Dredging Cagayan de Oro River will not solve floods, experts say

American Chronicle: Dredging the Cagayan River [in the Philippines] will not prevent further floods, a team of experts from the University of the Philippines said Thursday. The team from the National Institute of Geological Sciences (Nigs) of U.P. Diliman was headed by Prof. Fernando Siringan, Prof. Alfredo Mahar Lagmay and Prof. Emeritus Kelvin Rodolfo, also of the University of Illinois.

"Dredging the Cagayan River is not necessary," Siringan said in his luncheon presentation made to members and guests of the Rotary Club of Cagayan de Oro (Mother Club) held at a local hotel Thursday, Feb. 19. "It is costly, very short term and a recurring cost. It has very little effect in low areas and deepening an estuary only brings sea water inland, poisoning ground water and soils."

Because the central and business district of Cagayan de Oro is built on a delta or flood plain built by the gradual accretion of sediments, floods are part of its natural cycle. Large portions of the delta plain have elevations within two meters or lower of sea level and key infrastructure such as the Kagay-an Bridge rotunda are actually built on previous wetlands or recently abandoned river channels.

Thus, the city's central business district is influenced by tides, storm surges and tsunamis and with urbanization, floods have become a threat, Siringan said. Siringan had previously conducted studies of the Cagayan River in 1989-90, 1999 and 2001 for the Cagayan de Oro River Development Authority (CORDA) previously headed by Mayor Jaraula when he was still a city councilor.

… Instead of costly dredging, the U.P. team recommends a comprehensive package of measures to prevent a repeat of the two weekend floods last January which devastated Cagayan de Oro.

A 1720 map of the Cagayan River in the Philippines

The fires of climate change

Yahoo7!.au (Australia): Victorian taxpayers are about to fund a full-scale royal commission into the catastrophic bushfires of February 7 in which 208 people - probably more - were burnt to death.

There will be no blame. Everything will be on the table: the adequacy of prescribed preventative burning or hazard reduction; the lethal crime of arson; escape clearways; warning alarm systems; 'go or stay' risk assessment and evacuation procedures; fireproof bunkers; planning regulations; building codes; the adequacy of fire fighting resources; and the usefulness of the forest fire danger index.

Submissions from everyone will be welcomed. Such is the local and national trauma and grief that the inquiry is expected to be therapeutic for those who need and want to tell their stories and those who listen to them.

It may be a year to 18 months before the royal commission completes its work. It is significant to note that two stakeholder groups have already come to concluded views: the 13,000 professional firefighters of Australia and the Climate Institute, which commissions scientific research in Australia into fires and global atmospheric warming.

Climate Institute CEO John Connor told Stateline NSW (on February 20, 2009) that in his organisation's concluded view: "These are the fires of climate change that we've seen in Victoria and perhaps indeed in Port Lincoln in South Australia in 2005. Climate change is not just about warmer weather. It's about wilder weather. Climate change costs ... climate change kills"….

Daybreak in Wodonga, Victoria, shot by Phillip Capper, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Rare fungal disease migrates to Oregon, Washington

Oregon Live.com: A rare fungal disease that has killed 19 in Canada has migrated to Oregon and Washington, where it is linked to five deaths since 2004. The pathogenic fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, lives in Northwest trees, such as Douglas fir, as well as soil and water. An outbreak began in 1999 on Vancouver Island and eventually spread to mainland British Columbia, where it has sickened about 200 people. A study published this week plots the progress of the fungus into the United States.

"It's definitely an emerging pathogen in both the number of cases in the Pacific Northwest and the range it's expanding in," said Edmond Byrnes, a graduate student at Duke University Medical Center and lead author of the Journal of Infectious Diseases paper. There's no need to start wearing face masks while hiking in the woods, public health officials say, but they are nonetheless concerned about the spread of a tropical pathogen in the temperate region.

Byrnes' study documents 14 cases in humans and eight in animals -- including porpoises, alpacas, cats and dogs -- between 2006 and 2008 in Oregon and Washington. Many people will be exposed to the fungus during their lifetime, but few will actually get sick, said Dr. Paul Cieslak, manager of the Oregon Public Health Division's communicable disease program. In British Columbia, a province that is home to 4.4 million people, about 25 people fall ill and one dies from the infection each year, according to the province's Centre for Disease Control….

A totally unrelated fungus, Inonotus hispidus, growing on apple tree. Shot by Björn Appel (Warden), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.

