Green Climate Fund hits $10 billion goal, after Australia surprise

Alister Doyle and Megan Rowling at Trust.org via Reuters: A new Green Climate Fund that aims to help poor nations cope with global warming reached a U.N. goal of $10 billion on Tuesday at global climate talks in Lima, helped by a surprise donation from Australia.

Several of the 190 nations at the meeting welcomed the cash from both Australia and Belgium, but China said rich countries were not working fast enough to meet a broader goal of providing $100 billion a year by 2020 from public and private sources to help the poor cope. "We've got above one of the psychologically important milestones of more than $10 billion," Hela Cheikhrouhou, head of the Fund, told Reuters. Pledges by 24 nations now total $10.14 billion, she said.

Environment ministers are meeting in Lima from Dec. 1-12 to work on elements of a draft deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Finance is a key part of the deal, due to be agreed in Paris in late 2015, to help developing nations take part. Australia, which faced criticisms by developing nations after it did not make a pledge at a donors' meeting last month, pledged A$200 million ($166 million) and Belgium 51.6 million euros ($64 million)....

Image by Svilen.milev, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licens

Sierra Leone’s worrying ebola trend

IRIN: In the week ending 30 November, Sierra Leone reported 537 confirmed Ebola cases, 152 more than the previous week and over four times the combined number of cases in Guinea and Liberia during the same period, according to World Health Organization’s (WHO) latest updates.

For more than a month, the outbreak has been slowing in Liberia, which reported 43 cases from 24-28 November. In Guinea, where the virus was first reported in March, there has been a slight increase in cases since October. Seventy-seven cases were reported in the last week of November, says WHO.

Health authorities in Sierra Leone say the continued denial of the existence of Ebola and unsafe burials are driving up infections. Seventy percent of infections are due to unsafe burials of Ebola victims, Brima Kargbo, chief medical officer at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, told reporters on 3 December.

“The issue of denial is still [widespread] in our communities despite the fact that there is increased awareness and sensitization. People continue to hide the sick; people continue to wash bodies,” Kargbo said.

“What we have done is continue to engage the community leaders - for them to fully understand the risk factors of Ebola and for them to see the need to be involved in the fight [against Ebola] by reporting early when their loved ones are sick; at the same time for people not to bury without the support of the medical teams.”...

Chinese tests find quarter of drinking water 'substandard'

Reuters: Almost a quarter of purified drinking water tested by China's top safety watchdog was substandard, with many products found to contain excessive levels of bacteria, the official Shanghai Daily newspaper said on Monday.

The findings underline the challenge to controlling supply chains in China, after a slew of food safety scares over the past year from donkey meat products contaminated with fox to heavy metals found in infant food.

The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) found excessive bacteria in purified water products from China's biggest drinks maker, Wahaha Group, as well as C'estbon Beverage Co Ltd and Danone SA's Robust brand, the newspaper said.

In a statement posted on the official Xinhua news agency, Wahaha said it had recalled the affected products and cut its supply relationship with the water station where it said the contamination had occurred....

Image by Angelsharum, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

California residents braced for floods and mudslides as rain sweeps state

Amanda Holpunch in the Guardian (UK): A Pacific storm is sweeping through California, providing the drought-stricken state with a brief respite from its arid conditions but triggering fears of mudslides and floods. The downpour, however, will put a minor dent in the three-year drought and comes with mudslide evacuations, traffic hazards and concerns that it could give a misleading impression of the state’s water conditions.

The Los Angeles region could experience its heaviest rainfall in two years. The National Weather Service predicted that up to six inches could fall in the southern part of the state by the end of Wednesday. Authorities on Tuesday issued a mandatory evacuation for 75 homes in Camarillo Springs, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles. The order was lifted at 6pm, though people were urged to voluntarily stay out of their homes. Voluntary evacuation notices were also issued to dozens of other homes in southern California.

San Francisco’s famed cable cars had to shut down during the downpour. The California highway patrol reported an increase in traffic hazards and a large number of car crashes in the Bay Area. Many flights in the region were delayed because of the rain.

Sacramento received 0.53 inches of rain on Tuesday, and was due for another half-inch into Wednesday. Over the next few days, more than four inches of rain are expected in the mountainous parts of the state.

Flash-flood warnings were issued to in parts of El Dorado and Placer counties because of the quick pace of the rain storm. These regions were beset by the King Fire, which covered more than 150 square miles and brought in firefighters from other states including Alaska and Florida. The state has launched projects to fight erosion of the devastated land...

The Golden Gate through the rain drops. A beautiful shot by Brocken Inaglory Brocken Inaglory, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0

Drying of Botswana's Gaborone dam due to insufficient rain

Mmoniemang Motsamai in AllAfrica.com via the Daily News (Botswana): Minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Mr Kitso Mokaila has told Parliament that the drying up of Gaborone Dam and its inability to accumulate water was a result of insufficient rain in Gaborone and its catchment areas. "The fact that there had been no rains here and certainly the history of rainfall in Gaborone can be confirmed by Metrological Services", said Mr Mokaila.

He also brushed aside sentiments that small dams up stream could be responsible for the drying up of the Gaborone Dam, saying, instead such dams had been a blessing in disguise because they had been depositing water into the dam.

The Gaborone Dam is currently at 5.4 per cent, yielding 14 million litres of water a day, but had the capacity to yield 88 million litres of water a day. "And maybe in the next two weeks it will be dry and we won't be able to extract anything out of it," the minister said.

He further told MPs that when government realised the need for standardised water issues, it took a decision to give Water Utilities Corporation the authority to supply water to the nation. He said at the time, WUC was supplying water to main towns from dams and that councils were using boreholes to supply water to individual villages with water affairs doing the same.

Mr Mokaila said, however, that the charges were not standard to all the areas and it was imperative for one authority to do so. For example; he said Molepolole was paying P2.60 per kilo-litre while Selebi Phikwe was paying P1.30.

