Super typhoon Megi hits Philippines

The Guardian (UK) via the Associated Press: The strongest cyclone in years to hit the Philippines has knocked out communications and power as residents take shelter, while flooding in Vietnam has swept away a bus and 20 of its passengers, including a girl pulled from her mother's grasp by the strong waters.

Super typhoon Megi, crossing the northern Philippines, was expected to add to the already heavy rains that have fallen on much of Asia. In China, authorities evacuated 140,000 people from a coastal province ahead of the typhoon. Megi could later hit Vietnam, where flooding has caused 30 deaths in recent days, in addition to those missing and feared dead after the bus was swept away.

Megi packed sustained winds of 140mph (225kmh) and gusts of 162mph as it made landfall at midday local time at Palanan Bay, in Isabela province. It felled trees and power poles and cut off power, phone and internet services in many areas. However, it appeared to be weakening while crossing the mountains of the main northern island of Luzon.

With more than 3,600 Filipinos waiting out the typhoon in school buildings, town halls, churches and relatives' homes, roads in and out of Isabela province were deserted and blocked by collapsed trees and power lines….

Super Typhoon Megi on October 17, from NOAA

Did snow and glacier melt cause Pakistan's floods?

Nafees Muhammad in the Tribune (Pakistan): Who should we blame for the flood and its aftermath? Other than some government officials nobody thinks it was a natural catastrophe. It has been made to appear as a man-made calamity. If this is indeed the case, then the future could be ominous.

On August 2, the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) announced that the worst flood in the last 80 years had struck the country, but no comparative data was provided to justify this. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa received the most rainfall during July but no record was broken. On the other hand, the Tarbela and Taunsa dams received so much water that it broke a record that had stood for over a century. If the flood was a result of heavy rainfall, why doesn’t the data for flood and rainfall support one another?

…Scientists are pointing fingers at climate change as one of the factors for unprecedented heavy rains and the heat wave. In a research study by PMD on last year’s rainfall, a statement by Dr Hayley Fowler of the University of Newcastle in the UK says: “The water inflow in Tarbela is largely dependent on three sources; glaciers (60 per cent), snow melt (30 per cent) and rainfall (10 per cent).” The report also mentions the mean temperature of the catchment areas as the determinant factor for the level of flow from glaciers. Climatic change appears to be a more important factor of the flood this year. The PMD admits in one of its report that there is a need to conduct comprehensive study on glaciers and develop a model to determine water melt from them….

A footbridge over the Indus River in Pakistan, shot by Bernard Gagnon , Wikimedia Commons,under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Guam, protecting reefs from the US Navy

Islands Business: Guam Governor Felix P. Camacho summed it up best when he said that the US military buildup “is the largest threat to coral reefs” on his island. Other Micronesian islands echoed his sentiment, which helped set the tone at the 2010 US Coral Reef Taskforce Meeting held on Saipan from September 15 and 16.

The US Coral Reef Taskforce is one of the foremost policy groups guiding national and international coral reef conservation. Among the major projects related to the military buildup in Guam that will impact coral reefs is a deep-draft wharf for transiting aircraft carriers.

The US Navy earlier chose the Polaris Point in Guam’s Apra Harbor as its preferred site for a carrier berth. But the Record of Decision for the Guam and CNMI military buildup’s final environmental impact statement, signed on September 21, noted that the Navy had deferred making a decision on a specific location for a transient CVN berth in Apra Harbor and voluntarily collected additional data on marine resources in the two alternative site locations.

Camacho asked the US Coral Reef Taskforce to help Guam come up with the best possible mitigation strategies for its coral reefs during the military buildup. “The members have the ability to direct resources to this important and urgent task, and techniques and strategies developed for Guahan could have future uses in other locations facing major development as well,” he said.

But Capt. Peter S. Lynch, commanding officer of the US Naval Facilities Engineering Command, said it’s not only the military buildup that’s impacting coral reefs, citing runoff from a construction site or wastewater treatment that’s not properly treated could create algae plumes….

UNICEF urges disaster risk reduction

TTKN: As the world marks the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction on 13 October, UNICEF today urged governments and civil society partners to step up efforts to help mitigate the impact of disasters – especially on children – by helping communities to become resilient, and more able to respond to disasters and changing climate conditions.

Children typically represent 50 to 60 per cent of those affected by disasters, whether through loss of life or from diseases related to malnutrition and poor water and sanitation—conditions that are exacerbated by disasters. In addition, disasters disrupt education and can cause psychological distress, and present issues of exploitation of children, creating more vulnerability.

…UNICEF is redoubling efforts globally to reduce the risks associated disasters. In Bangladesh, more children die from drowning, than any other country in the world. Some 17,000 children drown each year. With risks increasing due to climate change, extreme weather patterns, frequent flooding and rising sea levels, UNICEF and its partners have taught Bangladeshi children how to swim. As of last year, 35,000 Bangladeshi children have been taught to swim, and many have learned life-saving techniques.

Recent trends show increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters: heat waves, floods, droughts, cyclones and earthquakes. Climate change, particularly when coupled with underdevelopment, environmental degradation, and urbanization, is becoming one of the most important drivers of disaster risk….

Climate change may alter Pacific’s cycles

Science Daily: While it's still hotly debated among scientists whether climate change causes a shift from the traditional form of El Nino to one known as El Nino Modoki, scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean. The research is published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.

El Nino is a periodic warming in the eastern tropical Pacific that occurs along the coast of South America. Recently, scientists have noticed that El Nino warming is stronger in the Central Pacific rather than the Eastern Pacific, a phenomenon known as El Nino Modoki (Modoki is a Japanese term for "similar, but different").

Last year, the journal Nature published a paper that found climate change is behind this shift from El Nino to El Nino Modoki. While the findings of that paper are still being debated, this latest paper in Nature Geoscience presents evidence that El Nino Modoki drives a climate pattern known as the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO).