US blocks fishing trawlers from following retreating Arctic ice

Science Daily: Commercial fishing in US Arctic waters is to be banned at least until its effects are understood, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has decided [dated February 5]. In the most powerful application yet of the precautionary principle to fisheries, the council said its prohibition should stay in force until impacts of commercial fishing in previously ice covered waters are fully understood.

“This is a courageous and ethical move by Alaska’s fishermen,” said Bill Fox, Vice President of Fisheries with WWF-US. WWF, along with other groups, has been lobbying for a ban on commercial fishing in the Arctic until a fisheries management plan for the region is developed.

“We do not know enough about the ecology of these areas to allow them to be fished commercially. Until we have that information in hand, we should not tamper with these vulnerable ecosystems, particularly at a time when climate change is already threatening them.”

Council member Bill Tweit, of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said, “Traditional knowledge and the precautionary principle is applied here which is important in the scientific management of fisheries in the Arctic" while US State Dept Nicole Ricci described the decision as “a pioneering piece of domestic regulation which will provide international leadership for fisheries management in the Arctic”

…Arctic ecosystems are considered extremely fragile and slow to recover from disruptions or damage. Fish stocks are particularly sensitive to ocean temperatures with even small changes resulting extremely unpredictable shifts in the locations and productivity of the stocks and even a small commercial fishery in the Arctic could have substantial impacts…..

USCGC Polar Sea, shot by Jcmurphy

Record cold snap kills crops, animals in Guinea

AllAfrica.com, via IRIN: Near-freezing temperatures in north-central Guinea in January destroyed crops and livestock on which thousands of people depend for food as well as cash. Elderly locals told IRIN they had never seen cold this intense in Mali, a town in Guinea's Labé region.

"The vegetation looks as if it was burned in a fire," Hannibal Barry of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told IRIN from Mali on 19 February during a joint evaluation by UN agencies, local authorities and NGOs.

Temperatures dropped to 1.4 degrees Celsius from 17 to 26 January, according to a preliminary report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP). The cold wiped out crops - mainly potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, onions and bananas - across five districts in Mali. It is not yet known how many hectares were destroyed, Mamadou Saliou III Diallo, head of agricultural operations at the Mali prefecture, told IRIN after visiting the affected areas.

In one district, the cold destroyed 15 hectares, he said, adding that UN and local officials continued to survey the area. …Many people had borrowed money for crops from a rural credit bank, said Diallo, who lost his potato and tomato harvest. "Now people here are asking themselves how they will be able to pay their debts and at the same time feed their families."

FAO is initially appealing for US$500,000 to help families affected by the cold, Mariatou Coulibaly, FAO emergency coordinator in Guinea, told IRIN from the capital Conakry…

Locator map of Guinea by Vardion, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 and Attribution ShareAlike 1.0 License

Tasmanian health fear as climate heats up

Tasmanian Examiner (Australia): Tasmania faces an ominous and burgeoning epidemic of chronic disease in its climate change future, the State's Director of Public Health said yesterday. Dr Roscoe Taylor said the spectre of an influenza pandemic was also very real. The foreseeable risks to health worldwide had been documented, he said, but Tasmania faced its share of public health concerns brought about after events that could only be attributed to climate change.

He said the increased frequency of extreme weather would cause physical injury and psychological instability, as the population became anxious about storm, drought or extreme heat events. "With changes in Tasmania's weather patterns, we will see more severe weather events," he said.

"An ageing population of people living with chronic medical conditions might not readily cope with heat stress." Longer term, Dr Taylor said drought would threaten reliable, nutritious food sources and water supply. "There are significant threats to public health and nutrition when our natural food sources are affected with seasonal interruptions," he said.

The extreme weather would also bring social isolation and anxiety. "There will be community anxiety about the future. We have to be careful not to transfer our own fears on to our children. "We have to give them a sense that they can minimise the risks and do something about the future."

Very real evidence of climate change across Tasmania's water supply was already playing itself out, he said. "We are seeing the impact of climate change on our water supply with increased and longer algal blooms," he said. "At Ross the population has had to seek alternative water supplies because of an ongoing blue-green algae outbreak, and on King Island blooms are appearing in the water catchment dams….

Seawater intrusion threatening Beirut water supplies

Zawya (Beirut): Climate change, high population density and overexploitation of groundwater resources has lead to massive saltwater intrusion in the greater Beirut area, a leading hydrogeologist said on Thursday. "Seawater intrusion will be aggravated by climate change and exacerbated by us," Dr. Mark Saadeh, said at the American University of Beirut. Saadeh, a lecturer at the University Saint-Espirit de Kaslik and consultant for the Litani River Authority, was speaking as part of a series on climate change in the Middle East organized by public policy think tank, the Issam Fares Institute.

