New map of global air pollution

NASA/Goddard: In many developing countries, the absence of surface-based air pollution sensors makes it difficult, and in some cases impossible, to get even a rough estimate of the abundance of a subcategory of airborne particles that epidemiologists suspect contributes to millions of premature deaths each year. The problematic particles, called fine particulate matter (PM2.5), are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, about a tenth the fraction of human hair. These small particles can get past the body’s normal defenses and penetrate deep into the lungs.

To fill in these gaps in surface-based PM2.5 measurements, experts look toward satellites to provide a global perspective. Yet, satellite instruments have generally struggled to achieve accurate measurements of the particles in near-surface air. The problem: Most satellite instruments can't distinguish particles close to the ground from those high in the atmosphere. In addition, clouds tend to obscure the view. And bright land surfaces, such as snow, desert sand, and those found in certain urban areas can mar measurements.

However, the view got a bit clearer this summer with the publication of the first long-term global map of PM2.5 in a recent issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. Canadian researchers Aaron van Donkelaar and Randall Martin at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, created the map by blending total-column aerosol amount measurements from two NASA satellite instruments with information about the vertical distribution of aerosols from a computer model.

…The map shows very high levels of PM2.5 in a broad swath stretching from the Saharan Desert in Northern Africa to Eastern Asia. When compared with maps of population density, it suggests more than 80 percent of the world's population breathe polluted air that exceeds the World Health Organization's recommended level of 10 micrograms per cubic meter. Levels of PM2.5 are comparatively low in the United States, though noticeable pockets are clearly visible over urban areas in the Midwest and East…..

Global satellite-derived map of PM_2.5 averaged over 2001-2006. Credit: Dalhousie University, Aaron van Donkelaar

Flood-ravaged Mexico hit from Pacific

Terra Daily via AFP: A new storm compounded Mexico's misery Tuesday, drenching the Baja California peninsula as the country tallied its dead and struggled to care for one million people affected by Hurricane Karl and historic flooding. Pacific Tropical Storm Georgette drenched the resort town of Cabo San Lucas at Baja California's southern tip, lashing the region with strong winds before being downgraded to a tropical depression.

"We have already evacuated around 1,000 families" from areas vulnerable to flooding and storm surges, said Jose Gajon, director of Civil Defense for Baja California Sur state.

Across the country to the east, the toll from the powerful hurricane that struck last Friday, mainly in Veracruz state along the Gulf of Mexico coast, rose to 22 dead as emergency crews searched many of the hundreds of towns and villages inundated by heavy rains and flooding and struggled to reach remote communities….

Tough fighting on Australian beaches

Andrew Clennell in the Daily Telegraph (Australia): Homeowners who sandbag coastal areas to protect their properties during storms could face fines up to $247,000 under tough new coastal protection laws. Councils will also be given the power to impose levies on coastal property owners to build sea walls.

Environment Minister Frank Sartor is in negotiations with the Greens to get his Coastal Protection Bill through Parliament, with the Opposition opposing it and organisations such as the Property Council lobbying to have it defeated. The Bill includes provisions for $495,000 fines for corporations and $247,000 fines for residents who install illegal measures to protect their homes from sea level rises. Residents who do not gain approval for sandbagging would also pay up to $22,000 a day in fines if they continue.

Mr Sartor's laws - which he introduced into Parliament this week - have raised the ire of NSW coastal residents. The laws apply to properties within 1km of coastal rivers and estuaries as well as seafront properties….

Aerial view of bathers on a Gold Coast beach in Queensland, Australia, shot by S B, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Glacial retreat in Ecuador

John Vidal in the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog” (UK): The Cayambe volcano lies dead on the equator line in Ecuador and is the third-highest mountain in all the Americas at 17,159 ft (5,230m). It is really only climbed by serious "Andenistas" - as opposed to Alpinists - because of its crevasses and icecap, so the great Guardian/Oxfam climate expedition stopped at a modest 4,675m (14,250ft), which is nearly the height of Mont Blanc.

Okay, we went nearly all the way by Toyota pickup on a perilous track, but the wind was bitter and the snow lay deep on the glaciers. Or what was left of them.

Where, just 25 years ago, there had been a three-kilometre long, 60-metre thick avalanche of ice, tumbling off the peak, we gazed down on bare, black rock. A whole valley once filled with ice was mostly empty. The snout of the glacier was 1,800 ft higher than it had been.

…For the next few years, glacier retreat may not be a great problem around Cayambe, because the extra melt water from the icecap makes up for the lack of rain that is being experienced. But this cannot last. Soon, the melting of the Andean cryosphere - or iceworld - will impact heavily on urban water supplies and therefore on some of the poorest people in the world, who depend on the rivers, which in turn depend on the melt water off mountains like Cayambe….

Cayambe volcano, shot by Martin Iturbide, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rising energy demand hits water scarcity

Peter Boaz and Matthew O. Berger in IPS: Meeting the growing demand for energy in the U.S., even through sustainable means, could entail greater threats to the environment, new research shows. The study was carried out by Circle of Blue, a network of journalists and scientists dedicated to water sustainability, and could have implications not just for the relationship between energy demand and water scarcity in the U.S. but elsewhere in the world, as well. "It is not just that energy production could not occur without using vast amounts of water. It's also that it's occurring in the era of climate change, population growth and steadily increasing demand for energy," explained Circle of Blue's Keith Schneider, who presented the findings in Washington Wednesday.

"The result is that the competition for water at every stage of the mining, processing, production, shipping and use of energy is growing more fierce, more complex and much more difficult to resolve," he said. About half the 410 billion gallons of water the U.S. withdraws daily goes to cooling thermoelectric power plants, and most of that to cooling coal-burning plants, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

...The U.S. government has not been blind to the conflict between energy and water needs. The first part of a report commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 2005 laid out the consequences of not paying enough attention to water supply issues in increasing energy production. The second part, which would have laid out a research agenda and begun developing solutions, has yet to be made public, says Schneider. He says the U.S. Department of Energy has declined repeated requests to explain why the report has not been published.

