World cup cities say climate change is big part of planning

Anita Powell in Voice of America: The World Cup soccer tournament is getting more and more carbon-heavy, with FIFA estimating that the 2014 event in Brazil will dump 2.72 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- one million more tons than South Africa’s 2010 World Cup. Officials from both sides of the globe weigh in how they have incorporated climate change concerns into the World  Cup.

Brazil’s tourism board says it is expecting tourists to spend $10.4 billion during this year’s World Cup. That cash injection, however, will take its toll on the environment. The majority of the heat-trapping gas will come from air travel as spectators and teams fly around the world’s fifth-biggest country in order to get to the 12 different stadiums where the 64 World Cup matches will be played.  

At a meeting in Johannesburg this month, mayors from some of the world's megacities met to discuss the unique challenges -- especially climate change -- that urban areas face. The mayor of the World Cup host city of Curitiba told VOA that green planning was part of its preparations for the event.

Gustavo Fruet also said he’s looked to the last host city, Johannesburg, for lessons. “There were problems with funding, and a lack of clarity in city planning. There should be a legacy for the city and not just for an event. What we see as a positive [from Johannesburg] is that it gives visibility to the country, visibility to the city and it allowed an increase, above all, in tourism and prepared people to provide better service. So for me this is the best achievement, the great legacy -- to show quality, efficiency, and above all joy in receiving foreigners,” he said.

Johannesburg mayor Mpho Parks Tau said he believes mayors are paying attention to the issue of climate change and the World Cup. "That would help us elevate the work that we do as cities in relation to climate change. And we’ve been able to share with them our best practices in relation to energy, in relation to transportation, and other practices that we introduced in Johannesburg.”....

The Johannesburg skyline at dawn, shot by Dylan Harbour, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Flooding experts say Britain will have to adapt to climate change – and fast

Damian Carrington in the Guardian (UK): "You are looking at retreat," says Prof Colin Thorne, a flooding expert at the University of Nottingham. "It is the only sensible policy – it makes no sense to defend the indefensible." This assessment of how the UK will have to adapt to its increasing flood risk is stark, but is shared by virtually all those who work on the issue.

Centuries of draining wetlands, reclaiming salt marshes and walling in rivers is being put into reverse by climate change, which is bringing fiercer storms, more intense downpours and is pushing up sea levels. Sea walls are now being deliberately allowed to be breached, with new defences built further back, and fields turned into lakes to slow the rush of the water, as flood management turns back towards natural methods.

Thorne says the strategy of once more "making space for water" has been around for a decade, but the urgency of implementing it has increased sharply. "We thought then we were talking about the 2030s, but it is all happening a heck of a lot quicker."

Large parts of southern England had their wettest January ever recorded, the Met Office announced on Thursday, and the Somerset Levels, much of which is below sea level, have been inundated for weeks. "I have enormous sympathy for these people," says Thorne. But he thinks the 1,000-year history of keeping the sea out of the area is coming to the end. "Can the Somerset Levels be defended between now and the end of the century? No," he says.

Hannah Cloke, a flooding expert at the University of Reading, agrees: "We could make the choice to protect the Levels forever, but that is going to take a lot of resources. My gut feeling is that you are going to have to let that be a marshland in the end. But people live there and have their livelihoods there, so it is very tricky." Cloke says greatest priority across the country is giving people the help they need to adjust to more frequent floods, from warnings and emergency planning down to home-level protection, such as water-absorbing green roofs and porous paving stones. She points to a small but growing trend of riverbank homes being raised on stilts....

The River Brue in flood at Westhay Bridge in 2008.  This river cuts across the Somerset Levels. Shot by Edwin Graham, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Measuring resilience to climate change in Nepal from the community up

Susannah Fisher in Eco-Business: Nepal’s vulnerability to a warming climate became clear in May 2012 when the Seti river burst its banks during flash floods and landslides that killed more than 60 people. Scientists say such events are likely to become more common as the world warms, so communities need to adapt.

The Government of Nepal is well aware of the challenges. With support from development partners, it is investing heavily in climate change adaptation. For example, the Pilot Programme on Climate Change Resilience (part of the Climate Investment Funds) is providing US$110 million in grants and loans. The UK Department for International Development and the European Union are supporting district and village institutions to develop and implement Local Adaptation Plans of Action to address the impacts of climate change.

...A project may achieve its goal (for example improving water supplies, or increasing biodiversity) but it may not have contributed to overall resilience to current or future climate threats. It may not have even set out to.

To address this gap, we have been working with communities and policymakers in Nepal to develop local indicators of resilience to climate-related threats and to identify what could be monitored at a national level....

Macchermo River (and glacier) in Nepal, shot by DARIO SEVERI, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Researchers evaluate best weather forecasting models wit one 2013 storm

University of Iowa's Iowa Now: Two University of Iowa researchers recently tested the ability of the world’s most advanced weather forecasting models to predict the Sept. 9-16, 2013 extreme rainfall that caused severe flooding in Boulder, Colo. The results, published in the December 2013 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, indicated the forecasting models generally performed well, but also left room for improvement.

David Lavers and Gabriele Villarini, researchers at IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering, a world-renowned UI research facility, evaluated rainfall forecasts from eight different global numerical weather prediction (NWP) models.

