Can cold-water corals adapt to climate change?

Geomar, the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel (Germany): Are cold-water corals able to withstand ocean acidification? A long-term experiment carried out at the German Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR) showed, that the species Lophelia pertusa continues growth when exposed to ocean acidification. This unexpected finding is now published by GEOMAR scientists in “Global Change Biology”. In a new series of experiments, they will analyse how the corals react to combined changes in carbon dioxide concentration, temperature and food availability as projected to occur during the next decades to centuries.

By absorbing about a third of man-made carbon dioxide (CO2), the ocean decelerates global warming. However, when dissolved in seawater, CO2 reacts to produce carbonic acid, causing seawater pH to decrease. It also diminishes the concentration of carbonate ions, thereby putting organisms forming their shells and skeletons from calcium carbonate at risk. Apart from plankton, algae, mussels and snails, stony corals are among those particularly endangered: Their skeletons consist of aragonite, the most soluble form of calcium carbonate.

“Model calculations indicate that if CO2-emissions continue at current rates, more than 70 percent of cold-water coral reefs known today will be exposed to conditions corrosive for calcium carbonate by the end of this century. It seemed obvious, therefore, that these corals will be among the first to suffer from the effects of ocean acidification”, explains Ulf Riebesell, Professor of Biological Oceanography at GEOMAR. “But our results do not support this”, adds the Kiel marine biologist Dr. Armin Form. “For the first time ever, we showed that the globally widespread species Lophelia pertusa keeps growing even in corrosive waters if given the time to adjust to the new conditions.” Armin Form and Ulf Riebesell now presented their results in the renowned journal Global Change Biology....

Sampling Lophelia pertusa with JAGO. Photos: JAGO-Team, GEOMAR, from the GEOMAR website

Three-quarters of the Severn Estuary's mudflats could be lost to sea level rises

Graham Henry in Wales Online: Sea level rises of between 30-40cm in the Severn Estuary over the next 60 years could cause more than three-quarters of the estuary’s intertidal area to be lost, a new report has warned. In stark findings, The State of the Severn Estuary report warns that the impact of climate change could cause 77% of the zone – the area that is above water at low tide and underwater at high tide – to disappear over the next 100 years.

The rapid loss of intertidal areas could have knock-on implications for wildlife that feed on the mudflats and sandflats of the intertidal zone, such as wading birds and waterfowl, with the report warning that intertidal mudflats were of “major conservation importance”. It is coupled with a warning of repeated flooding in areas along the Estuary in the future if no action is taken, and current sea defences were not maintained.

Environment Agency Wales has previously warned that without flood defence improvements, rising seas could cause damaging floods to towns along the Severn Estuary by 2060, including Cardiff, Penarth and Newport.


Plans identified Lavernock Point in the Vale of Glamorgan ... at particular risk, while there are risk points identified all along the estuary to Gloucestershire, which includes around 250,000 homes.

The report – produced by the Severn Estuary Partnership and Cardiff University in collaboration with Environment Agency Wales – also predicts that 38% of vital saltmarshes could be lost in the next century as they become “squeezed” against flood defences....

Mouth of the Severn Lavernock Point is an atmospheric spot where wind, tide and Glamorgan meet. The view towards Somerset is that of a drowned land whose one-time hills now protrude above the surface of these waters as islands or project out into them as promontories. Shot by Alan Bowring, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Opening the lid on propaganda machine

Over at DeSmogBlog (which you should read regularly), Brendan DeMelle has released a large batch of internal documents from the Heartland Institute, one of the main conduits for climate denial funds from the Koch brothers. The documents apparently came from a disgruntled Heartland insider.

Those of you who follow the propaganda blitz will see plenty of familiar names among the recipients of Heartland funds: Craig Idso, Judith Curry, Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, and even the blandly moderate Andrew Revkin, who should be "cultivated," according to the documents. The level of giving really clarifies why these often debunked voices keep at it -- they're getting well-paid.

There are also plans to fund a pro-fossil fuel disinformation campaign against the teaching of climate science in school, pushing the long-debunked notion that the science is unclear. The goal is to dissuade teachers from touching the topic at all.

Maybe it's time to start putting pressure on the publicly held corporations that also give money to Heartland. The list includes Microsoft, Altria and other tobacco peddlers, as well as the usual assortment of coal companies. It would also be revealing to discover the identity of the Anonymous Donor who has given over $8 million to the Institute over several years. I'm not surprised to see the tobacco and fossil fuel companies on the list. But Microsoft should get a thorough drubbing for joining such ghastly company.

High population density is greatest risk factor for water-linked diseases

Science Daily: Water-associated infectious disease outbreaks are more likely to occur in areas where a region's population density is growing, according to a new global analysis of economic and environmental conditions that influence the risk for these outbreaks.

Ohio State University scientists constructed a massive database containing information about 1,428 water-associated disease outbreaks that were reported between 1991 and 2008 around the world. By combining outbreak records with data on a variety of socio-environmental factors known about the affected regions, the researchers developed a model that can be used to predict risks for water-associated disease outbreaks anywhere in the world.

...There are five different categories of water-associated diseases, depending on the role water plays in the disease transmission process. Population density was a risk factor for all types of these diseases. Prolonged and excessive heat was shown to be a driver of water-related diseases that are transmitted to people by insect bites.

The study shows that clusters of reported outbreaks tended to occur in Western Europe, Central Africa, Northern India and Southeast Asia. These regions, as well as Latin America and eastern Brazil, were targeted as potential "hot spots" at highest risk for future water-associated disease outbreaks ranging from E. coli-related diarrhea to dengue fever.

World health experts conservatively estimate that 4 percent of deaths -- almost 2 million annually -- and 5.7 percent of illnesses around the world are caused by infectious diseases related to unsafe water and sanitation and hygiene problems. Getting a better handle on the socio-environmental factors that affect the risks for water-associated disease outbreaks is a first step toward guiding policymakers as they prioritize the distribution of health resources around the world, the researchers say....