…In 2009, the U.S. dedicated 23 million acres of public lands in six states for new solar electricity-generating plants as part of its economic stimulus package, which apportioned nearly 100 billion dollars for clean energy projects. Though the plan appeared promising, environmentalists soon began to point it could have damaging, unintended consequences. Schneider notes that criticism of the impact the water-cooled solar plants could have on water priorities in the U.S. Southwest even came from within the government….

Glen Canyon Dam , Lake Powell, Arizona, shot by , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Lifeboats and lifelines in the Philippines

Jose Ma and Lorenzo Tan in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: …In the Philippines, we must cement down the rules on resource use and stop re-classification. These are finite resources. We must eliminate overlaps through integrated area planning, as opposed to the traditional silo approach. The “one-town-one product” program was only Phase 1. Development of strategic regional plans, founded on likely climate scenarios, will be Phase 2.

• We know that the environment is the social security system for a vast number of poor. Although jobs may be created, they cannot be sustained in a vacuum that does not include solid social, economic and environmental foundations. More than that, we must rationalize agriculture/ aquaculture, introducing and promoting “climate smart” formulas. With global population expected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion, we know that natural systems will no longer suffice. Simply because we do not have a “Planet B,” it is imperative that we develop a “Plan B” for all crucial life-sustaining services.

• More than just “lifeboats,” we know that we must strengthen climate “lifelines”—the ways by which people, messages, information and goods are moved. These include transport, infrastructure, telecommunications, energy, banking and insurance. We know that unless these crucial lifelines are made climate ready, our economy faces serious marginalization.

…Cognizant of the non-linear nature of climate change, adaptation must be designed now through a bottom-up process. Adaptation is the management of risk. This can start now, locally. In contrast, the best-laid mitigation efforts (carbon reduction) will take 50 years or more to stabilize climate—while hunger happens daily. Local actions should define national programs. And, as a planet, we must learn how to work together. There are many solutions, but we only have one future, and one planet…

Desert dust reduces river flow

Environmental Research Web: Dark-colored dust that settles on snow in the Upper Colorado River Basin makes the snow melt early and robs the Colorado River of about 5 percent of its water each year, says a new study coauthored by researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), a collaboration of the University of Colorado and NOAA. This quantity of lost water is nearly twice what the city of Las Vegas uses in a year, says study coauthor Brad Udall, director of the Western Water Assessment (WWA) – a joint program of CIRES and NOAA.

"By cutting down on dust we could restore some of the lost flow, which is critical as the Southwestern climate warms," Udall said.

Snow dusted with dark particles absorbs a greater fraction of the Sun's rays and melts faster than white snow, said coauthor Jeffrey Deems of WWA and CIRES' National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Earlier snowmelt then lets the growing season of snow-covered vegetation start earlier and more water is lost through evaporation and transpiration, he said. That leaves less water for the Colorado River, which supplies water to more than 27 million people in seven states and two countries.

Heavy dust coatings on the snowpack are a relatively recent phenomenon. Since the mid-1800s onwards, human activities, such as livestock grazing and road building, have disturbed the desert soil and broken up the soil crust that curbs wind erosion. Winds then whip up the desert dust – from northwest New Mexico, northeast Arizona, and southern Utah – and drop it on mountains downwind that form the river's headwaters, Deems said.

"Dust can have an impact even when it's too sparse to notice," said study leader Thomas Painter, a snow hydrologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. and an affiliate scientist of NSIDC. "But it can get to the point where it looks like cinnamon toast."…

An aerial section of snow-covered Rocky Mountain range. This image shows an ariel view of Mt. Princeton. Shot by Wing-Chi Poon, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Kuwait’s coral is dying as sea warms up

James Calderwood in the National: A group of Kuwaiti divers has reported bleaching in more than 90 per cent of the country’s coral reefs – a sign that the coral is either sick or dead. “This is really bad,” Dari al Huwail, a member of Kuwait Dive Team, said. “Before Ramadan, it seemed normal; there were signs of bleaching, but they were not unusual, at least to me.” After the holy month, “we went diving for a conservation project and were shocked to discover how massive the bleaching was”.

When team members dived at a reef near Umm al Maradim island, they noticed most of the brightly coloured corals had turned a sickly white. When two teams of divers inspected Kuwait’s seven other major reefs this week, they realised that the whole country was affected.

“We’re not scientific experts, we don’t have a background in marine biology, but we are professional in documenting what we see,” Mr al Huwail said. The team said it was ready to collaborate with international experts to discover why the corals have turned white and try to solve the problem.

Ali Haidar, the deputy director general of the government’s Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement on Monday that the bleaching was probably caused by rising sea temperatures. Sea temperatures around Kuwait have soared to 35°C this year….

Satellite image of Kuwait's islands, from NASA

Environment as the foundation

AllAfrica.com via the African Development Bank: "Climate Change permeates all discussions on development and how we address the challenges of finance is an important issue," AfDB Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Nkosana Moyo, said while opening a two-day Roundtable on African Perspectives on the Issues before the UN High Level Advisory Group on Climate change financing in Tunis on Tuesday 21 September 2010. Mr. Moyo was speaking on behalf of President Donald Kaberuka who is a member of the UN High Level Advisory Group, but is currently attending the Heads of States Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in New York.

Noting that the environment was a global public good, Mr. Moyo said finance to support investments, technology development and transfer as well as capacity building for both mitigation and adaptation was crucial if Africa was to adequately adapt to climate change impacts and take actions to grow a low carbon intensive economy in line with its sustainable development imperatives in a cost-effective manner. "For most of the countries in Africa, the overwhelming aspect of the challenges posed by climate change will be how to deal with its adverse impacts through adaptation. These impacts, which are already becoming visible are affecting major parts of the economy in these counties...already pushing back efforts at development and meeting the MDGs," he explained.

