Climate change fund for Africa becomes operational In 2013

Edmund Smith-Asante in SpyGhana: The fourth meeting of the Board of Programme Directors of the Climate for Development in Africa Initiative (Clim-Dev) has been held in the Tunisian capital Tunis. Hosted by the African Development Bank (AfDB), on March 6 and 7, 2013,  the high-level meeting marked a turning point in Africa’s fight against climate change, particularly in Africa itself.

As a result of the meeting, the Clim-Dev Special Fund (CDSF) – an ad hoc investment fund set aside to finance climate change activities in Africa, becomes operational this year. According to AfDB, in addition to the Fund, resources and the possibility of disseminating robust and viable statistical data on climate and its evolution in Africa, CDSF will finance concrete operations on the ground.

Meanwhile, 14 projects are being reviewed under the Climate for Development initiative in Africa currently....

Glaciers will melt faster than ever and loss could be irreversible warn scientists

Science Daily: Canada's Arctic Archipelago glaciers will melt faster than ever in the next few centuries. Research by European funded scientists has shown that 20 per cent of the Canadian Arctic glaciers may have disappeared by the end of this century which would amount to an additional sea level rise of 3.5 cm.

The results of the research, part of the EU funded ice2sea programme, will be published in Geophysical Research Letters this week, and the paper is now available online. The researchers developed a climate model for the island group of the north of Canada in which they simulated the shrinking and growing of glaciers in this area.

The researchers show that the model correctly "predicted" the ice mass loss measured over the last ten years and then used the same model to project the effect of future climate change on Canada's Arctic Archipelago glaciers.

The most important result of the research is it shows the probable irreversibility of the melting process, according to lead author Dr Jan Lenaerts of Utrecht University who says, "Even if we assume that global warming is not happening quite so fast, it is still highly likely that the ice is going to melt at an alarming rate. The chances of it growing back are very slim."

One of the main reasons for the irreversibility lies in the fact that snow melting on tundra, and sea ice loss from around the glaciers, actually reinforce regional warming, with significant consequences on the glaciers of Northern Canada. Snow and sea ice reflect the sunlight, and when the snow and sea ice have disappeared, a large part of the sunlight will be absorbed by the land and the sea, which will significantly increase the local temperature....

Kluane icefield, shot by Steffen Schreyer, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany license

Millions of Indians facing worst drought in decades

Space Daily via AFP: Millions of people in western India are suffering their worst drought in more than four decades, with critics blaming official ineptitude and corruption for exacerbating the natural water shortage. Central areas of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, are facing a water shortage worse than the severe drought in 1972, the state's chief minister Prithviraj Chavan told AFP.

"In recorded history the reservoirs have never been so low in central Maharashtra," he said. "With every passing day the reservoirs are drying up." Chavan blamed the crisis on two successive poor monsoons, although others say a public policy failure is also responsible.

Nearly 2,000 tanker trucks are being used to transport drinking water to the needy, while hundreds of cattle camps have been set up to keep livestock alive until the monsoon, which usually arrives in June. "With every passing day, the tankers have to travel a greater distance. It's a huge logistical issue," Chavan said.

The chief minister's office could not put an exact figure on the population in the 10,000 villages affected, but said it ran into millions....

2012 drought in Karnataka, India, shot by Pushkarv, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Insurance only part of disaster resilience, says climate change panel

Guardian Development Network (UK): In most developing countries, farmers risk losing their crops and livestock to droughts or floods, and the recent intensity of these climatic shocks has been record-setting. As the losses from these events mount, the developing world has been turning to the experiences of richer nations in transferring risk through mechanisms such as insurance.

But experts – including the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its special report on managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation (SRex) have sounded a note of caution in portraying insurance as a panacea for climatic shocks.

Even in the developed world, insurers are reluctant to provide regional or even nationwide coverage for floods and other natural hazards because of the systemic nature of those risks, the report pointed out. Globally, only about 20% of the losses from weather-related events were insured between 1980 and 2003, the report said. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, which is exposed to high flood risk, insurance is non-existent; the government provides compensation.

The SRex expressed only moderate confidence that disaster insurance mechanisms could increase resilience, Tom Mitchell, lead author and head of the climate change programme at the UK's Overseas Development Institute (ODI), said.

Mitchell wrote in a blogpost on the Climate and Development Knowledge Network that although the report says insurance "can help to finance relief, recovery and construction, reduce vulnerability, and provide knowledge and incentives for reducing risk", it also says "under certain conditions, such mechanisms can provide disincentives for reducing risk"....

Africa Adaptation Knowledge Network (AAKNet) endorsed as key tool to step up climate change adaption efforts on vulnerable continent

UNEP News Centre: Around 120 representatives from 60 Africa regional adaptation knowledge platforms and other organizations have boosted climate change adaptation efforts in Africa, one of the world's most vulnerable continents to shifting climactic conditions, by endorsing the Africa Adaptation Knowledge Network (AAKNet) as a key tool for creating a coordinated approach.

Africa is particularly susceptible to climate change for a variety of reasons: its reliance on rain-fed agriculture, limited supply of freshwater, widespread poverty and disease, weak institutions, variable access to information and technology, complex disasters and conflicts, and inadequate access to basic services.

Severe droughts in the Sahel in 2012 and the Horn of Africa in 2011 brought into sharp focus the serious impacts of climate change, highlighting that there has never been a more urgent need for stronger adaptation as a priority in providing sustainable solutions to reduce the vulnerability of a great majority of Africa's one billion citizens.

Despite the challenges, there are many examples of adaptation measures that are improving lives across the continent, such as a Global Environment Facility-funded project to restore mangroves in Djibouti that enhanced local income as it tackles coastal erosion....

Image from the UNEP website

2012 least deadly for natural disasters in 10 years, but lack of resilience leaves key economies at ‘extreme risk’

Maplecroft press release: With less than 10,000 lives lost worldwide, 2012 was the least deadly for natural disasters in the last 10 years, due largely to the lack of major events outside high-income countries that possess strong socio-economic resilience – the ability to withstand shock and bounce back. However, new research from risk analysis company, Maplecroft reveals that resilience to major weather and seismic events is not improving in some of the world’s most important growth markets, leaving large sections of their populations, essential infrastructure and economies at ‘extreme risk.’

Over 2012, fatalities from natural hazards stood at 9% of the yearly average of 106,000 from the previous decade, while recorded natural disasters also saw a significant fall to 251 events, constituting a 65% drop on the 10 year average of 380.

