More Malawi floods in the next two weeks

Yamikani Yapuwa and Memory Kutengule in AllAfrica.com via Malawi News Agency:  The Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services has warned of high rainfall amounts which will eventually trigger flash floods and flooding in potential flood prone districts in the next two weeks. Director of Climate Change and Meteorological Services Jolam Nkhokwe said the trend is as a result of the activeness of Congo air mass coupled with a low pressure area in the Mozambique Channel.

He said: "Our two main rain bearing systems which are the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and Congo air mass coupled with a low pressure area located in the Mozambique Channel remain active. "This will consequently cause wide spread rainfall associated with high rainfall amounts. The high rainfall amounts cumulatively are expected to trigger flash floods and flooding in potential flood prone districts such as, Nsanje, Chikhwawa, Phalombe, Mangochi, Salima, Nkhata bay and Karonga," warned Nkhokwe.

Nkhokwe further warned that during this period severe thunderstorms are expected and would be accompanied by strong winds and lighting because of the accumulation of heat energy in the atmosphere. "The general public is therefore being advised to be indoors during periods of severe thunderstorms to avoid lighting strikes and should take caution when crossing swelling rivers," cautioned Nkhokwe.

And Assistant District Disaster and Risk Management Officer for Blantyre, Alibewake Maulawo has disclosed to Malawi News Agency that at least 561 households in Blantyre District have been affected by the stormy rains since October last year....

Locator map of Malawi by TUBS, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

UN climate chief says 'door closing' on warming fix

Space Daily via AFP: UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres on Tuesday warned time was running out for meaningful action on global warming, citing the plight of low-lying Pacific nations facing ever rising seas. Figueres, in Samoa for a UN conference on small island states, said the impact of climate change was greatest on Pacific nations, even though they had contributed little to the problem.

"Climate change is the greatest threat these islands face and they are recognised as the bellwether of global efforts to address this issue," she told AFP. "Unless the world acts on climate change in a timely way, they are going to be the hardest hit."

Figueres said rising seas not only eroded the coastlines of island states, they also spoiled water supplies when they entered the water table and swamped agricultural land, rendering it barren.

Warming also meant more cyclones and storms battered the islands, while planning was underway for a worst-case scenario where populations of climate change refugees would have to be relocated from their homelands.

"Kiribati (which has purchased land in neighbouring Fiji) is probably the most famous, but countries as large as Papua New Guinea are already starting to identify which are their most threatened populations," she said....

Faster, more accurate flood warnings through EU research

A press release from the European Commission: Timely flood alerts and real-time monitoring of flood emergencies can save lives and prevent damage to property, infrastructure and the environment. Imprints, WeSenseIt and UrbanFlood are just three examples of EU-funded projects that have developed unique forecasting and alert systems to warn communities of impending floods.

Flood management and prevention is at the heart of the Imprints project which has developed an early warning platform to cut responses to flash floods down to about two hours, and even less – potentially giving people more time to get out of harm’s way. The platform is based on better rainfall predictions, using meteorological models and weather radar networks. The software is able to predict water flows on the ground and provide a full early warning system for flash floods, the amount of debris they might carry and any potential damage to local infrastructure.

Water services and hydro-meteorological operations in Spain, Switzerland and France are using these project’s innovations to refine their own real-time forecasting systems. Furthermore, flash flood indicators, developed within this project, are used now in the operational European Flood Awareness System.

Meanwhile, WeSenseIt, a project which ends in September 2016, makes good use of the power of human observation as an essential part of an early warning system. People contribute by taking measurements using new apps currently being developed by the project, and sending information and images by mobile phone. The new technologies and approaches are being tested in Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.

“We have developed mobile apps so that flood wardens in the UK can walk along river banks, and take tagged pictures if they think there is something of concern,” says project coordinator Fabio Ciravegna from the University of Sheffield. In Italy, an evaluation involving some 500 volunteers simulating a flood in the city of Vicenza was completed at the end of March 2014....

A 2005 flood in Thun, Switzerland, uploaded by Zumbo, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Flood alert data not reaching communities in Nepal

Om Astha Rai in Republica: ...Until last year, there was no early warning system in the Mahakali River basin. This year, just a month ahead of the onset of monsoon, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), with support from Mercy Corps, an INGO that has been supporting disaster preparedness programs in Nepal, developed early warning system in the Mahakali River basin.