Decreasing precipitation levels, hotter weather and annual rises of more than 3 mm in the Mediterranean were the main climatological causes of groundwater overexploitation, Saadeh said. The fact that roughly one third of Lebanon's population (estimated at 4.5-5 million) lived in Beirut also "placed a tremendous burden on the country's water resources," he added. Exacerbating all this was a wasteful water management system, through which up to 65 per cent of Beirut's water supplies was lost.

…Water salinity not only affected drinking and agricultural water, but also the safety of many of Beirut's buildings, Saadeh said. "Water mixed into concrete has to be as good as drinking water, which is rarely the case in Lebanon," the hydrogeologist said. Many of the apartment blocks in Beirut were built with concrete mixed with highly salinated water that corrodes building foundations. If even the slightest earthquake were to rattle Beirut, a large number of structures would come tumbling down.

So what can be done to ensure the better use and quality of Beirut's water supplies? One step would be to create a national coastal monitoring system, according to Saadeh. "We need to start taking measurements of everything and pool in all this data to come up with a much clearer picture." More immediate counter measures include creating a coastal buffer zone where welling would be prohibited, and better water management…..

Night in Beirut, shot by Rekd, Wikimedia Commons

Humanitarian costs of climate change unpredictable

IRIN reports on a valuable new study: New projections of the impact of climate change make headlines every day, but a report by a leading research institution has underlined the need for "meaningful data" to help aid agencies prepare for the future. The report by a group of researchers at the Feinstein International Centre of the US-based Tufts University uses various models to project the likely rise in humanitarian spending over the next 20 years as the frequency and intensity of natural disasters increases.

But Peter Walker, director of the centre and one of the researchers, said the point of the report was not to say, "This is what the future will be ... rather it is to say, 'Stop making wild and sensationalist predictions and admit the real problem is that we have been negligent in the data we collect, and so have placed ourselves in a situation where we are hard-pressed to say anything meaningful about what the future will look like.'"

…Natural disasters affect an average of more than 250 million people per year; since 1992, nearly US$2.7 trillion has been spent on international responses to cyclones, floods and droughts in at least four regions of the world - South-East Asia, India and the neighbouring states, East Africa and Central America - the Feinstein report notes. The future is "inherently unpredictable", and aid agencies have "to let go of their old comfortable linear models of change" and become "adaptive, flexible, and open to acting upon feedback", said Walker….

AllAfrica.com, via Daily Trust (Nigeria): The Senate has taken steps at establishing the National Desertification Control Commission with the holding yesterday of a public hearing on desertification in the country aimed at putting finishing touches to the bill before it is passed into law.

Speaking at the one-day public hearing organised by Senate Joint Committees on Establishment and Environment, Senate President David Mark identified desertification as the most severe of all the environmental challenges facing the country hence the need for an agency to fully concentrate on the menace.

Mark, who was represented at the occasion by Senate Majority Whip, Mahmud Kanti Bello (PDP, Katsina North), said "almost every part of the country is characterised by one problem or the other. However, desertification in some views is undoubtedly the severest and most profound in terms of devastation, destruction and magnitude."

The Senate President said reports has shown that desert has overtaken about 1650 square kilometres of frontline states adding, "From knowledge, between 50 to 70 per cent of Yobe, Borno, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara and Adamawa States have been overtaken by desert. These states with a population of 42 million people, account for about 43 per cent of the country's land area….

Satellite image of Nigeria (thank you, NASA), showing the Sahara encroaching from the north

Coastal wetlands in eastern US disappearing

Science Daily: While the nation as a whole gained freshwater wetlands from 1998 to 2004, a new report by NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents a continuing loss of coastal wetlands in the eastern United States. The new report, Status and Trends of Wetlands in the Coastal Watersheds of the Eastern United States, shows a loss of 59,000 acres each year in the coastal watersheds of the Great Lakes, Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico from 1998 to 2004.

“This report shows the nation’s need to expand the effort to conserve and rebuild valuable coastal wetlands,” said Jim Balsiger, acting NOAA assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “Coastal wetlands are nurseries for important commercial and recreational fish and are vital to many threatened and endangered species. They also provide natural protection to coastal communities from the most damaging effects of hurricanes and storm surges.”

One reason wetland loss is concentrated in coastal watersheds is that with large numbers of people living here – more than half of the nation’s population lives in coastal counties in densities five times greater than inland counties – the building of roads, homes and businesses have accelerated wetlands loss, particularly along the Gulf of Mexico. Wetland restoration is also more difficult in coastal areas where land values are high and factors such as storms and large expanses of soft muddy ground hamper restoration efforts.