With regards to the provision of water in the southern region, he said government went a step further to negotiate with states along the Zambezi River for Botswana to source water from the Zambezi River to water the Kgalagadi-Tsabong area....

NASA image of the Gaborone Dam in Botswana, shot from the International Space Station

New study explains the role of oceans in global ‘warming hiatus’

A press release from the University of Southampton: New research shows that ocean heat uptake across three oceans is the likely cause of the ‘warming hiatus’ – the current decade-long slowdown in global surface warming.  Using data from a range of state-of-the-art ocean and atmosphere models, the research shows that the increased oceanic heat drawdown in the equatorial Pacific, North Atlantic and Southern Ocean basins has played a significant role in the hiatus.

The new analysis has been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Professor Sybren Drijfhout from the University of Southampton and collaborators from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) Dr Adam Blaker, Professor Simon Josey, Dr George Nurser and Dr Bablu Sinha, together with Dr Magdalena Balmaseda from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF).

Professor Drijfhout said: “This study attributes the increased oceanic heat drawdown in the equatorial Pacific, North Atlantic and Southern Ocean to specific, different mechanisms in each region. This is important as current climate models have been unable to simulate the hiatus. Our study gives clues to where the heat is drawn down and by which processes. This can serve as a benchmark for climate models on how to improve their projections of future global mean temperature.”

Previously, the drawdown of heat by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean over the hiatus period, due to cool sea-surface temperatures associated with a succession of cool-surface La Nina episodes, was thought to be sufficient to explain the hiatus.  However, this new analysis reveals that the northern North Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and Equatorial Pacific Ocean are all important regions of ocean heat uptake. Each basin contributes a roughly equal amount to explaining the hiatus, but the mechanisms of heat drawdown are different and specific in each basin.

...Dr Sinha concluded: “The deeper understanding gained in this study of the processes and regions responsible for variations in oceanic heat drawdown and retention will improve the accuracy of future climate projections.”

Fish at an oil platform, Gulf of Mexico, photo by US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

India rushes water aid to thirsty Maldives to take a lead over China

Shubham Ghosh in One India: India rushed to maritime neighbour Maldives' rescue after receiving a distress call from Male which faced a massive water crisis after its main water treatment plant was damaged in a fire. New Delhi sent 200 tonnes of potable water by air and water ways.

Maldives conveyed its plight to foreign minister Sushma Swaraj through her Maldivian counterpart Dunya Maumoon that the capital was in a state of emergency as 1,00,000 residents were left without a drop to drinking following the fire at the treatment plant. Maldives has no natural source of water and depends on treated sea water. Swaraj immediately took up the matter with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and New Delhi wasted no time to use the opportunity to strengthen its ties with the maritime neighbour. Foreign ministry spokesperson

Syed Akbaruddin said India was the first country to stand by Maldives at its hour of need and reiterated that India would help any member of the Saarc fraternity in all possible way. It may be mentioned here that Prime Minister Modi has stressed improving South Asian solidarity on all platforms, including the recent Saarc Summit held in Nepal. The prime minister also assured Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen about India's help and expressed hope about further progress in the relation between the two neighbours.

Maldives also sought help from Sri Lanka, China and United States. Former Maldivian presidents Mayoom Abdul Gayoom and Mohammed Naseed thanked the Indian government for aiding their country at the time of the crisis....

Antarctica: Heat comes from the deep

A press release from the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research-Kiel: The water temperatures on the West Antarctic shelf are rising. The reason for this is predominantly warm water from greater depths, which as a result of global change now increasingly reaches the shallow shelf. There it has the potential to accelerate the glacier melt from below and trigger the sliding of big glaciers. These data are published today by scientists of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel together with colleagues from the UK, the US and Japan in the international journal Science.

... "There are many large glaciers in the area. The elevated temperatures have accelerated the melting and sliding of these glaciers in recent decades and there are no indications that this trend is changing,"says the lead author of the study, Dr. Sunke Schmidtko from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.

For their study, he and his colleagues of the University of East Anglia, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Hokkaido (Japan) evaluated all oceanographic data from the waters around Antarctica from 1960 to 2014 that were available in public databases. These data show that five decades ago, the water masses in the West Antarctic shelf seas were already warmer than in other parts of Antarctica, for example, in the Weddell Sea. However, the temperature difference is not constant. Since 1960, the temperatures in the West Antarctic Amundsen Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea have been rising. "Based on the data we were able to see that this shelf process is induced from the open ocean," says Dr. Schmidtko.

..."These are the regions in which accelerated glacial melting has been observed for some time. We show that oceanographic changes over the past 50 years have probably caused this melting. If the water continues to warm, the increased penetration of warmer water masses onto the shelf will likely further accelerate this process, with an impact on the rate of global sea level rise " explains Professor Karen Heywood from the University of East Anglia.

The scientists also draw attention to the rising up of warm water masses in the southwestern Weddell Sea. Here very cold temperatures (less than minus 1.5°C or 29°F) prevail on the shelf and a large-scale melting of shelf ice has not been observed yet. If the shoaling of warm water masses continues, it is expected that there will be major environmental changes with dramatic consequences for the Filchner or Ronne Ice Shelf, too. For the first time glaciers outside the West Antarctic could experience enhanced melting from below....

A NASA/Cryosat image of ice on the Weddell Sea

Evidence suggests California's drought is the worst in 1,200 years

A press release from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute: As California finally experiences the arrival of a rain-bearing Pineapple Express this week, two climate scientists from the University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have shown that the drought of 2012-2014 has been the worst in 1,200 years.

Daniel Griffin, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota, and Kevin Anchukaitis, an assistant scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, asked the question, “How unusual is the ongoing California drought?"  Watching the severity of the California drought intensify since last autumn, they wondered how it would eventually compare to other extreme droughts throughout the state's history.