According to Maplecroft’s annual Natural Hazards Risk Atlas, which evaluates the exposure and resilience of 197 countries to 12 natural hazards, there is a danger that the relatively quiet year of 2012 may lead to further complacency in relation to disaster risk preparedness in some of the most exposed and least resilient countries. This would have potentially devastating consequences when major natural hazards inevitably do occur.  Consequently, supply chains and investors are exposed to greater risk than anticipated, as natural disasters can exacerbate other political and societal risks from regime stability to food security and societal unrest.

The growth of mega-cities in countries, such as Bangladesh, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Viet Nam, which are prone to earthquakes and weather related events means population expansion into flood plains and low-lying coastal areas will leave more people exposed to these devastating hazards, in addition to the negative impacts for critical centres of economic output. Maplecroft states that without significant improvements in resilience, natural hazards are more likely to manifest as disasters in these countries.

Maplecroft states that the substantial drop in global fatalities not only relates to the reduced number of natural hazards, but also to the strength of resilience in the countries where 2012’s major events occurred. Superstorm Sandy, in spite of its strength and size, killed only 159 people in the United States, due largely to the country’s highly sophisticated response and well developed infrastructure and communications networks. In contrast, the deadliest event of 2012, Typhoon Bopha in the Philippines, resulted in over 1,000 deaths even though fewer people were exposed to the storm’s path, as it swept across Manila and the surrounding region....

Map from the Maplecroft website

80% of Indian sewage flows untreated into rivers

Space Daily via AFP: Eighty percent of sewage in India is untreated and flows directly into the nation's rivers, polluting the main sources of drinking water, a study by an environment watchdog showed Tuesday.

Indian cities produce nearly 40,000 million litres of sewage every day and barely 20 percent of it is treated, according to "Excreta Does Matter", a new report released by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

"The untreated waste dumped into rivers seeps into groundwater, thereby creating a ticking health bomb in India," concludes the report. Weak or non-existent enforcement of environmental laws, rapid urban development and a lack of awareness about the dangers of sewage are all blamed for water pollution....

Loss of wild insects hurts crops around the world

Seed Daily via SPX: Researchers studying data from 600 fields in 20 countries have found that managed honey bees are not as successful at pollinating crops as wild insects, primarily wild bees, suggesting the continuing loss of wild insects in many agricultural landscapes has negative consequences for crop harvests.

The study, which prompts an urgent call to maintain and manage pollinator diversity for long-term agricultural production, is published today in the prestigious journal Science.

The 50 international researchers, including Lawrence Harder, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary, analysed data from 41 crop systems around the world including fruits, seeds, nuts, and coffee to examine the consequences of having abundant wild pollinators for crop pollination.

"Our study demonstrates that production of many fruit and seed crops that make diets interesting, such as tomatoes, coffee and watermelon, is limited because their flowers are not adequately pollinated," says Harder. "We also show that adding more honey bees often does not fix this problem, but that increased service by wild insects would help."

Flowers of most crops need to receive pollen before making seeds and fruits, a process that is enhanced by insects that visit flowers. These pollinators, including bees, flies, butterflies and beetles, usually live in natural or semi-natural habitats, such as the edges of forests, hedgerows or grasslands. As these habitats are lost, primarily owing to conversion to agriculture, the abundance and diversity of pollinators decline and crops receive fewer visits from wild insects....

"Broad-bottom drones storming the hive - wasps, hornets & bumble bees, joining in the attack", by James Gillray (died 1815), published by Hannah Humphrey (floruit 1778). This set of images was gathered by Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.

Changing how food aid is allocated 'may save more lives'

Andrew Williams in SciDev.net: International development agencies may be able to save the lives of a greater number of undernourished children by changing how they allocate food aid in developing countries, suggests a study published today (4 March) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Instead of allocating food based solely on weight-for-height measurements, as is currently recommended, making use of additional 'height-for-age' data reduced the effects of malnutrition by nine per cent in the study.

Also, the same end results in alleviating malnutrition were achieved with the new method as with the current one but with a 61 per cent cut in the cost of providing ready-to-use therapeutic and supplementary food, the study found. The study also proposes that when making crucial food allocation decisions, aid agencies should prioritise those children most in need — even if it means that others go without.

Lawrence M. Wein, professor of management science at Stanford University, United States, and the corresponding author of the study, says one of the main results is that "relative to the currently used policies, incorporating height-for-age information into the allocation decision improves performance — that is, it saves lives".

The other key finding is that "the optimal policy is an 'all-or-nothing' policy where the most at-risk children receive 500 kilocalories per day and the other children receive nothing," he says.  But because of the limited scope of the study, the authors do not make specific policy recommendations....

Food aid in Kenya, USAID photo

Why food riots are likely to become the new normal

Nafeez Mossadeq in the Environment Blog at the Guardian (UK): ... We now know that the fundamental triggers for the Arab spring were unprecedented food price rises. The first sign things were unravelling hit in 2008, when a global rice shortage coincided with dramatic increases in staple food prices, triggering food riots across the middle east, north Africa and south Asia. A month before the fall of the Egyptian and Tunisian regimes, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported record high food prices for dairy, meat, sugar and cereals.

...Whether or not those prices materialise this year, food price volatility is only a symptom of deeper systemic problems – namely, that the global industrial food system is increasingly unsustainable. Last year, the world produced 2,241m tonnes of grain, down 75m tonnes or 3% from the 2011 record harvest.

The key issue, of course, is climate change. Droughts exacerbated by global warming in key food-basket regions have already led to a 10-20% drop in rice yields over the past decade. Last year, four-fifths of the US experienced a heatwave, there were prolonged droughts in Russia and Africa, a lighter monsoon in India and floods in Pakistan – extreme weather events that were likely linked to climate change afflicting the world's major food basket regions.

The US Department of Agriculture predicts a 3-4% food price rise this year – a warning that is seconded in the UK. Make no mistake: on a business-as-usual scenario, this is the new normal. Overall, global grain consumption has exceeded production in eight of the past 13 years. By mid-century, world crop yields could fall as much as 20-40% because of climate change alone....

Algeria slashed food prices amid riots, January 2011, shot by {{{1}}}, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Philippine cities tackle climate change

IRIN: When asked what resilience means, the head of city planning for the Philippines’ second largest city, Davao, said that for Filipinos it means how high floodwater reaches before they agree to be evacuated. “In our most recent flooding, that level was chest-high,” said Roberto Alabado III, referring to flooding in mid-January that affected thousands of city dwellers, most in slum areas, who refused evacuation until they were chest-deep in floodwater.  “That’s our limit,” Alabado wryly noted.