...After the storms had subsided, Lavers and Villarini decided to examine how well some of the leading NWP models had done. As a constantly improving science, NWP involves integrating current weather conditions through mathematical models of the atmosphere-ocean system to forecast future weather. For their study, the researchers selected the actual rainfall forecasts made by eight state-of-the-art global NWP models for the period of the Colorado floods.

“At an early lead time to the event, the rainfall forecasts failed to capture the persistent nature of the event’s rainfall,” says Lavers, corresponding author and an IIHR postdoctoral researcher. “However, the rainfall forecasts from Sept. 9 (the first day of the event) did provide guidance indicating a significant period of rainfall in Colorado.”

“Overall, these models tended to underestimate rainfall amounts and placed the rainfall in the wrong area, even though they provided an indication that a period of heavy rainfall was going to affect parts of Colorado,” says Gabriele Villarini, study co-author, assistant professor in the UI College of Engineering Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and assistant research engineer at IIHR.

...Says Lavers: “It is hoped that the continuing development of finer resolution NWP models that resolve the complex atmospheric motions in mountainous terrain, such as the Rocky Mountains, will make it possible to improve the forecasting capabilities of such extreme rainfall events.”...

FEMA image of the aftermath of 2013 flooding in Jamestown, Colorado

African monsoon project to benefit crops and healthcare

Nick Kennedy in SciDev.net: Researchers unravelling the complexities of the West African monsoon say they are set to bring major agricultural and health benefits to people in the region — despite setbacks caused by terrorist threats and wars in the Sahel region.

The African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) programme, a consortium of over 400 researchers from 30 countries that was started 14 years ago, has gathered a wealth of new data about the West African monsoon from across the Sahel, and is now inspiring similar projects elsewhere in Africa.

The new dataset is enabling the researchers to improve climate prediction models for West Africa, which in turn will help to forecast farming success and disease outbreaks in the region. They are are now extending the project to coastal areas of West Africa.

Crop forecasts will be produced by the AGRHYMET (Agrometeorology, Hydrology and Meteorology) centre in Niger. The forecasts could allow the millions of people who depend on the monsoon for subsistence agriculture to make better-informed decisions.

For example, if farmers can be certain that the next season will be a drought, then they know it is not worth buying expensive fertiliser and seeds, says Richard Washington, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.

The scientists hope that AMMA will also help forecast health risks throughout West Africa because diseases such as meningitis and malaria are influenced by the monsoon, says Doug Parker, meteorology professor at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and a UK coordinator for AMMA. These forecasts are now being prepared in Burkina Faso and Senegal...

Kolel Hill in Burkina Faso, shot by Marco Schmidt, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Are invasive plants a problem in Europe? Controversial views among invasion biologists

Seed Daily via SPX: Some introduced (i.e. non-native) plants become abundant, threaten species richness and the well-functioning of ecosystems, the economy, or health (plant invasion). Environmental policies that attempt to restrict the expansion of non-native species are based on a consensus among scientific experts that invasions are a serious environmental problem. An example of a problematic non-native species in many parts of the world is Fallopia japonica, the Japanese knotweed that negatively affects river ecosystems.

A consensus among experts on the severity of plant invasions seems evident in many scientific and outreach publications. However, instead of consensus, a new study by an interdisciplinary research team at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) of psychologists and plant biologists found a wide range of different opinions among scientific experts about how to describe invasive plant species, and how severe their effects on the environment are. The study is published in the latest issue of the open access journal NeoBiota.

The researchers conducted 26 face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of German-speaking scientists working on plant invasions, or more generally on environmental change, in Europe. The interviews revealed that individual understandings of scientific concepts, uncertainties, and value-based attitudes towards invasive plants and their management diverged widely among these experts.

"Particularly, ambiguous definitions of the terms non-native and invasive (two key notions in invasion science) are a strong source of misunderstandings among scientists," said lead author Franziska Humair, a doctoral student at ETH Zurich. Some of the study participants used a biological definition to discriminate native from non-native species ("species from a different biogeographic region"), while others referred to culture ("species not familiar to local people")....

Japanese knotweed, shot by H. Zell, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Vietnam reports second bird flu death in 2014

New Vision via AFP: Vietnam has recorded its second death from bird flu in 2014, a health official said Thursday, as regional concerns over a potential resurgence of the deadly virus grow. A 60-year-old woman from southern Dong Thap province died on January 28 and tested positive for the H5N1 virus the following day, provincial medical department director Nguyen Ngoc An told AFP.

It follows the death of a 52-year-old man from the southern Binh Phuoc province on January 18. Demand for poultry in Vietnam tends to increase at the end of January as families celebrate the Tet lunar new year festival.

The H5N1 virus has caused 649 confirmed flu cases in humans since it re-emerged in 2003, resulting in 385 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It typically spreads from birds to humans through direct contact. But experts fear it could mutate into a form easily transmissible between humans, with the potential to trigger a pandemic.

Vietnam has recorded one of the highest fatality rates from bird flu in Southeast Asia.It has claimed 63 lives so far, including one in 2013, according to the WHO. The WHO figures do not include the two recent deaths in Vietnam....

A map of a 2009 outbreak of H1N1 in Vietnam, created by Zuanzuanfuwa, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Water supply availability ‘to dominate US natural resource management’

A press release from the University of York: Water supply is the most pressing environmental issue facing the United States according to a survey of policy makers and scientists revealed in a new publication in BioScience by researchers at the University of York and the University of California, Davis.