A 1973 photo of a pool of dirty water near an automobile scrap yard, US National Archives

China's farming calendar 'out of step' with global warming

Yidong Gong in SciDev.net: The traditional Chinese farming calendar, still used by millions of farmers to guide their farming activities, should be adapted to reflect global warming, say scientists. The 24 'solar terms', a set of timings reflecting the seasonal cycle, were laid down 2,000 years ago as a supplement to the traditional Chinese calendar. They are marked on the calendar under specific dates — two terms per month — and refer to agricultural activities.

The terms, which mark seasonal transitions and indicate the stages crop growth, include 'great cold', 'great heat', 'rain water', 'waking of insects' and 'grain in ear'. They are used alongside modern agro-meteorological data to plan agricultural activities. In rural areas, many proverbs and songs associated with the terms are also used.

But now, Chinese meteorologists say the traditional divisions no longer apply because they do not take climate change into account. The researchers collected air temperature data from 549 meteorological stations across the country from 1960 to 2008 to determine how the mean temperatures indicating seasonal transitions have changed.

They found that the mean temperature in China has risen substantially, with spring and summer starting earlier, and autumn and winter having a later onset. Summer has lengthened by 15 days, while winter has shortened by the same amount. Such a dramatic change means the farming practices associated with the solar terms need to be adjusted, they say. The number of cold days for 'great cold' has reduced by 56.8 per cent over the past ten years compared with the 1960s, for example, whereas the number of hot days for 'great heat' has increased by 81.4 per cent....

A harvest in China, shot by Steve Evans, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate change impacts reveal alarming trends in Nepal

Udo Weber of the German embassy in Nepal, in TelegraphNepal: The big environmental issues cannot be solved on a national level. This is an experience we are making for centuries. The big river systems, be it in Europe, in the Middle East or in Asia have always been a connecting element between different people and countries - but they also have often been a major bone of contention (German – French history is a vivid example for this). Regional co-operation is therefore the only reasonable way of addressing environmental cross-border issues.

South Asia has always been – to some extent - prone to disasters, especially to water related disasters. In recent years, the risks and also the worldwide perception of risks, have change dramatically due to climate change. I therefore wish to elaborate a few points on climate change from a German perspective. Climate change is the definitive challenge of the 21st century. Changes in the climate destroy the basis on which a human life subsists; drought, for instance, leads to shortages in food and water. Rising sea levels are already threatening the territories of small island states like the Maldives and vast stretches of coastland as we see in Bangladesh.

Climate change impacts in Nepal demonstrate alarmingly increasing trends. According to a recent OECD report, Nepal's average mean temperature is projected to increase by 1.2 to 3 degrees Celsius in the next 40 to 90 years.

Warming trends will have adverse impact on Nepal's glacial landscapes and also bring the threat of Glacial Lake Outburst Flooding (GLOF). Both cause potential danger in the livelihood and security of billions of people depending on the Himalayan headwaters in the South and East Asian Regions.

Changes in snowfall patterns are already experienced which pose threats to Himalayan snow accumulation forcing glacial retreats. Dry season run-off of the rivers in Nepal emanating from the Himalayas is now partly reduced, meaning Nepal's largely agricultural economy, hydroelectricity potential and river-bank farming will be under substantial danger in coming years....

A frozen lake down to the Himalayan vilage of Manang, with an elevation of 3800 meters, shot by Liran Ben Yehuda, public domain

Kenya develops broad action plans to combat climate change

Naftali Mwaura in Africa Science News: The Kenyan government in conjunction with donor partners has developed comprehensive action plans that pin-points specific interventions required to buffer against adverse effects of climate change on strategic sectors of the economy.

Government officials revealed that the new strategy on combating climate change looks at innovative measures that can be adopted locally to minimize the impact of climate change across a broad swathe of social and economic sectors. It is hoped that a national climate change action plan will reinvigorate the implementation of policy, legal and funding interventions critical to attaining low carbon status.

Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, Ali Mohammed, stressed that the Kenyan government has retained commitment towards combating climate change through development of progressive policy and legislative frameworks. He added that “the government is also providing funding towards adaptation and mitigation programs to lessen effects of climate change on fragile ecosystems and livelihoods.”

According to the Permanent Secretary, “Kenya has developed a cross-cutting strategy to combat climate change. It addresses agriculture, water, forestry, energy and health. The strategy root for innovative technologies that can sustain low carbon pathways.” He noted that the action plan addresses every international treaty to mitigate, adapt and climate proof the environment...

People displaced by climate change need our help, but so do those who cannot leave

Sir John Beddington in a guest blog at Scientific American: The environment is already affecting patterns of human migration. On the island of Hatia, along coastal Bangladesh, 22 percent of households have migrated to cities as a coping strategy following tidal surges. But we would be wrong to assume that our only concern should be for the millions of people who might try to leave areas of environmental stress that are affected by hazards such as droughts, floods, water scarcity and land degradation. In fact, a recent UK report has shown that a focus on populations migrating away from environmental change neglects two key groups of vulnerable people: the many millions who will actually migrate into areas of environmental threat, and those who will be trapped there by economic, social or indeed environmental challenges.

The report, “Foresight: Migration and Global Environmental Change,” released by the U.K. Government Office for Science, has found that the decision to migrate is a complex and multi-faceted one. This two year study, which I oversaw, involved 350 leading experts from more than 30 countries. It found that migration patterns are influenced by a wide range of inter-related drivers, including social ties, political situations and the desire of individuals to earn a wage. Global-scale changes to our environments will increasingly affect these factors, for instance through further eroding rural livelihoods and eliminating income streams. Yet, paradoxically, a deteriorating environment is also likely to make migration more difficult for many of the world’s most vulnerable, because it eats away the assets that local inhabitants need to make this move. This is what makes identifying “environmental migrants” so problematic—just because a person’s environment is deteriorating doesn’t mean he or she will move.

We often forget that migration is not easy; it can be expensive and often relies on having good social ties in some other area, reasonable economic capital and favorable political conditions, such as the existence of bilateral migration arrangements or the absence of conflict. ...Therefore, although migration patterns are likely to be a concern for most governments, the alternative—population pressures increasing in locations where people have little chance to move and diversify their incomes—is arguably even more troubling.