"We've found that El Nino Modoki is responsible for changes in the NPGO,"said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "The reason this is important is because the NPGO has significant effects on fish stocks and ocean nutrient distributions in the Pacific, especially along the west coast of the United States."

The NPGO, first named two years ago by Di Lorenzo and colleagues in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, explained for the first time long-term changes in ocean circulation of the North Pacific, which scientists now link to an increasing number of dramatic transitions in coastal marine ecosystems.

"The ecosystems of the Pacific may very well become more sensitive to the NPGO in the future," said Di Lorenzo. "Our data show that this NPGO is definitively linked to El Nino Modoki, so as Modoki becomes more frequent in the central tropical Pacific, the NPGO will also intensify."…

A lost road in Malta

Annaliza Borg in the Malta Independent Online: The Ghadira road, part of which caved in last Monday, was built directly on a sand dune without much attention to the underlying geology, The Malta Independent on Sunday has learnt. It may truly be lost if climate change is not taken seriously and geological studies are not carried out.

Lack of attention to surface and subsurface geology is widespread in Malta and explains why our roads are of such poor quality, said geologist Peter Gatt, when contacted. The part of Marfa Road opposite the beach was built directly on a sand dune.

“A relatively thin layer of asphalt over unbound aggregate cannot withstand traffic load especially when the underlying sand has shifted,” Mr Gatt pointed out. The high water pressure from a leaking water pipe may have caused some liquefaction and erosion of the sand. The sand flowed away through cracks or along the perimeter of the road leaving a void under the asphalt.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the road surface caved in when a bus was driving over it. No one was hurt in the incident, the circumstances of which were identical to those of another unpleasant situation in May 2005, when a coachload of tourists was involved.

This week’s incident has nonetheless spurred comments about the proposed controversial road project that the government shelved at the end of October last year. The government had announced the road project months before, generating controversy mainly because many argued that the nature reserve and Foresta 2000 would be compromised if a new road was built through it.

Mellieha mayor Robert Cutajar is calling for the Malta Environment and Planning Authority to conclude its Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) documentation on the Ghadira Road as the beach was “becoming smaller by the hour”….

The Ghadira nature preserve in Malta. Just guessing, but that might be the road in question to the left of the image. Shot by Inkwina, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Amazon drought emergency widens

Al-Jazeera.net: Brazil has adopted emergency measures to deal with one of the Amazon region's worst droughts in decades. A state of emergency has been declared in 25 towns as key waterways and rivers are left completely parched, the Amazonas state government said on Saturday.

So far, the severe months-long drought has affected 40,000 people in communities who depend on the South American rainforest for sustenance. In response, the government has airlifted six tonnes of food and 200 tonnes of donations to the stricken villages. However, according to officials, aid delivery has been slow due to the low water levels in rivers, which prevent large vessels from navigating them.

…Ane Alencar, a researcher with the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research (IPAM), said the drought affecting the Amazon is an extreme weather event resulting from El Nino, which occurred in late 2009 with its fallout being felt this year. She said the drought in the state of Amazonas has been more frequent and more intense than before.

Environmentalists say the severity of the drought was unexpected, but that dry weather like this will become more common due to climate change. "There is already a climate change going on at some level. Greenpeace is tracking the impacts this can have on the Amazon, the impacts that the global warming - some two degrees - may bring to the Amazon, using as examples the years when those episodes are more severe. This year was out of the line," Rafael Cruz, a Greenpeace worker, said….

Aerial view of the Amazon River, shot by Joel Takv, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Is Lagos prepared for the coming deluge?

Allwell Okpi in 234Next.com: …Though flooding is not new in Lagos, the experience this year is about the worst in the history of the state. It has been blamed on relatively high amount of rainfall this year, the opening of Oyan Dam and more significantly, the rising level of the Atlantic Ocean. According to a study carried out in 2008 by some scientists, some parts of Lagos, especially the parts closer to the ocean will be under water in the next 50 years, considering the rate at which the Atlantic Ocean is rising.

While speaking at the launch of a Nigerian documentary on climate change, Stefan Cramer, Nigeria director for Germany's Heinrich Boll Foundation think-tank and an adviser to the Nigerian government on climate change, reportedly said the most scientists predict sea levels would rise by one meter over the next 50 years or so. Considering that most parts of the state are less than two metres below sea level this poses danger for the megacity. "In 50 years with a one-meter sea level rise, two million or three million people would be homeless. By the end of the century we would have two meters and by that stage Lagos is gone as we know it," Mr Cramer told Reuters.

… All the circumstances surrounding the flooding in Lagos point to the gradual rise on the Atlantic Ocean. The management of Ogun-Osun River Basin Development Authority, the operators of the Oyan Dam on Thursday said the flood was caused by sea level rise and not the release of water from the dam. Rasak Jimoh, Managing director of the agency said the affected area is a flood plain which is directly under the influence of back flow from the Lagos Lagoon, so as the Atlantic Ocean is rising, it is causing the Lagos Lagoon to overflow on its flood plain.

….According to Stephen Olaleye, a hydrogeologist, the problem is that these affected communities were built on floodplains against general environment regulations. "Generally, it is not proper to build residences on plains. It's a natural thing. Flood plains are regularly flooded when there is increase in the volume of water in ocean or river or in this case the Lagoon. But another problem is that buildings in such areas are at risk of collapse because the likelihood is that their foundation will be below the water table and that is danger in a long run," he said….

A market in Lagos, shot by Zouzou Wizman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Why winds are slowing

Joseph Milton in Nature News: Increasing amounts of vegetation could be causing up to 60% of a slowing in wind speed across the Northern Hemisphere, according to researchers analysing three decades of wind-speed data in Nature Geoscience1 today.

The decline is a potential concern for wind-turbine efficiency. But researchers cannot tell whether the effect, an average 10% slowdown, will make much difference to wind turbines — the slowing winds measured are at 10 metres above the ground, whereas turbines operate at 50–100 metres up, where there is little global data.