A question on the water supply necessary to sustain human populations and ecosystem resilience was ranked as having the greatest potential, if it was answered, to increase the effectiveness of policies related to natural resource management in the United States. The publication comes as California suffers its worst drought in nearly half a century.

The question emerged from a previous collaboration among decision makers and scientists that yielded 40 research questions that most reflected the needs of those with jurisdiction over natural resources. That research also was published in BioScience.

The survey, by Dr Murray Rudd of the Environment Department at York and Dr Erica Fleishman, of the John Muir Institute of the Environment at UC Davis, asked managers, policymakers and their advisers, and scientists to rank the questions on the basis of their applicability to policy. The 602 respondents included 194 policymakers, 70 government scientists, and 228 academic scientists.

...Dr Rudd said, “We found a significant difference in research priorities between respondents. Importantly, there was no evidence of a simple science–policy divide. Priorities did not differ between academics and government employees or between scientists (academic and government) and policymakers.

“Our results suggest that participatory exercises such as this are a robust way of establishing priorities to guide funders of research and researchers who aim to inform policy.”...

A 2011 shot of northern California's Hetch Hetchy reservoir, by King of Hearts, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Tree roots in the mountains 'acted like a thermostat' for millions of years

EurekAlert via the University of Oxford: For the first time, scientists have discovered how tree roots in the mountains may play an important role in controlling long-term global temperatures. Researchers from Oxford and Sheffield Universities have found that temperatures affect the thickness of the leaf litter and organic soil layers, as well as the rate at which the tree roots grow. In a warmer world, this means that tree roots are more likely to grow into the mineral layer of the soil, breaking down rock into component parts which will eventually combine with carbon dioxide. This process, called weathering, draws carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and cools the planet. The researchers say this theory suggests that mountainous ecosystems have acted like the Earth's thermostat, addressing the risk of 'catastrophic' overheating or cooling over millions of years.

In their research paper published online in Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers carried out studies in tropical rain forests in Peru, measuring tree roots across different sites of varying altitude – from the warm Amazonian Lowlands to the cooler mountain ranges of the Andes. They measured the growth of the tree roots to 30 cm beneath the surface, every three months over several years. At each of the sites, they also measured the thickness of the organic layer above the soil. This information was then combined with existing data of monthly temperature, humidity, rainfall, and soil moisture in order to calculate the likely breakdown process of the basalt and granite rocks found in the mountain ranges of Peru.

Using this model, based on field data in Peru, the scientists were able to scale up in order to calculate the likely contribution of mountain forests worldwide to global weathering rates. The researchers then calculated the likely amount of carbon to be pulled out of the atmosphere through weathering when the Earth became very hot. They looked at the volcanic eruptions in India 65 million years ago (known as the Deccan traps). The model also allowed them to calculate the weathering process and carbon feedback after the Earth's cooling 45 million years ago, when great mountain ranges like the Andes and the Himalayas were first formed.

The paper suggests that mountainous regions may play a particularly important role in drawing carbon out of the atmosphere because they have abundant volcanic rock which is highly reactive to weathering when it disintegrates...

A 1924 photograph by Eugene Atget of tree roots in St. Cloud

Climate hubs for US farmers

A press release from the US Department of Agriculture: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today the creation of the first ever Regional Hubs for Risk Adaptation and Mitigation to Climate Change at seven locations around the country. "Climate Hubs" will address increasing risks such as fires, invasive pests, devastating floods, and crippling droughts on a regional basis, aiming to translate science and research into information to farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners on ways to adapt and adjust their resource management. In his State of the Union Address, President Obama pledged that his Administration will continue to do everything in its power to act on climate change. Today's announcement is part of the President's Climate Action Plan to responsibly cut carbon pollution, slow the effects of climate change and put America on track to a cleaner environment.

"For generations, America's farmers, ranchers and forest landowners have innovated and adapted to challenges. Today, they face a new and more complex threat in the form of a changing and shifting climate, which impacts both our nation's forests and our farmers' bottom lines," said Vilsack. "USDA's Climate Hubs are part of our broad commitment to developing the next generation of climate solutions, so that our agricultural leaders have the modern technologies and tools they need to adapt and succeed in the face of a changing climate."

The Secretary first announced his intention to create the Hubs last summer. The Hubs will provide outreach and information to producers on ways to mitigate risks; public education about the risks climate change poses to agriculture, ranchlands and forests; regional climate risk and vulnerability assessments; and centers of climate forecast data and information. They will also link a broad network of partners participating in climate risk adaptation and mitigation, including universities; non-governmental organizations; federal agencies such as the Department of Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Native Nations and organizations; state departments of environment and agriculture; research centers; farm groups and more.

Across the country, farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are seeing an increase in risks to their operations due to fires, increases in invasive pests, droughts, and floods. For example, in the Midwest, growing seasons have lengthened by almost two weeks since 1950. The fire season is now 60 days longer than it was 30 years ago, and forests will become increasingly threatened by insect outbreaks, fire, drought and storms over the next 50 years. These events threaten our food supply and are costly for producers and rural economies. Drought alone was estimated to cost the U.S. $50 billion from 2011 to 2013. Such risks have implications not only for agricultural producers, but for all Americans....

Grant Woods' painting, "The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa"

After slowdown, global fight for land rights at tipping point

Carey L. Biron in IPS: Global trends towards a strengthening of legal rights over land for local and indigenous communities appear to have slowed significantly in recent years, leading some analysts to warn that the fight for local control over forests has reached an inflection point with a new danger of backtracking on previous progress.