Davao is one of four cities the government has identified as being at high risk of climate-related hazards. It was near the path of the Category 5 (winds of at least 250km per hour) Typhoon Bopha that hit the southern island of Mindanao in early December, leading to some 2,000 people dead or missing.

“It’s scary,” admitted Alabado. “Can we handle everything? We haven’t solved [all our] problems from the past 20 years - including sanitation - and now we have to think about [climate-related] problems for the next 20 years.”

Most of the city’s disaster initiatives have been on the response side, boosting the city’s reputation as among the strongest nationwide in emergency response (it opened a “911” integrated emergency response service in 2002, patterned after the US hotline), but officials have since realized the city needs also to prevent, adapt to and, if possible, avoid, climate-related disasters, he added.

“Awareness is not enough,” said the World Food Programme’s (WFP) country representative, Stephen Anderson. “Local governments don’t act on information from climate hazard maps,” he told IRIN, explaining why WFP, along with the UN Human Settlements Programme, is helping to “climate-proof” four cities - Iloilo, Cagayan de Oro, Butuan and Davao - under a US-funded climate change adaptation programme that is helping city officials conduct vulnerability assessments and implement pilot projects based on identified climate threats...

Seen in Davao City, shot by Pascalll, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Global warming will open unexpected new shipping routes in Arctic

Meg Sullivan in the UCLA Newsroom: Shipping lanes through the Arctic Ocean won't put the Suez and Panama canals out of business anytime soon, but global warming will make these frigid routes much more accessible than ever imagined by melting an unprecedented amount of sea ice during the late summer, new UCLA research shows.

"The development is both exciting from an economic development point of view and worrisome in terms of safety, both for the Arctic environment and for the ships themselves," said lead researcher Laurence C. Smith, a professor of geography at UCLA.

The findings, which explore accessibility during the Arctic's most navigable month of the year, September, appear in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus. The first thorough assessment of trans-Arctic shipping potential as global temperatures continue to rise, the study is based on independent climate forecasts for the years 2040 to 2059.

By mid-century, even ordinary shipping vessels will be able to navigate previously inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean, and they will not need icebreakers to blaze their path as they do today, the researchers found.

"We're talking about a future in which open-water vessels will, at least during some years, be able to navigate unescorted through the Arctic, which at the moment is inconceivable," said co-author Scott R. Stephenson, a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Department of Geography.

Just as surprisingly, the Arctic ice sheet is expected to thin to the point that polar icebreakers will be able to navigate between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans by making a straight shot over the North Pole, Smith and Stephenson predict. "Nobody's ever talked about shipping over the top of the North Pole," Smith said. "This is an entirely unexpected possibility."...

Red lines indicate the fastest available trans-Arctic routes for Polar Class 6 ships (moderate-capability icebreakers such as those used today in the Baltic), and blue lines indicate the fastest available routes for common open-water ships. Where overlap occurs, line weights indicate the number of successful transits following the same route. Dashed lines reflect currently existing sovereignty boundaries. The white backdrop indicates period-averaged sea ice concentration.  (Courtesy of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

Two-thirds of forest elephants killed by ivory poachers in past decade

Damian Carrington in the Guardian (UK): The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two-thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory, a landmark new study revealed on Tuesday. The research was released at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok where the eight key ivory-trading nations, including the host nation Thailand and biggest market China, have been put on notice of sweeping trade sanctions if they fail to crack down on the trade.

"The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction – potentially within the next decade – of the forest elephant," said Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of 60 scientists on the research team.

There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. The total elephant population was over 1 million 30 years ago, but has been devastated by poaching driven by the rising demand for ivory ornaments in Asia.

Prof Lee White, head of the National Parks Service in Gabon, once home to the largest forest elephant population, said: "A rainforest without elephants is a barren place. They bring it to life, they create the trails and keep open the forest clearings other animals use; they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees – elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale."

Forest elephants have suffered particularly badly because they range across central Africa, which has been left lawless in large areas by war, and where poachers have ready access to guns. Furthermore, the tusks of forest elephants are longer, straighter and harder than savannah elephants, making them particularly sought after. "A lot of carvers prefer forest elephant tusks," said WCS's vice president, Elizabeth Bennett....

An African elephant in Tanzania, shot by Gary M. Stolz, US Fish and Wildlife Service

Sea level rise could severely affect Caribbean coastal wetlands

Jamaica Observer: A new World Bank study says a rise in sea levels by a metre from climate change could destroy more than 60 per cent of the Caribbean and the developing world's coastal wetlands currently found at one metre or less elevation. The study says this could lead to economic losses of about US$630 million annually.

The World Bank analysis considered a variety of types of coastal wetlands at risk in 76 countries and territories, using a number of databases and satellite maps. According to the data, about 99 per cent of the coastal wetlands, at elevations of one metre or less in the Middle East and North Africa, could disappear, as well as 77 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa, 66 per cent in East Asia, and 39 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The World Bank said, in recent years, coastal wetlands have been disappearing more quickly than other ecosystems, mainly because of land development The Washington-based financial institution said sea level rise from climate change will exacerbate these losses, adding that the rise in sea levels will lead to wetlands being submerged, pushed inland, or blanketed with salt.

"How those wetlands fare will vary, depending on the slopes and water flows in the surrounding area," the bank said. Susmita Dasgupta, a lead environment economist at the bank's Development Research Group, said the findings are "alarming, because wetlands don't exist just for the birds and plants. People rely on them for water, food, transportation, and other essential goods and services"...

NASA photo of Cuba's Zapata Swamp Biosphere Reserve

New Fischer-Tropsch catalyst invented in Amsterdam

University of Amsterdam News: Inspired by patents from the 1960’s audio cassette recording industry, UvA chemists now developed a new Fischer-Tropsch catalyst. It can be used for the making of synthetic fuels from natural gas and biomass. This week the research on the new nanocobalt-ironoxide catalyst was published as a VIP article in Angewandte Chemie. The catalyst was patented by the Total S.A. oil and gas company.

Roberto Calderone, Raveendran Shiju and Gadi Rothenberg from the Heterogeneous Catalysis and Sustainable Chemistry group (Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences) succeeded in growing nanometer-thin cobalt shells on iron oxide particles. These new materials are excellent Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) catalysts, giving good diesel fractions.