"While the emissions in Africa are only a small fraction of global emissions, the continent can further contribute to lowering the negative global effects of climate change by charting a low carbon intensive development pathway," he said. He however observed that low carbon intensive options were more expensive, noting, however, that "they offer opportunities for Africa to sustainably develop its abundant hydro, solar, wind and forest resources to promote access to cleaner energy"…

Emergency preparedness lowers death toll in Korea

Kelly Ng in Asia Pacific FutureGov: Korea reduced average disaster death toll by 79 per cent with its two-prong preemptive climate change response, said Dr Yeon-Soo Park, Administrator, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

…“Korea is extremely concerned about the effects of climate change because of the massive losses in human lives and property,” Dr Park told over 100 senior leaders in government and critical infrastructure at FutureGov’s Disaster Management Response and Recovery Forum 2010.

…Legislation and organisational structure is essential to lay a strong foundation for Korea’s national disaster management system, according to Dr Park. “We have 19 acts covering prevention and response of all types of emergencies and disasters, such as earthquakes, hazardous materials, wind and flood, small river improvement, and so on.”

NEMA’s 550 employees take on the various functions in training, standards, legislation, system development and such during ‘peace’ time. When an emergency occurs, NEMA transforms into a unified control tower for 230 local government agencies, 202 fire stations and 38 central agencies. This structure – of centralising during critical times – increases efficiency while keeping cost low.

The Korean government observed that it has spent large amount of money every year in recovery after a disaster happens. From 1998 to 2007, natural disasters cost the country damages of US$1.9 billion and recovery cost of US$3.1 billion annually.

“We want to move from ‘cost of recovery’ to ‘investment in prevention and mitigation’. Last year (2009), disaster prevention funds surpassed 1 trillion Korean won (US$861 million). It provided us with the opportunity to make this paradigm shift in policy from recovery to prevention,” he added…..

Typhoon Shanshan passes Korea in September 2006.

Floods in northern India sweep away homes, crops

Reuters: Unusually heavy monsoon rains over northern India have flooded villages, leaving more than half a million people homeless and submerging crops in a key sugar producing region, officials said on Monday.

Torrential rains have lashed the impoverished and densely populated state of Bihar since Friday, causing the Gandak river to overflow and sweep away hundreds of homes and destroy 30,000 hectares of rice, maize and sugarcane.

In neighboring Uttar Pradesh, at least 50,000 hectares of were under water, mainly in the sugar cane-growing western region, Relief Commissioner K.K. Sinha said, adding the government was assessing how much of crop had been lost.

Local television showed villagers wading through chest-deep water, carrying cots, goats and children in their arms. Weather officials have predicted more heavy rains in Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh is India's top cane-producing state and any output loss would reduce sugar supply in India, the world's top consumer and second-largest producer of the commodity….

Uttar Pradesh locator map created by PlaneMad, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Insurance is key to finance rising cost of climate risk

Swiss Re: Innovative insurance solutions hold the key to driving climate adaptation initiatives in the developing world and securing the development prospects of communities threatened by rising climate risks, says a new Swiss Re publication. Released today at the opening of this year’s Climate Week NY˚C, “Weathering climate change: insurance solutions for more resilient communities” takes a fresh look at how risk transfer measures help societies adapt to climate change and minimise the financial impact of large natural disasters.

Natural hazards and extreme weather claim scores of lives and cause billions of dollars in damage each year, as recently witnessed by the devastating floods in Pakistan and drought in Russia. According to the report, climate change could severely exacerbate the impact of such disasters, wiping out years of development gains and costing some countries up to 19 percent of annual GDP by 2030.

Cost-effective adaptation measures can mitigate much of the potential loss, in some locations by more than 90 percent. But decision-makers have to make investment choices under great uncertainty and with limited funds. Insurance provides them a cost-effective way to cope with the financial impact of the most severe weather events.

“Insurance is an effective method to finance the costs of climate-related disasters,” says Matthias Weber, Swiss Re’s Division Head Property & Specialty. “It is most effective when viewed as an integral part of a much broader climate adaptation strategy.”
Extending adequate cover to poor communities in developing countries is often difficult because many lack a mature local insurance market. But new forms of risk transfer involving the public and private sectors offer ways to insure climate risks and large natural disasters in such instances. An example of this is the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF), a multi-country risk pool supported by Swiss Re that innovates in its combined use of traditional insurance and capital market instruments. It provides 16 Caribbean governments with rapid access to financing in the event of hurricanes and earthquakes….

Focusing on resilience

PR Newswire: "A focus on ‘resilience,’ on climate adaptation, must be at the center of any realistic approach to climate change. That is why we're here on this first day of Climate Week NYC," commented Global Adaptation Institute CEO Dr. Juan Jose Daboub to reporters after the keynote panel discussion on "Risk and Resilience," co-sponsored by Swiss Re and the Climate Group.

"The need for urgent action on adaptation measures is supported by the study Swiss Re released today that finds cost-effective adaptation measures can mitigate potential loss by 90 percent in some cases. Global Adaptation Institute (www.GlobalAdaptationInstitute.org) endorses this important focus on climate resilience," affirmed Daboub at the climate gathering.

One participant termed today's Climate Week NYC event on resilience/adaptation "an excellent follow-on" to last week's high-level session in Washington where Global Adaptation Institute hosted 30 top people for a one and a half day strategy session on this key environmental topic of climate adaptation.

…"Private investment is absolutely vital. Our Institute will directly fund initiatives that build resilience to climate change ('global warming'). It will be positive if the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) increases its focus on Adaptation, but vulnerable populations can't wait for the Kyoto Protocol or other global treaties on carbon and greenhouse gases to save them," Daboub emphasized at today's New York event against the backdrop of the annual UN General Assembly, amid preparations for the Cancun Climate Summit/COP-16 meeting in December….