The past five years have seen less than 20 percent of global forestland put under community control compared to the previous half-dozen years, according to new research released Wednesday by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a Washington-based coalition of 140 international organisations. Further, the group says that far fewer legal safeguards were put in place during this latter period, while those laws that have been passed have been weaker.

 “If private companies and governments from the developed countries don’t weigh in, all of this progress could be lost – this could be it,” Andy White, RRI’s coordinator, told IPS. “Even though there’s a lot of talk on this issue right now, no one is really investing – not the donors, not the big companies, not the developed country governments. No one is putting money behind the words to help developing countries to do the mapping, the registries, the consultations that will be required to get this done.”

The slowdown comes despite a significant uptick in the public discussion over land and indigenous rights, with multinational corporations, national courts and Western donors increasingly acknowledging the issue’s importance and pledging to strengthen safeguards for forest tenure. Development workers say this disconnect between words and actions highlights both a lack of prioritisation on land rights and, given the rising rhetoric, an opportunity for future action....

Aztec drums in the 16th century Florentine Codex

EU set to approve new GM corn after Germany drops objection

Seed Daily via AFP: A new genetically modified crop, US firm Pioneer's TC1507 corn, is set for approval in Europe next week after Germany dropped its objections, several EU sources told AFP Wednesday. "Germany is moving from being against to abstaining" in a vote on the long-running controversy, said a source close to the dossier who asked not to be identified. A second source confirmed.

Ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday are to hand down a final decision on the cultivation of TC1507 corn after a European Court ruled late last year that the company's 2001 request for permission must be dealt with. But the 28-nation bloc is badly divided over GM crops, and the EU's complex voting arithmetic has been at the heart of a deadlock on a decision.

The European Union's general affairs ministers will decide next week using qualified majority voting -- which is weighted to take account of the bigger states. If there is no majority against due to one nation's abstention, then approval will be automatic, said the EU's Health Commissioner Tonio Borg on website Vieuws.

When the principle was last voted on in 2009, the heavyweights of Britain, France and Germany ended up cancelling each other out. Asked to allow GM cultivation in the EU, but to leave space for national and even territorial opt-outs on non-health or environmental grounds, Britain was one of six backers...

A withered corn field near Erftstadt, Germany, shot by Christian Nurtsch, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany license

Fracking is depleting water supplies in America's driest areas, report shows

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): America's oil and gas rush is depleting water supplies in the driest and most drought-prone areas of the country, from Texas to California, new research has found. Of the nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells drilled since 2011, three-quarters were located in areas where water is scarce, and 55% were in areas experiencing drought, the report by the Ceres investor network found.

Fracking those wells used 97bn gallons of water, raising new concerns about unforeseen costs of America's energy rush. "Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country's most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions," said Mindy Lubber, president of the Ceres green investors' network.

Without new tougher regulations on water use, she warned industry could be on a "collision course" with other water users.

"It's a wake-up call," said Prof James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine. "We understand as a country that we need more energy but it is time to have a conversation about what impacts there are, and do our best to try to minimise any damage."

It can take millions of gallons of fresh water to frack a single well, and much of the drilling is tightly concentrated in areas where water is in chronically short supply, or where there have been multi-year droughts. Half of the 97bn gallons of water was used to frack wells in Texas, which has experienced severe drought for years – and where production is expected to double over the next five years....

A Halliburton fracking operation in the Bakken, shot by Joshua Doubek, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rising threat to Pakistan's crops from climate

Ashfak Bokhari in Dawn (Pakistan): Farmers in Sindh are suffering the worst effects of climate change on their banana, tomato, seasonal vegetable and fruit crops in the wake of an unexpected wave of extreme cold.

Growers say the cold spell has destroyed 70 per cent of banana orchards and 80 per cent of vegetable and fruit farms in six districts of the province. Banana produced here has a huge demand in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan as well as Iran and Afghanistan. Such an extreme weather was last experienced in 2005.

They accuse the agriculture extension department of lack of interest to help them save their crops sensitising them to the effects of climate change and enable them to make changes accordingly in the crop pattern. The fact remains that because of climate change, sowing and harvesting timings have changed and those who are unable to adapt themselves to the changed situation suffer the most.

The cultivation of the potato crop in Punjab was delayed by a month (from September to October) this year due to precipitation and high temperature. Still, some farmers in central Punjab expect reduction in the yield up to ten per cent. Vegetables, particularly potatoes, are more vulnerable to heat. Punjab contributes almost 90 per cent to the country’s total production of potato.

Agriculture is facing five major risks caused by climate change. These are rise in sea level, glacial retreats, floods, higher average temperature and frequency of droughts. Crop yields are expected to decrease in the years to come not only because of flooding, but also due to rise in temperatures. Some areas may even become uncultivable. Cotton was once an important crop for Faisalabad, but now it is not grown there anymore...

A camel carrying hay in Pakistan, shot by Bart de Goeij, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Climatologist advises Nigerian coastal communities on flood control

AllAfrica.com via the Daily Trust (Nigeria):A climatologist, Prof. Temi Ologunorisa, on Tuesday urged coastal communities to evolve measures aimed at mitigating the effects of flooding in their communities. Ologunorisa told newsmen in Lagos that such measures would avert a recurrence of the 2012 devastating flood in coastal communities and some parts of the country.