Under the system, two early warning stations were installed in the Mahakali basin -- one in Dattu VDC of Darchula district and another in Sirsha VDC of Dadeldhura district. However, both stations could be useful only for people living downstream of Khalanga of Darchula, the worst-hit place in last year´s flood.

"We have no early warning system as yet," says Bohara, who now leads a group of Mahakali flood victims fighting for adequate relief and compensation from the government. "We are still vulnerable to floods."

Over the last five years, Nepal has made huge progress in collecting real-time information about floods. Today, flood forecasting stations have been set up in as many as 21 places of seven different river basins. Apart from Mahakali, flood forecasting stations are in operation in Karnali, Babai, West Rapti, Narayani, Bagamati, Koshi and Kankai river systems as well.

In these rivers, if water levels rise above warning points, the system automatically sends sound alarms to government authorities and local people. "If we react to these alarms on time, we can save lives as well as properties," says Rajendra Sharma, chief of flood forecasting section at the DHM....

The Chandani Dodhara suspension bridge over the Mahakali River, shot by Shivagoutam, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Tropical Storm Arthur strengthens, nets hurricane watch

USA Today: As the Fourth of July weekend nears, the Atlantic hurricane season's first named storm was slowly strengthening off Florida's coast early Wednesday. At 5 a.m. Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center reported Tropical Storm Arthur was located about 90 miles east of Cape Canaveral. A tropical storm watch is in effect for Florida's east coast, from Sebastian Inlet to Flagler Beach.

Forecasters said Arthur was becoming better organized but is likely to stay just offshore, passing northeastern Florida Wednesday night and moving parallel to the southeastern U.S. coast, becoming a hurricane by Thursday.

Maximum sustained winds were recorded at 60 mph. The storm has picked up speed and is currently moving north at 6 mph. The NHC predicts a turn to the north-northeast Wednesday night followed by a turn toward the northeast and an increase in forward speed on Thursday.

A hurricane watch is also in effect from Bogue Inlet to Oregon Inlet in North Carolina. Also a tropical storm watch is in effect from south Santee River South Carolina to south of Bogue Inlet and from north of Oregon Inlet to the North Carolina/Virginia border including eastern Albemarle Sound.

The NHC urged those as far north as parts of Virginia to monitor Tropical Storm Arthur's path. "I think everybody's keeping one eye on the weather and one eye on the events this weekend," said Joe Marinelli, president of Visit Savannah, the Georgia city's tourism bureau....

Tropical Storm Arthur on July 1, 2014, via NASA

Lloyd's calls on insurers to take into account climate-change risk

Julia Kollewe in the Guardian (UK): Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest and biggest insurance market, has for the first time called on insurers to incorporate climate change into their models. The call to action comes a day after a landmark US report, named the National Climate Assessment, which has warned that climate change is wreaking havoc across the US.

Lloyd's says damage and weather-related losses around the world have increased from an annual average of $50bn in the 1980s to close to $200bn over the last 10 years. The 326-year-old insurance market, whose members write insurance business worldwide, believes the time has come for a formal call on the industry to take into account various climate-change scenarios to avoid unpredictable losses to businesses.

What the industry describes as extreme weather events have increased in number and severity as the global climate system has altered, causing more and bigger hurricanes, typhoons and heatwaves around the world. In the UK the main climate-change related risk is flooding.

...A new report by Lloyd's, which consulted the world's largest catastrophe modelling firms, says a 20cm rise in the sea level at the southern tip of Manhattan Island increased Superstorm Sandy's surge losses by 30% (up to $8bn) in New York alone.

The 840-page National Climate Assessment, published this week, was described by John Holdren, the White House science adviser, as the "loudest and clearest alarm bell to date signalling the need to take urgent action to combat the threats to Americans from climate change"...

Inside Lloyd's of London, shot by phogel, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

El Niño forecasters must not repeat mistakes of 1997

An editorial in New Scientist: In January, climate researchers warned that extreme El Niño events are likely to become more common as the planet warms. It now seems that the world will have a chance to rehearse for the future as early as the end of this year. A major El Niño is massing in the Pacific Ocean and is likely to cause cyclones, tornadoes, droughts, floods and sea level changes across the world (see "World is unprepared for major El Niño later this year").

Many leading scientists say the approaching El Niño looks similar in magnitude to the huge one that started in 1997 and went on to kill tens of thousands of people and cause tens of billions of dollars of damage. But you won't hear that sort of warning from official forecasters. They agree that an El Niño is likely, but are saying little about its potential strength.