The Fischer-Tropsch process is used for producing fuels from synthesis gas, which in turn is made from natural gas, biomass or coal. The large reserves of shale gas and natural gas currently changing the world energy market have raised interest in F-T technology. But there is a catch: F-T reactors are huge, and typically use hundreds of tons of catalyst.

Cobalt-based catalysts are the optimal choice for synthesizing middle distillate fuels such as diesel and kerosene with F-T technology. But cobalt is also expensive. In 2009 the Total Gaz & Power company contacted Rothenberg’s group to develop a new F-T catalyst together. The UvA researchers took up the challenge to design a cheaper catalyst that can be prepared on a very large scale, yet performs at least as well as pure cobalt.

The UvA team sought to meet these restraints with the so-called surface nucleation of a cobalt phase onto iron oxide colloids. They were inspired by the method that companies such as TDK used in the 1960s for producing magnetic tapes for audio cassettes. The standard recording materials in these cassettes were polymer-based tapes containing cigar-shaped cobalt-doped iron oxide particles.

After two years of hard work they achieved a cheap, reliable, efficient and, most importantly, scalable method for synthesizing spherical core-shell catalyst particles. The particles have an average diameter of 10 nanometer (nm) and consist of a 8 nm magnetite (iron oxide) core with a cobalt oxide shell of only 1 nm. The new catalysts were then tested in collaboration with research groups of Andreas Jess in Bayreuth and Andrei Khodakov in Lille. They proved to be excellent Fischer-Tropsch catalysts, giving good diesel fractions....

US launches project to build Pacific island community resilience to climate change

Islands Business (Fiji): The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Coastal Community Adaptation Project (C-CAP), a new five-year project that will build the resilience of vulnerable communities across 12 Pacific Island countries to climate change.

U.S. Ambassador to Papua New Guinea, Walter E. North, who led the launch, said, “The United States is pleased to support the Pacific region in adapting to climate change, which is crucial in sustaining economic development. This initiative emphasizes our heightened focus on this important region.”

USAID has partnered with the University of the South Pacific (USP) to implement the project via the extensive network of USP campuses throughout the Pacific region. C-CAP will identify communities at risk to increasing global climate change impacts, and assist them in rehabilitating or constructing new, small-scale community infrastructure; build capacity for community engagement for disaster prevention and preparedness; and integrate climate-resilient policies and practices into long-term land use plans and building standards.

USAID Mission Director for the Pacific Islands, Gloria D. Steele, said, “USAID will help vulnerable communities across the Pacific region to strengthen their ability to factor climate change projections into their decision-making processes.”...

Low tide in Fiji, shot by M Sundstrom, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Atlantic warming points to malaria risk... in India

Terra Daily via (AFP): Health watchdogs monitoring the risk of malaria in India should keep a close eye on what's happening thousands of kilometres (miles) away in the Atlantic, an unusual study published on Sunday suggests. The temperature of the sea surface in the tropical South Atlantic is a big determinant for levels of monsoon rain, which in turn is the big factor for malarial mosquitoes, it says.

Researchers led by Mercedes Pascual at the University of Michigan compared maps of monsoon rainfall and malaria epidemics in the desert fringe of northwestern India with a global map of sea-surface temperatures.

What struck them was a clear link between abnormally cold temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic in July and a regional increase in malaria in the ensuing September-December period. Previous research has suggested that the vast body of water in the Atlantic has a much bigger impact on the global climate system than thought.

When this volume of ocean warms or cools, it has a knock-on effect on adjoining seas. The transfer of heat has an impact on ocean circulation and rainfall, affecting for instance the relationship between the monsoon of the Indian Ocean and El Nino, the pendulum weather swing in the Pacific....

Histopathology of malaria exoerythrocytic forms in liver. Histopathology of malaria exoerythrocytic forms in liver. Parasite. Content Providers(s): CDC/Dr. Melvin Creation Date: 1973

Growing population and less intense weather in recent decades has led to relaxation of Australian planning laws

Andrew Ash in the Courier-Mail (Brisbane): In the aftermath of Tropical Cyclone Oswald, questions are being asked about urban planning strategies and approaches to rebuilding. The risks have been growing for decades, especially in southeast Queensland, but until the last few years we have been dealt some kind cards when it comes to intense weather.

Consequently, we have not been paying attention to these risks as they have been gradually ramping up. By far the greatest increase in risk has been the growing population and the concentration of these increasing numbers of people on flood plains, mostly close to the coast.

Since 1950, southeast Queensland's population has grown from 660,000 to more than 3,000,000 people. In parallel, there has been a shift in the type and size of houses. Classic high-set Queenslanders have been replaced largely by low-set houses on concrete slabs. Compounding this is the increase in capital now invested in our homes. Today's dwelling price-to-income ratios are more than double levels of 40 years ago.

When you put these three factors of population growth in vulnerable locations, more vulnerable dwellings and higher capital tied up in houses, there has been a dramatic increase in risk.

However, the cyclical nature of our weather and climate has meant southeast Queensland has been exposed to less intense weather in the past 30 years than the three decades prior to that, when 17 tropical cyclones crossed the east coast of Queensland.

The past three decades have seen a greater frequency of El Nino events in which only two cyclones crossed the coast in the southeast region. (Indeed, it is more than 20 years since a cyclone has crossed - near Byron Bay). For most people there is little memory or understanding of what damage these cyclones can cause....

NASA image of Tropical Cyclone Oswald, January 21, 2013

Clearing forests may transform local—and global—climate

Judith D. Schwartz in Scientific American:  In the last 15 years 200,000 hectares of the Mau Forest in western Kenya have been converted to agricultural land. Previously called a “water tower” because it supplied water to the Rift Valley and Lake Victoria, the forest region has dried up; in 2009 the rainy season—from August to November—saw no rain, and since then precipitation has been modest. Whereas hydropower used to provide the bulk of Kenya’s power ongoing droughts have led investors to pull out of hydro projects; power rationing and epic blackouts are common. In a desperate move to halt environmental disaster by reducing population pressure, the Kenyan government evicted tens of thousands of people from the land.

Severe drought, temperature extremes, formerly productive land gone barren: this is climate change. Yet, says botanist Jan Pokorny of Charles University in Prague, these snippets from Kenya are not about greenhouse gases, but rather the way that land-use changes—specifically deforestation—affect climate; newly tree-free ground “represents huge amounts of solar energy changed into sensible heat, i.e. hot air.” Pokorny, who uses satellite technology to measure changes in land-surface and temperatures, has done research in western Kenya for 25 years, and watched the area grow hotter and drier. The change from forest cover to bare ground leads to more heat and drought, he says. More than half the country used to be forested; it's now less than 2 percent.