"Any moment from now the rainy season will set in and many communities will be exposed to erosion and flood. In order to prevent a recurrence of the 2012 flood that ravaged many communities, coastal communities and those living in flood-prone areas should start preparing, to avoid emergencies.

"We must not wait till flood-related emergencies occur before acting and that is what we do in this part of the world."

Ologunorisa, who is the director of the Centre for Climate Change and Environment Research, Osun State University, Osogbo, said that there were signs of heavy rainfall this year. He advised those whose houses were built on flood plains beds to urgently begin to relocate to safer places.

The climatologist also urged those in coastal communities not to wait for the rains before clearing their drains....

'Stay away from the coast': severe flood warnings as storms lash Britain

Matthew Weaver in the Guardian (UK): The latest in this winter's series of damaging Atlantic storms has lashed Britain, causing fresh travel chaos on the roads and railways, cutting power to thousands of homes, and creating yet more flooding.

Winds of up more than 90mph, heavy rain and high tides prompted the Environment Agency to issue six severe flood warning – meaning danger to life – all in south-west England, from Weymouth in Dorset to Land's End in Cornwall.

It urged the public to "stay away from sea fronts and beaches as conditions represent a significant risk to life". A further 76 flood warnings were in place across the country.

The Met Office has also issued "be prepared" amber warnings for strong winds sweeping across southern England and Wales. About 39,000 homes had power restored to them overnight, with 5,000 homes still without electricity.

A spokesman for Western Power Distribution said about 200 engineers had been working through the night to repair damage caused by debris being blown into overhead lines by strong winds in the south-west. "Over the last 12 hours or so, 44,000 customers in the south-west have been off supply at some point but we've managed to restore it to all but 5,000 homes," he said."It's an extremely exceptional event....

A wall cloud at Danby Beacon in in 2005, shot by colin grice, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

Food, energy and water demand integrated approach

T.V. Padma in SciDev.net: Improvements in food, energy and water sectors need to be tackled together in an integrated manner to address climate change impacts, says Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chair of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“I hope people will understand the integration of food, energy and water (sectors). Each one of these has to be seen as part of the whole,” Pachauri tells SciDev.Net ahead of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit, being organised by The Energy and Resources Research Institute this week (6—8 February).

Pachauri observed that as populations and incomes continue to grow, the demand on the three sectors was also growing, calling for efficient use of resources in all three areas and attention to the technological and economic issues linked to them.

“I think that what we hope to do is ensure that all these three (sectors) are seen as the integrated elements of a much larger complex. And I think that we would have to make sure that each one of these is seen in terms of how developments are going to take place in the future,” he said. He cited as examples of the inter-linkages among the three areas as the fact that energy was needed to provide water for irrigation and how water was needed to carry out any agriculture.

Lisa Grande, United Nations Development programme (UNDP's) resident representative in India, said in a message that food, energy and water security were the greatest challenges facing India, and the "magnitude of these problems is serious"....

"Abundance" by Rubens

Greenland's fastest glacier reaches record speeds

Science Daily: Jakobshavn Isbræ (Jakobshavn Glacier) is moving ice from the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean at a speed that appears to be the fastest ever recorded. Researchers from the University of Washington and the German Space Agency (DLR) measured the dramatic speeds of the fast-flowing glacier in 2012 and 2013.

The results are published today in The C
ryosphere, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). "We are now seeing summer speeds more than 4 times what they were in the 1990s on a glacier which at that time was believed to be one of the fastest, if not the fastest, glacier in Greenland," says Ian Joughin, a researcher at the Polar Science Center, University of Washington and lead-author of the study.

In the summer of 2012 the glacier reached a record speed of more than 17 kilometres per year, or over 46 metres per day. These flow rates are unprecedented: they appear to be the fastest ever recorded for any glacier or ice stream in Greenland or Antarctica, the researchers say.

They note that summer speeds are temporary, with the glacier flowing more slowly over the winter months. But they add that even the annually averaged speedup over the past couple of years is nearly 3 times what it was in the 1990s.

This speedup of Jakobshavn Isbræ means that the glacier is adding more and more ice to the ocean, contributing to sea-level rise. "We know that from 2000 to 2010 this glacier alone increased sea level by about 1 mm. With the additional speed it likely will contribute a bit more than this over the next decade," explains Joughin.

Jakobshavn Isbræ, which is widely believed to be the glacier that produced the large iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, drains the Greenland ice sheet into a deep ocean fjord on the coast of the island. At its calving front, where the glacier effectively ends as it breaks off into icebergs, some of the ice melts while the rest is pushed out, floating into the ocean. Both of these processes contribute about the same amount to sea-level rise from Greenland....

NASA false-color image of the Jakobshavn Glacier

Heaviest snowstorm in 50 years blankets northern Iran

Terra Daily via AFP: The heaviest snowstorm in five decades has blanketed provinces in northern Iran, cutting power supplies and trapping villagers, Iranian media reported Monday.

 The storm is "unprecedented for the past 50 years, with two metres (almost seven feet) of snow falling since Friday," a Mazandaran provincial official said, quoted by the media.

 "Our main problems are (the provision of) power and water, which have been cut off due to the heavy snow," he said.

 According to officials, around 500,000 people in northern Iran have been left without electricity and gas since Saturday.

 Iran's Red Crescent head, Pir Hossein Kolivand, said teams have in the past four days rescued around 11,000 people caught in the heavy snow....