Why is that? One of the key reasons for the devastation of 1997 was excess caution among forecasters. A major UN study published in 2000 revealed that for forecasters, an incorrect prediction is more embarrassing than no prediction at all. We may be seeing the same failings today.

There is still a chance that the threat will dissipate. But we won't know for sure until it is too late to prepare properly. If governments and emergency services are to be given enough time, they need full and frank forecasts now.

Clear forecasting is important for another reason: the response to a big El Niño will be a test of how ready the world is for climate change. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reiterated that we must prepare for climate variability rather than for any particular threat. El Niño is the biggest source of climate variability we know about....

Friends and neighbors pitch in to save the belongings of a condominium in Laguna Niguel, California, that was heavily damaged in a landslide resulting from El Nino storms. Two luxury homes above the condos collapsed when the hillside gave way. Photo by DAVE GATLEY/FEMA News Photo

Climate change 'not a distant threat,' White House warns

Tanya Lewis in LiveScience: From longer and hotter summers to heavier downpours to more coastal flooding, the effects of human-induced climate change are already hitting every region of the United States and the U.S. economy, a government report finds.

These extreme weather events will likely only get worse, experts say. The Northeast will experience more heat waves, extreme precipitation and coastal flooding caused by storm surge. The Midwest can expect hotter weather and increased demand for water and energy. And the Southwest will suffer hotter, drier weather and more wildfires, according to the third National Climate Assessment (NCA) released by the White House today (May 6).

"Climate change is not a distant threat — it's already affecting every region of the country and economy," John Holdren, assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said today at a news conference. [8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World]

The report reveals how regional impacts of climate change will affect health, agriculture, energy, water and transportation, said Jerry Melillo, a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and chair of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee.

"For decades, we've been connecting the dots about climate change," Melillo said at the news conference. "Now, we have connected those dots."....

Sunset at White Pocket in Arizona, shot by John Fowler, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Drones may help predict tornadoes in the future

USA Today: Fourteen minutes is how much time a city or town has between a tornado warning and when a twister touches ground, according to the national average from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

But that warning time could increase to an hour with the help of data from unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly called drones, according to Jamey Jacob, an aerospace and engineering professor at Oklahoma State University.

Two days of violent weather have killed at least 30 people in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee and the storms are forecast to continue. In the future, the information collected by drones could help meteorologists make better tornado forecasts, Jacob said.

Jacob is leading a team of students in designing and developing drones to fly into storms and collect a storm's pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speeds. "Right now, we don't have a really good way in determining which thunderstorms will develop into tornadoes," Jacob told USA TODAY Network. He added, "We're looking for the fingerprint of the tornado."

Oklahoma is in the middle of Tornado Alley. The state had 63 tornadoes last May alone, according to NOAA. As tornado season gears up again, the OSU team is building drones, which will weigh 35 pounds each and be able to fly up to 12 hours, Jacob said....

An F5 tornado in Manitoba, shot by , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, Justin Hobson (Justin1569 at en.wikipedia), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Before the Washington mudslide, warnings of the unthinkable

Darryl Fears in the Washington Post: ... At least 18 people have been confirmed dead, and up to 30 more are likely entombed in a thick gray muck, swallowed by the land, perhaps never to be seen again. For two tiny logging towns — Darrington’s population is 1,400 and Oso’s is 180 — the death on such a wide scale is unimaginable. Bogged down by relentless rain that continued Saturday, workers have failed to unearth many bodies, all but assuring that the landscape will be preserved in the short term as a mass graveyard.

...[S]ome are now questioning whether many of the homes should have been built at all in the valley below a hillside that commonly shifts, sending mud raining down about once a decade. At least four new homes have been built since the last major landslide muddied the valley eight years ago.

The Snohomish County officials who control land use permits asserted last week that there was no way of knowing a giant mudslide would ever happen there. In fact, the area was primed for just such an extraordinary event, according to geologist Daniel J. Miller, who twice surveyed the area for local Native American tribes who rely on the river’s health for fishing and for the Army Corps of Engineers. He wrote in his 1999 report that the Hazel Landslide, as the mountain is known, was constantly shifting, experiencing landslides and would one day suffer “a catastrophic failure.”

