industrial nations which are responsible for global warming. The statement came at a time when there was buzz about developed countries like the US and Canada considering to levy carbon tax on imported carbon-intensive goods….

Image of sand dunes in Rub' al Khali, Arabia's "empty quarter". Acquired by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or ASTER, aboard NASA's Terra Earth-orbiting satellite

US study predicts prolonged toxic algal outbreaks due to climate change

Xinhua: Climate change could prolong toxic algal outbreaks by 2040 or sooner, posing a health threat to humans, a new study suggests. Using cutting-edge technologies to model future ocean and weather patterns, a team of U.S. researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the University of Washington looked at blooms of Alexandrium catenella, more commonly known as "red tide," which produces saxitoxin, a poison that can accumulate in shellfish.

If consumed by humans, saxitoxin can cause gastrointestinal and neurological symptoms including vomiting and muscle paralysis or even death in extreme cases, the researchers said in the study published Saturday by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Longer harmful algal bloom seasons could translate to more days the shellfish fishery is closed, threatening the vitality of the 108-million-dollar shellfish industry in Washington state, according to the study. The team predicted that places like Washington State's Puget Sound would experience longer seasons of harmful algal bloom outbreaks in the "imminent" future.

"Changes in the harmful algal bloom season appear to be imminent and we expect a significant increase in Puget Sound and similar at- risk environments within 30 years, possibly by the next decade," said Stephanie Moore, Ph.D., with NOAA's West Coast Center for Oceans and Human Health….

An algal bloom off the Danish coast, view by NASA satellite

What does the Arab world do when its water runs out?

John Vidal in the Global Development blog in the Guardian (UK): Poverty, repression, decades of injustice and mass unemployment have all been cited as causes of the political convulsions in the Middle East and north Africa these last weeks. But a less recognised reason for the turmoil in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and now Iran has been rising food prices, directly linked to a growing regional water crisis.

The diverse states that make up the Arab world, stretching from the Atlantic coast to Iraq, have some of the world's greatest oil reserves, but this disguises the fact that they mostly occupy hyper-arid places. Rivers are few, water demand is increasing as populations grow, underground reserves are shrinking and nearly all depend on imported staple foods that are now trading at record prices.

For a region that expects populations to double to more than 600 million within 40 years, and climate change to raise temperatures, these structural problems are political dynamite and already destabilising countries, say the World Bank, the UN and many independent studies.

In recent reports they separately warn that the riots and demonstrations after the three major food-price rises of the last five years in north Africa and the Middle East might be just a taste of greater troubles to come unless countries start to share their natural resources, and reduce their profligate energy and water use…

Map showing the Arab League members colored by the decade of joining, with lighter being longer-term membership. Map by Jak, Wikimedia Commons

Making water safe to drink

Science Daily: "Over the last couple of generations, there has been a huge amount of groundwater pollution worldwide, and this has had a negative impact on our drinking water supply," says Barbara Sherwood Lollar, Canada Research Chair in Isotope Geochemistry of the Earth and the Environment at the University of Toronto.

Sherwood Lollar took part in the THINK CANADA Press Breakfast Sunday at AAAS. Her research examines society's efforts to reverse and stop groundwater pollution, and the effectiveness of bioremediation technologies -- using microbes to clean up organic contaminants such as petroleum hydrocarbons (oil, gasoline or diesel) or chemicals used in the electronics or transportation industries.

While the disposal of these organic contaminants tends to be well regulated today, this has not always been the case. Lax regulations and enforcement during the period immediately after the Second World War has left Europe and North America with a legacy of past contamination. "This contamination has had a pervasive impact on the environment," says Sherwood Lollar. "It is still out there, and it needs to be dealt with."

Over the past decade, many techniques used to clean up groundwater contamination have harnessed the power of microbiology and the work of geochemists like Sherwood Lollar. "We are not genetically engineering microbes," she explains. "In many settings, naturally occurring microbes feed off the organic contaminants and, in the process, convert them to non-toxic end products."