Satellites show 'total' California water storage at near-decade low

A press release from the University of California Center for Hydrological Modeling: Updates to satellite data show that California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin River basins are at near decade-low water storage levels.  These and other findings on the State’s dwindling water resources were documented in an advisory report released today from the UC Center for Hydrologic Modeling (UCCHM) at the University of California, Irvine.

Responding to Governor Jerry Brown’s recent declaration of a drought emergency in California, a team of UCCHM researchers has updated its research on the state’s two largest river basins, and the source of most its water. The region also encompasses the Central Valley, the most productive agriculture region in the country. The Central Valley depends entirely on the surface and groundwater resources within the river basins to meet its irrigation needs and to produce food for the nation.

Using satellite data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, the
researchers, led by UCCHM Director and UC Irvine Professor Jay Famiglietti, found that as of November 2013, total water storage in the river basins -- the combination of all of the snow, surface water, soil moisture and groundwater, and an integrated measure of basin-wide water availability -- had declined to its lowest point in nearly a decade.  GRACE data for the record-dry 2013-2014 winter months were not yet available for analysis.

The data show particularly steep water losses between November 2011 and November 2013, the early phase of the current drought.  Famiglietti and fellow UCCHM researchers estimate that the basins have already lost 10 cubic kilometers of fresh water in each of the last two years -- equivalent to virtually all of California’s urban and household water use each year.  "That’s the steepest decline in total water storage that we’ve seen in California since the GRACE mission was launched in 2002," Famiglietti said...

Adapting to sea level rise could save trillions by 2100

Brian Kahn in Climate Central: Floods already pose major problems for coastal communities each year. Those issues are only likely to grow as oceans continue to rise, due in part to climate change, threatening millions of people and trillions of dollars in infrastructure. But new research suggests that building levees could stave off huge losses at a minimal cost.

Coasts are home to more than 1 billion people across the globe and up 310 million of those live in a 100-year floodplain. In addition, $11 trillion in assets also sit below the 100-year flood mark.

The slow creep of sea level rise is putting more and more of these people and assets at risk. Since the start of the 20th century, sea levels have risen roughly 8 inches. That number is also expected to increase into the next century as ocean waters warm and expand and more water is added from melting glaciers. A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday projects sea levels could rise from 9 to 48 inches by 2100. The wide range of uncertainty is due to the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, which appear fairly stable but if they were to start melting, could contribute as much as 25 inches to sea level rise.

The study projects that even with conservative economic and population growth, $17 trillion in coastal assets could be sitting below the 100-year flood level by 2100. In a wealthier, more populous world, that number would balloon to $210 trillion.

While these factors have been considered individually in previous studies, this is the first time sea levels, including contributions for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, have been modeled in relation to both population growth and coastal development over the course of the 21st century. The results show that unless something is done, coastal flood could cause catastrophic losses every year....

At the Hook of Holland, shot by Mark Ahsmann, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Rivers run dry as claims of illegality surround Romania's hydropower boom

Luke Dale-Harris in the Guardian (UK): Deep into the wilderness of Romania's Southern Carpathian mountains, Bogdan Binescu, an avid angler and environmental campaigner, stops by the white waters of a mountain stream. "This river used to be the only route back to civilisation," he says. "But now civilisation has caught up."

A few kilometres on, his meaning becomes clear. Where beech trees had previously risen from the banks of the River Capra, a grey concrete building sits on muddied earth, housing the turbines of a small hydropower plant. Beyond, the river has all but disappeared, its bed of shattered rock and compacted earth now exposed. Between 80 and 90% of the river now flows through a thick metal pipe, carried here from a dam five kilometres upstream.

This is one of more than 500 "micro" hydropower plants operating or in various stages of construction and planning in the largely protected mountains. Together, they will produce less than 4% of the country's energy.

Often subsidised by European funds and with profits boosted by up to 500% from green tariffs – a subsidy drawn from a tax on energy consumers – micro hydropower has quickly become a favoured form of investment.

As profits are highest where the rivers run fast, investors are drawn deep into the mountains, in many cases to state-owned nature parks, protected under EU and domestic law. Binescu says: "Many of these projects are illegal on so many levels that only the powerful and well-connected have access to them." It is this, as much as the ecological impact of the power plants, which has drawn public protests throughout the Carpathians over the last year, in Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria...

A mountain stream in Romania, shot by king-danny, public domain 

Climate change puts Arctic winters on thin ice

A press release from the University of Waterloo (Canada): Arctic lakes have been freezing up later in the year and thawing earlier, creating an ice season about 24 days shorter than it was in 1950, a University of Waterloo study has found.

The research, sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA), also reveals that climate change has dramatically affected the thickness of lake ice at the coldest point in the season: In 2011, Arctic lake ice was up to 38 centimetres thinner than it was in 1950.

“We’ve found that the thickness of the ice has decreased tremendously in response to climate warming in the region,” said lead author Cristina Surdu, a PhD student in Waterloo’s Department of Geography and Environmental Management. “When we saw the actual numbers we were shocked at how dramatic the change has been. It’s basically more than a foot of ice by the end of winter, so it’s very significant.”

The study of more than 400 lakes of the North Slope of Alaska, is the first time researchers have been able to document the magnitude of lake-ice changes in the region over such a long period of time, says author Claude Duguay, a University of Waterloo professor and member of the Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change.