George McCord's "New York Harbor"

Drought, weak infrastructure worsen Tanzanian hunger

Kizito Makoye in AlertNet: …Southern Tanzania is experiencing prolonged drought, a problem weather forecasters accurately predicted. But a lack of basic infrastructure in the region - from working roads and electrical supply to radio ownership, which might have alerted more people to the coming problem - has helped turn hardship into hunger.

"The government is not doing enough to avert this disaster. We call upon national leaders to distribute food for free to all affected families in southern regions as soon as possible," said Harold Sungusia a human right activist with the Dar es Salaam-based Legal and Human Rights Centre.

Climate change is thought to be playing a key role in worsening droughts across east Africa. But drought by itself does not cause disasters, experts emphasize. It is a lack of preparedness for problems and a lack of means to deal with them that turns drought into hunger, they say.

…The Tanzania Meteorological Agency predicted last year that drought would grip most parts of central and southern Tanzania in 2010. But the dry weather still came as a surprise to most villagers in remote Kiwengo, where maize, beans, rice, yams and cassava are normally grown. Very few possess radios, so news and educational programmes on climate change rarely reach the village.

According to experts from the disaster management department of the Prime Minister's Office, who assessed the situation in the affected areas, the problems drought-affected farmers face are expected to worsen because of difficulties delivering relief food in the remote region….

Hungry children in Pakistan floods face death

Margie Mason in the AP: More than 100,000 children left homeless by Pakistan's floods are in danger of dying because they simply do not have enough to eat, according to UNICEF. Children already weak from living on too little food in poor rural areas before the floods are fighting to stay alive, as diarrhea, respiratory diseases and malaria attack their emaciated bodies.

….The floodwaters that began swamping a section of Pakistan larger than Florida six weeks ago continue to inundate new areas, forcing even more people to flee. At least 18 million have already been affected, and nearly half of them are homeless. Many have been herded into crude, crowded camps or left to fend for themselves along roads.

But doctors warn the real catastrophe is moving much slower than the murky water. About 105,000 kids younger than 5 are at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition over the next six months, UNICEF estimates. "You're seeing children who were probably very close to the brink of being malnourished, and the emergency has just pushed them over the edge," says Erin Boyd, a UNICEF emergency nutritionist working in southern Pakistan. "There's just not the capacity to treat this level of severe acute malnutrition."

The U.N.'s World Food Program alone has fed more than 4 million people since the crisis began, distributing monthly rations that include nutrition-packed foods for children. But the sheer geographic and human scale of the disaster is overwhelming, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called it the worst he has ever seen.….

September 4, 2010, Pakistani flood victims collect relief supplies delivered by U.S. Marine helicopter

Massive fire reaches Utah homes

Erin Alberty, Jeremiah Stettler and Roxana Orellana in the Salt Lake Tribune: …At least 1,400 homes had been evacuated as of midnight and some had caught fire, said emergency responders who descended on Herriman from across the valley and pushed through crowds of onlookers.

…The blaze started during a National Guard training session when a spark from a soldier’s round ignited dry brush, said Utah National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Hank McIntire. “They knew immediately and they got on it right away,” but did not have enough manpower and equipment to contain the fire, McIntire said.

From Camp Williams, the fire moved into Arnold’s Hollow of Rose Canyon and jumped over a dirt road that had previously acted as a barrier on Camp Williams’ northern border at Black Ridge, said Unified Fire Authority Capt. Brad Taylor. Bulldozers were digging up fire breaks to the fire’s east to keep it from spreading into the valley, but Taylor said they would not be effective until the winds die down….

The red dot shows the location of Herriman, Utah. Adapted from Wikipedia's UT county maps by Seth Ilys. Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Insurance talks for UK flood victims

Yorkshire Dales Country News (UK): With thousands of home owners in flood-risk areas facing the possibility of having their home insurance policies withdrawn in three years time, Government officials and representatives of the insurance industry are working on a new insurance “road map” which will provide some sort of cover.

This will replace an emergency agreement drawn up with the Labour government after a series of disastrous floods over the past few years had meant that tens of thousands of properties in risk areas would become virtually un-insurable and therefore extremely difficult - or even impossible - to sell. That voluntary agreement expires in 2013.

Officials of the environment department Defra, the insurance industry, the National Flood Forum and the Environment Agency met at the weekend to draw up this new road map, which could mean that although householders in at-risk areas will have to pay heftier premiums, the Government would intervene to ensure that they would not be black-listed.

…Flooding in parts of the Yorkshire Dales has become a major concern in recent years for a mixture of factors, writes our countryside commentator John Sheard....

Michael Wilson of York shot this outside his house in June 2007, where the Rivers Ouse and Foss are usually in the right hand corner of the shot. Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

'Very large' Hurricane Igor leaves Bermuda

Sam Strangeways and Ruth O’Kelly Lynch in Reuters: Hurricane Igor pounded Bermuda with high winds and driving rain early on Monday as it moved north over the Atlantic, skirting the U.S. East Coast, which should suffer only rough surf and a stiff breeze. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the core of the "very large" category 1 hurricane, packing maximum sustained winds near to 75 miles per hour, was about 127 miles north northwest of Bermuda, a popular resort and global insurance service hub, as of 5 a.m. EDT/0900 GMT.

Hurricane force winds extended about 90 miles from its core. The hurricane was moving north northeast at 20 miles per hour. A turn northwest away from the U.S. coast and an increase in forward speed were expected in the next 24 hours.

…Bermuda residents reported uprooted trees, flying debris, widespread power outages, some flooding of streets and homes and boats torn free from moorings. There were no immediate reports of casualties…

Hurricane Igor on September 17, 2010

Multiple benefits for dams

Some pro-dam propaganda from Patrick Reynolds in International Water Power and Dam Construction: A multiplicity of water needs can be served by hydro and multipurpose projects, and in the near- to medium-term there is going to be relatively greater demand to employ them as an adaptation strategy to the anticipated increase in weather instability, as projected from the effects of climate change, notes The World Bank Group in its Directions in Hydropower report, which was published last year.