The report contains a case study from Florida’s St. Vincent Island that illustrates the challenges of restoring coastal wetlands, but also shows the enormous benefits including opening up areas for public recreation as well as habitat for fish, turtles, shorebirds and other wildlife….

Anhinga anhinga watching sunset over marshes, Shark Valley, Everglades National Park, Florida, USA, shot by Wing-Chi Poon, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

Climate change 'biggest challenge of our time' for insurers

London Stock Exchange: Climate change will present insurers with the "biggest challenge in our time", a new thinkpiece from the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) has said. The piece, which acts as a preview for the CII's Coping With Climate Change: Risks and Opportunities for Insurers report due on February 23rd, warns of a "clear and pressing need" for the industry to assess and effectively manage the issues raised by increasingly volatile weather patterns.

It adds that Europe is likely to face increased droughts and heat waves over the coming years, with the number of days when temperatures reach at least 25 degrees Celsius in London expected to double by the 2020s. By the 2050s, the capital could be facing between three and five times as many hot days as it does now….

Danger! Crevasses, in Les Deux Alpes (Isère département, France). Shot by Willtron, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Adapting to snow, or not

I had some posts all ready to link to. I just needed to drive home. But a two-hour trip turned into a snowbound overnight stay because the Carbon-Based mobile couldn't make it up a hill about ten miles from my house. Whiteout conditions. No four-wheel drive. We turned around and hunkered down in a lovely old-fashioned motel in Kent, Connecticut, where I could find no wireless service and no bars on my air card.

A disruption in blogging service because this advocate for resilience and preparedness couldn't handle the snow. A lesson to us all. Get some snow tires, admit reality when it comes to winter conditions in the Litchfield Hills. Or, even more to the point, read the weather report.

This illustration by Milo Winter comes from Aesop for Children, one of the first books I remember reading.

What if Oregonians decline to address climate change?

EurekAlert: If nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Oregon will face some $3.3 billion in annual costs, which could translate to an individual tab of about 4 percent of annual household income by 2020, according to a report produced for the University of Oregon's Climate Leadership Initiative's Program on Climate Economics by ECONorthwest.

The UO's Program on Climate Economics is guided by a steering committee of 19 academic and private economists from Oregon and other western states. Committee members also produce some of the program's research. Ernie Niemi, lead author of the report, is a principal with ECONorthwest, a fellow with the UO's Climate Leadership Initiative (CLI) and a member of the steering committee. ECONorthwest was contracted to produce the assessment.

"Our research found that a failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would produce significant and continually rising costs for Oregon households and businesses," said Bob Doppelt, director of the Climate Leadership Initiative, who managed the report. "There will be no business-as-usual economy in Oregon under a business-as-usual approach to climate change." "The $3.3 billion price tag for 2020 is a purposeful understatement," Niemi said. "The amount is based on 17 potential costs for which we had sufficient data to draw conclusions."

Total annual costs would more than triple by 2080 if insufficient action is taken to reduce emissions. Per-household costs are based on projected population growth and were computed to spell out the cost of inaction on a personal level, not as a recommendation of cost-sharing.

…."It's sobering that these significant costs reflect just 'average' conditions projected under business-as-usual carbon emissions," said Dave Ervin, a member of the steering committee for CLI's Program on Economics and professor of economics at Portland State University. "Given the evidence of earlier-than-expected melting in the Arctic and Antarctic regions and other issues, the risks of larger costs are real. That's why the insurance industry and a number of financial institutions are so concerned."….

Treeway by Crater Lake, Oregon, shot by Herr stahlhoefer, who has generously released the image into the public domain

Small groups make a big difference

Scaria Meledam writes in ExpressBuzz.com: Biodiversity and ecosystem maintenance are the keys to successful pro-poor adaptation strategies to climate change, says the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST) is the best example. Initiated in a small way by the Anglican Church in 1999 in Mpwapwa, Tanzania, TIST now supports 2800 small groups of subsistence farmers in Kenya, Uganda and India in tackling deforestation and climate change-related drought and famine. Over 2.3 million trees have been planted under the scheme.

From where do they get funds? From the sale of carbon offset credits (the international scheme under which firms polluting more that the limit fixed for them are forced to buy credits from those who pollute less) and farm products. Carbon offsets from tree planting are sold through eBay. Income from carbon offsets allows farmers to buy seeds, care for trees and buy necessities such as medication and pay school fees.