What this means is that just because a community faces environmental hazards, even severe ones, it does not necessarily follow that local people will migrate to escape those conditions....

German-Russian emigrants in 1929, from the Bundesarchiv

A look back suggests a sobering future of wildfire dangers in US west

EurekAlert: The American West has seen a recent increase in large wildfires due to droughts, the build-up of combustible fuel, or biomass, in forests, a spread of fire-prone species and increased tree mortality from insects and heat. In a paper appearing online Feb. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a 12-member research team warns that these conditions may be "a perfect storm" for more fires.

While grazing and fire suppression have kept incidents of wildfires unusually low for most of the last century, the amounts of combustible biomass, temperatures and drought are all rising. "Consequently, a fire deficit now exists and has been growing throughout the 20th century, pushing fire regimes into disequilibrium with climate," the team concludes.

"The last two centuries have seen dramatic changes in wildfire across the American West, with a peak in wildfires in the 1800s giving way to much less burning over the past 100 years," said lead author Jennifer R. Marlon, now a National Science Foundation Earth Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. "The decline was mostly caused by the influx of explorers and settlers and by their subsequent suppression of wildfires, both intentionally and accidentally."

...In their analysis, Marlon and colleagues used existing records on charcoal deposits in lakebed sediments to establish a baseline of fire activity for the past 3,000 years. They compared that with independent fire-history data drawn from historical records and fire scars on the landscape.

..."We can use the relationship between climate and fire," Marlon said, "to answer the question: What would the natural level of fire be like today if we didn't work so hard to suppress or eliminate fires? The answer is that because of climate change and the buildup of fuels across the western U.S., levels of burning would be higher than at any time over the past 3,000 years, including the peak in burning during the Medieval Climate Anomaly."...

July - Sep 2000 -- Air Force Reserve firefighting aircraft and aircrews quenched wildfires in California, Idaho and Montana, flying C-130s equipped with Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems. Here, an Air Force Reserve C-130 Hercules MAFFS aircraft assigned to the 302nd Airlift Wing, Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., drops fire retardant chemicals on the "Big Crow" wildfire in southwestern Idaho

215 Russians die in cold snap; well over 600 in Europe

Terra Daily via AFP: Some 215 Russians have died this year in a prolonged period of abnormally cold winter weather, the health ministry said Monday as the overall death toll for Europe rose to well over 600. Heavy snow continued to fall on Monday in Romania and Bulgaria, but the cold snap that froze much of Europe for the past two weeks began to ease in the west of the continent.

In Russia, 215 people died and 5,546 people suffered from hypothermia and frostbite, including 154 children, between January 1 and February 13, the ministry said in a statement. While accustomed to frosty winters, Russia has seen 20 days of unusually cold weather, with the average temperature falling 7 to 14 degrees Celsius below average, the state weather service said.

In Moscow, the temperature was minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus four Fahrenheit) on Monday afternoon, the state weather service said. While Russian apartment blocks are generally well heated, the homeless are particularly at risk....

A Moscow winter in 2007, shot by Andrey, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Rising temperatures push Andean species skyward

Nathanael Massey in E&E News: The cloud forests of the Andes mountains, bound between the Amazonian lowlands to the west and the peaks of the Andean uplift to the east, harbor worlds upon worlds. Within the mountains' mosaic of high plateaus, deep-cut valleys and steeply climbing slopes, unique ecosystems have flourished side by side for centuries, their equilibrium protected by the rugged terrain and 12,000 years of relatively stable climate. Home to nearly one-sixth of the world's plant species, as well as hundreds of kinds of mammals, birds and amphibians, the Andean cloud forests are one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth.

They are also among the most vulnerable. Isolation has given rise to a high number of endemic -- or regionally unique -- species with little history of migration, leaving them ill-equipped to respond to the human influences that have crept through the forests in recent decades. Mineral extraction and agricultural deforestation have taken a toll, and incursions into the region show every sign of expanding.

Most alarmingly, warming temperatures have accelerated a process of upslope migration, begun at the close of the last ice age, that threatens to push the region's biodiversity into increased competition, nutrient-poor soil conditions and, finally, thin air, according to forest ecologists working in the region.

Although many South American countries have taken steps to protect Andean ecosystems, their efforts might be insufficient. A new study led by researchers at Duke University has identified and mapped hundreds of endemic plant and animal species across 17,000 miles of east-facing Andean uplift, a section ranging through Bolivia and Peru. It found that only 20 percent of areas with the highest levels of biodiversity are protected by government regulations.

"What our study showed was incredibly scary," said Bruce Young, director of species science at the organization NatureServe and a co-author of the study....

Cloud forest near Mindo, Ecuador, shot by Ayacop, public domain

Cyclone hits as evaluation team visits Madagascar

Dennis McClean in the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction: For the second year in a row, Valentine's Day on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar has been marked by the arrival of a tropical cyclone. Cyclone Giovanna made landfall on the east coast shortly after midnight, bringing torrential rain and reported wind speeds of up to 231 km per hour.

One death has been reported so far in Brickaville where unconfirmed reports indicate severe damage to the local hospital and many people rendered homeless. In the capital, Antananarivo, power has been cut off and drivers ordered to stay off the roads.

Last year, Cyclone Bingiza also hit the island on February 14, and killed 14 people and destroyed nearly 6,000 homes over the course of five days. Schools for over 7,000 children were damaged.

The imminent arrival of Cyclone Giovanna injected an unusual dose of reality into the work of an evaluation team from the UK's York University which arrived on the island a week ago to assess the impact of UNICEF and the Ministry of Education's Disaster Risk Reduction, Preparedness and Response programme.

Yesterday, Dr. Sean Deely, Deputy Director of York University's Postwar Reconstruction and Development Unit (PRDU) was at a school in Analangirofo, close to where the cyclone was expected to make landfall and said: "It was amazing to see the kids preparing for the cyclone and the extent of their knowledge."...

Intense Tropical Cyclone Giovanna approaching Madagascar on February 13, 2012

Exact climate change contribution to floods won't be clear for a decade, say scientists

Ben Cubby in the Sydney Morning Herald: The floods inundating northern NSW and Queensland are likely to have been driven in part by human-induced climate change - although the precise extent of this influence won't be known for another decade. Leading climate researchers said the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events that bring drought and flood to Australia seems to have increased in the past 30 years, even though such events have been occurring independently of human influence for far longer.