To answer those questions, Griffin and Anchukaitis collected new tree-ring samples from blue oak trees in southern and central California. “California’s old blue oaks are as close to nature’s rain gauges as we get,” says Griffin. “They thrive in some of the driest environments where trees can grow in California.” These trees are particularly sensitive to moisture changes and their tree rings display moisture fluctuations vividly.

As soon as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released climate data for the summer of 2014, the two scientists sprang into action. Using their blue oak data, they reconstructed rainfall back to the 13th century.  ... Griffin and Anchukaitis found that while the current period of low precipitation is not unusual in California’s history, these rainfall deficits combined with sustained record high temperatures created the current multiyear severe water shortages.  "While it is precipitation that sets the rhythm of California drought, temperature weighs in on the pitch," says Anchukaitis.

“We were genuinely surprised at the result,” says Griffin, a NOAA Climate & Global Change Fellow and former WHOI postdoctoral scholar. “This is California--drought happens. Time and again, the most common result in tree-ring studies is that drought episodes in the past were more extreme than those of more recent eras.  This time, however, the result was different.” While there is good evidence of past sustained, multi-decadal droughts or so-called “megadroughts”' in California, the authors say those past episodes were probably punctuated by occasional wet years, even if the cumulative effect over decades was one of overall drying.  The current short-term drought appears to be worse than any previous span of consecutive years of drought without reprieve....

A 2011 shot of a dried lake near San Luis Obispo, Natural Resources Conservation Service, public domain

UN report urges more funds for climate change adaptation, warns on temperature rise

UN News Centre: Despite public funding of climate change adaptation measures reaching as high as $26 billion in 2012-2013, a new United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report predicts a significant funding gap after 2020 unless new and additional finance for adaptation is made available.

The first UNEP Adaptation Gap Report finds that even if global greenhouse gas emissions are cut to the level required to keep temperature rise below 2°C, the cost of climate change adaptation in developing countries is likely to reach two to three times the previous estimates of $70-100 billion per year by 2050.

“Debating the economics of our response to climate change must become more honest,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner in a press release on the challenges ahead, released as the first week of UN climate talks in Lima, Peru wrap up. That conference is set to conclude its work on 12 December.

“As world leaders meet in Lima to take the critical next step in realizing a global agreement on climate change, this report underlines the importance of including comprehensive adaptation plans in the agreement.”

The report assesses global adaptation gaps in finance, technology and knowledge, and lays out a framework for future work to better define and bridge those gaps. It calls for further action to cut emissions to prevent adaptation costs from soaring as wider and more-expensive action is needed to protect communities from the intensifying impacts of climate change...

A panorama of Naajaat in northwest Greenland, Image shot by Slaunger and stitched together by Herbythyme, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Climate researchers discover El Nino's fueling effect on intense hurricanes

A press release from the University of Hawaii-Manoa: El Niño, the abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, is a well-studied tropical climate phenomenon that occurs every few years. It has major impacts on society and Earth’s climate – inducing intense droughts and floods in multiple regions of the globe. Further, scientists have observed that El Niño greatly influences the yearly variations of tropical cyclones (a general term that includes hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones) in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

However, there is a mismatch in both timing and location between this climate disturbance and the Northern Hemisphere hurricane season: El Niño peaks in winter and its surface ocean warming occurs mostly along the equator, i.e., a season and region without tropical cyclone (TC) activity. This prompted scientists to investigate El Niño’s influence on hurricanes via its remote ability to alter atmospheric conditions such as stability and vertical wind shear rather than the local oceanic environment.

Fei-Fei Jin and Julien Boucharel at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and I-I Lin at the National Taiwan University published a paper today in Nature that uncovers what’s behind this “remote control.” Jin and colleagues uncovered an oceanic pathway that brings El Niño’s heat into the Northeastern Pacific basin two or three seasons after its winter peak – right in time to directly fuel intense hurricanes in that region.

El Niño develops as the equatorial Pacific Ocean builds up a huge amount of heat underneath the surface and it turns into La Niña when this heat is discharged out of the equatorial region.  “This recharge/discharge of heat makes El Niño/La Niña evolve somewhat like a swing,” said Jin, lead author of the study.

Prior to Jin's and colleagues’ recent work, researchers had largely ignored the huge accumulation of heat occurring underneath the ocean surface during every El Niño event as a potential culprit for fueling hurricane activity.

“We did not connect the discharged heat of El Niño to the fueling of hurricanes until recently, when we noticed another line of active research in the tropical cyclone community that clearly demonstrated that a strong hurricane is able to get its energy not only from the warm surface water, but also by causing warm, deep water – up to 100 meters deep – to upwell to the surface,” said Jin....

El Niño’s discharged heat fuels intense hurricanes (historical tracks in black). Credit: Jin/SOEST.

Typhoon Hagupit: at least three dead and a million evacuated in Philippines

Kate Hodal in the Guardian (UK): At least three people have been killed and over a million evacuated after typhoon Hagupit tore into the Philippines this weekend, causing landslides, pummelling houses and stirring up gusts of 170kph (106mph) across the country’s central islands.

But the disaster-prone nation – which sees up to 20 typhoons a year – was spared from the extreme death and devastation of last year’s typhoon Haiyan, which killed over 6,000 people and displaced around 4 million, thanks to evacuation and national preparedness strategies that saw aid and government agencies deliver provisions and supplies ahead of the storm.

Hagupit, which is named “Ruby” in the Philippines, was the most powerful storm to hit the country this year. A category 3 typhoon when it made landfall on eastern Samar island on Saturday night – the same place last year’s typhoon Haiyan first struck – Hagupit is thought to have destroyed around 80% of all the homes along some coastal areas, where it also washed away rice crops, Reuters reported.