For every living tree a small cash stipend is deposited regularly in bank accounts opened by small community groups designated for this purpose.TIST strategies include small group development, conservation farming and sustainable agriculture, reforestation, agro-forestry and entrepreneurship involving the sale of carbon offsets and farm products. Activities also address health, education and nutrition.

Local subsistence farmers are involved in planning, implementation and information sharing. The aim is to empower and equip them to restore their natural environment, increase soil fertility, create jobs, strengthen local economic development in the local community, and move from famine to surplus.

Many of the best solutions to climate change, like TIST, provide multiple benefits for biodiversity, poverty alleviation, and adaptation and mitigation. But achieving all these objectives is often difficult because adaptation activities in one sector can compromise those in another. Decisions should, therefore, be based on good science and an understanding of these trade-offs. At the very least, climate change solutions should aim at avoiding damage to biodiversity and ecosystem services, and increase in inequity and poverty….

Gandhi planting a tree outside Kingsley Hall, East End, London, England, December 3, 1931. The tree has been destroyed in World War II and was replanted by Lady Attenborough in 1984

Food waste as an environmental crisis

Environment News Service: Over half of the food produced globally is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain, finds a new study by the United Nations Environment Programme released today. This staggering amount of waste plus environmental degradation is putting an end to a 100-year trend of falling food prices, the study warns. Food prices may increase by 30 to 50 percent within decades, forcing those living in extreme poverty to spend up to 90 percent of their income on food, findings that are supported by a recent report from the World Bank.

The UN report was issued at the UNEP Governing Council and Global Ministerial Environment Forum taking place in Nairobi through Friday. The environment ministers are focused on finding solutions to the world's environmental, financial, food and energy crises through the emerging concept of a green economy. The report looks ahead to 2050 when the global population is expected to be close to 9.5 billion, up from the 6.76 billion people on Earth today.

"There is evidence within the report that the world could feed the entire projected population growth alone by becoming more efficient while also ensuring the survival of wild animals, birds and fish on this planet," said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. Losses and food waste in the United States could be as high as 50 percent, according to some recent estimates. Up to one-quarter of all fresh fruits and vegetables in the United States is lost between the field and the table….

Gluttony, of the seven deadly sins (1592), by Jacob Matham

UN weather agency says La Nina climate pattern weakening

Agence France-Presse: La Nina, the weather phenomenon that has been blamed for icy conditions that claimed dozens of lives across Europe since November, is weakening, the World Meteorological Organization said Tuesday. La Nina is produced by cooler surface water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and, like its Pacific sibling El Nino, is credited with upsetting climate patterns around the world.

"As these conditions weaken, the outlook for March-May 2009 is for 'neutral' conditions to be the most likely outcome," the UN's weather agency said in a statement. However, forecasts for the remainder of this year were "very uncertain" at the moment, the statement added. The average global temperature for 2008 was slightly lower than any other year since 2000, due partly to La Nina, according to the WMO….

That's the logo for the World Meteorological Organization

Victoria's weather troubles may come from the Indian Ocean

Stock & Land (Australia): Victoria's catastrophic bushfires may have their origins 5000 kilometres away, in the Indian Ocean, and a phenomenon only first identified a decade ago. Last week, researchers from the University of NSW reported that the event known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) may be the primary driver of drought in south-eastern Australia, overriding even the El Nino/La Nina cycles. A positive outcome of this finding may be better predictions of dry spells, possibly up to six months ahead.

The grim news is that all current understanding about the IOD points to an increased number of drought years as the planet warms. Like the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which reflects the warming and cooling of surface temperatures across the Pacific Ocean, the IOD refers to temperature patterns over the Indian Ocean.

As in the Pacific, Indian Ocean waters are alternately warmer or cooler in the east and west, although the pattern is uneven and historically less frequent. In what scientists have called the "positive" phase of the IOD, cooler ocean temperatures around Indonesia generate less of the moist, turbulent air that in better years—when Indonesian waters are warmer than those of the western Indian Ocean—streams across the Australian continent to deliver the south-east its spring rain.

The IOD has now been positive for three years running, since 2006. There has been a strong run of positive IOD events since the mid-1990s, when the Murray-Darling Basin first began to encounter water deficits. Dr Caroline Ummenhofer of UNSW’s Climate Change Research Centre analysed droughts since the 1880s and concluded that the Federation drought around 1900, the prolonged WWII drought of the 1940s and the current "Big Dry" have all been associated with either positive IOD phases, or a lack of wetter negative IOD phases….