The research team used satellite radar imagery from ESA to determine that 62 per cent of the lakes in the region froze to the bottom in 1992. By 2011, only 26 per cent of lakes froze down to the bed, or bottom of the lake. Overall, there was a 22 per cent reduction in what the researchers call “grounded ice” from 1992 to 2011.

Researchers were able to tell the difference between a fully frozen lake and one that had not completely frozen to the bottom, because satellite radar signals behave very differently, depending on presence or absence of water underneath the ice....

Ekutna Lake in Alaska, shot by Frank K., Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

UN seeks $2 billion to tackle hunger in the Sahel

Misha Hussain at the Thomson Reuters Foundation: The United Nations appealed on Monday for $2 billion to feed and care for a record 20 million people across Africa's Sahel belt, urging donors to tackle a deteriorating humanitarian situation in a region where food insecurity has almost doubled in a year.

Conflict in Mali, Nigeria, Sudan and Central African Republic has disrupted markets and aggravated food shortages across the Sahel which suffers regular droughts and cyclical floods as well as locust infestations and epidemics.

Over 1.6 million people have abandoned their homes and half of those have sought refuge in impoverished countries throughout the savannah region that are already struggling to look after their own populations, said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

“This year is make or break for the Sahel. Donors have to show more ambition than in previous years to fund the Sahel. We have to work fast because if we don’t, the cycle of drought that is reality for the Sahel will catch up with us. It’s a race against time,” Robert Piper, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for the Sahel, told Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Food insecurity – a measure of hunger within a population due to conflict or climate – surged across the Sahel during 2013. But funding for this new appeal may fall short because of the slow global economic recovery and competing demands on donor resources.

International donors have already been asked to respond to multiple crises in Africa as well as a $6.5 billion appeal for Syria, the largest in U.N. history. Last year, donors met just 63 percent of the $1.7 billion Sahel U.N. appeal....

A NOAA shot on the road between Bamako and Kayes in Mali

Flooding threat spreads to Severn and Thames riverside properties

Steven Morris, Damian Carrington and Matthew Weaver in the Guardian (UK): More homes and businesses are in danger of being flooded over the next few days as pressure built on the government to take action to prevent a similar crisis in the future and residents of the worst-hit area, the Somerset Levels, prepared for a royal visit.

The Environment Agency said high tides, large waves and strong winds would lead to a risk of coastal flooding along the south west and southern coasts of England Tuesday and Wednesday. It warned that properties on the banks of rivers including the Severn and the Thames could also be affected over the same period.

A severe weather warning was issued by the Met Office for Wednesday saying that gusts of up to 80mph and another 40mm of rain were possible across much of southern England and Wales.

The monotony for flood-stranded residents on the Somerset Levels will be broken on Tuesday by a visit from the Prince of Wales, who was already booked in for a tour to discuss the aftermath of the the 2012 winter floods in the area...

A 2007 flood near the Severn River, shot by Iain Cuthbertson, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Philippine typhoon survivors brace for new storm

Terra Daily via AFP: Hundreds of people who survived Super Typhoon Haiyan are bracing for a new storm that is expected to hit the central Philippines late Friday, officials said.

Tropical storm Kajiki, packing maximum winds of 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour, is expected to hit the central island of Leyte before midnight, cutting through the archipelago as it heads towards the South China Sea, the government weather station said.

Although Kajiki is far weaker than Haiyan -- one of the strongest storms ever to hit land with winds reaching 315 kilometres (195 miles) per hour -- authorities are still warning it could bring new flashfloods and landslides to communities living in already rudimentary shelters.

Leyte suffered the worst casualties when Super Typhoon Haiyan struck in November, flattening whole towns and leaving about 8,000 dead or missing. In the island's still-ruined capital of Tacloban City, about 150 families living near the coast evacuated ahead of time before the storm hit.

The residents, who are still housed in tents after Haiyan destroyed their homes, fled to higher ground or took refuge with friends or relatives, said city administrator Tecson Lim....

Extreme weather is a reality – the insurance industry must adapt

Trevor Maynard in the Finance hub at Guardian Sustainable Business: The atmosphere is heating up and becoming more humid, we can say this with great certainty. This is likely to lead to an increase in extreme weather and more flooding. Recent major catastrophes are entirely consistent with this. Climate change might not cause such events – but it can make them much worse.

Since 1980, the cost of natural catastrophes has grown by $870bn in real terms and 2011 was the second costliest year on record for natural catastrophes including devastating floods in Thailand and Australia. Sea levels are rising, most probably at an accelerating rate, and this surely made the impact of Superstorm Sandy worse than it might otherwise have been.

Despite the backdrop of financial crises the long-term impacts to society are potentially too dangerous to ignore. It is critical that economies begin to confront and adapt to the changes that are already underway, while agreeing to internationally binding carbon reduction targets.

Yet the responsibility does not lie with governments alone. Unless businesses take a leading role in adjusting to our new future and adapting to the effects of further climate change then the costs, both financial and otherwise, will continue to grow.

From my own vantage point within the insurance industry, I can see three ways in which we can achieve this.

All industries need to take significant steps towards managing the climate impacts of the companies we run and the work we carry out. In some industries, including our own, progress is being made and programmes are in place to help reduce the environmental impact. ClimateWise, a partnership of insurers, brokers and risk modellers, includes more than 40 insurance companies and organisations globally that are working together to reduce the risks of climate change.