Several previous regional studies looking at the United States, Australia, China and parts of Europe have shown decreasing wind speeds just above the planet's surface. Climate change, afforestation and urban development had been mooted as possible causes. But, says Robert Vautard, at the University of Versailles Saint Quentin in Yvelines, France, "people always said the data were rubbish. There was no quality-controlled global archive of data."

…Changing patterns of atmospheric circulation at high altitudes have previously been blamed for slowing wind speeds — as air temperatures and pressures in different parts of the atmosphere shift with a gradually heating Earth. But Vautard and his team say that only 10–50% of the change they observed could be explained by current understanding of how changes in high-altitude circulation affect surface wind speeds.

…Increased vegetation — resulting from ex-agricultural land becoming overgrown, afforestation and changing landscape-management practices — could account for 25–60% of the observed stilling in wind speed, says Vautard. The researchers used satellite images to estimate increases in the volume and height of vegetation, and computer climate models to see how this would affect wind speed. "We need further investigation of whether afforestation affects wind speeds," he says, "but it's almost certainly having an effect."…

Missoula panel says public supports national parks despite threats

Chelsi Moy of the Missoulian (Montana): Despite the many threats to the country's national parks - including a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog, development along park borders and global climate change - a panel of experts on Friday was heartened by continued public support and respect for America's great outdoors. "Even during these tough economic times we saw visitation increase by 4 percent," said Theresa Pierno, executive vice president of the National Parks Conservation Association. "It tells us how important they are to the American public."

Pierno was one of four panel members Friday morning who discussed the future of the National Park Service as part of the 20th annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference, a five-day event hosted by the University of Montana.

…A $9 billion backlog of maintenance projects continues to grow within the National Park Service. Half of that amount represents road repairs, Jarvis said. Only $2.8 billion is for "critical systems" such as wastewater treatment plants. The Park Service dedicates $250 million annually to fix these problems, "but we're losing ground at a rate of around $650 million a year," he said.

The NPS generates around $250 million a year in fee collections. Unlike the Bush administration, Jarvis said he doesn't support increased fees to generate additional revenue, and is afraid it might discourage people from visiting parks.

Instead, he wants the annual revenue to begin generating interest rather than sitting in the U.S. Treasury, and suggested developing a large endowment to pay for maintaining national parks into the future. "We need to make sure the national parks are getting the kind of funding that they need," Pierno said….

Sunset at Angel's Landing in Utah's Zion National Park, shot by Diliff, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Twinned satellites to map the earth in 3-D

German Aerospace Center: The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and the space company Astrium have recently taken an important step forward in their mission to create a three-dimensional map of the world. On 14 October 2010, the radar satellite TanDEM-X moved into close formation with its 'twin', TerraSAR-X. Before this, the two satellites were orbiting 20 kilometres apart - a flight time of almost three seconds. Now, there are only 350 metres separating the pair, which means their antennas are able to acquire radar images of the same area simultaneously. The objective of the mission is to create a high-precision, three-dimensional digital elevation model of Earth's land surface. The project needs the satellites to operate in parallel for a period of three years. The transition to close formation flight marks the beginning of the final preparatory stage of the TanDEM-X mission. The routine operations phase is due to start in early January next year.

…The reduced distance between the satellites means that the two radar systems can be synchronised for the first time. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X can also monitor each other's 'health' via an inter-satellite link. "This is completely uncharted territory. Never before have two satellites worked in such close formation over a period of several years," says Manfred Zink, Project Manager for the TanDEM-X Ground Segment. Eckard Settelmeyer, Director of Earth Observation and Science at Astrium, adds: "This dual mission will give another boost to satellite-supported applications and science."

The close formation flight marks the bistatic phase of the TanDEM-X mission. The two radar satellites no longer work independently, but in synchronisation. One satellite transmits the radar signals needed for image acquisition, but then both satellites receive the signals reflected from the ground. "Only in this bistatic mode can we get the image quality we need for the global elevation model. It marks an important milestone in the mission," says Zink. Working in close formation, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X's antennas complement one another like a pair of eyes. The combination of both radar images will no longer suffer from temporal changes between subsequent acquisitions over water or forest areas, and the combined sets of data can be processed into high-quality elevation models.

There are also energy-related benefits to this recording method. Because of the power consumption and build-up of heat, a radar satellite has a limit to the length of time for which it can transmit. However, in bistatic mode, TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X share the transmission task. This means that the DLR scientists can use double the acquisition time that is available with one satellite….

TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X now flying in close formation

Okavango’s resurgent floods test disaster management

Thabani Okwenjani in IPS: Despite early warnings about higher-than-usual flooding of the Okavango Delta [in Namibia and Botswana] in 2010, homes, fields, latrines and boreholes in the delta were flooded. Beginning in May, gradually rising waters destroyed crops, disrupted the water supply and sanitation facilities, threatening public health with increased incidence of malaria and diarrhoea.

The flooding marks a return to high water levels last seen thirty or forty years ago, and even with advance notice, local government’s disaster management strategy proved inadequate to the task. Dr Piotr Wolski, Associate Professor at the Okavango Research Institute (ORI) of the University of Botswana in Maun, who is an expert in hydrology, says he warned government already in April of the risk of severe flooding in the area, but nobody paid heed to his advice.

Wolski was able to predict the advent of the flood because he had been studying the delta’s weather patterns for years. He says the flood was caused by cyclic weather patterns and not by – largely unpredictable – climate change.

OKACOM executive secretary Eben Chonguiça tells Fransiska Thikerete that joint fact-finding has helped Angola, Botswana and Namibia to build a basis of trust and enable balanced choices over development in the Okavango River basin can proceed. "It looks like there is a lot of flooding this year, but when you look back 30 years, these floods are not exceptional," he notes.

According to Wolski, the flooding in the delta is based on a 30-year cycle of flooding and drought which has been occurring for the past 800 years. After having experienced drought for three decades, the delta is now likely to enter a 30-year-period of flooding, he reckons….