...An ancient glacier is jutting out of the mountain, making its flat plateau unstable, Miller said. The Stillaguamish River was eroding it from below. Rows of conifer trees that helped to mitigate erosion by sucking water through their roots and releasing it into the atmosphere were chopped down by loggers. Rain fell on the bald spots they left, drenching dirt and sand, making the mountain even more precarious.

March 2014 has been a ­record-breaker, the wettest in Seattle’s history. Miller realized his warning was not heeded when he visited the site following a major landslide in 2006 that did not do nearly as much harm. He could not believe what he saw.

...Charity Prueher, 41 and raised in Oso, said homeowners rarely mentioned the slides. When they did, the coursing mud was considered a small disruption, more of an annoyance than a major problem. “They’re so content with the beautiful place where they live, they don’t think anything would happen,” Prueher said....

Lisa Bishop and her dog, Cody, with Northwest Disaster Search Dogs, watch as a Washington National Guard helicopter flies over the debris field caused by the mudslide in Oso, Wash., March 27, 2014. US National Guard photo

Risk of Washington mudslide ‘unforeseen’? Warnings go back decades

Ken Armstrong, Mike Carter and Mike Baker in the Seattle Times: While a Snohomish County official said the area hit by the mudslide “was considered very safe,” the hillside’s history of slides dates back more than 60 years. One expert says he was shocked when homebuilding was permitted after a big 2006 slide.

Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, warning of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

That report was written by Daniel J. Miller and his wife, Lynne Rodgers Miller. When she saw the news of the mudslide Saturday, she knew right away where the land had given way. Her husband knew, too. “We’ve known it would happen at some point,” he told The Seattle Times on Monday. “We just didn’t know when.”

Daniel Miller, a geomorphologist, also documented the hill’s landslide conditions in a report written in 1997 for the Washington Department of Ecology and the Tulalip Tribes. He knows the hill’s history, having collected reports and memos from the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s. He has a half-dozen manila folders stuffed with maps, slides, models and drawings, all telling the story of an unstable hillside that has defied efforts to shore it up.

That’s why he could not believe what he saw in 2006, when he returned to the hill within weeks of a landslide that crashed into and plugged the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, creating a new channel that threatened homes on a street called Steelhead Drive. Instead of seeing homes being vacated, he saw carpenters building new ones. “Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any building across from the river,” he said. “We’ve known that it’s been failing,” he said of the hill. “It’s not unknown that this hazard exists.”...

US Airmen with the Washington National Guard in Oso on March 27, 2014, public domain

Potential cyclone may enter Philippines this week

The Philippine Star: The state weather bureau is monitoring a new low pressure area (LPA) expected to enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR) early this week. In an interview over radio dzMM, weather forecaster Jun Galang of the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said the LPA may enter PAR by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.

The potential tropical cyclone may affect the regions of Eastern Visayas and Caraga if it enters the country. It will then be named "Caloy," the third tropical cyclone to hit the Philippines this year.

According to PAGASA's 24-hour weather forecast, the northeast monsoon is still affecting Luzon, which will have partly cloudy to cloudy with isolated light rains. The regions of Caraga and Northern Mindanao will experience cloudy skies with light rains and isolated thunderstorms.

PAGASA said the rest of the country will have partly cloudy to cloudy skies with isolated rainshowers or thunderstorms....

Cold nights, warm days trigger pollution alerts across France

Terra Daily via AFP: Nearly a third of the 22 regions in mainland France on Wednesday were on a maximum pollution alert including a swathe of the country's north, centre-east and the Paris region. The prevalance of particles with a diameter of less than 10 microns were reported by regional air monitoring centres in the affected areas.

A lack of wind during the anticyclonic period and cold nights followed by balmy days triggered the phenomenon, they said. In addition, there were emissions from cars and from heating in buildings and factories.

In general, the smaller and lighter a particle is the longer it stays in the atmosphere and can remain suspended for weeks. Particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter are also the most dangerous to health as they can pierce the lungs and the blood system. They can also lead to asthma, allergies and respiratory ailments.

Alerts have been declared in Haute Normandie, Pas de Calais and Calvados in the north, the Ile-de-France region where Paris is located and the centre-east including some Alpine areas and in some parts of the west.

Alerts are issued in France when the concentration of small particles reaches 80 micrograms per cubic metre. Measures to fight the advanced pollution level include orders to drive vehicles slowly, a ban on chimney fires and an advice to residents to eschew physical activity either indoors or outdoors....