Each year Earth loses 12 million to 15 million hectares of forest, according to the World Wildlife Fund, the equivalent of 36 football fields disappearing per minute. Although forests are ebbing throughout the world, in Africa forest-climate dynamics are easily grasped: according to the United Nations Environmental Programme, the continent is losing forests at twice the global rate. Says Pokorny, the conversion of forest to agricultural land, a change that took centuries in Europe, “happened during one generation in western Kenya.” Pokorny's work, coupled with a controversial new theory called the “biotic pump,” suggests that transforming landscapes from forest to field has at least as big an impact on regional climate as greenhouse gas–induced global warming....

A misty mountain forest in Kenya, shot by Wsaharan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

UAE marks Arab Water Day

Khaleej Times: The UAE under the leadership of the President, His Highness Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is mobilising Arab, regional and international energies to develop and conserve water resources, Dr. Rashid Ahmed bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, said on Saturday.

In remarks on the eve of the Arab Water Day, Bin Fahad said, the UAE hosted in January the International Water Summit which brought together policymakers, scientists and business leaders to tackle the urgent water and wastewater challenges facing arid regions.

The Arab Water Ministerial Council organises the Arab Water Day on 3rd March every year to urge Arab countries for more work towards achieving water security in the Arab Countries in the way towards sustainable development in the region.

“Acknowledging its water reality and scarce water resources for irrigation, drinking and development purposes, the UAE has made tremendous efforts to make water available for these goals including improving legislative and institutional frameworks that aim to conserve water resources in consistence with principles of integrated water management, conducting research on water resources development, managing and mitigating risks and challenges facing the water sector in terms of increasing demand and consumption, and analyzing the climate change negative impact on sectors like agriculture, water and the environment,” he added....

How extreme weather acts as a catalyst for climate concern

Adam Corner in Environment Blog in the Guardian (UK): Against a backdrop of lukewarm sentiment about environmental issues globally, levels of concern about climate change in Wales are at their highest for many years. In a poll of 1,001 people by Cardiff and Aberystwyth Universities published on Monday, 85% reported being either fairly or very concerned about the risks of climate change, while 88% agreed that the climate was changing – levels not seen in British opinion polls since the mid 2000s.

The authors of the study reported a number of findings that can be compared directly to previous studies of the UK public as a whole. When identical questions were asked in a UK-wide survey in 2010, notably lower levels of belief in the reality of climate change and concern about its effects were observed.

The survey was conducted at the end of 2012, just after serious flooding swept across the nation, and the results reveal what looks like a significant impact of the floods on people's views about climate change. Across the sample as a whole, 65% agreed that the country was already feeling the effects of climate change. But the researchers surveyed an additional number of people in an area that was particularly affected by flooding (around Ceredigion). Among this group, the figure rose to 74%.

The Welsh study is not the first to point to a link between weather events and perceptions of climate change. A recent analysis of US public opinion over two decades found a clear and consistent relationship between average temperatures and belief in the reality and seriousness of climate change. The study even put a figure on the impact of seasonal weather on climatic beliefs: for every degree above the average temperature experienced over the past 12 months, there was a 7.6% increase in agreement that the world was warming....

A 2004 flash flood in Chepstow, shot by Neil Kennedy, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Record accumulated snowfall buries northern Japan

Asahi Shimbun: Communities in Hokkaido and five prefectures of the Tohoku region had record levels of accumulated snow as of Feb. 25, although precipitation levels are about the same as an average year. In the Sukayu district of Aomori city along the Hakkoda mountain range, the snowpile measured 5.61 meters, a record for all areas where the Japan Meteorological Agency keeps records of accumulated snowfall. Thirteen locations have set records for their snowpiles this winter.

Low temperatures in the region are a major reason for the deep snowpiles and some municipalities are facing problems from the accumulated snow. Located at an altitude of 890 meters, Sukayu is known for its hot springs. Some tourists came to the area after seeing news reports about the huge snowpiles.

An inn in the area has increased the number of times a day it shovels snow from three to five. Bulldozers are in operation from 4 a.m. until 9 p.m. clearing snow from the roads and parking lots. Despite these efforts, overnight snowfall leaves a knee-high snowpile by most mornings.

In Aomori city, where population density is greater, the snowpile in a central part of the city measured 1.42 meters, the deepest it has been this winter. The 40 or so locations, such as vacant lots, where snow is dumped are full. The city had set aside about 985 million yen ($10.5 million) in its budget to clear snow from major roads, but so far 1.36 billion yen has been spent, forcing the municipal government to submit a supplementary budget asking for an additional 600 million yen.

Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, also had a record snowpile of 1.53 meters. Because so many residents have dumped snow in a local river, there is now the danger of flooding because the river has been dammed by the snow....

A snow blower train in 2010, property of the Hokkaido Railway. Public domain

Saharan and Asian dust, biological particles end global journey in California

Scripps News at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography: A field study of aerosol impacts on clouds and precipitation in the Sierra Nevada shows that dust and microorganisms transported from as far away as the Sahara desert help to spur the precipitation that California counts on for its water supply.

The CalWater field campaign, funded by the California Energy Commission and led by UC San Diego and NOAA, could help western states better understand the future of their water supply and hydropower generation as climate change influences how much and how often dust travels around the world and alters precipitation far from its point of origin.

"UC San Diego is a leader in addressing complex, multi-disciplinary global challenges, such as water shortages and environmental concerns," said UCSD Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. "Our researchers work collaboratively to investigate and produce meaningful and impactful research that will further our understanding of our planet and environment, so we can improve human life and our world."

Jessie Creamean, a postdoctoral associate at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., co-authored the paper appearing in the journal Science with Kaitlyn Suski, a graduate student in the laboratory of Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry Prof. Kimberly Prather, who holds appointments at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSD.

"We were able to show dust and biological aerosols that made it from as far as the Sahara were incorporated into the clouds to form ice, then influenced the formation of the precipitation in California," said Creamean, who conducted the fieldwork as a UCSD graduate student under Prather, the study leader. "To our knowledge, no one has been able to directly determine the origin of the critical aerosols seeding mid-level clouds which ultimately produce periods with extensive precipitation typically in the form of snow at the ground."...