The World Bank says it ‘is keenly aware of this timely and important period for hydropower’ though adds that this particular use of water resources will be only part of the picture in future. It says that given the increasing importance of climate change, water security, and regional cooperation, the bank has consequentially a wider view that ‘encompasses water infrastructure that serves multiple objectives, among which energy may be a subsidiary goal’.

The Directions report adds, ‘As part of a flexible, well-planned water resources infrastructure, hydropower can help countries manage floods and droughts and improve water resources allocations across a complex set of users’.

It goes on, ‘Multipurpose hydropower can also support adaptation to increasingly difficult hydrology by strengthening a country’s ability to regulate and store water and so resist flood and drought shocks.’

But before facing any climate change impact on hydrology, some countries are already experiencing great water-stress, prime among them being Ethiopia, Haiti and Niger, the World Bank said in March, when releasing an internal review of support given to water-related activities over 1997-2007. Almost a third of all projects worldwide approved by the World Bank for funding since 1997 have been water-related.

In every country, from the most water-stressed to those far less strained – possibly even with an abundance of hydrological resources, there is far more attention demanded, and being given now, to a wider range of planning factors, including strategies being developed around river basins, large and small. One such major planning initiative is underway for the river Nile – the world’s longest – and its many regional, national and local sub-catchments….

Water-gate on Miljacka River in Sarajevo, near Alifakovac. Shot by Emx, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Satellites reveal Russian fires worst in 14 years

European Space Agency: More wildfires have burned around the Russian capital this year than in the last decade and a half, according to sensors aboard ESA’s observation satellites. The forest and peat bog fires ignited this summer amid an unprecedented heat wave of up to 40ºC.

Working like thermometers in the sky, the Along Track Scanning Radiometer and the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer on ESA’s ERS-2 and Envisat satellites measure thermal-infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth’s land surface. Flames reach temperatures that are detected by these sensors and confirm the presence of fire.

Data gathered from fires across Russia from July 1996 to the present were used to plot the number of fires occurring monthly. The region near Moscow showed around six times the number of fires this August compared to previous years.

Data from these sensors are compiled to create ESA’s ATSR World Fire Atlas which is available online to users within six hours. The atlas – the longest worldwide fire record available – also provides the time, date, longitude and latitude of the hot spots….

The ESA global detection of hot spots by ERS-2's Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR-2) and Envisat's Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) from July 1996 to August 2010. These twin radiometer sensors work like thermometers in the sky, measuring thermal infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth's land surfaces. Temperatures exceeding 312º K (38.85 ºC) are classed as burning fires. Credit: ESA

Report suggests increase in severe weather for Iowa

James Pusey in the Ames Tribune (Iowa): Severe flooding, heat waves and storms could become increasingly common in Iowa due to the effects of global warming, according to a recent report. The report, titled “Global Warming and Extreme Weather: The Science, the Forecast and the Impacts on America,” was released by Environment Iowa, a citizen-based environmental advocacy group.

The report highlights several recent extreme weather incidences, including the 2008 floods that caused between $8 billion and $10 billion in damage in Iowa. Jessica Buchberger, field associate for Environment Iowa, said the report should be a call to action to cut down on emissions of greenhouse gases. “Given that unchecked global warming will likely fuel even more severe weather, we need to start cutting global warming pollution now,” Buchberger said.

Scientists at Iowa State University said there is evidence to support the report’s findings, although there are other factors that contribute to the trend of increasing severe weather. Gene Takle, a climate scientist at Iowa State University, said these other factors include irrigation and crop-planting practices. “Irrigation throughout the Great Plains, from the Dakotas all the way to Texas, has led to a tremendous amount of water that’s been mined and put into the atmosphere,” Takle said.

There also has been an increase in corn plants per acre over the last 50 years, Takle said, pulling more water from the soil and evaporating it to the atmosphere. Today’s farmers are planting up to 35,000 corn plants per acre, he said, whereas 50 years ago they planted about 15,000 per acre.

Climate change compounds the problem, he said, because the warmer that atmosphere is, the more water it can hold. This means when water is released from the atmosphere, it is released in higher quantities. In other words, when it rains, it pours….

Ames, IA, August 11, 2010 -- Duff Avenue is impassable as the waters of the Squaw Creek flood Ames businesses. Record flooding swamped the city after back-to-back-to-back storms. Jace Anderson/FEMA

UN seeks two billion dollars for Pakistan

Terra Daily via AFP: The United Nations on Friday appealed for a record two billion dollars in emergency aid for the millions of victims of Pakistan's devastating floods. The Pakistan floods are "the worst natural disaster the United Nations has responded to in its 65-year history," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said at the launch of the appeal.

The floods caused by weeks of torrential rain have left less than 2,000 dead, according to an official toll, but the UN said the massive surge has exposed more than 20 million people to homelessness, malnutrition, risks of epidemics and loss of livelihood.

"We simply cannot stand by and watch the immense suffering in a disaster of this scale," said Valerie Amos, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, announcing the mega-appeal….

Fighting to save glaciers

Marcela Valente in IPS via Tierramérica: Argentina's glaciers, along with Chile's the most extensive of South America, manifest the damage caused by climate change, while they also face threats from mining and major transportation infrastructure projects. A law to protect them has been postponed yet again. Glaciers are vast reserves of freshwater, vital for feeding rivers, lakes and underground water tables. But rising global temperatures are shrinking their ability to serve that function.

"Climate change is the main cause of glacier retraction, but also affecting them are the petroleum industry, large-scale mining, high-impact tourism and infrastructure projects," glaciologist Ricardo Villalba, director of the Argentine Institute of Snow and Glacier Research and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA), told Tierramérica.