''It's completely naive to exclude climate change as a contributor to the floods because of the rapid warming of the oceans, but we are not yet at the stage where we can be too specific about individual events,'' a climate researcher at the University of NSW, Matthew England, said.

The El Nino/La Nina-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a cycle caused by warm sea-surface temperatures and air-pressure changes, and is a principal driver of weather in the southern hemisphere. Unusually, Australia has endured two La Ninas in the past 18 months, leading to the nation recording the wettest two-year period since instrumental records began in the 1880s.

''Some of the main El Nino and La Nina reconstructions available show a significant trend in the cycles over the past century and particularly in the last 30 years,'' Professor England said. ''We are getting more El Nino and La Nina events. 'One thing that's certain is that the water north of Australia has warmed about 0.7 degrees above the long-term average. For this key region, we are in the situation now where the long-term trend is as significant as natural variability.''

Recent studies overseas have drawn similar conclusions. A paper published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change reported an increased frequency of ENSO in the past 30 years...

A 4WD crosses the rising Boyne River east of Durong in Queensland, shot by Sweetbixkid, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century

The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery: Urban flooding is a serious and growing development challenge. It is a global phenomenon which causes widespread devastation, economic damages and loss of human lives.

The occurrence of floods is the most frequent among all natural disasters globally. In 2010 alone, 178 million people were affected by floods. The total losses in exceptional years such as 1998 and 2010 exceeded $40 billion.

Cities and Flooding: A Guide to Integrated Urban Flood Risk Management for the 21st Century provides forward-looking operational assistance to policy makers and technical specialists in the rapidly expanding cities and towns of the developing world on how best to manage the risk of floods. It takes a strategic approach, in which appropriate risk management measures are assessed, selected and integrated in a process that both informs and involves the full range of stakeholders....

[Some of the report's conclusions are:]

• Flooding is having a major impact on millions of people every year and therefore flood risk management measures need to be implemented in the short term
• Impacts from flooding are growing and may become much worse in the future. Schemes must balance the short and long term and integrate structural and non-structural measures
• Successful long term implementation of flood risk management measures requires clear leadership, strong champions and the right institutional and legislative frameworks
• It is critically important to monitor and benchmark flood risk management even when there has not been a flood event for some time.

Flooding and incompetence

An editorial in the Starbroek News (Namibia): ...[A]fter two decades in office inclusive of a major disaster seven years ago, the PPP/C government has run out of excuses where it relates to viable solutions and a comprehensive plan to confront flooding. If there is a single issue which has reflected the full range of the PPP/C’s incompetence, lack of imagination and drift while presiding over the most serious and grievous losses to large segments of the populace year after year it is flooding. If there is a single performance-based issue that the government should have lost office over it is flooding. There is no doubt about that.

...The culpability of the government is reflected on two planes. The first is simple. After the 2005 Great Flood the government was fully aware that it needed a game changer to insulate the areas vulnerable to the swollen EDWC [East Demerara Water Conservancy]. It has had a full 7 years – almost to the day – to complete the lynchpin in its plan – the Hope Canal. The questions about the engineering wisdom of this canal aside, it was for the government to show in words and deed that it recognized the grave danger posed by the EDWC to Mahaica/Mahaicony and the lower East Coast and that it was prepared to execute this project properly and rapidly. Seven years later the project is plodding on and 2014 might arrive without it being completed. Minister Robert Persaud who presided over this sector has been moved to another area without fulfilling arguably the most important commitment he and his government had made to the people. It is also worthy of note that the dredging of several rivers including the Pomeroon and the Mahaica had been on the government’s agenda after the Great Flood and had been discussed by Minister Persaud with several donors and friendly countries. Nothing came of it and residents of the Pomeroon were left to plead again this year amidst deep flooding for the dredging of the river. It should also be pointed out that while admittedly the price tags are high, the Jagdeo government made no progress on taking decisions on phases 2 and 3 of the MMA scheme and the rebuilding of the northern wall of the conservancy.

The second plane of culpability is the persistent and unanswered dilemma of the EDWC. Is the threat posed by the EDWC a function of the extent of its siltation and poor management over the last 30 years? Is it also the case that if these issues had been addressed in the ambit of a comprehensive flood control plan there may have been no need for this giant canal at Hope leading out to the Atlantic? Prior to the 2005 Great Flood, the ordinary citizen knew very little of the EDWC....

Flooding on the Klein Windhoek River, Namibia, year unknown, shot by Bries, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

With climate change, today's '100-year floods' may happen every three to 20 years

Jennifer Chu in PhysOrg: Last August, Hurricane Irene spun through the Caribbean and parts of the eastern United States, leaving widespread wreckage in its wake. The Category 3 storm whipped up water levels, generating storm surges that swept over seawalls and flooded seaside and inland communities. Many hurricane analysts suggested, based on the wide extent of flooding, that Irene was a “100-year event”: a storm that only comes around once in a century.

However, researchers from MIT and Princeton University have found that with climate change, such storms could make landfall far more frequently, causing powerful, devastating storm surges every three to 20 years. The group simulated tens of thousands of storms under different climate conditions, finding that today’s “500-year floods” could, with climate change, occur once every 25 to 240 years. The researchers published their results in the current issue of Nature Climate Change.

MIT postdoc Ning Lin, lead author of the study, says knowing the frequency of storm surges may help urban and coastal planners design seawalls and other protective structures. “When you design your buildings or dams or structures on the coast, you have to know how high your seawall has to be,” Lin says. “You have to decide whether to build a seawall to prevent being flooded every 20 years.”

Lin collaborated with Kerry Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, as well as with Michael Oppenheimer and Erik Vanmarcke at Princeton. The group looked at the impact of climate change on storm surges, using New York City as a case study. To simulate present and future storm activity in the region, the researchers combined four climate models with a specific hurricane model. The combined models generated 45,000 synthetic storms within a 200-kilometer radius of Battery Park, at the southern tip of Manhattan....