From NASA: Saharan sand blowing off the coasts of Mauritania and Senegal

To control floods, the Dutch turn to nature for inspiration

Cheryl Katz in Yale Environment 360: On a freezing winter day along the south-central coast of Holland, two beachcombers, hunched against the wind, stroll along a crescent of sand extending more than half a mile into the North Sea. Nearby, a snowkiter skims over the 28 million-cubic-yard heap of dredged sediment spreading along the shore. If all goes as planned, the mound will eventually disappear, rearranged by ocean currents into a 12-mile-long buffer protecting the coastline for the next two decades.

This is the Sand Engine, one of the latest innovations from Dutch masters of flood control technology and designed, as the national water board Rijkswaterstaat says, so that “nature will take the sand to the right place for us.” After having constructed the country’s vaunted system of sea gates and dikes, Dutch planners and engineers are now augmenting it with new technology enlisting nature to keep the water at bay.

“Normally, there is a lot of erosion here,” says hydraulic engineer Mathijs van Ledden, sweeping an arm toward the snow-covered spit snaking around an elongated lagoon. Van Ledden is a flood risk reduction specialist with Royal HaskoningDHV, a Dutch engineering consultancy involved in creating the Sand Engine, currently 2.2 miles wide. “This big reservoir of sand should re-nourish the rest of the coast in time,” he says, gesturing toward the skyline of The Hague, several miles away.

The Sand Engine will fortify eroding beaches as ocean currents slowly redistribute its dredged material. The Sand Engine is the signature project of Building with Nature, a consortium of Dutch industries, universities, research institutes, and public water agencies looking to harness natural systems for next-generation hydraulic engineering. Completed in late 2011 at a cost of 50 million euros ($67 million), the Sand Engine’s goal is to provide long-term fortification for eroding beaches as ocean currents gradually redistribute its dredged material. Until now, this coastline needed sand replenishment every five years, requiring expensive dredging that damaged marine ecosystems. The Sand Engine will feed beaches for about 20 years at half the price, said Marcel Stive, chair of coastal engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and principal creator of the technology....

A Dutch beach, shot by Albert Kok, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Scientists play down 'tipping point' theory

Terra Daily via AFP: A doomsday-like scenario of sudden, irreversible change to the Earth's ecology -- a tipping point -- is not supported by science, Australian researchers say.

Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, scientists from the University of Adelaide, along with U.S. and British colleagues, argue that global-scale ecological tipping points are unlikely and that ecological change over large areas seem to follow a more gradual, smooth pattern.

"This is good news because it says that we might avoid the doom-and-gloom scenario of abrupt, irreversible change," Barry Brook, lead author of the paper and Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide, said. "A focus on planetary tipping points may both distract from the vast ecological transformations that have already occurred, and lead to unjustified fatalism about the catastrophic effects of tipping points."

The scientists say they refute recent efforts to define "planetary tipping points" -- critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change that would have global effect -- often presented as fact to policy makers.

"An emphasis on a point of no return is not particularly helpful for bringing about the conservation action we need," Brook said in a university release Thursday...

Sebastien Bourdon's 1657 painting, "The fall of Simon Magus"

Pakistan launches first national climate change policy

Reuters via AlertNet: Disaster-prone Pakistan has launched its first ever national policy on climate change, detailing how it plans to tackle the challenges posed by global warming, mitigate its risks and adapt key sectors of the country's economy to cope with its consequences.

Pakistan is highly vulnerable to weather-related disasters such as cyclones, droughts, floods, landslides and avalanches. Devastating floods in 2010 disrupted the lives of 20 million people - many more than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami - and cost $10 billion.

The climate change policy, developed with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), recommends some 120 steps the country could take to slow down the impact of global warming, as well as adapt sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture.

Measures include flood forecasting warning systems, local rainwater harvesting, developing new varieties of resilient crops, promoting renewable energy sources and more efficient public transport.

"The National Climate Change policy takes into account risks and vulnerabilities of various development sectors with specific emphasis on water, food, energy and national security issues," said Rana Mohammad Farooq Saeed Khan, Minister for Climate Change at the launch of the policy in Islamabad on Tuesday....

Palm oil expansion threatens Congo Basin forests

Megan Rowling in AlertNet): Industrial cultivation of oil palm has "wreaked havoc" on rainforests and forest peoples in Southeast Asia and now threatens to do the same in the Congo Basin, a report from the Rainforest Foundation UK warned on Thursday.

Research commissioned by the forest protection group found that half a million hectares of new palm oil projects are getting underway in the Congo Basin rainforest, which will result in a fivefold increase in the area of large-scale palm plantations in the region. "This is a stark new threat to the second largest contiguous rainforest in the world," the report said.

Around 1.6 million hectares of new developments have been announced in the central African region since 2009, and palm oil companies are actively searching for bigger areas, the report said. Two thirds, or some 115 million hectares, of the total Congo Basin forest area is believed to have suitable soil and climate conditions for growing oil palms, it noted.

The forest area of the Congo Basin spans the borders of six countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Between 1990 and 2005, the expansion of oil palm cultivation - often illegal - resulted in the deforestation of 1.1 million hectares in Malaysia and 1.7 million hectares in Indonesia, according to the report. Between 50 and 60 percent of oil palm development in the two countries during this time occurred at the expense of natural forests, it added.

"The human cost of palm oil production has been alienation of forest peoples from their land, land conflicts and the pollution or over-use of water sources," it said. "Oil palm expansion on peat forests has been a major contributor to increased climate change emissions."...

Logging in the northern Republic of Congo, via NASA

Australia's weather bureau confirms it's been the hottest summer on record

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology: This summer hasn't just felt hot. It's been hot. The numbers are in, and the Bureau has confirmed this summer has been Australia's hottest on record. Average temperatures across the country came in at 28.6°C, 1.1°C above normal, and exceeding the previous record set in the summer of 1997-98 by more than 0.1°C. A new daytime maximum temperature record was also set at 35.7°C, or 1.4°C above normal, and 0.2°C above the 1982/83 record.

The most extreme heat occurred in the first three weeks of January during an exceptionally widespread and prolonged heatwave. The highest temperature recorded during the heatwave was at Moomba in South Australia at 49.6°C.

Of the 112 locations used in long-term climate monitoring, 14 had their hottest day on record during the summer of 2012/13 – the largest number in any single summer. Record temperatures were also set in two capital cities; Sydney with 45.8°C and Hobart with 41.8°C.