….Experts from IANIGLA and environmental organisations are promoting a law to preserve these ice masses, which the Argentine Congress passed in 2008. But President Cristina Fernández vetoed it, saying the law was "excessive" in banning economic activities on or around the glaciers. After that failure, the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, voted in August on a new text, which was to come up for debate in the Senate on Sep. 8, but the Senators decided to put it off until the end of the month. The greatest resistance comes from lawmakers representing Argentina's western mining provinces, including San Juan and La Rioja.

…The proposed legislation calls for the creation of a national glacier inventory, an essential tool that would be entrusted to the experts at IANIGLA. If the law is passed, the Institute would be given the authority to decide on every mining or infrastructure project.

Controversial projects like Pascua Lama -- an open-pit gold mine extending into both Chile and Argentina, run by the Canadian company Barrick Gold -- would be subject to audit by the Institute, and could be suspended if preservation of the glaciers is not guaranteed….

The Spegazzini glacier in Argentina, shot by Remi Jouan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Pakistan’s flood survivors need stronger support

UN News Centre: As the United Nations prepares to launch a revised appeal for funds to tackle Pakistan’s devastating flood crisis, the world body’s top refugee official today urged the international community to provide stronger support for the victims of the disaster. The floods, which began in late July, are the worst disaster in living memory for the South Asian nation, resulting in the death of more than 1,000 people and leaving millions homeless.

“This is unprecedented. Nobody was prepared for such a level of destruction and for such difficult conditions for the people affected,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said after a two-day visit to the flood-affected areas.

“Everybody is doing their best, but the best everyone is doing cannot match the dramatic needs that we are facing,” he stated, appealing to the international community for “a stronger engagement and stronger support for us all to do better and to do more.”

Mr. Guterres visited flood-affected Afghan refugees and Pakistani villagers in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkwa (KPK), one of the worst-hit areas. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that over 4.3 million people in the province are affected by floods and over 192,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged.

“A lot of progress has been made, but the way ahead is still long,” said Ahmed Warsame, head of the provincial sub-office of the UN refugee agency, known as UNHCR. “We need to ensure that we meet the needs of all flood-affected communities and reach out to those most vulnerable to ensure they have access to humanitarian assistance.”…

A Pakistani soldier assists an older man to board a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan

Deadly mudslides, floods hit Mexico

Disaster News Network via BNO News: Category 3 Hurricane Karl on Friday made landfall on Mexico's Gulf coast, causing heavy rains and mudslides that killed at least two people and injured two others. The storm rapidly weakened and eventually dissipated on Saturday as it passed over the high mountains of southern Mexico.

Karl initially made landfall as a category three storm near the city of Veracruz on Mexico’s Gulf Coast on Friday, knocking down over 900 trees and knocking out power to several thousand people. Heavy rains have also affected other states. In Puebla state a landslide in the municipality of Zacapoaxtla left two people killed - a 64-year-old woman and a 2-year-old girl- and injured two others, the state's Civil Protection office told BNO News.

As the storm moved inland, Karl eventually weakened to a tropical depression and then dissipated hours later over the high mountains in southern Mexico. "Karl moved over the high mountains of southern Mexico and quickly weakened," said hurricane specialist Lixion Avila at the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center. "The cloud pattern as well as the circulation are very disrupted while the deep convection has practically vanished. There are no surface observations nearby suggesting the presence of strong winds."….

How science will shape climate adaptation plans

Vicky Pope of the Met Office, in the Guardian (UK): …A project commissioned by the Environment Agency to investigate the impact of climate change on the Thames estuary over the next 100 years concluded that current government predictions for sea level rise are realistic. A major outcome from the scientific analysis was that the worst-case scenarios for high water levels can be significantly reduced - from 4.2m to 2.7m – because we are able to rule out the more extreme sea level rise. As a result, massive investment in a tide-excluding estuary barrage is unlikely to be needed this century. This will be reviewed as more information becomes available, taking a flexible approach to adaptation.

The energy industry, working with the Met Office, looked at the likely impact of climate change on its infrastructure. The project found that very few changes in design standards are required, although it did highlight a number of issues. For instance, transformers could suffer higher failure rates and efficiency of some types of thermal power station could be markedly reduced because of increasing temperatures. A particular concern highlighted by this report and reiterated in today's report from the Climate Change Committee - the independent body that advises government on its climate targets - is that little is known about how winds will change in the future - important because of the increasing role of wind power in the UK energy mix.

…We need particularly to look at how we communicate complex and often conflicting results. In order to explain complex science to a lay audience, scientists and journalists are prone to progressively downplay the complexity. Conversely, in striving to adopt a more scientific approach and include the full range of uncertainty, we often give sceptics an easy route to undermine the science.

All too often uncertainty in science offers a convenient excuse for delaying important decisions. However, in the case of climate change there is overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing — in part due to human activities — and that changes will accelerate if emissions continue unabated…..

The Thames at sunset, near Greenwich, shot by Dlloyd, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Calm down about beetle-killed forests

Bill Gabbert in New West (US): …Sometimes land managers, when faced with a landscape of brown, ugly, beetle-killed trees, fall all over themselves finding additional taxpayer funds to “fix” the problem, such as a state Governor vowing to order his state employees to storm into a federal wilderness if there are any fires in the area, which has some beetle-killed trees, or an agency asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix a possible future beetle problem.

Some scientists have tried to say that the wildfire potential in areas affected by beetles is over-stated. But now there is new research that further confirms that point of view. And it appeared on the NASA web site, whose satellites were used to collect some of the data.

University of Wisconsin forest ecologists Monica Turner and Phil Townsend, in collaboration with Yellowstone National Park Vegetation Management Specialist Roy Renkin, are studying the connection in the forests near Yellowstone National Park. Roy, by the way, is also a qualified Fire Behavior Analyst, who I have worked with many times on fires. He knows his stuff.