...Whereas the national government was criticised for its slow relief and debris-clearance efforts after Haiyan, this year military troops were on hand to help clear roads and the air force was on standby to help deliver aid or participate in rescue missions ahead of time, local media reported...

NASA image of Typhoon Hagupit on December 6, 2014

To conserve Arctic species, take action in Africa

Jacques Trouvilliez (Executive Secretary of AEWA, the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds) in IPS: So great are the contrasts between the frozen empty expanses of the far north and Africa’s baking deserts, steamy rain forests and savannahs that any direct connections between the two seem far-fetched – if they indeed exist at all.

In fact, migratory birds provide an environmental tie linking the Arctic and Africa and are the reason why the U.N. Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds (AEWA) and the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council, have entered a commitment to cooperate.

The Arctic Council is holding its first Arctic Biodiversity Congress in Trondheim, Norway and far from being of marginal interest to AEWA, its deliberations over the fauna inhabiting the regions around the North Pole could hardly be more relevant.

Following publication of the Arctic Biodiversity Assessment in May 2013, progress is being made in elaborating a strategy under the Arctic Migratory Birds Initiative (AMBI): a concrete example of where we can collaborate with practical work on the ground.

The habitats could hardly be more different and the distances between them are large, but the waterfowl, shorebird and seabird species – the predominant birds of the Arctic – find the conditions they require at different times of the year in the various habitats of the world.

The birds have adapted to develop the capacity to make their often arduous journeys from their Arctic breeding grounds to wintering sites and back. These wintering sites can be in Europe – but in some cases they even lie as far as in Southern Africa, as is the case for the Red Knot....

A Red Knot, shot by Ron Knight, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Brazil to launch new satellite to track deforestation

The New Age (South Africa): Brazil will launch a satellite from China Sunday to keep an eye in the sky on deforestation in the Amazon, the National Space Agency (Inpe) said Thursday. An agency spokesman said the launch of the Cbers-4 satellite was scheduled for 0326 GMT December from Tayuan, China, about 750 kilometers (460 miles) southwest of Beijing.

Brazil and China will share the $30 million cost of sending the two-ton satellite into a 778-kilometer high orbit, the spokesman added.Both countries participated in the development of the satellite, which has four cameras in its payload module. The launch comes a year after its predecessor satellite failed to enter orbit because of a fault with the launch vehicle, China's Long March 4B.

Cbers, standing for China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite, will allow Brazil to keep a close watch from space on deforestation in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rain forest, as well as administer agriculture and monitor livestock movement. Brazil and China began space cooperation in 1988 and Cbers 1 was launched in 1999, with a second satellite in 2003 and a third in 2007...

A line drawing of the Cbers-1 satellite, public domain

Super typhoon intensifies as it threatens Philippines

Terra Daily via AFP: A super typhoon gained strength on Thursday as it tracked towards the Philippines, threatening more devastation for mostly poor communities where thousands of people have died in an annual tirade of mega-storms.

Weather forecasters warned Hagupit, already generating wind gusts of 240 kilometres (149 miles) an hour, would continue to intensify as it swept in from the Pacific Ocean, and likely hit eastern islands on Saturday.

"Let's prepare for everything," President Benigno Aquino told a nationally televised meeting of disaster agency chiefs, after hearing warnings of giant storm surges and house-destroying winds.

Authorities said Hagupit would likely hit or pass near areas yet to recover from Super Typhoon Haiyan, the most powerful storm ever recorded on land that killed or left missing more than 7,350 people in November last year.

In Tacloban, one of the cities worst-hit by Haiyan, some residents began evacuating from vulnerable coastal areas well ahead of Hagupit's expected arrival, while others emptied supermarket shelves of essential supplies....

NASA image of Hagupit, taken December 4, 2014

Report warns of soaring risk of ‘mega-fires’ in British Columbia

Bethany Lindsay and Larry Pynn in the Vancouver Sun: As the planet heats up and the risk of “mega fires” rises, B.C. will no longer be able to lean on its world-class wildfire-fighting teams to keep people and property safe, according to a draft provincial document.

The Forests Ministry paper, called Climate Change Adaption Action Plan for Wildfire Management 2014-2024, suggests fire prevention should become the top priority of the province.

“It is not an option to continue to increase fire suppression response and associated costs, because even the most aggressive action would neither be safe nor effective for the extreme wildfire events such as those seen in Kelowna in 2003 and Slave Lake in 2010,” reads the draft, obtained through a freedom of information request.

“During these events, suppression response cannot be relied upon to protect communities or natural resource values. The only protection provided will be the protection established before the fire, provided through wildland-urban interface fuel reduction and landscape fire management.”

The document, dated last April, says the average temperature in B.C. is predicted to rise by four degrees by 2080. That warming trend, combined with the higher rate of wildfire spread in forests affected by the mountain pine beetle, means that “mega fires” will be increasingly common.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada has predicted that severe wildfires will happen at least 50 per cent more often by 2050....

Generic fire image by the US Fish and Wildlife Service

Buckyballs enhance carbon capture

A press release from Rice University: Rice University scientists have discovered an environmentally friendly carbon-capture method that could be equally adept at drawing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial flue gases and natural gas wells.

The Rice lab of chemist Andrew Barron revealed in a proof-of-concept study that amine-rich compounds are highly effective at capturing the greenhouse gas when combined with carbon-60 molecules. The research is the subject of an open-access paper today in Nature’s online journal Scientific Reports.

“We had two goals,” Barron said. “One was to make the compound 100 percent selective between carbon dioxide and methane at any pressure and temperature. The other was to reduce the high temperature needed by other amine solutions to get the carbon dioxide back out again. We’ve been successful on both counts.”

Tests from one to 50 atmospheric pressures showed the Rice compound captured a fifth of its weight in carbon dioxide but no measurable amount of methane, Barron said, and the material did not degrade over many absorption/desorption cycles.