Fishermen in the Okavango Delta, shot by NickSS @flickr, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Mekong countries should delay dam projects for decade

Terra Daily via AFP: Countries in the lower Mekong River region should delay any decisions about building hydropower dams for 10 years, an influential new study said Friday, warning of the many risks involved. The recommendation was made in a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) report commissioned by the Mekong River Commission (MRC), an inter-governmental advisory body that deals with all Mekong River-related activities.

The MRC -- which represents Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam -- is studying the possible construction of 11 hydropower projects on southeast Asia's longest river. "The recommendation to defer dam construction for a 10-year period is very significant," said Tiffany Hacker, an interim communication advisor for the MRC.

Environmental groups have long objected to damming the river, arguing that it would damage fragile ecosystems. The assessment, led by consultants with the help of the MRC, government agencies and civil society representatives, said more time was needed to study the risks that come with building dams in such a complex environment….

Sunset on the Mekong, shot by ZAC, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Flooding hits south Russia, seven die, seven missing

RIA Novosti (Russia): At least seven died and another seven are missing after a flooding caused by excessive rains in several residential areas in Russia's southern Krasnodar Territory, a local emergency ministry said.

Earlier reports said that nine people were killed. About 300 people were evacuated. Local authorities imposed an emergency status in the area…..

An obelisk in Krasnodar

Can Hungary's red sludge be made less toxic with carbon?

Indiana University News: The red, metal-laden sludge that escaped a containment pond in Hungary last week could be made less toxic with the help of carbon sequestration, says an Indiana University Bloomington geologist who has a patent pending on the technique.

The bauxite residue now covers 40 square kilometers south of the Danube River, and has caused the deaths of eight Hungarians and injured at least 150. The residue also has caused the extinction of life in a local river and as yet unknown environmental damage elsewhere. While human deaths in the wake of the disaster may have been strictly a result of the containment failure, injuries have mostly been attributed to the chemical properties of the sludge, whose high pH (between 11 and 13) can quickly damage and kill living cells. Bauxite residue is between 10,000 and 1,000,000 times more basic than pure water, which has a pH around 7.

"We propose one way to reduce the pH of bauxite residue is to mix it with another kind of industrial waste -- oil-field brine, which is a by-product of oil and gas production -- and then carbon dioxide," said IU Bloomington geologist Chen Zhu, who submitted a U.S. Department of Energy patent application in 2007 describing the technique.

The water-based brine provides the medium for carbon dioxide to dissolve. Once dissolved, the carbon dioxide can chemically react with water to form carbonic acid. The carbonic acid counteracts some of the red mud's alkalinity, and what's left -- the negatively charged carbonate -- can serve as a partner for positively charged metal ions, such as iron, calcium and magnesium. Some of these salts spontaneously precipitate out of solution, which is a good thing, since the metals in these salts will longer will be free to interact with, say, living matter….

A NASA image of the area surrounding the toxic sludge spill in Hungary. The alumina plant appears along the right edge of the image and incorporates both bright blue and brick red reservoirs.

More effective financial regulation is fundamental to global food security

Jayati Ghosh in the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters” blog: …As World Food Day comes around this year, there is muted media discussion and hazy public awareness about the real causes of the persistent food crisis or of how the large majority of people in the world are engaged in an intensified struggle to ensure adequate food for their families. The global situation is not much better than it was two years ago, and there is a real possibility of a repeat of the crazy price movements witnessed during 2007 and early 2008, which destabilised food consumption and added to poverty in so many places.
….It was speculative activity in commodity futures markets, enabled by financial deregulation, which led to wild swings in global oil and food prices. The cost of basic grains and other staples rose rapidly, fell sharply, and has been rising again in the past year. Index investors and other financial agents with no interest in holding commodities were allowed to invest in commodity markets and treat futures contracts like any other financial asset. The volume of unregulated over the counter contracts has tracked food price changes in both future and spot markets, showing huge changes even while actual demand and supply of food in the global market changed very little.

This can easily happen again, unless strict regulation prevents such financial activity. The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill, recently passed in the US, contains some necessary regulations, bringing all futures contracts into regulated exchanges and requiring some position limits for investors (based on proof of actual interest in the commodity). But a great deal will depend on the implementation. Meanwhile, the European Union's proposed legislation is very weak and will effectively allow such speculation to continue….

Line drawing of a cornucopia by Pearson Scott Foresman

Pakistan needs sustained international funding for reconstruction

Associated Press of Pakistan: Pakistan on Friday urged a continuous flow of funds for recovery and rehabilitation efforts in the flood affected areas as the challenges the country faced were time-critical.Addressing the Third Ministerial Meeting of the Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP), Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the floods have ruined about 3.6 million hectares of rich farm land and over one-third of infrastructure.He briefed the gathering about the impact of the catastrophic floods in Pakistan that have brought in their wake massive destruction and miseries and made the challenge of economic recovery more daunting.

“It is imperative, that the flow of funds, required by the UN in the early recovery phase is not disrupted,” he said and termed it vital for ensuring sustainable rehabilitation. He said there was the daunting challenge to provide seed to flood-stricken farmers over the next few weeks, to enable them plant wheat. “If the next wheat crop is not salvaged, the food security of millions will be in jeopardy,” Qureshi warned.

Foreign Minister said Pakistan’s economy that was already under tremendous counterterrorism pressure, was now confronting additional daunting challenges. “We need to rehabilitate over 20 million flood affectees; and rebuilding close to 2 million houses, thousands of bridges, schools, hospitals and roads, and vast agricultural lands, mercilessly ripped apart by the calamity. This will require several billion dollars,” he added.

Qureshi pleaded that Pakistan needs continued support and assistance from its friends. “Coping with such a scale of destruction is beyond any developing country’s capacity.” … He pointed that the UN revised its floods flash appeal upward to two billion dollars, and so far, nearly $ 690 million have been raised….