Sandstorms may follow prolonged drought

China Daily: The severe drought that plagued northern China during the past four months may breed worse sandstorms, which is sometimes seen during the coming spring as a result of rainfall shortage, a climate expert said on Tuesday. Li Weijing, Deputy Director-General of the National Climate Center, said during an exclusive interview with chinadaily.com.cn that the country's recent dry weather would result in the formation of sandstorms, which are sometimes seen in northern China in spring.

"Forecasts say we will witness much more dust and sand than the time last year because there is less rain this year," Li said. "The snow that covered most parts of northern China last year prevented sandstorms from forming, while the drought this year will give rise to the amount of drifting sand."

However, the Deputy Director-General, added that sand alone is not enough to cause sandstorms. "Another precondition is high wind speed, which depends on the atmospheric circulation," added Li, who said the atmospheric circulation would be under close monitoring during the coming spring. Research found that violent changes in atmospheric circulation have intensified climate change, of which the current prolonged drought as one of its forms.

China's worst drought since 1951 is still plaguing just under 100 million mu (6.6 million hectares) of farmland as of Monday. The peak of the drought was on Feb 7 when 160 million mu of cropland was affected, according to figures from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters. The four-month long dry weather finally eased to some degree when most parts of the affected area witnessed rainfalls since the end of last week as a result of artificial and natural rain….

Dust continued to obscure the Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan in this SeaWiFS image (from NASA) of the area obtained on March 21, 2001

Threats to biodiversity rise in world’s Mediterranean-climate regions

Science Daily: In the first systematic analysis of threats to the biodiversity of the world’s Mediterranean-climate regions, scientists at The Nature Conservancy and UC Davis report that these conservation hotspots are facing significant and increasing pressure. The study, which appears in this week’s edition of the journal Diversity and Distributions, is part of a global conservation assessment of the rare Mediterranean biome.

“Throughout human history, the mild climates of Mediterranean regions have fostered growth of major urban centers, vast agricultural zones and dense human populations – all in the midst of some of the rarest biodiversity on Earth”, says Dr. Rebecca Shaw, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy’s California program and the leader of the global assessment.

Mediterranean climates – characterized by warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters – are extremely rare, found on only 2% of the Earth’s land surface: portions of California/Baja California, South Africa, Australia, Chile, and the Mediterranean Basin. Increasing the pace and scale of conservation in Mediterranean regions is critically important to biodiversity protection, because these regions contain 20% of the world’s plant species.

…Overall, population density and urban areas increased in these regions by 13 percent from 1990 to 2000, while agricultural areas spread by 1 percent. Population grew by over 34 million people from 1990 to 2000, twice the population of Chile. Urban areas expanded by 2,110 square miles (5,480 square kilometers), an area about half the size of the nation of Lebanon. The greatest increase in urban area was in California, USA and Baja California, Mexico. Loss of natural habitat to agriculture was greatest in southwest Australia….

Photo of Napa Valley, California, looking east from the Niebaum-Coppola Winery, taken September 2005 by Stan Shebs, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License

NYC can expect big storms more frequently: study

Reuters: New York City's average temperature could rise by as much as 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit this century, and once-in-a-century storms may occur as often as every 15 years, a climate change panel said on Tuesday. The report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change was requested by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to better understand how global temperature levels could strain the city's infrastructure.

The report was based on data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in a 2007 report but for the first time compiles figures pertinent to New York. "The climate change projections developed by our expert panel put numbers to what we already know -- climate change is real and could have serious consequences for New York if we don't take action," Bloomberg said.

"We cannot wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan for the effects of climate change," he said. The report predicts average annual temperatures will increase by 4 to 7.5 degrees Fahrenheit and extreme events such as heat waves, intense rain, droughts and coastal flooding will become more frequent and more intense. Coastal floods that are now expected occur once every 10 years could occur once every three years and floods that occur once in a century could begin to occur once in every 15 to 35 years, the report said….

The Flatiron Building, Manhattan

Scientists quitting Canada as climate funding dries up

Canwest News Service: Katrin Meissner is determined to be on the forefront of understanding the climate change affecting everything from permafrost to bird migrations. The celebrated young scientist at the University of Victoria had planned to build her career in Canada. But Meissner is packing up her young family and heading for Australia.

The University of New South Wales made her an offer she couldn't refuse - a position as a senior lecturer, research opportunities and guaranteed daycare for her one-year-old son, which was the perk that sealed the deal. ``I didn't really want to leave,'' says Meissner, who is walking away from a coveted tenure-track position in Victoria. But she says the opportunities in Australia seem much more promising. ''Long-term it looks quite scary in Canada, '' says Meissner.