Carbon-60, the soccer ball-shaped molecule also known as buckminsterfullerene (or the “buckyball”) was discovered at Rice by Nobel Prize laureates Richard Smalley, Robert Curl and Harold Kroto in 1985. The ultimate curvature of buckyballs may make them the best possible way to bind amine molecules that capture carbon dioxide but allow desirable methane to pass through.

The Rice lab used buckyballs as crosslinkers between amines, nitrogen-based molecules drawn from polyethyleneimine. The lab produced a brown, spongy material in which hydrophobic (water-avoiding) buckyballs forced the hydrophilic (water-seeking) amines to the outside, where passing carbon dioxide could bind to the exposed nitrogen.

When Barron and his team began combining carbons and amines several years ago, they noticed an interesting progression: Flat graphene absorbed carbon dioxide well, multiwalled nanotubes absorbed it better, and thinner single-walled nanotubes even better. “That suggested the curvature was important,” Barron said. “C-60, being a sphere, has the highest possible curvature among carbon materials.”...

Carbon-60 molecules, also known as buckyballs, were combined with amines in a compound that absorbs a fifth of its weight in carbon dioxide. It shows potential as an environmentally friendly material for capturing carbon from natural gas wells and industrial plants. (Courtesy of the Barron Research Group/Rice University)

Press 4 for fertilizer - M-farming in Ethiopia

IRIN: One reason farmers in Africa mostly produce so much less than those in other parts of the world is that they have limited access to the technical knowledge and practical tips that can significantly increase yields. But as the continent becomes increasingly wired, this information deficit is narrowing.

While there are other factors, such as poor infrastructure and low access to credit and markets, that have helped keep average yields in Africa largely unchanged since the 1960s, detailed and speedily-delivered information is now increasingly recognized as an essential part of bringing agricultural production levels closer to their full potential.

In Ethiopia, which already has one of the most extensive systems in the world for educating the 85 percent of the population who work the land for a living, this recognition has driven the development of a multilingual mobile phone-based resource centre.

The hotline, operated by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, and Ethio Telecom, and created by the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA), has proved a huge hit. Since its July launch and still in its pilot phase, more than three million farmers in the regions of Amhara, Oromia, Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region (SNNPR) have punched 8028 on their mobiles to access the system, which uses both interactive voice response (IVR) and SMS technology....

Image by Mmckinley, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Super-Typhoon Hagupit to hit Philippines; millions affected

Jon Plotkin in Decoded Science: The Philippines has been hit hard By Super-Typhoons (a Super-Typhoon has winds over 150 miles per hour) in the past two years: First Haiyan in 2013; then Rammasun in 2014. Now comes possibly the most powerful storm ever to hit land — Super-Typhoon Hagupit.

... Unfortunately, Super-Typhoon Hagupit will strike areas already battered by typhoons in the last year. It is on a track to be about as destructive as a typhoon can be, skirting the Philippines just offshore, so that its circulation is minimally affected by interaction with the land, but so that the circulation affects millions of people.

The typhoon is forecast to pass within a hundred miles of the major metropolitan area of Manila, which has a population of over twenty-one million. As of this morning, Hagupit has winds estimated at 180 miles per hour.

These are forecast to increase to 190 miles per hour by tonight, and persist for at least 24 hours. This would make Hagupit one of the strongest storms ever recorded, and place it close to the theoretical maximum for a tropical cyclone. Gusts could top 225 miles per hour. The damage caused by that kind of wind is catastrophic....

NASA image of Hagupit, December 4, 2014

Research finds lethal wolf control backfires on livestock

A press release from Washington State University: Washington State University researchers have found that it is counter-productive to kill wolves to keep them from preying on livestock. Shooting and trapping lead to more dead sheep and cattle the following year, not fewer.

Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, WSU wildlife biologist Rob Wielgus and data analyst Kaylie Peebles say that, for each wolf killed, the odds of more livestock depredations increase significantly. See the paper at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0113505.

The trend continues until 25 percent of the wolves in an area are killed. Ranchers and wildlife managers then see a “standing wave of livestock depredations,” said Wielgus. Moreover, he and Peebles write, that rate of wolf mortality “is unsustainable and cannot be carried out indefinitely if federal relisting of wolves is to be avoided.”

The gray wolf was federally listed as endangered in 1974. During much of its recovery in the northern Rocky Mountains, government predator control efforts have been used to keep wolves from attacking sheep and livestock. With wolves delisted in 2012, sport hunting has also been used. But until now, the effectiveness of lethal control has been what Wielgus and Peebles call a “widely accepted, but untested, hypothesis.”

Their study is the largest of its kind, analyzing 25 years of lethal control data from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Interagency Annual Wolf Reports in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The researchers found that killing one wolf increases the odds of depredations 4 percent for sheep and 5 to 6 percent for cattle. If 20 wolves are killed, livestock deaths double.

Work reported in PLOS ONE last year by Peebles, Wielgus and other WSU colleagues found that lethal controls of cougars also backfire, disrupting their populations so much that younger, less disciplined cougars attack more livestock....

A female gray wolf, shot by Seney Natural History Association, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

January-October 2014 temperatures break records

A press release from the World Meteorological Organization: The global average temperature over land and ocean surfaces for January to October 2014 was the highest on record, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It said October was the hottest since records began in 1880.

NOAA said the combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–October period was 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F).  For October, it was 0.74°C (1.33°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F).

The high October temperature was driven by warmth across the globe over both the land and ocean surfaces and was fairly evenly distributed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere had its hottest October on record and the Northern Hemisphere its third warmest. October marked the third consecutive month and fifth of the past six with a record high global temperature for its respective month (July was fourth highest).