Scientists urged to help Rwanda deal with climate impacts

Stevenson Mugisha in AllAfrica.com via New Times (Rwanda): The Minister of Environment and Lands, Stanislas Kamanzi, has called upon experts in the region to endeavour putting in place strategies aimed at fighting climate change. Kamanzi made the call in Kigali yesterday while officially opening a two-day workshop on Rwanda Science-Policy Dialogue on Climate Change.

The seminar with a theme; "Integrating climate change, mitigation and adaptation in development planning," was organized by Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in partnership with the University of Dar es Salaam and other stakeholders on climate change. "I advise you as experts in your respective capacities, to lay down serious strategies meant to support initiatives geared towards addressing climate change challenges in Africa," Kamanzi said.

He added that any considerable changes in climate patterns are bound to generate undesirable impacts on the welfare of the African people. The minister revealed that in the case of Rwanda, impacts of climate change have been clearly evident in ecosystems such as Lake Cyohoha in Bugesera District and Rugezi wetland where a combination of environmental degradation and climate change led to a decline in water levels for lakes Burera and Ruhondo. He said that as a result, there was a decline in hydroelectricity power generation from the lakes….

Between denial and the deep blue (rising) sea

Adam Morton in the Age (Australia): It is called the Bruun rule, and it works like this. For every centimetre the sea level increases, it says there is a decent chance of the shoreline retreating between 50 centimetres and a metre. If the sea should rise by a metre - which some scientists say is possible this century if ice sheets melt with global warming - that would mean 50 to 100 metres of coast swallowed by the ocean.

The Bruun rule is only a rough guide, and does not recognise many of the complexities at play; for a start, it assumes a flattish, sandy coastline with steady wave formation. But, as a rule of thumb, it gives some insight into what scientists find can be a difficult idea to get across - that changes being projected for the ocean would be much more damaging than they seem at first blush.

The sea is rising: steadily if not visibly. Scientists say the average pace around the globe is three millimetres a year, or 30 centimetres a century at the current rate. … How these estimates were reached, and whether the assumptions underpinning them still stand up, is explained in a new book. Understanding Sea-Level in Rise and Variability brings together the work of more than 90 researchers. Its lead editor, CSIRO oceanographer Dr John Church, says that by including the most recent peer-reviewed science it provides greater certainty than the latest IPCC report.

The book quantifies the causes of recent sea-level rise. About 40 per cent has come from thermal expansion - the increase in the size of water molecules as it gets hotter. Another 40 per cent is from melting ice caps, and the diminishing glaciers in Alaska, Patagonia, the Himalayas and the Antarctic Peninsula. The remaining 20 per cent is run-off from water storages and aquifers - and the wildcard of the ice sheets.

…Church says senior bureaucrats and many politicians understand the need to act, but sees a lack of urgency. ''This is not based on a belief system. It is about trying to understand what the observations are telling us,'' he says. ''There are about 140 million people living within one metre of high-tide levels around the world, and roughly $1 trillion of infrastructure in that region. Those assets, those people, are already at risk from storm surges, inundation and erosion, and increasingly will be so.''

High water in Venice, shot by EVenise, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Tropical Storm Paula drenches Cuba

Rigoberto Diaz in the Montreal Gazette via AFP: Hurricane Paula weakened to tropical storm status Thursday, but still packed a punch when it hit western Cuba on its way toward the center of the island and Havana. Cuba's civil defense called on coastal residents in Pinar del Rio province, in western Cuba, to take precautions. It said the storm, even in its weakened state, may also cause damage to the Isle of Youth and the capital city Havana.

General Ramon Pardo Guerra, head of Cuba's civil defense authority, urged inhabitants to "take all possible measures to protect life and property," in an alert directed especially at coastal dwellers. At 5 p.m. ET, Paula's center was over Cuba, 60 kilometers southwest of Havana moving towards the east a near 15 kilometres an hour, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center reported.

The storm's maximum sustained winds dropped to around 95 kilometres an hour, with higher gusts. "Weakening is forecast during the next 48 hours and Paula is expected to become a tropical depression on Friday," the NHC said….

The track of Paula at six-hour intervals, through October 11, by Titoxd

Field trials for drought-tolerant transgenic maize

Red Orbit: Crop specialists in Kenya and Uganda have laid the groundwork for confined field trials to commence later this year for new varieties of maize genetically modified to survive recurrent droughts that threaten over 300 million Africans for whom maize is life, according to a speech given today by the head of the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) at the World Food Prize Symposium.

Scientists working with AATF believe it's important to explore the potential of biotechnology to maintain and increase food production in Africa, given the large number of families dependent on maize, and warnings that maize yields could drop dramatically as climate change increases drought frequency and severity across the continent.

There is preliminary evidence that the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) varieties, which were developed through a public-private partnership, could provide yields 24-35 percent higher than what farmers are now growing.

The process for testing the WEMA varieties has been informed by a series of "mock trials" conducted in 2009 in Kenya and Tanzania. The mock trials carefully simulated field conditions, procedures, and regulatory oversight that will occur in the actual trials.

…Drought is the most important constraint to African agricultural production, and its effects are particularly severe on maize, which is the most widely-grown staple on the continent. For millions of small-scale farmers who rely on rainfall to water their crops, risk of crop failure from drought is a major barrier to the adoption of improved farming practices….

From Anga Bottione-Rossi's Histoire naturelle, agricole et economique du maïs Paris: Madame Huzard; Turin: Bocca, 1836

New NOAA supercomputing center coming to West Virginia

Ben Adducceo in West Virginia Public Broadcasting: A supercomputer that can predict and study weather patterns better than ever before is coming to Fairmont next year. The computer and its center is being built at the Interstate 79 Technology Park. This supercomputer will help scientists understand climate change better.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated the beginning of work to renovate the I-79 Technology Research Park into a place fit to hold the supercomputer. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration’s Environmental Security Computing Center is designed to improve the accuracy of global and regional weather predictions.