…."Elements like carbon have different stable isotopes: Carbon-12 and Carbon-13. One is slightly heavier than the other, and the microbes tend to feed mostly on the lighter one. When the microbes have been working for some time, the ratio of heavy-to-light carbon will change. It is this change -- referred to as an isotopic signature -- that lets us know the water is being cleaned up," says Sherwood Lollar.

By cleaning up contaminated groundwater, it is possible to recuperate what would otherwise be a lost resource. The technique is starting to be used by regulators, and Sherwood Lollar is working with an international group of scientists to put together a guidance document for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)…

Water in Stopica Cave

Pakistan’s efficient response helped cope with floods, says ambassador

The Daily Times (Pakistan) sounds upbeat: Six months after unprecedented floods uprooted millions of lives, Pakistan has defied all gloomy predictions to emerge stronger through resilience of its people and efficient governmental response to the catastrophe, Islamabad’s envoy to the United States said.

Ambassador Hussain Haqqani was highlighting the Pakistani nation’s recovery efforts in the face of last summer’s devastating floods – the first natural disaster in recent memory – that displaced 20 million people and inflicted a loss of over $9 billion according to a World Bank study.

Pakistan, he told a Washington think tank, has been striving to reconstruct its vast areas swamped by the floods and is confident of a full recovery from the calamity of epic proportions with sustained support from its friends in the international community.

But, he pointed out, contrary to Western media speculations about instability in the immediate aftermath of the natural disaster, the Pakistani state has remained stable, functional and cohesive. It has lived up to the enormous task of saving flood victims from disease and starvation and enabled their return to homes for a fresh start. In fact, the ambassador said, Pakistan is on its way to achieving a better economic growth than initially feared dismal outlook.

Simultaneously, he noted, the country is marching towards democratic consolidation and overpowering the terrorist challenge through a combination of national policies and determination of its people. “One major reason that Pakistan cannot face an uprising of the type that is currently passing through the Middle East and North Africa is that it has political institutions in place which can both articulate and alleviate the concerns of its masses,” the envoy said in a presentation at the Atlantic Council….

Jordan's efforts to adapt to climate change 'unorganised'

Hana Namrouqa in Zawya: Jordan must take its climate change adaptation measures to the national level in order to enact needed programmes estimated to cost the Kingdom billions of dollars over the next decade, experts and officials say. The fact that the Kingdom doesn't contribute to greenhouse emissions but is already falling victim to climate change has led decision makers to place adaptation to climate change as a priority, officials and experts in the field said.

Despite the introduction of programmes designed to tackle climate change, authorities have fallen short of incorporating climate change adaptation issues into national policies, particularly at the ministries of agriculture, energy and mineral resources, industry and trade, education and health, according to experts.

With climate change adaptation measures expected to cost the county billions of dollars over the upcoming decades, officials say there is a growing need for comprehensive efforts in the Kingdom, one of the hardest hit by the phenomenon in the Arab world.

In order to integrate climate change into national policies, an estimated $1.564 billion is needed for climate change adaptation and an additional $3.345 billion for mitigation by the year 2020, states the draft National Environmental and Economic Development Study for Climate Change (NEEDS) report.

According to projections in the draft report, carried out by the ministries of environment, water and irrigation, agriculture, energy and finance, the figure increases to $5 billion by the year 2050….

Desert in the south of Jordan, shot by MM, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Understanding on-farm climate change decisions

Farm Weekly (Australia): A new report released today by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation helps to explain what drives farmers’ decision making in relation to climate change. “This new report looks at how different kinds of farmers react to the prospect of climate change adaptation, and the factors that impact on their decision making,” Mr Craig Burns, RIRDC Managing Director said.

“The study found that health and social factors were key attributes of farmers who were seeking to move towards more sustainable farming practices. It also found many farmers are driven by a sense of moral responsibility when it comes to their attitudes to sustainability.” …Some of the report’s findings include:

• ‘Cash poor long term adaptors’ actively seek to adapt their farming practices to manage climate change risk and to be sustainable in the long term;
• ‘Comfortable non-adaptors’ feel little pressure to seriously consider climate change or the adaptive practices that adverse climate change will demand;
• ‘Transitioners ’ had poor overall adaptive capacity, and were less certain about climate change and what they should do about it.
  