It is a refrain heard across Canada as funding dries up at the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS), a prime source of funding for university-based projects underway from the Arctic to B.C. mountaintops. Projects involving hundreds of scientists have entered their final phase and will shut down by March 2010. ``They're dead as of next spring,'' says atmospheric physicist Richard Peltier of University of Toronto, noting that there is no new federal money in sight for new projects or to build on existing ones.

``It's a shame to see it go down the tubes,'' says Richard Lawford, at the University of Manitoba, who manages the four-year-old Drought Research Initiative funded by the foundation. The project is aimed at preparing for the country's next water crisis. The last drought, from 1999 to 2004, cost an estimated $6 billion and 41,000 jobs. Lawford says the team is keen to build on the project in a bid to ensure there is enough water for farmers and cities. But with CFCAS running out of cash, so is the project.

Young scientists and technical staff will be hardest hit. ``That's were the real pain comes in,'' says Lawford, who fears many highly educated young scientists working on the drought project will head to the U.S. where science is expected to undergo a renaissance under President Barack Obama….

The HMS Alert in the ice of Robeson Channel during the British Arctic Expedition. Photographic plate from Voyage to the Polar Sea by Sir George Strong Nares (published in 1878)

Rising floods spread to second Australian state

AP: Authorities put helicopters on standby for emergencies Tuesday as they evacuated residents from homes north of Sydney inundated by floodwaters, while wildfires continued blazing in the country's drought-parched south. Australia's populous east coast has been beset by weather extremes of fiery drought and torrential rains that scientists argue are being exacerbated by climate change.

The Bourke region of New South Wales state's northwest was declared a natural disaster area Tuesday after 20 homes and several government buildings were flooded, State Emergency Service spokesman Phil Campbell said. High water also isolated about 5,000 people in towns, villages and farms across the state's north, he said.

The Bellinger River burst its banks Tuesday, prompting the evacuation of homes and businesses in the town of Bellingen, which has a population of 3,000, and communities downstream, police Chief Inspector Shane Cribb said. With more rain forecast Wednesday, the flood risk has not passed. "We'll be making sure that we have sufficient helicopters as well as volunteers and flood boats in that region to answer any requests for emergency evacuation," Campbell said.

To the north, most of Queensland state has been submerged for weeks by the worst flooding in three decades, with more rain expected during the tropical monsoonal season….

That's the flag of New South Wales

Study links carbon, melting arctic

Canada.com: A provocative new study of the record-setting Arctic thaw that's unlocking the Northwest Passage and transforming Canada's polar frontier has, for the first time, drawn a clear connection between rising global carbon pollution and the retreat of sea ice.

The study by top Norwegian climate researcher Ola Johannessen, to be published in October by the Chinese Academy of Sciences but obtained Friday by Canwest News Service, identified a “strengthening linkage” between the upward trend in CO2 emissions over the past century and the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, which reached a historic minimum last year and appears headed for similar decreases this summer.

At a time when Canada’s next federal election is expected to turn on the debate over a proposed Liberal carbon tax, the scientific paper could add weight to arguments urging sharp reductions in carbon emissions to help slow or reverse climate-change impacts.

…Johannessen’s study, describing the state of Arctic Ocean ice as a “keystone indicator” of global climate change, concludes that “90 per cent of the decreasing sea-ice extent is empirically ‘accounted for’ by the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere” and that his tracking of the tight relationship between carbon pollution and the size of the ice cap points to “substantially faster ice decreases up to 2050 than predicted by IPCC models” - the forecasts produced by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning international scientific panel on climate change.

…The study also warns that calculations of sea-ice response to CO2 emissions could become meaningless if, as some scientists have conjectured, the planet reaches “a critical ‘tipping point’ for sea ice” when increasingly exposed Arctic waters absorb so much heat it triggers a rapid and irreversible depletion of the remaining year-round ice….

Polarhase 4 1997-08-04Arctic Hare (Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada), shot by Ansgar Walk, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Modeling the flow of carbon in the atmosphere

Science Daily: The global travel logs of greenhouse gases are based on atmospheric sampling locations sprinkled over the Earth and short towers that measure the uptake or release of carbon from a small patch of forest. But those measurements don't agree with current computer models of how plants and soils behave.

A University of Michigan researcher is developing a unique way to reconcile these crucial data. "If we're going to adapt to climate change, we need to be able to predict what the climate will be," said Anna Michalak, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. "We want to know how the sources and sinks of carbon will evolve in the future, and the only way we can manage climate change is with scientific information."