A view of the marina in Battery Park City, Manhattan, shot by David Moran, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Soil erosion increasing global warming threat

Nina Chestney in Reuters: Global warming will get worse as agricultural methods accelerate the rate of soil erosion, which depletes the amount of carbon the soil is able to store, a United Nations' Environment Programme report said on Monday. Soil contains huge quantities of carbon in the form of organic matter. which provides nutrients for plant growth and improves soil fertility and water movement.

The top meter of soil alone stores around 2,200 billion tonnes of carbon, which is three times the level currently held in the atmosphere, said the UNEP Year Book 2012. "Soil carbon is easily lost but difficult to rebuild," the report said.

"Soil carbon stocks are highly vulnerable to human activities. They decrease significantly (and often rapidly) in response to changes in land cover and land use such as deforestation, urban development and increased tillage, and as a result of unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices."

Such activities can break down soil's organic matter. When this happens, some carbon is converted to carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is one of the main contributors to global warming, and it is lost from the soil. Around 24 percent of global land has already suffered from declines in health and productivity over the past quarter of a century due to unsustainable land use, UNEP said....

Soil in France, shot by Lionel Allorge, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

January 2012 the fourth warmest for the contiguous United States

NOAA: During January, warmer-than-average conditions enveloped most of the contiguous United States, with widespread below-average precipitation. The overall weather pattern for the month was reflected in the lack of snow for much of the Northern Plains, Midwest, and Northeast. This scenario was in stark contrast to Alaska where several towns had their coldest January on record.

...The average contiguous U.S. temperature in January was 36.3 degrees F, 5.5 degrees F above the 1901-2000 long-term average -- the fourth warmest January on record, and the warmest since 2006. Precipitation, averaged across the nation, was 1.85 inches. This was 0.37 inch below the long-term average, with variability between regions.

Warmer-than-average temperatures were widespread across the contiguous United States during January. Nine states – Arizona, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming – had January temperatures ranking among their ten warmest. Florida and Washington were the only states with temperatures near average, and no state was cooler than average.

Many locations across the Northern Plains exceeded all-time warm January maximum temperatures records during the month, including Minot, North Dakota, which reached 61 degrees F on January 5th. This surpassed the previous record of 59.0 degrees F for the city, set on January 28th, 1906.

In contrast to the contiguous United States being much warmer than average, several towns across Alaska had their coldest average January temperatures on record -- Nome (-16.6 degrees F), Bethel (-17.3 degrees F) McGrath (-28.5 degrees F), and Bettles (-35.6 degrees F)...

Temperature map from NOAA

CU-Boulder study shows global glaciers, ice caps shedding billions of tons of mass annually

I've linked to news coverage of this study before, but here's the authoritative account without the denialist spin that some news outlets have been pushing as a result of less than expected ice losses in high Asia mountains: University of Colorado at Boulder: Earth’s glaciers and ice caps outside of the regions of Greenland and Antarctica are shedding roughly 150 billion tons of ice annually, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

The research effort is the first comprehensive satellite study of the contribution of the world’s melting glaciers and ice caps to global sea level rise and indicates they are adding roughly 0.4 millimeters annually, said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. The measurements are important because the melting of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, along with Greenland and Antarctica, pose the greatest threat to sea level increases in the future, Wahr said.

The researchers used satellite measurements taken with the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, a joint effort of NASA and Germany, to calculate that the world’s glaciers and ice caps had lost about 148 billion tons, or about 39 cubic miles of ice annually from 2003 to 2010. The total does not count the mass from individual glacier and ice caps on the fringes of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets -- roughly an additional 80 billion tons.

“This is the first time anyone has looked at all of the mass loss from all of Earth’s glaciers and ice caps with GRACE,” said Wahr. “The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change.”

...“The total amount of ice lost to Earth’s oceans from 2003 to 2010 would cover the entire United States in about 1 and one-half feet of water,” said Wahr, also a fellow at the CU-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

The vast majority of climate scientists agree that human activities like pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is warming the planet, an effect that is most pronounced in the polar regions.

One unexpected study result from GRACE was that the estimated ice loss from high Asia mountains -- including ranges like the Himalaya, the Pamir and the Tien Shan -- was only about 4 billion tons of ice annually. Some previous ground-based estimates of ice loss in the high Asia mountains have ranged up to 50 billion tons annually, Wahr said.

...“What is still not clear is how these rates of melt may increase and how rapidly glaciers may shrink in the coming decades,” said Pfeffer, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s civil, environmental and architectural engineering department. “That makes it hard to project into the future.”

...“One big question is how sea level rise is going to change in this century,” said Pfeffer. “If we could understand the physics more completely and perfect numerical models to simulate all of the processes controlling sea level -- especially glacier and ice sheet changes -- we would have a much better means to make predictions. But we are not quite there yet.”...

Revealed: how Scots are subsidising housing in English flood plains

Rob Edwards in Herald Scotland: Scottish householders are paying for property development in the southeast of England by contributing to a £200 million-a-year "stealth subsidy" for insuring buildings in areas at high risk of flooding. To keep insurance costs down for thousands of homeowners on English flood plains, owners in Scotland are being charged higher premiums, according to a leading flood insurance expert, David Crichton. And the costs for some are likely to rocket next year, he warns.

As many as 23% of homes in England are at risk of flooding, compared to under five per cent in Scotland. Because of pressures on space, more than one in 10 new properties in England are still being built in flood-risk areas – something that hasn't happened in Scotland and Wales for years.

But because the insurance industry has promised that it will provide affordable flood insurance for every UK home and small business, those in low-risk parts of Scotland are being made to pay more to subsidise those in high-risk areas. This is a "stealth subsidy" which is unfair to Scotland, Crichton told the Sunday Herald.

"At present there is a subsidy of over £200m per-year from policyholders in low-risk areas to those in high-risk areas to enable continued flood plain development in the southeast of England," he said. "Scots with their lower flood risk are paying a disproportionate share of this."

Crichton argued that England's efforts to manage flood risks better had been "largely unsuccessful". There were now at least 40 ways in which Scotland's flood risk was lower than the rest of the UK. "Scotland has gone a long way to manage the risk," he said. "The trouble is that most insurers are unaware that there is any difference at all."...