Jane Lubchenco is the administrator of NOAA. “It will help us tackle the great big huge problem of generating better information about climate change at the regional scale,” she said….

Africa 'needs practical advice from climate scientists'

Ochieng' Ogodo in SciDev.net: Scientists are failing Africa in its attempts to adapt to climate change, a conference was told this week. They spend too much time collecting data and attending conferences, and not enough time providing practical solutions that local people can implement, according to Anthony Nyong, manager of the Compliance and Safeguard Division at the African Development Bank.

For instance the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development, based in Niger, regularly collects data on drought. Yet the main need of people whose livelihoods have been devastated by droughts is knowledge on how to cope, he said.

Governments and donors were also to blame for failing to integrate climate adaptation plans into development programmes or to take account of local knowledge. They also squander large sums of money on conferences instead of spending it in the field, he told the UNEP-Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Climate Change Adaptation Collaborative Programme meeting on Monday (11 October).

Nyong urged scientists to redirect some of their energies from collecting data and producing information to transforming this information into knowledge that could help African people cope….

Transsaharan road shot by Radosław Botev, Wikimedia Commons

Impoverished streams

EurekAlert: Rivers and streams supply the lifeblood of ecosystems across the globe, providing water for drinking and irrigation for humans as well as a wide array of life forms in rivers and streams from single-celled organisms all the way up to the fish humans eat. But humans and nature itself are making it tough on rivers to continue in their central role to support fish species, according to new research by a team of scientists including one from Arizona State University.

Globally, rivers and streams are being drained due to human use and climate change. These and other human impacts alter the natural variability of river flows. Some impacted rivers have dried and no longer run, while still others have actually seen increases in the variability of flows due to storm floods. The end result is that these two forces are conspiring to shorten food chains, particularly by eliminating top predators like many large-bodied fish.

"Floods and droughts shorten the food chain but they accomplish this in different ways," said John Sabo, an Arizona State University associate professor in the School of Life Sciences. Sabo is the lead author of the paper, "The Role of Discharge Variation in Scaling of Drainage Area and Food Chain Length in Rivers," which appeared Oct. 15, 2010, in Science Express, the online, early publication venue for the journal Science.

"High flows take out the middle men in the food web making fish (the top predator) feed lower in the food chain; droughts completely knock out the top predator. The end result in either case is a simpler food web, but the effects we see for low flows are more catastrophic for fish, and much more long lasting," said Sabo, who studies ecology, evolution and environmental sciences….

Dniester river near Ţipova, Rezina County, Moldova, photographer unknown, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New buoy designed to gather information in changing Arctic

University of Washington News: A new buoy designed to collect information both in ice floes and open ocean is being air dropped today (Oct. 12, 2010) into the Arctic Ocean by a U.S. Coast Guard C-130. The Airborne eXpandable Ice Beacon, or AXIB, passed stringent air-drop certification by the Coast Guard earlier this year and this is its first air drop as a fully operational research tool.

"The buoys can provide crucial data for weather and ice forecasting used for tracking the direction and intensity of storms, some of which affect Alaska," says Roger Anderson, a senior mathematician with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory who is overseeing the airdrop. "The data also will be used by scientists in climate models and to try to understand the changes occurring in the Arctic and around the globe."

The state of the Arctic is of concern because Arctic sea ice has retreated extensively in the summer for the past decade, with the last four summers setting records for how little ice cover remained at the end of the melt season, according to Ignatius Rigor, senior research scientist at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory. With these retreats, warmer ocean and air temperatures have been recorded, especially north of Alaska.

… The new Airborne eXpendable Ice Beacon buoys were developed as a partnership between the Polar Science Center at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory, U.S. Coast Guard and National Ice Center. Prototypes deployed in the last two years led to the manufacture of this new buoy. It measures such things as air pressure and temperature, winds, upper ocean temperature, ice and snow temperatures and movement of the ice. Each buoy costs about $18,000.

The buoys will be part of the International Arctic Buoy Program currently collecting and sharing data from more than 100 buoys deployed by 30 institutions from 10 individual countries and the European Union. The program, which originated at the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory in 1979, is currently coordinated by Rigor.

From the University of Washington website: A prototype of the Airborne eXpendable Ice Buoy is deployed from the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy. Its first air drop as a fully operation research tool was October 12.

Estimated flood damage to Pakistan is $9.5 billion

Nahal Toosi in the Associated Press: International lenders are estimating that this summer's floods caused $9.5 billion in damage to Pakistan's infrastructure, agriculture and other sectors, a government official said Wednesday. The estimate, drafted by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank in consultation with Pakistani leaders, underscores the financial challenges facing Pakistan, a U.S.-allied nation that is battling an Islamist insurgency and was relying on international loans before the deluge.

…The $9.5 billion figure refers only to existing values of roads, buildings, irrigation systems and other devastated sectors that were evaluated nationwide, not what it will cost to replace them, said the government official familiar with the report.

The replacement costs will depend on which projects the government chooses to pursue and whether it wants to rebuild certain structures in the same fashion or better, he said. The official requested anonymity because the draft findings have yet to be officially released.

The floods began in late July during unusually heavy monsoon rains, eventually covering one-fifth of the country and affecting some 20 million of its 175 million people. Nearly 2,000 people died, while millions were left homeless, according to the United Nations.

Dozens of bridges were washed away, while more than 1.9 million homes were damaged or destroyed. Around 5.9 million acres (2.4 million hectares) of farmland were damaged, a severe blow to agriculture, the most important pillar of Pakistan's economy. Even as nearly all of the people displaced in the northwest have returned to their homes — or what's left of them — parts of southern Sindh province are still under water….

A bridge in Pakistan destroyed by floodwaters, August 13 shot by Paul Duncan of the US Marine Corps

Hurricane Paula heading for Cuba

CNN: Category 2 Hurricane Paula was brushing the tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Wednesday and heading for Cuba, forecasters said. As of 8 a.m., the center of Paula was moving over the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. It was about 55 miles (90 kilometers) east of Cancun, Mexico, and about 70 miles (115 kilometers) west-southwest of the western tip of Cuba.