A smoke haze from scores of steam engines hangs over the former Etat Paris (Batignolles) Depot, outside Gare de St.Lazaire, 07/65. 141D & G Pacifics, 140C 2-8-0's and 141TD 2-8-2T's are visible. Scanned from a photograph taken with an Halina 35X Super camera from a boat train. The photographer was on a school holiday to Cannes. Shot by Hugh Llewelyn, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

Early-warning system for health risks

A press release from Fraunhofer: That environmental factors affect health is neither unknown nor new. But how are the two actually connected? How can predictions be better used to avoid, for example epidemics by initiating countermeasures on time? In the EU project EO2HEAVEN researchers aimed to answer exactly those questions. The IT architecture for evaluating and correlating data was provided by Dr. Kym Watson and his team at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB in Karlsruhe. The scientists will present the system concept at CeBIT at the Fraunhofer stand in Hall 9.

In the future, sensors, data and risk analysis should provide hospitals and health authorities with timely decision support in the event of an impending health threat. Graphics: Stefan Riel; photo: Jerzy Sawluk | pixelio.

Within this project three case studies were examined: In Dresden the relationship between air quality – measured in terms of temperature, particulate matter and ozone – and cardiovascular disease; in the South African city of Durban the relationship between air pollution in an industrial area and asthma; and in Uganda the influence of various environmental factors on cholera outbreaks. To this end the researchers at the IOSB developed a software architecture for early warning systems that correlates the environmental and health data and represents it in graphical form. “This allowed us for the first time to visualize the relationships between these factors on risk maps to create a better understanding of the complex environment-health nexus,” explains project coordinator Dr. Kym Watson.

...In the long term it is conceivable, for example, that asthmatics could create their own personal profile in an app. Kym Watson explains the principle: “Users can define the thresholds above which they haven an allergic reaction to pollen or poor air quality. The user can view his / her personal risk map that relates these thresholds to measured or forecasted environmental data. The app could even warn the user when a limit value is or is likely to be exceeded. ”....

Sometimes I'm stumped for an illustration. That's when a green dragon comes in handy. Image by  Bastianow. Version without border of coat of arms: Bedwyr., public domain

Red weather warnings issued as 100mph winds head towards UK

The Guardian (UK): The Met Office has issued a rare red warning because of exceptionally strong winds that could reach 100mph in west Wales and north-west England.

It said that winds in areas affected by the warning, which means take action, will reach 80mph over a wide area on Wednesday and pose a risk of structural damage, bringing down trees and leading to loss of power supplies. Additionally, coastal areas could be hit by large waves.

Gale-force winds of up to 80mph are expected in southern Englan
d, creating an additional hazard for communities that have borne the worst of the flooding. The Met Office is also predicting a further spell of widespread rain, with a risk of 40mm on high ground of south Wales and south-west England, which it says will "exacerbate the current flooding situation"

Shipping in the Shannon sea area, south-west of Ireland, have been warned of hurricane force winds.

Amid intense criticism of the response to the flooding, David Cameron said on Tuesday that money was "no object" in tackling the crisis. But on Wednesday, the government sought to qualify the commitment, with the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, insisting that there would be no blank cheque....

Storm damage in Aberstwyth, January 2014, shot by Ian Capper, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

Cyclone heading for Mozambique's coast

AllAfrica.com via Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique: A tropical cyclone has formed in the Mozambique Channel, and is forecast to make its way towards the Mozambican coast over the next three days, bringing strong winds and torrential rain to the south of the country.

Cyclone Deliwe has moved down the western coast of Madagascar, picking up speed. According to the US navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC), at 06.00 on Friday the cyclone was generating winds of 83 kilometres an hour, with gusts of over 100 kilometres an hour.

As it moves over open water, the storm is expected to gather strength. The forecast for Saturday morning is for winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour.

It is not yet clear whether Deliwe will strike the Mozambican coast, but the National Meteorology Institute (INAM) warns that it is heading towards Inhambane province. Thunderstorms and heavy rains can be expected in the southern part of the Mozambique Channel over the next four days.

The cyclone is moving west at a speed of 12 knots (22 kilometres an hour). It will create dangerous conditions at sea, with waves up to five metres high...

System of phone alerts could warn of extreme weather in India

Terra Daily: Computer scientists in India have created image-based mobile phone alerts for extreme weather they say could prevent casualties in cyclones.