A new record was also set for the number of consecutive days the average maximum daily temperature for Australia exceeded 39°C – seven days between 2 and 8 January 2013, almost doubling the previous record of four consecutive days in 1973.

Despite heavy rainfall on the east coast, compounded as ex-tropical cyclone Oswald cut a steady path down the eastern-seaboard, for most of Australia it was a dry summer. Nationally, summer rainfall was at its lowest since 2004-05. Victoria had its driest summer since 1984-85 and South Australia since 1985-86....

Strzelecki Desert in Australia, shot by David Olsen (Djolsen), public domain

Argentine soybean yield goes below budget

Seed Daily via UPI: Argentina's soybean yield will be much lower than expected, affecting national income projections based on exports in the coming months. The government blamed drought for the downturn. Argentine agriculture suffered from dry weather most of 2012 but some relief was seen after February rains.

Argentina's earnings projections are far from clear because of the reported setback to timely irrigation. Trading on the International Exchange in Chicago is mixed because of poor crop results from across South America and the United States. Soybean futures were supported by reports of long delays at Brazilian ports and mixed weather elsewhere in South America, including major exporter Argentina.

The Rosario Chamber of Commerce in Santa Fe province estimated Argentina will produce 48 million tons of soybeans in the 2012-13 season. "There is at least a million tons reduction against previous forecasts," Agriculture.com reported on its website....

An Argentine soy field, shot by Alfonso, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New study reveals how sensitive US east coast regions may be to ocean acidification

Science Daily: A continental-scale chemical survey in the waters of the eastern U.S. and Gulf of Mexico is helping researchers determine how distinct bodies of water will resist changes in acidity. The study, which measures varying levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other forms of carbon in the ocean, was conducted by scientists from 11 institutions across the U.S. and was published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

"Before now, we haven't had a very clear picture of acidification status on the east coast of the U.S.," says Zhaohui 'Aleck' Wang, the study's lead author and a chemical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "It's important that we start to understand it, because increase in ocean acidity could deeply affect marine life along the coast and has important implications for people who rely on aquaculture and fisheries both commercially and recreationally."

Coastal ocean acidification, Wang says, can occur when excess carbon dioxide is absorbed by, flushed into or generated in coastal waters, setting off a chain of chemical reactions that lowers the water's pH, making it more acidic. The process disproportionately affects species like oysters, snails, pteropods, and coral, since those organisms cannot effectively form shells in a more acidic environment.

...Since the waters of the northeast U.S. are already susceptible to rising acidity, Wang says this raises big questions about how species of marine life -- many of which are important to the commercial fishing and shellfish industry there -- will fare in the future. "For example, how are oysters going to do? What about other shellfish? If the food chain changes, how are fish going to be impacted?" Wang asks. "There's a whole range of ecological and sociological questions." There is a great need for need for more robust coastal ocean chemistry monitoring and coastal ocean acidification studies, he adds. A better understanding of the changing chemistry will help fisheries regulators to better manage the stocks....

By collecting and analyzing water samples, Wang and his colleagues charted the coastal ocean’s capacity to buffer itself from increase input of CO2or resist a change in pH (shown as a ratio of total alkalinity, TA, to dissolved inorganic carbon, DIC). The dark blue color indicates a low capacity; red indicates a higher capacity. The waters in the Gulf of Mexico are more resistant to change; the waters off New Hampshire and Massachusetts are less resistant. In the figure, the contour lines labeled with numbers represent the calcium carbonate saturation state of aragonite, a mineral form of calcium carbonate. The higher numbers mean shell-building organisms have more carbonate with which produce their shells than areas with lower numbers, where less carbonate is available for shell building. Shells will dissolve in waters with a saturation state value below 1, but organisms will feel the effect of low saturation state before it reaches 1. (Credit: Courtesy Wang, et al., 2013)

Natural capital: avoiding the next financial crisis

Ivo Mulder and George Scott in Chinadialogue: Nature underpins global wealth creation. The renewable flow of goods and services provided by the earth’s ecosystems buttress our economy and yield benefits for business. But this stock of ecosystems – also known as “natural capital” – is largely invisible in financial decision-making. As a result, natural capital does not appear on the balance sheets of businesses and is largely unaccounted for in financial products.

...Most finance institutions still do not believe that natural capital is material to their bottom line. As a result, for many types of financial products there are at present no metrics available to incorporate it (quantitatively) in credit risk. But loss of forests affects water supplies vital to agriculture and hydropower. Greenhouse gas emissions from forest clearance account for about 12-15% of emissions globally. Species loss is immense, while deforestation can trigger community conflicts. Economists estimate forest loss alone is eroding natural capital and ecosystem services valued at US$1.2 to US$4.7 trillion per year.

...For industries dependent on natural capital, the continued erosion of global resources presents additional operational challenges. Exponential population growth is putting ever increasing pressure on the limited global natural capital base. The resulting surging demand in the past decade alone has reversed a 100-year decline in resource prices. Growing pressure on agricultural production, as well as associated water and energy requirements, from feeding an additional billion people by 2030 will trigger considerable increases in the price of global commodities.

...The Natural Capital Declaration, launched in June 2012, is an attempt to do something about this web of risks. The industry-led initiative aims to encourage widespread integration of natural capital considerations into financial products and services, and work towards their inclusion in financial accounting and reporting....

Jean-Francois Millet, "Forest workers sawing wood," early 1850s

Contoversy about Louisiana’s coastal master plan for sea level rise

Bob Marshall in the Advocate via the Lens (Louisiana): Yes, we can. And, by the way: You’re wrong. That’s how Garret Graves, head of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, and some coastal scientists have responded to federal researchers who last week predicted the southeast coast faces the highest rate of sea level rise “on the planet” – 4.4 feet by 2100.

At that rate, they said, parts of the state’s coastal Master Plan will be obsolete before they are completed. “The NOAA folks are just misinformed,” said Graves, summing up a point-by-point email rebuttal of the claims made by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staffers in a story by The Lens.

Requests for a response from Graves and others involved with the Master Plan had gone unanswered when the story on the NOAA claims was published. Now they have fired back. “Yes, we expect things to change, and, yes, we can adapt these projects as we move forward,” he said.

Graves said a central feature of the Master Plan allows projects to be adapted to ever-increasing rates of sea level rise and subsidence, even those higher than predicted in the NOAA scenario.