The Tokyo Climate Center, which is a WMO Regional Climate Centre, also reported that October was the hottest on record. The record was also confirmed by data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

WMO uses a combination of datasets to compile its annual Statement on the Status of the Global Climate. Additional information is drawn from the ERA-Interim reanalysis-based data set maintained by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. WMO will issue its provisional statement for 2014 on 2 December at simultaneous press conferences in Lima (0930 local time) and Geneva (1530 CET)....

Temperature map from NOAA

More than 3,000 evacuated as French floods toll reaches five

Terra Daily via AFP: The worst flooding in years in southern France has claimed five lives and forced more than 3,000 people to evacuate their homes, officials said Sunday. The latest victim was a 73-year-old man who died of heart failure in Rivesaltes, in the Pyrenees-Orientales region, when trying to force his car through a big dip in a road that was flooded.

Along the banks of the Agly river in the same region, some 2,800 people had been evacuated by late afternoon Sunday, the government office there said.

The flooding was considered already more serious than deadly overflows in 1999 and "we are evacuating residents within 200 metres (yards) of either side of the river," the government said. Another 560 people had already left their homes in Canet, Argeles-sur-Mer and Barcares, on the Mediterranean coast.

Mumbai, Kolkata most vulnerable to climate change

The Financial Express (India): India’s populous coastal cities Mumbai and Kolkata are most vulnerable to loss of life and properties due to coastal flooding in the second half of the century, the government has said quoting a UN report ahead of a key global climate conference in Peruvian capital Lima.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned against extreme weather events like occurrence of heatwave, heavy precipitation, droughts, floods, cyclones and wildfire that cause damage to ecosystems and human systems in various regions, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said.

“… India is among the top 20 countries and regions most at risk based on analysis of climate risk and coping ability. Mumbai and Kolkata will have the greatest population and assets exposure to coastal flooding in 2070,” he said.

The minister’s statement assumes significance at a time when representatives of governments are scheduled to meet in Lima from tomorrow for the Climate Change Conference to lay the foundation for an effective, new and universal climate change agreement in Paris in 2015.

Mumbai' sea-face at night

Global animal health threatened by vector born diseases

Companies and Markets: The International Federation for Animal Health has launched a white paper on vector borne diseases and their impact on animal and human health, with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The paper, which aims to assist in combating vector borne diseases to promote the better health and welfare of animals for the greater good of protecting animals and humans globally, emphasises the need to understand the diseases and to spread awareness of the most effective ways of managing and preventing them.

Vector borne diseases account for 17% of global infectious diseases with malaria the most deadly, causing an estimated 627,000 deaths annually. VBDs cause high human morbidity levels as well as large economic losses in animal production - trypanosomiasis accounts for losses of $1.2 billion a year in cattle production - and reduced animal welfare. Most statistics regarding the impact of VBDs are hard to track because cases predominantly occur in countries with little means of formal reporting or surveillance, poor diagnostic tools and consequently there is little accurate assessment of the economic impact of these diseases. The IFAH's paper looks to close the gaps in knowledge of VBDs and present solutions for combating the problem.

Global animal health is set to be impacted for years to come as the IFAH reports the difficulties in combating diseases that are constantly changing, affected by climate change which influences vector spread and habitat change by humans introducing wetlands or changing their patters of the transportation of goods, humans, livestock, and companion animals. The most influential and dangerous factor limiting the prevention of vector borne disease is insecticide resistance and farmers must be aware of the need to manage the spread of VBDs through a combination of insecticides and physical barriers....

Edward Hicks' 1848 painting, "The Cornell Farm"

Geoengineering our climate is not a ‘quick fix

A press release from the University of Leeds: The deliberate, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system is not a “quick fix” for global warming, according to the findings of the UK’s first publicly funded studies on geoengineering. The results of three projects – IAGP, led by the University of Leeds; SPICE, led by the University of Bristol; and CGG, led by the University of Oxford – are announced at an event held at The Royal Society, London, on 26 November 2014.

Professor Piers Forster, Professor of Physical Climate Change at the University of Leeds, and the principal investigator of the Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals (IAGP) project, said: “Our research shows that the devil is in the detail. Geoengineering will be much more expensive and challenging than previous estimates suggest and any benefits would be limited.

“For example, when simulating the spraying of sea salt particles into clouds to try to brighten them, we found that only a few clouds were susceptible and that the particles would tend to coagulate and fall out before reaching the cloud base.”

In September 2009, The Royal Society published a report, Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty. It influenced research worldwide, identified important gaps and called for a major UK funding programme into geoengineering. The IAGP and SPICE projects were funded the next year, and the CGG project followed in 2012.

IAGP is the UK’s first interdisciplinary research study into the controversial issue of geoengineering. It has brought together a range of expertise – climate modelling, philosophy and engineering – in addition to understanding public perceptions, to assess geoengineering within wider societal values.

“Cleverly designed simulations create less necessity for real-world testing. My favourite part of the research involved creating  a virtual reality in which we tried to rescue Arctic sea ice by dumping sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere from Stratotanker aircraft flying out of Svalbard in Norway,” said Professor Forster. “Issues around monitoring and predicting the effects of our actions led to huge indecision and highlighted how challenging it would be to ever try and deploy these techniques in the real world.”...

Image from the University of Leeds

New method for quickly determining antibiotic resistance

A press release from Uppsala University: Scientists from Uppsala University, the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Stockholm and Uppsala University Hospital have developed a new method of rapidly identifying which bacteria are causing an infection and determining whether they are resistant or sensitive to antibiotics. The findings are now being published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

‘Clinical use of the method would mean that the right antibiotic treatment could be started straightaway, reducing unnecessary use of antibiotics,’ says Professor Dan I. Andersson of Uppsala University, who headed the study jointly with Professor Mats Nilsson of SciLifeLab in Stockholm and Stockholm University.