The storm was packing winds of 100 mph (160 kph) as it moves north at about 9 mph (15 kph). It was expected to continue moving north for the next few hours, then turn northeast and slow later Wednesday, the hurricane center said.

Hurricane warnings were in effect for the coast of Mexico from Punta Allen north to Cabo Catoche, including Cozumel, and for the Cuban province of Pinar del Rio. Tropical storm warnings were in effect for the Mexican coast from Cabo Catoche to San Felipe, although forecasters said the Yucatan warnings likely will be canceled later Wednesday.

Tropical storm-force winds affecting Mexico are forecast to diminish later Wednesday, forecasters said. Tropical storm-force winds are anticipated to reach western Cuba by Wednesday afternoon, with hurricane conditions expected Wednesday night. "The small core of Hurricane Paula will continue to move over the Yucatan Channel today and be near or over western Cuba by tonight or early Thursday," the hurricane center said….

Hurricane Paula, October 12, 2010

CDC awards $5.25 million for state and local climate change programs

Media Newswire: Eight states and two cities will receive a total of $5.25 million for climate change prevention initiatives, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today. The awards for a three-year funding period will support health departments in meeting the public health challenges of climate change. The funding recipients are Arizona, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and New York City and San Francisco.

The programs will address health impacts including heat- related illness, animal- and insect-related illness, food- and water-borne diseases, conditions that worsen allergies and respiratory problems, and health effects linked to intense weather events.

CDC is funding two types of activities to expand capacity in health departments. Some health departments will use the funds to conduct risk assessments identifying the most likely health impacts and most threatened populations. Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and San Francisco each will receive up to $360,000 over the next three years for this type of assessment and planning.

Health departments that already know their likely climate change health needs and vulnerable populations will begin developing strategies and projects to protect those communities. Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon and New York City each will receive up to $750,000 over the next three years.

"Climate change represents one of the most significant challenges to public health in the 21st century," said Christopher Portier, Ph.D., director of CDC's National Center for Environmental Health. "These projects will lead the way in anticipating and preparing for those extreme weather events and their impact and reducing the burden on the health of our communities."…

Coral records show ocean thermocline rise with global warming

Ohio State University: Researchers looking at corals in the western tropical Pacific Ocean have found records linking a profound shift in the depth of the division between warm surface water and colder, deeper water traceable to recent global warming. The finding is the first real evidence supporting what climate modelers have been predicting as the effects of global climate change on the subsurface ocean circulation.

The report by researchers from Ohio State University and the University of Toronto was published in the latest online edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Andrea Grottoli

“We’re trying to find a way to understand how the warm water in the tropical Pacific has changed in the last century, but more importantly during the last several decades,” said Branwen Williams, who conducted this research while a doctoral student at Ohio State. Williams is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. “The Pacific is really important since it serves as a strong driver and changes in this ocean can have a very strong impact on global climate and oceanography.”….

From the Ohio State website: Researchers Branwen Williams and Andrea Grottoli with soft coral and black coral specimens collected offshore of Palau in the western tropical Pacific.

Fresh hope for Pavlovsk seed bank

Saif Bonar in BSR Russia: In 1926, Russian Botanist, Nikolai Vavilov founded the Pavolvsk Experimental Station, 30km outside St Petersburg. It has since grown to become the largest collection of its type in the world with over 5,000 types of berries and fruits. The site, some 500 hectares is funded on a shoe-string, the average wage is $270 per month, yet 90% of its collection cannot be found in any other research station or gene bank in the world. Despite this, property developers are keen to destroy the facility to make way for upmarket country retreats or Dachas for the St Petersburg to elite to retire to at the weekend.

The announcement of Pavlovks's impending doom, in the early Summer of this year, startled the world's scientific community. A social media campaign urged people to send Twitter messages to Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. A more conventional petition also did the rounds by email and the media got behind the campaign applying futher pressure on the Russian government.

Unlike many research facilities and seed banks, the Pavlovsk facility is a field genebank, so its collection sits, lives and grows in the ground. This makes transporting or moving it elsewhere a painstaking and expensive challenge which the facilities director claims could take up to 15 years to complete.

Giving into the global pressure, President Medvedev ordered an inspection of the facility and the proposed plots to be auctioned off on 23 September. On 31st August, the facility was visited without warning by a range of government officials, representing the Russian Housing Development Foundation (who own the land and want to sell it), The Public Chamber and the Accounts Chamber. As a result of their impromptu inspection, the team conceded that the land which they intended to sell did in-fact house some of the Vavilov botanical collection and agreed to a postponement of their auction, which had been schedule for late September….

The Church of Mary Magdalene in Pavlovsk, from 1900

Paula strengthens to a Category 2 hurricane

Voice of America: Hurricane Paula has strengthened as it threatens the Gulf Coast of Mexico and parts of Central America, forcing officials to call for the evacuation of many coastal areas. At last report (1745 UTC), forecasters at the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Paula's maximum sustained winds had increased from 120 kilometers to 160 kilometers an hour. Further strengthening is expected.

The storm is about 220 kilometers southeast of the Mexican resort island of Cozumel, where hurricane warnings are in effect. It is expected to approach the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula late Tuesday and Wednesday….

US Navy Research Laboratory satellite image shows Hurricane Paula, 12 Oct 2010

Transgenic corn suppresses European corn borer and save farmers billions

Seed Daily: Transgenic corn's suppression of the European corn borer has saved Midwest farmers billions of dollars in the past decade, reports a new study in Science.

Research conducted by several Midwest universities shows that suppression of this pest has saved $3.2 billion for corn growers in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin over the past 14 years with more than $2.4 billion of this total benefiting non-Bt corn growers. Comparable estimates for Iowa and Nebraska are $3.6 billion in total, with $1.9 billion accruing for non-Bt corn growers.