The Ouse Washes at Sutton Gault, an area of seasonally flooding wet grassland (washland) lying between the Old and New Bedford Rivers. These are derived from the River Ouse, a major tributary of East Anglia's Wash. Shot by Richard Humphrey, Wikimeida Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Amazon defenders face death or exile

Tom Phillips in the Guardian (UK): ...In a region often compared to the Wild West, betraying those pillaging the rainforest all too often leads to a coffin or to exile. Mouth Organ John, an amateur musician and mechanic whose real name was João Chupel Primo, met his fate first.

Last October, he and Guerra handed the authorities a dossier outlining the alleged activities of illegal loggers and land-grabbers in the region. Within days two men appeared at Primo's workshop in the city of Itaituba and shot him dead. A bloody photograph of his corpse, laid out on a mortician's slab, made a local tabloid. "There are signs this was an execution," the local police chief, José Dias, told the paper.

Guerra escaped death, but he too lost his life. Told of his friend's murder, he locked himself indoors, clutching a shotgun to ward off the gunmen. The next day, he was spirited out of town by federal police. Since then Guerra has embarked on a lonely pilgrimage across Brazil, journeying thousands of miles in search of support and safety. He became the latest Amazonian exile – people forced into self-imposed hiding or police protection because of their stance against those destroying the environment.

...In June Brazil will host the Rio+20 United Nations conference on sustainable development. World leaders will gather in Rio to debate how to reconcile economic development with environmental conservation and social inclusion.

Brazil will be able to trumpet advances in its battle against deforestation – in December the government claimed Amazon destruction had fallen to its lowest level in 23 years. But the continuing threats to environmental activists represent a major blot on its environment credentials.

"What is at stake … is the government's ability to protect its forests and its people," said Eliane Brum, a Brazilian journalist who has won numerous awards for her dispatches from the Amazon. "If nothing is done … the government will be demoralised on the eve of Rio+20."...

Martin Johnson Heade's 1864 painting of a Brazilian forest

Libya fallout worsens Sahel hunger pangs as crisis looms

Terra Daily via AFP: Sahel states are bracing for a long, potentially deadly hungry season, many weakened by the return of people from Libya who are unemployed, armed and creating fresh strife in already-vulnerable countries.

Crops have failed across a massive swathe of eight countries after late and erratic rains in 2011, and aid agencies have raised the alarm of a food crisis bigger than that which left millions hungry in 2010.

However this semi-arid belt running across Africa, separating Sahara from savannah, has had several new shocks which are aggravating the crisis.

As the rains dried up, so too did remittances from oil-rich Libya where many in this zone went to work, explains Grant Leaity, regional chief of emergency for the United Nations children's agency UNICEF....

Libya and the five other original founders of Community of Sahel-Saharan States (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan) as of 1998

Heat and cold damage corals in their own ways

Terra Daily via SPX: Around the world coral reefs are facing threats brought by climate change and dramatic shifts in sea temperatures. While ocean warming has been the primary focus for scientists and ocean policy managers, cold events can also cause large-scale coral bleaching events.

A new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego compared damage to corals exposed to heat as well as cold stress. The results reveal that cool temperatures can inflict more damage in the short term, but heat is more destructive in the long run.

...Climate change is widely known to produce warming conditions in the oceans, but extreme cold-water events have become more frequent and intense as well. In 2010, for example, coral reefs around the world faced one of the coldest winters and one of the hottest summers on record.

During a unique experiment conducted by former Scripps Oceanography student Melissa Roth and current Scripps scientist Dimitri Deheyn, corals subjected to cold temperatures suffered greater growth impairment and other measurable damage in just days compared with heat treated corals.

Yet the researchers found that corals were eventually able to adjust to the chilly conditions, stabilize their health and continue to grow. However, over the long term corals subjected to heat suffered more greatly than those in cold, with evidence of severe bleaching and growth stoppage, a trajectory that leads to death....

A reef in the Maldives, shot by J. Ollé, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Blizzards push southeastern Europe energy grids to limits

Oleg Vukmanovic and Maja Zuvela in Reuters: Blizzards and ice-laden power lines in southeastern Europe pushed gas and electricity networks near to breaking point Wednesday as consumption soared, while some western countries scrambled to prevent similar breakdowns.

As electricity cables buckled under the weight of ice and snow in southeastern Bosnia, where some 15,000 customers were left in darkness, Serbia warned of a "possible collapse" of its energy system as record-breaking demand stretched the power grid near its technical limits.

Serbia's government adviser for energy issues, Petar Skundric, said the Balkan nation should reduce power consumption by 10 percent "to avoid problems and possible collapse of the energy system."

"In only a week's time Serbia has broken six historical records both in consumption and production of electricity," Skundric told reporters. "The system is operating at the very border of its technical capabilities, and we should do our best to reduce both consumption by at least 10 percent from the current level and production by around some 500 MW," he said....

A snowflake, shot by NOAA

Climate change affecting Antarctica faster than previously thought

Xinhua: Climate change is affecting the world's last great unspoiled wilderness of the Antarctic faster than previously thought, according to a New Zealand-led international team of researchers. The scientists, led by Professor Craig Cary, of the University of Waikato, have been studying ecosystems in the continent's Dry Valleys and found that microbial communities in the soil undergo rapid and lasting changes in response to environmental conditions.

"We used to think that changes in microbial change took place slowly over centuries, but the research we've been doing indicates that the bacteria living in the soil are inherently sensitive to climate variability," said Cary in a statement. "Minor temperature variations could lead to cascading changes in hydrology and biogeochemical cycling and could dramatically affect ecosystem function."

The scientists measured the rate at which observed biological changes occurred beneath a seal carcass and at a nearby control site. They found that under the carcass the soil environment changed by stabilizing temperatures, elevating relative humidity and reducing ultraviolet exposure.

They then determined the speed of the changes by transferring a 250-year-old carcass to an untouched site and used community DNA fingerprinting and new sequencing techniques to track the changes in microbial composition and structure. It took only two years for major changes to occur during the five-year study.