Antibiotic resistance is a growing medical problem that threatens human health all
over the world. Today, many people are dying because of infections caused by resistant bacteria. When an infected person is treated with antibiotics, ‘empirical therapy’ is usually provided. This means that the choice of antibiotic is based on the resistance situation of the bacteria in a large population (such as the Swedish population), rather than on the resistance, if any, of the bacteria in the infected person’s body. The result is sometimes selection of an antibiotic drug that is ineffective against the bacteria concerned, because the latter is resistant to the drug chosen. This, in turn, boosts the use of antibiotics, especially what are known as ‘broad-spectrum’ antibiotics that work on many types of bacteria. One possible solution to these problems would be for us to have reliable methods of quickly and easily identifying the bacterial species causing the infection and its resistance pattern, and apply the correct treatment immediately.

Professor Andersson continues: ‘This is just what we’ve been working on in our study. We have developed a new method that permits identification of both the species and the resistance pattern of bacteria in urinary infections in less than four hours. By comparison, the resistance determination done at present takes one to two days.’...

Agar plate with colonies, image from NOAA

Sea level rise won’t only affect infrastructure

Scoop via Forest & Bird (New Zealand): The independent conservation organisation Forest & Bird is asking the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) to widen the focus of her next report on climate change-driven sea level rise.

A preliminary report on sea level rise was released by the PCE today. The PCE will release another report next year on the impacts of sea level rise on the most vulnerable areas of coastline around the country, and the risks to infrastructure in those areas.

Forest & Bird Group Manager Campaigns and Advocacy Kevin Hackwell says the next report should also take into account the impacts of sea level rise on our natural coastal ecosystems, and recommend the best ways to deal with sea level rise.

He says some critical natural features could be changed forever by sea level rise. “For example the huge Kaipara Harbour north of Auckland covers 947 square kilometres at high tide, with nearly half of that area exposed as mudflats and sandflats at low tide,” Kevin Hackwell says.

...“Quite a few of our shore birds breed just above the current high tide level on our open coasts or at the head of estuaries. For instance the four remaining nesting sites of New Zealand’s Seabird of the Year, the fairy tern, could be wiped out by storm surges,” Kevin Hackwell says.

“We would also like to see the PCE make recommendations on how sea level rise should be dealt with. Building extensive sea walls is likely to be very expensive, in many places unrealistic, and in the long run may create more problems than they would solve....

Sphinx Rock in Marie's Leg Cove, New Zealand, shot by Pseudopanax, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license 

Bringing ebola tests up to speed

IRIN: Ebola in West Africa is believed to have erupted almost a year ago in southern Guinea, but was confirmed by the French Pasteur Institute only in March 2014, by which time it had killed 60 people and was suspected to have crossed the border into Liberia and Sierra Leone.

While it now takes just a few hours to diagnose Ebola, the rate and scale of the outbreak (in which more than 14,000 cases have been reported so far in West Africa, Europe and the US) still outpace the hours-long tests, necessitating even quicker diagnoses.

Currently in West Africa, samples have to be transported to a laboratory where the commonly used test takes 4-6 hours between set-up and results. Poor roads, and lack of electricity and properly functioning health systems are some of the obstacles to timely diagnoses.

“Getting specimens to the lab can take days and getting the result to clinicians and patients can also take several days. So the time between taking samples and receiving the result can be as long as four days,” Margaret Harris, a spokesperson with the World Health Organization (WHO), told IRIN.

WHO on 18 November called for rapid diagnostic kits to overcome the complex and lengthy lab tests. Safe and easy-to-use kits would help quickly isolate Ebola patients from others who present with similar early symptoms but have other ailments....

Hotter summers are coming to Mumbai, and it won't be pretty

Shruti Navindran in the Guardian (UK): By some projections, India’s financial capital, Mumbai, will experience “unprecedented heat” within the next two decades. Last June, the IPCC Fifth Assessment report warned of larger “near-term increases in seasonal mean and annual mean temperatures” in the region. That spells longer, more frequent bouts of extreme heat, elevated minimum temperatures, and warmer winters. Last month, meanwhile, the journal Nature published a meta-analysis using 39 climate models to predict “dates of departures” when local temperatures would exceed historical extremes recorded over the previous 150 years. They figured Mumbai’s date with the inferno could come as early as 2034 if there was no change in global carbon output.

Though all of us are all sensitive to heat, and quick to react when it climbs above our comfort levels, our knowledge of how it might affect our health doesn’t really go beyond sunstrokes and fainting spells. A 2008 paper by medical geographer Rais Akhtar and environmental epidemiologist Sari Kovats spells out the dubious gifts that climate-change exacerbated heat is likely to bring Asian cities. This includes an uptick in deaths from cardio-respiratory disease, heat-related illness and death, increased rates of potential transmission of vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria, and a shrinking in the quantity and quality of available water, further amplifying the burden of disease. Researchers have also found that climate change-enhanced heat and humidity are conducive to the spread of falciparum malaria, the disease’s deadliest strain.

No one is likely to suffer the ill effects of this heat more than the 7.25 million slum-dwellers who’ve made Mumbai their home, and who comprise well over half the city’s population. “Slum-dwellers face a double burden: they face the crisis, and if they talk about it, they face evictions,” said Sheela Patel, a social worker who has helped the city’s shack and slum dwellers access suitable housing and infrastructure for two decades. Akhtar notes that slums, due to density, lack of vegetation and materials used in construction, tend to be heat traps “exacerbated by the proximity of city structures, vehicle exhaust emissions, and industrial activity”....

A slum in Mumbai, shot by Sthitaprajna Jena, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license 

New technology may speed up, build awareness of landslide risks

A press release from Oregon State University: Engineers have created a new way to use lidar technology to identify and classify landslides on a landscape scale, which may revolutionize the understanding of landslides in the U.S. and reveal them to be far more common and hazardous than often understood.