Transgenic corn is engineered to express insecticidal proteins from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Bt corn has become widely adopted in U.S. agriculture since its commercialization in 1996. In 2009, Bt corn constituted 63 percent of the U.S. crop….

A 1918 poster from the US

UN agencies aid Uganda in climate fight

Zahra Abigaba in the Daily Monitor (Uganda): United Nations agencies in Uganda have committed $36 million (Shs72 billion) towards supporting government initiatives on climate change. The five-year programme is a joint initiative between six resident and four non-resident United Nations agencies. The funds will be channelled through districts and communities especially the ones most hit by climate change like Karamoja, Bududa, Teso, among others.

“The compounded impact on health, economic development and food security will continue to grow in significance and severity if efforts are not made today to help communities, particularly those most vulnerable, to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate,” said Mr. Theophane Nikyema, the UN Uganda Resident Coordinator during a press briefing in Kampala.

He explained that the project will help Uganda develop a national climate change policy, climate change research agenda, district capacity building programmes, sensitisation campaigns and to deter the calamites that might be caused by climate change. “Uganda is facing serious climate change with temperatures expected to rise up to 1.5 degrees by 2020. The impact includes droughts, floods, landslides and glacial melting causing severe disruption to the ecosystem,” he said.

State Minister for Environment, Ms Jessica Eriyo said that the funds would be used to address calamities like drought, floods and landslides….

Australian farmers will lose water to restore rivers

James Grubel in Reuters: Farmers would lose more than a third of irrigation water in Australia's major food bowl, the Murray-Darling, under a plan released on Friday to restore ailing rivers, posing a new headache for the Labor minority government. The move could see the value of cotton production cut by 25 percent, and farmers and irrigators have warned of farm closures, massive job losses and higher food prices if the plan by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is adopted by the government.

Environmentalists welcome the cuts, saying they will help Australia's major river system survive future droughts brought on by climate change in the world's driest inhabited continent. Prime Minister Julia Gillard's fragile one-seat majority government is dependent on support from both rural independents and the Green party and will have to balance both interests in deciding whether to adopt the plan by the end of 2011.

Under the new plan, irrigation rights would be cut by between 3,000 to 4,000 gigalitres a year, cutting water supplies to farmers by between 27 to 37 percent, with the government to buy back water licenses to compensate farmers. "Cutting water use ... will reduce the supply of food and fiber and increase the number of farmers leaving the land, resulting in the destruction of farm and rural communities," said Victorian Farmers' Federation President Andrew Broad.

But the authority said the cuts were needed to guarantee the long-term health of the nation's major rivers, which have suffered a century of neglect and over-allocation for irrigation….

A farm near Milbrodale in New South Wales, shot by Mike Young, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Water-supply research is raining ideas

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia): Can rain falling on city streets be used to overcome water shortages when dams run low? The Cities as Water Supply Catchments research program at Monash University is looking at alternative water systems to counter pressures such as drought, population growth and climate change which are threatening traditional water supplies' ability to meet urban needs.

Councils and other water experts are being asked to take part in an online survey funded by the program and the CSIRO on the risks of stormwater harvesting….

…Eight integrated projects are covering engineering, stream ecology, water chemistry, climate science, social science, economics and urban design. The program is being supported by government departments, councils, water authorities, water supply companies, wastewater management agencies and property developers.

Rain delays a test match between South Africa and Australia, in Sydney in 2006, shot by Albinomonkey, Wikimedia Commons

New tropical storm is named Paula

Disaster News Network: Tropical Storm Paula formed Monday afternoon in the northwestern Caribbean prompting forecasters to post hurricane warnings along the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula from Punta Gruesa northward to Cancun.

According to the National Hurricane Center's 5 o'clock update, Paula was posting top winds of 60 mph and the pressure of 1000 mb was falling. Forecasters suggest the storm could become a hurricane within the next 24 hours however the future track of the storm is very uncertain. Some computer models show it weakening and disapearing as it interacts with land by the end of the week, others suggest it could stay just offshore and reach southern Florida next week.

"A turn toward the north-northwest and then toward the north is expected late Tuesday and early Wednesday," said Michael Brennan, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center. "On the forecast track, the center of Paula will begin moving away from the coast of Honduras tonight and Tuesday, and approach the coast within the hurricane warning area Tuesday night and Wednesday."

A hurricane warning has been issued for the coast of Mexico from Punta Gruesa northward to Cancun, including Cozumel. Additionally, a tropical storm warning has been issued from Chetumal northward to south of Punta Gruesa in Mexico….

A 2007 sunset in the Yucatan, shot by Daniel Rocha Góngora

Unquantifiable damage caused by Asian wildfires

Spero News via IRIN: Wildfires may not get the attention of earthquakes and cyclones but their destructive potential is considerable and warrants further attention, experts warn. “We are seeing more and more really big fires,” Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) forestry officer Pieter van Lierop told IRIN. “The control of these fires has become an issue of high importance, not only because of the increasing number of casualties and amounts of area burned, but also because of its link with other global issues, like climate change.”

Up to 56 million hectares of land are destroyed by wildfires each year in Asia, according to FAO. Since 1970 wildfires have caused an estimated US$11.6 billion in economic damage in Asia, according to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Disaster Database EM-DAT.

Densely populated areas and widespread use of large-scale agricultural fires to clear land for farming make the region particularly vulnerable to such threats, van Lierop said. But there is more. “The impact of… anthropogenic [man-made] impacts of increased population growth and higher demand for new agricultural areas, aggravates the risk of extended wildfire situations,” said Johann Goldammer, director of the German Research Institute, the Global Fire Monitoring Centre (GFMC).

…The combination of land conversion fires and unusually dry conditions from El Niño droughts, led to the outbreak of wildfires throughout Southeast Asia in 1997-1998, forcing some 200 million people in Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand to seek medical assistance….

Satellite view of 2006 fires on Borneo, via NASA