Waist-high cotton growing on a Queensland farm, around 1924

Frequent, severe fires turn Alaskan forests into a carbon production line

Jennifer Donovan in Michigan Tech News: Alaskan forests used to be important players in Mother Nature’s game plan for regulating carbon dioxide levels in the air. It’s elementary earth science: Trees take up carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. But now, American and Canadian researchers report that climate change is causing wildfires to burn larger swaths of Alaskan trees and to char the groundcover more severely, turning the black spruce forests of Alaska from repositories of carbon to generators of it. And the more carbon dioxide they release, the greater impact that may have in turn on future climate change.

“Since the proliferation of black spruce, Alaskan soils have acted as huge carbon sinks,” says Evan Kane, a research assistant professor in Michigan Technological University’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. “But with more frequent and more extensive burning in recent decades, these forests now lose more carbon in any fire event than they have historically been able to take up between fires.”

Kane is co-author on a paper published in the January 2011 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. Lead author on the research study titled “Recent Acceleration of Biomass Burning and Carbon Losses in Alaskan Forests and Peatlands” is Merritt R. Turetsky of the University of Guelph, Ontario.

The overall impact of burning northern forests depends on both the frequency and severity of the fires, the researchers note. A majority of the carbon in these forests is stored in the layers of moss, peat and leaf litter that cover the ground, and those are the layers most likely to burn in forest fires.

This burning not only releases carbon emissions, but the loss of that ground layer affects a number of natural processes, such as regulation of soil climate, maintenance of permafrost and the kinds of trees that can grow back. The new forest types likely to establish after repeated severe fires act as a much weaker carbon sink than black spruce forests….

From July 2009, a NASA image of several lightning-triggered fires (outlined in red) south west of Fairbanks, Alaska. The largest was the combined Bear Lake/Minto Flats South Fire; according to the situation summary report from the Alaska Inter-agency Coordination Centre, the fire was estimated to be just over 79,000 acres. The Bear Creek Fire is just inside the northern perimeter of Denali National Park. Dark brown patches mark the locations of old fires.

Grim outlook for US forests because of bugs, disease

Scott Condon in the Post Independent (Glenwood Springs, Colorado): The outlook for forests in western North America is grim: White pines in majestic Yellowstone National Park face obliteration; two-thirds of aspen forests, including many in the Roaring Fork Valley, are likely doomed; and bark beetle infestations will intensify with climate change.

The grim outlook was delivered Friday by scientists at the “Forests at Risk” conference in Aspen. More than 400 conservationists, U.S. Forest Service workers and curious folks attended the conference presented by For the Forests, an Aspen nonprofit. “There wasn't much good news in anything any of you had to say,” moderator Renee Montagne of National Public Radio told a panel featuring the first four presenters at the conference.

Tom Swetnam, professor and director of the laboratory of tree-ring research at the University of Arizona, said climate change will exacerbate the drought cycles that the study of tree rings show have regularly occurred in North America. There might be more rainfall as a result of climate change, he said, but it will be more than offset by higher temperatures.

That will create problems for virtually all species of trees in western forests. Jim Worrall, a plant pathologist with the U.S. Forest Service and a top expert on Sudden Aspen Decline (SAD), said there is “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” that the problem is tied to climate change. The drought that peaked in Colorado and much of the West in 2002 stressed trees and made them more susceptible to bugs and diseases. SAD mortality in aspen trees peaked in 2008 when 542,000 acres of the iconic tree died off.

…Swetnam said public land managers can't concentrate on restoring forests to a past condition. The changes have been too drastic. The focus should be getting forests into conditions where they can be resilient over time. That will require use of prescribed fire. Fire fighting has been eliminated as part of “the Smokey Bear effect,” he said, referring to the Forest Service firefighting. “We need to reintroduce fire,” Swetnam said, stressing that “we can't just rely on chainsaws.”…

Aspen trees in fall color on the North Kaibab Ranger District in Arizona. From U.S. Forest Service, Southwestern Region, Kaibab National Forest. Posted to Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license