When Cyclone Phailin hit India in late 2013 it was the largest storm to batter the subcontinent in over a decade, affecting more than 12 million people in India and neighboring countries and requiring mass evacuations.

The scale of the evacuations revealed an urgent need for an effective alert system that could forewarn the majority of the population, the scientists said. A paper published in Atmospheric Science Letters details how the researchers were able to track its genesis, progression and landfall using the country's Weather Research and Forecasting system.

Converting this information into images suitable for phones yielded a forecasting and warning system accessible to ordinary citizens, they said.

"Cyclone alerts can save lives and property, but must be easily accessible," researcher Sat Ghosh said. "The global perception of India's emerging IT prowess is lopsided. It is thought of as merely a manufacturing hub; however, our article puts the country's numerical literacy to practical use."...

Teenagers on a cell phone in Kolkata, shot by Biswarup Ganguly, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Acidifying oceans alarm hundreds of scientists

Environment News Service: Climate change is causing the world’s oceans to acidify at rates not seen for the last 55 million years, and the only way to moderate this danger is to reduce human emissions of carbon dioxide, conclude 540 scientists from 37 countries in a new report.

Their conclusion is the outcome of the Third Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World that took place in Monterey, California in September 2012. The findings of these experts were presented in a report to the Conference on Climate Change that took place in Warsaw from November 11 to 22.

Reflecting the latest research on the subject, the report was prepared by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research  and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.

The scientists expect “substantial changes” in marine ecosystems, marine biodiversity and coral reefs that have the potential to affect food security. They warn that seashell fisheries could lose some US$130 billion annually, if current CO2 emissions remain unchanged.

It emerges that all the oceans, which together absorb close to one quarter of the CO2 emissions generated by human activity, have experienced an overall 26 percent rise in acidity since the dawn of the industrial age.

Twenty-four million tonnes of CO2 are absorbed by the oceans every day and, if current emission rates are maintained, the level of the ocean acidity worldwide will rise by 170 percent before 2100, compared to the pre-industrial age....

A cliff vista shot by psyberartist, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Tropical Storm Haiyan to threaten Philippines as a strong typhoon this week

The Weather Channel: While the Atlantic hurricane season may have taken its last breath, that is certainly not the case in the western Pacific Ocean. Tropical Storm Haiyan, roughly 500 miles south-southeast of Guam, is gathering strength in a favorable environment of light winds aloft and warm sea-surface temperatures.

Haiyan's forecast west-northwest track will keep it well south of Guam, however, it will also put it on a collision course with the Philippines later this week.

According to the latest forecast from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (shown in the second graphic at right), Haiyan may approach super typhoon status (sustained winds at least 150 mph) before reaching the central Philippines Friday morning, local time (Thursday evening, U.S. time).

Given this more southern track than past tropical cyclones this season, the Philippine capital of Manila, home to roughly 12 million people in the metro area, is in danger of a direct strike by Haiyan Friday night or Saturday local time (Friday, U.S. time).

Furthermore, another tropical cyclone has already soaked parts of the central Philippines. Therefore, any additional rain from Haiyan will fall over saturated ground in the central Philippines, raising the threat of flooding and mudslides....

From October, 2009, Filipino citizens stand in line for family food packs donated by local businesses and private organizations to aid communities affected by Tropical Storm Ketsana. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Marie Matarlo/Released)

Great Barrier Reef report warns of cumulative effect of development

Oliver Milman in the Guardian (UK): The health of the Great Barrier Reef is declining and requires an urgent "net benefit policy" to ensure development along the Queensland coast does no further damage to the vast coral ecosystem, according to a major government assessment.

The Great Barrier Reef strategic assessment warns that the reef faces numerous threats, including erosion of water quality, a plague of crown-of-thorns starfish and climate change, which is described as the "most serious long-term risk facing the reef".

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority's report, which analysed the health of the World Heritage-listed marine park area, identified the need to reduce sediment, nitrogen and nutrient flows onto the reef. A parallel report, conducted by the Queensland government, looked at the condition of the coastline alongside the Great Barrier Reef.

The marine park assessment states that "urgent and effective" intervention is required. It proposes that a "net benefit policy" should ensure coastal activities produce an overall benefit to the reef, with more focus on the overall impact of human activities and weather events such as cyclones, rather than individual events....

A satellite image of the Great Barrier Reef, from NASA