...One of the key challenges for ClimateWise is overcoming the inherent short-termism of business decision-making; embedding sustainable practices at the heart of business necessitates goal-orientation on much longer terms and this can be very difficult within the existing decision frameworks of many businesses….

A flooded street in Bombay during the 2005 monsoon, shot by Hitesh Ashar, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Georgia officials under fire for actions before, during, after snow

CNN: Two days after snow began to fall -- and a day after many Georgians, including hundreds of schoolchildren, finally made it home -- the state's governor apologized Thursday for what many saw as an insufficient and ineffective response.

Gov. Nathan Deal told reporters he was "not satisfied" with how his state dealt with the 2.6 inches of snow plus the sheets of ice that it turned into, leading to massive gridlock throughout metro Atlanta. In addition to students stranded at school, many drivers camped out in their cars or abandoned them by the hundreds along thoroughfares big and small.

"I accept responsibility for the fact that we did not make preparation early enough to avoid these consequences," Deal said. "... I'm not looking for a scapegoat. I'm the governor, the buck stops with me."

Speaking later Thursday with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Deal said "we all made errors in judgment" and that "the major lesson is we have to be more proactive." According to the governor, that means taking action like declaring a state of emergency earlier on -- even if it ends up being a false alarm, relatively -- and making sure the resources are available to deal with such a crisis…

A view from Atlanta in January 2005, when a snow storm was better managed. Shot by SCEhardt, public domain

Savanna vegetation predictions best done by continent

North Carolina State University Newsroom: A “one-size-fits-all” model to predict the effects of climate change on savanna vegetation isn’t as effective as examining individual savannas by continent, according to research published in Science this week.

Savannas – grasslands dotted with trees – cover about 20 percent of the earth’s land and play a critical role in storing atmospheric carbon, says Dr. William Hoffmann, associate professor of plant and microbial biology at North Carolina State University and co-author of the study.

A single global model can't predict savanna tree density as well as continent-specific models, according to research published in Science this week.

A single global model can’t predict savanna tree density as well as continent-specific models, according to research published in Science this week. Photo of a South African savanna courtesy of Dr. William Hoffmann, a co-author of the study.

“We wanted to find out what controls savanna vegetation – essentially the density of trees within the savanna – and whether we can use a single global model to predict what will happen to savannas if global temperatures rise,” Hoffmann said. “We found that the rules determining tree density are fundamentally different among the three continents studied – Africa, Australia and South America. That means a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach won’t work.”

…“For example, greater moisture availability – a combination of rainfall, rainfall seasonality and drought indices – meant greater tree density in Africa and Australia, but it had almost no relationship with tree density in South America,” Hoffmann said.

Not surprisingly, he added, the study showed that fire reduces tree density. But the researchers found some strong counter-intuitive relationships between rainfall and fire frequency, namely that more moisture meant more fires. Hoffmann explained that more rainfall in a savanna meant faster-growing grasses, which meant any fires in that savanna would have ample fuel to spread quickly and easily…

A grassland in Slovenia, shot by Eleassar, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Nile Delta disappearing beneath the sea

IPS: …Spread over 25,000 kilometres, the densely populated Nile Delta is the breadbasket of Egypt, accounting for two-thirds of the country’s agricultural production and home to 40 million people. Its northern flank, running 240 kilometres from Alexandria to Port Said, is one of the most vulnerable coastlines in the world, facing the triple threat of coastal erosion, saltwater infiltration, and rising sea levels.

According to Khaled Ouda, a geologist at Assiut University, a 30 centimetres rise in sea level would inundate 6,000 square kilometres of the Nile Delta. The flooding would create islands out of an additional 2,000 square kilometres of elevated land, isolating towns, roads, fields, and industrial facilities.

“The total (area of the Delta) expected to be impacted by a rising of the sea level by one metre during this century will be 8,033 square kilometres, which is nearly 33 percent of the total area of the Nile Delta,” Ouda told IPS.

In a report released last September, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a sea level rise of 28 to 98 centimetres by 2100, more than twice its 2007 projections. Even by the most conservative estimate, this would destroy 12.5 percent of Egypt’s cultivated areas and displace about eight million people, or nearly 10 percent of the population…..

NASA image of the Nile Delta

Kenyan irrigation scheme offers solutions but raises questions

IRIN: One of the largest irrigation schemes in Kenya’s history, the recently launched 400,000-hectare Galana-Kulalu Food Security Project, will focus on the production of crops, livestock and fish for both domestic consumption and export.

But will the project succeed in its stated aim of alleviating the country’s persistent food deficit while creating a million jobs? Or will it turn out to be another white elephant that lines the pockets of a well-connected few?

“Previous [irrigation] projects could not survive since the communities were not involved. They felt short-changed. We were given a raw deal. Only a few people benefitted,” Jefferson Kingi, the governor of Kilifi, told IRIN. Kilifi and Tana River are the two counties set to host the project.

“Massive projects such as this, like many others, are always opportunities for government officials and corrupt politicians to make quick money. It is incumbent upon the government to ensure it is not hijacked by corruption cartels,” PLO Lumumba, a constitutional lawyer and anti-corruption activist, told IRIN.

The government has already allocated some US$42 million to finance the first phase of the project….

A 28-member farming group in Machakos, Kenya farms a 4-acre plot where they grow oranges, avocado, vegetables, maize. Shot by McKay Savage, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license