Here is an excerpt from the NASA article: “Their preliminary analysis indicates that large fires do not appear to occur more often or with greater severity in forest tracts with beetle damage. In fact, in some cases, beetle-killed forest swaths may actually be less likely to burn. What they’re discovering is in line with previous research on the subject….”

A beetle-killed forest near Breckenridge, Colorado, shot by Hustvedt, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Hurricane Igor takes aim at Bermuda

Reuters: Hurricane Igor headed across the Atlantic on Saturday with 110-mph/175-kph winds and heavy rains that threatened to batter Bermuda. Igor, located about 475 miles/765 km south of Bermuda at 7 a.m. (8 a.m. EST), was just shy of becoming a Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale….

That's Igor yesterday, shot by NASA

India gives $20 million for Pakistan flood relief

The Economic Times (India): India on Friday handed over a cheque of $20 million to UN chief Ban Ki-moon for relief and rehabilitation of flood-affected in Pakistan, after Islamabad's insistence that the aid be routed through the world body. Welcoming the contribution from the Indian government, Ban said: "I hope this money will be used for those who really need the warm hands of the international community."

India decided to send the money through the UN after Pakistan requested it to do so as the UN is coordinating the relief and rehabilitation programme. "Natural disasters do not respect national boundaries," India's Envoy to the UN Hardeep Singh Puri said after handing over the cheque to Ban in the presence of Pakistan's envoy to the UN Abdullah Hussain Haroon.

"This is a small but significant gesture from the highest levels of the Indian government conveying that the people of India stand by the people of Pakistan in their hour of need," Puri said and added that India has given an additional $5 million to the World Food Programme….

An aerial view of flooding in Pakistan taken from a US Marine helicopter by Captain Paul Duncan

Pristine rainforests are biogeochemical reactors

Terra Daily: A multinational team that includes a North Carolina State University researcher has found another piece of the atmospheric puzzle surrounding the effects of aerosol particles on climate change. Their findings will contribute to our ability to more accurately measure human impact on climate, and to determine how much pollution may "mask" the actual rate of climate change.

Dr. Markus Petters, an NC State assistant professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences, traveled to the Amazon rainforest in a remote area of Brazil as part of a team that wanted to study how a rainforest behaved in the absence of any anthropogenic, or human, influence.

They were particularly interested in the behavior of atmospheric aerosol particles, which play an important role in our climate system due to their ability to modify cloud formation and encourage or suppress precipitation. Aerosol particles act as seeds for cloud formation and water condensation inside clouds. Some of these particles - about one in a million - form ice crystals inside the clouds, which initiate rainfall.

…"We have to look at areas without anthropogenic influences and see what the aerosol budget is like without humans being involved," Petters says. "The Amazon is unique in that it provides a good place for us to observe atmospheric interactions without human influence, and to catalog baseline activity for the rainforest. If we understand that baseline well enough around the world, we can run simulations that show how human aerosol emissions modulate climate change."….

Afternoon clouds over the Amazon, shot by NASA

Graft could jeopardize Indonesia's climate deals

Sunanda Creagh in Reuters: Billions of dollars Indonesia stands to earn every year in climate change deals could be at risk if it fails to stamp out corruption in its forestry sector, long notorious for graft and focus of an ongoing investigation. Norway is preparing to pay the first $30 million of $1 billion it agreed to give Indonesia in return for a commitment to preserve valuable forests, part of a UN scheme in which rich nations will pay developing countries not to chop down trees.

"Our emission reduction potential from forestry and peatland is about 1.5 gigatonnes by 2030. So if the price of emissions reductions is around $10 per ton in 2030, then our potential revenue is $15 billion per annum by 2030," Agus Purnomo, head of Indonesia's National Council on Climate Change, told Reuters.

But considerable obstacles stand in the way. Indonesia's lucrative palm oil, plantations and mining sectors say the moratorium on land conversion will hinder expansion and profits. And the forestry sector has a legacy of mismanagement and graft. "It's a source of unlimited corruption," said Chandra M. Hamzah, deputy chairman at the KPK anti-graft agency set up by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to combat corruption.

An Ernst and Young audit found that in just 4 years between 1993/94 and 1997/98, Indonesia's reforestation fund lost $5.25 billion through systematic financial mismanagement and fraud. Anti-graft officials are concerned that the vast sums on offer under the UN scheme could lead to further corruption and theft….

The last batch of sawnwood from the peat forest in Indragiri Hulu, Riau Province, Indonesia. Deforestation for oil palm plantation. shot by Riau flickr user:Wakx, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Summer set records for nighttime temperatures

USA Today: This past summer didn't set U.S. records for just daytime temperatures but also for nighttime ones, posing a danger to the elderly and low-income people who depend on overnight cooling, a new study reveals.

At nearly one of four U.S. weather stations -- 278 out of 1,218 -- the average nighttime low temperatures for June, July and August were hotter than at any time since 1895, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. Record highs were set at stations in 37 states, including 40% of all those east of the Mississippi.

"Welcome to what might be termed the dark side of climate change," said Dan Lashof, director of NRDC's Climate Center. He said the summer's temperatures reflect a longer-term trend. "The long, hot summer of 2010 follows the hottest decade on record and more record high temperatures can be expected in the future as heat-trapping pollution continues to build up in our atmosphere."…

A bimetal thermometer, shot by 1-1111, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Record temperatures killing Caribbean coral

Stephen Leahy in IPS via Tierramérica: The waters of the Caribbean Sea are the warmest on record and the region's imperilled corals are bleaching and beginning to die, experts warn. This year many corals are already bleached and dying in the southern Caribbean Sea, especially in the Lesser Antilles, according to Mark Eakin coordinator of Coral Reef Watch at the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The waters are even warmer than they were in 2005 when a severe bleaching occurred across much of the Caribbean. More than 60 percent of corals around the U.S. Virgin Islands died, Eakin told Tierramérica. Water temperatures in this region reach their annual peak between September and October.