The new, non-subjective technology, created by researchers at Oregon State University and George Mason University, can analyze and classify the landslide risk in an area of 50 or more square miles in about 30 minutes - a task that previously might have taken an expert several weeks to months. It can also identify risks common to a broad area rather than just an individual site.

And with such speed and precision, it reveals that some landslide-prone areas of the Pacific Northwest are literally covered by landslides from one time or another in history. The system is based on new ways to use light detecting and ranging, or lidar technology, that can seemingly strip away vegetation and other obstructions to show land features in their bare form.

“With lidar we can see areas that are 50-80 percent covered by landslide deposits,” said Michael Olsen, an expert in geomatics and the Eric HI and Janice Hoffman Faculty Scholar in the OSU College of Engineering. “It may turn
out that there are 10-100 times more landslides in some places than we knew of before.

“We’ve always known landslides were a problem in the Pacific Northwest,” Olsen said. “Many people are just now beginning to realize how big the problem is.”…

This massive landslide near Oso, Washington, in March, 2014, killed 43 people and was one of the most deadly in U.S. history. (Photo by Jonathan Godt, courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey)

‘Monster’ fracking wells guzzle water in drought-stricken regions

Anastasia Pantsios in EcoWatch: The fracking industry likes to minimize the sector’s bottomless thirst for often-scarce water resources, saying it takes about 2-4 million gallons of water to frack the average well, an amount the American Petroleum Institute describes as “the equivalent of three to six Olympic swimming pools.” That’s close to the figure cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well.

But a new report released by Environmental Working Group (EWG) located 261 “monster” wells that consumed between 10 and 25 million gallons of water to drill each well. Among the conclusions EWG teased out of data reported by the industry itself and posted at fracfocus.org is that between April 2010 and December 2013, these 261 wells consumed 3.3 billions of water between them, a average of 12.7 million gallons each. And 14 of the wells topped 20 million gallons each.

“It’s far more relevant to compare those figures to basic human needs for water, rather than to swimming pools or golf courses,” said EWG’s report. “The 3.3 billion gallons consumed by the monster wells was almost twice as much water as is needed each year by the people of Atascosa County, Texas, in the heart of the Eagle Ford shale formation, one of the most intensively drilled gas and oil fields in the country.”

And proving that everything really is bigger in Texas, that’s where most of these monster wells were located, hosting 149 of them. Between them they consumed 1.8 billion gallons of water. The largest was located in Harrison County on the east Texas border, where in March 2013, Sabine Oil & Gas LLC drilled a well using more than 24.8 million gallons of water. Irion County in west central Texas had the most monster wells with 19 averaging water use of 12.9 each. And Texas also had what EWG described as the “dubious distinction” of using more fresh water in fracking, consuming 21 million gallons in 2011 alone….

The Jonah Gasfield in Wyoming, shot by Peter Aergst of the Wilderness Society, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 4.0 license

210 million people benefit from mangroves-associated fisheries

Wetlands International: Some 210 million people live in low elevation areas within 10 km of mangroves and many of these directly benefit from mangrove-associated fisheries. Yet, these people are often unaware of the key role mangroves may play, especially if the associated fisheries are offshore.

A new study by Wetlands International, The Nature Conservancy and the University of Cambridge, launched today at World Fisheries Day, concludes that mangrove conservation and restoration in areas close to human populations will render the greatest return on investment with respect to enhancing fisheries.

The fisheries value of mangroves is site specific as it depends on how many fish a mangrove produces, how many fish are subsequently caught by humans, and then what the fisheries value is, both in economic terms, as a food supply or through the livelihoods that they support.

As demands for fish continues to rise with the increase of coastal populations and rapidly growing economies, understanding where mangrove-associated fish productivity is highest is critical. Well-known species that rely on mangroves in one way or another include crabs, prawns, mullet, herring, anchovy, snappers and groupers….

Mangroves in Cuba, shot by Manuel Dohmen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0

Tibetan mega-dam begins operation

Terra Daily via AFP: China has begun generating electricity from Tibet's biggest ever hydropower project, state-run media reported, the latest dam development on Himalayan rivers which has stoked fears in neighbouring India.

The first generating unit of the 9.6 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) Zangmu Hydropower Station, which stands more than 3,300 metres above sea level, went into operation on Sunday, China's official Xinhua news agency said.

The dam on the Yarlung Zangbo river -- known as the Brahmaputra in India, where it is a major waterway -- will be 116 metres (381 feet) high when completed next year, according to reports.

It will have a total generating capacity of 510,000 kilowatts, Xinhua said, making it the largest dam ever built on the Tibetan plateau.

"The hydropower station will solve Tibet's power shortage, especially in the winter," Xinhua quoted an official from the Tibet Electric Power Co. as saying. India has previously expressed concern about damming the Brahmaputra, one of the largest Himalayan rivers and a lifeline to some of India's remote, farm-dependent northeastern states....

An aerial view of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet, shot by Akarsh Simha, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Almost complete loss of glaciers in the Andes expected by 2080

J. Won Park in Arirang: Most glaciers in the Andes will be gone by the year 2080. That's the worst case scenario painted by the World Bank in its latest climate change report.

The report says the world's average temperature could rise by four degrees Celsius by the end of the century, if the world doesn't take appropriate steps to stop global warming. The report, which mostly focuses on Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, says glaciers have already significantly retreated in the Andes.

It says that, if the trend continues, cities around the mountain range could be at risk of flooding and freshwater supplies could start to dry up. The grim projection goes on to say that, if the average global temperature rises by more than four degrees Celsius, sea levels will rise by almost 60 centimeters.

This would mean an increased risk of storms and tropical cyclones, especially for low-lying countries and small island states. The report also predicts that, in the Middle East and North Africa, warmer average temperatures will threaten already scarce water resources and negatively affect crop yields....

The Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina, shot by Jorge Láscar, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license