Cary said polar systems were particularly susceptible to climate change and the study would provide a foundation for future observations on the fate of life in the extreme environments....

A mummified seal carcass in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica, shot by Mila Zinkova, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Extreme weather tied to climate change

Dave Young in Fox31 in Denver: Two records were set in Denver: first, the 12.5 inches of snowfall on Feb. 3 set a new daily snowfall record for that date; second, the storm's total snowfall of 15.9 inches set a record as the heaviest snowfall in the month of February since 1912. Climate researchers in Colorado are investigating whether this record snowfall and other extreme weather events might be part of a bigger change in weather patterns.

“We've never had a storm so heavy,” said Bob Henson, referring to the February snowfall record. Hansen is a meteorologist for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Calling it "weather on steroids," scientists say two new studies point to climate change.

“We're losing mass up in Alaska, " said Dr. John Wahr, as he pointed to satellite images of ice sheet melting in Alaska. Using new satellite technology to create the images, CU physicists, including Wahr, measured the gravitational weight of global ice masses. The researchers found the ice masses are melting at an alarming rate, especially in Greenland and Antarctica.

“These glaciers are coming off of the ice cap … taking the ice into the oceans, and they've been speeding up," Wahr said. The melting glaciers add at least 500 billion tons of water annually to the Earth's oceans, and during the eight years the studies were conducted, four trillion tons of water was added. “That's enough water to cover the entire United States to a depth of one-and-a-half feet," Wahr said, raising the Earth's sea level by roughly half an inch.

The researchers attribute the changes to global warming....

Denver International Airport in the snow (from 2006), shot by ashleyniblock, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Eating our seed corn: Warnings from the Global Sustainability Report

Stewart M. Patrick in the Internationalist: Last week, as the world’s media focused on the deepening crisis over Syria, it missed a less pressing story with profound long-term implications. The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability, appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, released a sobering assessment for the world’s seven billion inhabitants. The document—Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing­­—offers humanity a stark choice: modify our patterns of production and consumption, or risk crashing through the “planetary boundaries” of growth and social progress.

It’s easy to mock UN reports, particularly from “high-level” panels. (Does the UN have any other kind?) But this document is an eye-opener—and offers some crucial recommendations for the Rio+20 mega conference in June.

First, it highlights just how far the world is from realizing the vision of “sustainable development.” That paradigm, introduced by the Bruntland Commission in its 1987 report, Our Common Future, is deceptively simple.

Sustainable development is not a synonym for “environmental protection,” as Resilient People underlines. It’s about ensuring that today’s actions, particularly in the economic sphere, advance growth and social welfare but don’t undermine critical ecosystem services. Fundamentally, it recognizes that our demand for water, food, land, and energy should not come at the expense of future generations. We must respect the environmental limits, or expand them through technological innovation and creative adaptation...

Yangtze river pollution sparks panic in China

Terra Daily via AFP: A cargo ship spilled acid into China's longest river last week, contaminating tap supplies and sparking a run on bottled water in eastern China, the government and state media said. It is the nation's second water pollution scare in a month, after factories in the southern region of Guangxi contaminated water supplies for millions with toxic cadmium and other waste in January.

The ship, reportedly South Korean, was docked in Zhenjiang city on the Yangtze river last Thursday when it leaked phenol -- an acid used in detergents -- into the water because of a faulty valve, local authorities reported.

Residents started complaining their tap water had a strange smell on Friday, and soon rumours that a capsized ship was polluting the river sparked a run on bottled water in at least two cities in Jiangsu province, the Shanghai Daily said.

One photo carried by the official China Daily newspaper showed a supermarket shelf stripped nearly bare as a customer loaded water bottles into a shopping cart. The water quality had now returned to normal, the government of Zhenjiang, in Jiangsu, said in a statement late Tuesday. A resident in the city of three million told AFP the run on water appeared to have eased on Wednesday....

The Changshou Yangtze River Railroad Bridge in Chongqing municipality, China, shot by John Roberts, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Louisiana officials establish formula for anticipating sea-level rise

Mark Schleifstein in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: State coastal restoration and levee projects should be designed to anticipate an average 3.3 feet increase in sea level over the next 100 years, according to a new Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority report. But the project designs must also consider whether changing circumstances, including a reduction in the speed in which coastal land is sinking or a possible catastrophic increase in atmospheric temperatures, could produce sea levels rises of only 1.6 feet or as high as 4.9 feet by 2112.

The report released this week by the Louisiana Applied Coastal Engineering and Science Division (LACES) provides planners with a formula for anticipating the rate of “relative sea level rise” — the combination of the effects of sinking soils and rising water levels — at varying locations along the coast.

Louisiana is unique among the nation’s coastal states in having some of the world’s highest rates of soil subsidence in the footprints of present and past deltas of the Mississippi River that make up the eastern two-thirds of the state’s coastline. Rising water levels are caused by a combination of natural and human-caused warming of the atmosphere, often referred to as climate change.

...The White House Council on Environmental Quality has ordered federal agencies to consider the effects of human-induced climate change in designing longer term federal projects, including the potential effects of “abrupt climate change,” where rising temperatures could cause larger than predicted increases in ice melt, and thus sea level rise.

The majority of proposed coastal restoration and levee projects will be either partly financed with federal money or will require permits from federal agencies. However, the report recommends against using a similar relative sea level rise formula adopted in 2008 by the Army Corps of Engineers because it is too broad-based to deal with the differing sea level rates along the state’s coastline, said Garret Graves, chairman of the authority....

Sand bar adjacent to Pass a Loutre. Possible sediment source for restoration projects. Bar features are natural. Louisiana, Pass a Loutre area. 1994 June 15, shot by NOAA

A new tool for mapping water use and drought

Dennis O'Brien at the Agricultural Research Service: Farmers and water managers may soon have an online tool to help them assess drought and irrigation impacts on water use and crop development, thanks to the work of two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists Martha Anderson and Bill Kustas have developed an evapotranspiration (ET) and drought modeling system at the ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. The modeling system also will help forecasters monitor ET and drought conditions across the United States and overseas.