...The NOAA researchers’ comments were based on new studies showing that the southeastern Louisiana coast, long known to have one of the highest rates of subsidence in the world, is sinking much faster and more uniformly than previously thought. That’s because it rests on the Mississippi River’s collapsing sediment-starved deltas.

When combined with recently released data proving the seas are rising at a faster rate than predicted, those two factors — collectively called “relative sea level rise” — showed the Gulf of Mexico rising 4.4 feet in this area by century’s end.

Tim Osborn, an 18-year veteran of NOAA’s Louisiana coastal surveys, contends that the updated data pose serious new problems for the Master Plan. “The problem is it’s a master plan for the restoration and conservation of a landscape that is moving downward at a faster rate than we realized when the plan was constructed — a rate faster than any place else we are seeing in the world for such a large land area,” he said....

From the US Geological Survey: Holly Beach, Louisiana. Photos of same location in 2001, and in 2005 after the devastation of Hurricane Rita.

Is acceptance of climate change adaptation an admission that mitigation has failed?

Lisa Anderson in AlertNet:  The question of whether accepting and acting on climate change adaptation amounts to an admission of defeat for climate change mitigation was the most pressing topic discussed by climate experts on a panel this week at an event sponsored by The Earth Institute.

The debate around applying climate change science to urban environments has been reinvigorated in the wake of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Sandy on New York City and its 500 miles of coastline in October 2012, as well as on the coastlines of neighbouring New Jersey and Long Island.

The work to mitigate the factors that contribute to climate change is not over, said Lisa Goddard, director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and a professor at New York's Columbia University, which hosted the panel event.

“But, at the same time, the climate is changing,” said Goddard. “We need to adapt to climate change.  Period. Just because we have a growing population and growing infrastructure, adaptation is not a debatable topic. It’s not an either/or.” “Just because you’re adapting to climate change doesn’t mean you’ve given up on mitigation,” she added.

Panelist Adam Sobel, a professor of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and of Earth and Environmental Sciences, agreed. Even if we reduced carbon dioxide emissions dramatically some of the damage has already been done and must be dealt with, he said. “Even under the most optimistic scenarios, we’re going to see some warming and it’s unrealistic not to recognise it,” he said, speaking of adaptation strategies.

Meanwhile, Sergej Mahnovski, director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, said adaptation and mitigation go hand in hand: “I think the answer is you have to do both.”...

The FDR Drive flooded by Hurricane Sandy, shot by David Shankbone, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

NASA eyes declining vegetation in the eastern United States from 2000 to 2010

NASA: NASA scientists report that warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation locally and regionally have altered the growth of large forest areas in the eastern United States over the past 10 years. Using NASA’s Terra satellite, scientists examined the relationship between natural plant growth trends, as monitored by NASA satellite images, and variations in climate over the eastern United States from 2000 to 2010.

Monthly satellite images from the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) showed declining density of the green forest cover during summer in four sub-regions, the Upper Great Lakes, southern Appalachian, mid-Atlantic, and southeastern Coastal Plain. More than 20 percent of the non-agricultural area in the four sub-regions that showed decline during the growing season, were covered by forests. Nearly 40 percent of the forested area within the mid-Atlantic sub-region alone showed a significant decline in forest canopy cover.

“We looked next at the relationships between warmer temperatures, rainfall patterns, and reduced forest greenness across these regions,” said Christopher Potter, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. “This comprehensive data set gave us the evidence to conclude that a series of relatively dry years since 2000 has been unfavorable for vigorous growth of forest cover over much of the eastern U. S. this past decade.” Potter is the first author of the paper titled “Declining Vegetation Growth Rates in the Eastern United States from 2000 to 2010,” published by Natural Resources, Dec. 2012, (3), 184-190.

...More recent studies indicate that climate change could be having many adverse and interrelated impacts on the region. The warming climate this century has caused new stresses on trees, such as insect pest outbreaks and the introduction of new pathogens. Scientists consider both climate change and disease to be dominant driving forces in the health of forests in this region....

Trends in forest canopy green cover over the eastern United States from 2000 to 2010 derived from NASA MODIS satellite sensor data. Green shades indicate a positive trend of increasing growing season green cover, whereas brown shades indicate a negative trend of decreasing growing season green cover. Four forest sub-regions of interest are outlined in red, north to south as: Great Lakes, Southern Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic, and southeastern Coastal Plain. Image credit: NASA

In China, nitrogen leaves pollution haze

Futurity: China, the amount of nitrogen from industry, cars, and fertilizer that fell on land and in water increased by 60 percent each year from 1980 to 2010, a new study reports. It’s no secret that China is faced with some of the world’s worst pollution. Until now, however, information on the magnitude, scope, and impacts of human-caused nitrogen emissions was lacking.

Xuejun Liu and Fusuo Zhang at China Agricultural University in Beijing led the study, which is part of an ongoing collaboration aimed at reducing agricultural nutrient pollution while increasing food production in China—a collaboration that includes Peter Vitousek, a biologist at Stanford University and Pamela Matson, a Woods Institute senior fellow and dean of the School of Earth Sciences.

For the study, researchers analyzed all available data on bulk nitrogen deposition from monitoring sites throughout China during the past 30 years. In that time, the country has become by far the largest creator and emitter of nitrogen globally.

Its use of nitrogen as a fertilizer increased about threefold from the 1980s to 2000s, while livestock numbers and coal combustion increased about fourfold, and the number of automobiles about twentyfold (all of these activities release reactive nitrogen into the environment).

Increased levels of nitrogen have led to a range of deleterious impacts, including decreased air quality, acidification of soil and water, increased greenhouse gas concentrations, and reduced biological diversity...

NASA image of haze over eastern China, from NASA

Vietnam to launch third satellite into orbit

Space Daily via XNA: Vietnam will launch its third satellite into orbit in the second quarter of 2013, according to a document approved by the Vietnamese Government Office.

Vietnamese media VnExpress quoted Bui Trong Tuyen, vice president of Vietnam's Space Technology Institute, as saying that the VNREDSat-1A, an earth observation optical satellite, is designed for the service of earth observation, analysis of natural resources, environmental management and natural disasters monitoring.

VNREDSat-1A will be launched into sun synchronous orbit (SSO) at an altitude of 670 km. The 120-kg remote sensing satellite is built by France's Astrium, which will supply to Vietnam the complete satellite system and ground receiving facilities. During the project, Astrium will help training 15 Vietnamese engineers in controlling the satellite.

The satellite, worth 70-million U.S. dollars, will be launched by the Arianespace at the Guiana Space Center, French Guiana....