The area affected by bleaching and dying corals will likely extend to the region east of Nicaragua, past the island of Hispaniola (Haiti and Dominican Republic) to Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles, and south along the Caribbean coasts of Panama and South America, according to a warning issued by Coral Reef Watch last month. "There is the potential that this will be worse than 2005, unless some tropical storms come through and mix the warm surface water with deeper, cooler water," Eakin said.

Coral reefs are found in less than one percent of the world's oceans but are home to 25 to 30 percent of all marine species. Some one billion people depend directly and indirectly on reefs for their livelihoods. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers coral reefs one of the life-support systems essential for human survival….

Healthy Acropora prolifera coral, photographed by Mark Eakin of NOAA near Lee Stocking Island, Bahamas

Climate change will stress northern construction

Richard Gilbert in the Daily Commercial News: Construction and engineering companies in northern Canada need to change the way they design and build to combat the effects of climate change, according to a federal advisory body. “Our research found that northerners are concerned that a warmer climate is already having an effect on the region’s infrastructure,” said the report titled True North: Adapting Infrastructure to Climate Change in Northern Canada.

“We heard that changing precipitation patterns, including changes in snow, rain, and freezing rain conditions; permafrost degradation; flooding and stream flow changes; sea-ice loss and coastal erosion and other climate-related changes are compromising the integrity of transportation systems, buildings, communications, energy projects, and containment structures for storing waste from mining operations.”

The National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy produced the report that considers the impact of climate change on the northern economy and its supporting infrastructure. The plan is to develop strategies for adaptation and sustainable economic development.

The report said one of the biggest challenges for engineers that design, build and maintain the physical infrastructure in Canada’s North is permafrost and other frozen systems.

The experience of these engineers has created a variety of practices and technologies adapted to cold climates. For example, frozen ground provides a stable surface for buildings, roads and airstrips, pipelines, transmission towers, and for waste containment. The choice of a shallow or deep foundation and overall design is a function of both infrastructure loads and thermal conditions of the ground….

Power transmission towers at Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) power plant, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Shot by WinterCity296

Deutsche Bank debunks skeptics

Reuters: International financial services heavyweight Deutsche Bank has taken aim at climate change skepticism in a just-released report that catalogs and counters the arguments denying man-made global warming. The report, titled Climate Change: Addressing the Major Skeptic Arguments, was commissioned by the bank and written by scientists at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

It lists 12 common claims used to argue against global warming and refutes each of them, pointing readers to corroborating sources. Its point is definitive. “The paper’s clear conclusion is that the primary claims of the skeptics do not undermine the assertion that human-made climate change is already happening and is a serious long-term threat,” wrote Mark Fulton, the bank’s head of climate change research.
Deutsche Bank is one of the most deeply invested financial institutions in the world in climate change, with more than $5 billion being managed in climate-related funds.

…“What is the state of the science? We asked Columbia, as trusted advisors, to give us a balanced answer in some detail,” Fulton said. “We are looking for financial investment opportunities around the climate change trend. The paper reassured us of our investment thesis and it should reassure our investors.”

Dr. Mary-Elena Carr, the associate director of Columbia’s Climate Center and the study’s co-author, said she did not think the rebuttals in the paper would win over those who say man-made climate change is either not happening or does not require action. She hoped it would find a broader audience in those interested in sorting through the ocean of information on global warming.

…“What you need is a risk-analysis approach,” said Fulton, who has been involved in economic modeling since the 1970s. “The data behind the climate change thesis is solid. When the evidence says it will take place, it isn’t a gamble worth taking.”…

Warming swells glacial lakes, endangering thousands

IRIN: As global warming shrinks glaciers along the world’s highest peaks, glacial lakes in Nepal are increasingly at risk of bursting the natural dams containing them - endangering the lives of tens of thousands in communities below, experts say. Nepalese authorities have identified about 20 “priority” lakes at risk of leading to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), and are using various methods to reduce the volume of water in some of them.

“With climate change causing the rapid melting of glaciers, the glacial lakes are growing so quickly that the risk of a disaster occurring throughout the Himalayas is increasing,” said Pradeep Mool, of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a Kathmandu-based organization funded by eight countries that researches climate change and mountain ecosystems.

“GLOFs come very fast, carry great big boulders; they can push down rock walls and destroy river banks. The destructive impact is very, very high,” Mool told IRIN by phone from Kathmandu.

GLOFs occur when the natural dams of ice or rock containing glacial lakes collapse because the lake has rapidly increased in size or its walls are shattered by earthquakes or avalanches. The resulting floods can cause rivers downstream to rise up to 35 metres, destroying everything in their path for up to 100km in only eight hours, he added….

Glacial lakes in Bhutan, from NASA

Indian farmers rapidly adopt flood-tolerant rice

Seed Daily: Farmers cultivating rice on 12 million hectares of flood-prone areas in India are planting flood-tolerant rice varieties at unprecedented rates, thanks to faster seed multiplication, targeted dissemination, and linking of partners.

Dr. Umesh Singh, senior scientist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), said, "Earlier, we only provided and field-tested IRRI rice lines that were tolerant of flooding. Now, we assist government agencies and private seed companies to multiply and distribute seeds to farmers at a faster pace. " Field-testing a rice variety normally takes 4-5 years before it is released and another 2-3 years before it reaches farmers. Through targeted dissemination, IRRI is helping state governments identify specific flood-prone areas where seeds of the submergence-tolerant variety can be distributed, without having to wait until it is multiplied and distributed en masse.

IRRI, celebrating its 50th year of conducting rice research, has been working with India's national and state governments, nonprofit organizations, farmers' organizations, research institutions, and public and private seed companies to promote Swarna-Sub1, a flood-tolerant version of the widely grown Swarna variety….

A rice field in Nemmara village, Kerala, India, shot by Kjrajesh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license