...The model, known as ALEXI (Atmosphere-Land Exchange Inverse), uses thermal infrared imagery from satellites and calculates soil and plant temperatures that can be used to create maps of ET rates of plants growing in cultivated areas, forests and natural habitats around the world.

ET consists of the water evaporated from soil and plant surfaces, and the water vapor that escapes, or transpires, through plant leaf pores (stomata) as the plants absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Generally, evaporation cools surfaces, so a cooler land surface is an indicator of higher ET rates and wetter soils.

Water stress elevates soil and leaf temperatures, which can be detected by satellites. Anderson and Kustas can use satellite temperature data to create ET maps. The maps are capable of detecting rivers, lakes, wetlands, riparian buffers, irrigated cropland and areas under water stress...

Physical scientist Martha Anderson and research leader Bill Kustas view a global scale map of evapotranspiration generated with the ALEXI model. Anderson and Kustas are collaborating with U.S. and international researchers from all the major continents in evaluating ALEXI output. Photo by Peggy Greb, found on the ARS website

Cloud seeding -- uncertain solution for Mexico's drought

Emilio Godoy in IPS via Tierramérica: As half of Mexico endures one of the most severe droughts in its history, cloud seeding appears to be a promising way to bring desperately needed rain, although it remains a source of controversy. While some promote the benefits of cloud seeding, others insist that there is no solid evidence of its effectiveness, in addition to the fact that the potential effects on the air, water and soil of the chemicals used have not been sufficiently studied.

"The methodology is not proven; the investment made has not yielded any results that demonstrate that cloud seeding leads to more precipitation," Graciela Binimelis of the Atmospheric Sciences Centre at the public National Autonomous University of Mexico told Tierramérica. Binimelis, who holds a PhD in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington, has studied the physics of clouds for more than two decades.

Cloud seeding involves the spraying of selected clouds with chemicals, usually silver iodide, either from aircraft or from the ground through the use of generators or rockets. This leads to the formation of ice crystals, which grow in size until they reach the necessary weight to fall in the form of rain at lesser altitudes. Silver iodide can cause possible residual injury to humans and mammals with intense or continued but not chronic exposure.

Cloud seeding is practiced along the border between the southern United States and northern Mexico, as well as in Argentina, Chile, Spain and China, the country that uses it most....

The Sonora Desert in Mexico, shot by Tomascastelazo - Tomas Castelazo, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Development in Arab world masks high food insecurity

Katie Nguyen in AlertNet: It's already a year since rising food prices helped ignite protests that gave us our biggest news story in 2011 - the Arab Spring. Popular anger over high food prices fuelled resentment that was already there; resentment about the inequalities between rich and poor, the widespread corruption and oppression in the region - fostered by its ageing, autocratic rulers.

Food security in the Arab world is once again in the spotlight this week as Beirut hosts a conference, bringing together leading thinkers in fields relating to food security - economics, agriculture, trade, water, health and nutrition. "Given the development level and the income level in the Arab world in general, food insecurity is much higher than in the rest of the world," economist Clemens Breisinger tells me.

Using new, diverse sources of data, his International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report shows that ensuring food security - the availability of food and people's access to it - is particularly difficult in the Arab region (which in the report encompasses Arab League members Turkey and Iran).

It says poverty and income inequality rates in the region are higher than officials numbers have suggested. Breisinger cites the Arab world's dependency on food imports as a reason why it is especially vulnerable to global price volatility....

Middle East map created by TownDown, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Farmers can grow food for all, as long as ecosystems hold

Rudy Ruintenberg and Tom Randall in Bloomberg News: ....The human population is headed to 9.3 billion by 2050, with the middle class expanding from 1.8 billion to 4.9 billion consumers, according to estimates by the UN and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Global farm output must rise 70 percent by 2050 to nourish everyone, as more people seek a higher calorie count every day, according to the FAO.

“We need to improve production," Graziano da Silva said. "The problem is how to do that without destroying the natural reserves, as we are doing now, wasting water, erosion of soils, destroying forests."

...The food-price index tracked by the FAO since 1990 peaked in February 2011 at 237.9 points. It averaged a record 228 points last year, 23 percent more than in 2010 and 14 percent more than in 2008. Some food price relief came by the end of last year, but the cost of food remains historically high. Prices will probably decline this year, Graziano da Silva said last month.

Unrest is likelier today because there’s less slack in the global food system. Inventories of wheat, corn and rice are lower than a decade ago, even as the world added more than 700 million people. Rising prices, declining crop yield growth and increasing fertilizer use have caught the attention of major investors concerned about economic, social and environmental sustainability.

“These trends do not suggest much safety margin,” wrote GMO LLC founder Jeremy Grantham in an April 2011 note titled “Time to Wake up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices Are Over Forever.” Grantham is no Malthusian, but his ominous concerns have reverberated among the band of institutional investors who are leading the push for sustainability strategy as a hedge against large-scale risks....

Water tower and grain storage facilities in Park, Kansas, shot by Chris Hartman, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

January floods mark the beginning of the disaster year

David Singh at the United National International Strategy for Disaster Reduction: Floods that began in January and which continue to heap misery on communities in Africa, the Americas, Australia and the Pacific, are a strong indication that over 100 million people will again be affected by floods this year in line with long-term trends.

“Widespread floods in January are in keeping with long-term disaster trends which show that floods are the most dominant disaster category when it comes to the numbers affected. Over the last ten years annual averages of 106 million people have had their lives disrupted by floods.

“The frequency and impact of the storms and floods last month should encourage local governments in coastal and riverside areas to put in place the budgeting and infrastructure necessary to reduce the impact of floods and prevent the significant loss of life and livelihoods which comes with them”, said UNISDR Head, Margareta Wahlström.

...Wahlström commented: ”In light of the evidence which points towards increased hydro-meteorological hazards, can we really continue to say that these events are unexpected or are we simply just unprepared? The most important thing right now is to find immediate strategies to deal with displaced people and long-term strategies to protect communities from these life threatening yet preventable situations.”...

A road in Red Wing, Minnesota is closed due to flooding in 2010. Photo by Patsy Lynch/FEMA