…The problem: Michalak said the data takes such a big-picture approach that it is difficult to isolate carbon being emitted or taken up in specific regions, or even countries. Scientists are left with an understanding of carbon sources that isn't nimble enough to understand the variability, or to be confident about predicting the future.

Michalak has developed a robust way to use available data to understand this variability called "geostatistical inverse modeling." This method breaks the globe into small regions and examines how much CO2 must have been emitted in each region to achieve the concentrations measured at atmospheric sample points. This method also allows her and her collaborators to use information from other existing satellites that measure the Earth's surface to supplement the information from the atmospheric monitoring network. Eventually, this method aims to trace the carbon levels at each sample point to a particular source or sink on the surface….

A diagram of the carbon cycle by Eraxx, modifying a diagram by FischX

Climate change means review of heating and cooling needed

H&V News (UK): Building services engineers need to start preparing for the impact of climate change according to a new report by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers. Climate Change: Adapting to the Inevitable looks at how approaches to energy, building water, infrastructure and transport should change in response to the expected rise in temperatures.

One of the key arguments is that engineers must review their design parameters: “Resilience to extreme weather events will also need to be reviewed. “The current peak design data used by engineers when designing internal heating, ventilation and cooling solutions for buildings will need to be reviewed to reflect future scenarios.

“The structural design parameters will also need updating regularly to cope with predictions for increased flooding, subsidence, effects of heat on materials and resistance to rain penetration.” Master planning to stop heat building up in urban centres is also an issue. The report said: “Buildings adaptation is perhaps the area where most consideration of future climate change has already been made.

…“The understanding of street layout, building orientation, massing and location is critical in minimising overheating in and around buildings, and reducing risks of flooding. Lessons can be learnt from developments in existing hot climates and recent advances in the understanding of zero-carbon master planning from projects such as Dongtan in China.”

London skyline from the south bank of the Thames . The Swiss Re "gherkin" and the White Tower can be seen in the background. Shot by Italo-Europeo, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Climate models predicted Australian bushfires

New Scientist: Australia may have just had a horrifying preview of what climate change has in store for its people. Even early warning couldn't stop last weekend's bush fires in Victoria claiming 170 lives and over 700 homes.

Climate models based on figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict more frequent - and more extreme - fires for southern Australia over the next few decades. Yet the role of climate change in recent fires has been downplayed, suggests John Handmer of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre at RMIT University in Melbourne.

Certainly, last weekend's fires were unprecedented: "We had a record heatwave, the worse fire danger index on record, during a record-breaking drought," says Handmer. The fire danger index takes into account both temperature and humidity. Over 50 is extreme; on Saturday, the index is believed to have been 5 to 6 times higher.

The level of devastation raises questions about whether Australia should, like other fire-prone places such as southern California, evacuate its people rather than let them stay….

February 10, 2009 map of Australia fires, NASA

The tropics on fire: scientist's grim vision of global warming

Guardian (UK): Tropical forests may dry out and become vulnerable to devastating wildfires as global warming accelerates over the coming decades, a senior scientist has warned. Soaring greenhouse gas emissions, driven by a surge in coal use in countries such as China and India, are threatening temperature rises that will turn damp and humid forests into parched tinderboxes, said Dr Chris Field, co-chair of the UN's Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Higher temperatures could see wildfires raging through the tropics and a large scale melting of the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere that will accelerate warming even further, he said.

…Field said that if the tropics became dry enough for fires to break out, tropical forests would pass a "tipping point" from absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to releasing it.

"Tropical forests are essentially inflammable. You couldn't get a fire to burn there if you tried. But if they dry out just a little, the result can be very large and destructive wildfires. It is increasingly clear that as you produce a warmer world, lots of forested areas that had been acting as carbon sinks could be converted to carbon sources," he said. The result could lead to runaway warming….

Illustration by J.M. Ruendas of the mouth of the Cachoeira River

Mass media often failing in its coverage of global warming, says climate researcher

Science Daily: "Business managers of media organizations, you are screwing up your responsibility by firing science and environment reporters who are frankly the only ones competent to do this," said climate researcher and policy analyst Stephen Schneider, in assessing the current state of media coverage of global warming and related issues.

Schneider, a coordinating lead author of chapter 19 in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published in 2007, is calling for the news media to employ trained reporters in covering global warming. He will be discussing this and other issues in the symposium "Hot and Hotter: Media Coverage of Climate-Change Impacts, Policies, and Politics," on Feb. 13, 2009 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

"Science is not politics. You can't just get two opposing viewpoints and think you've done due diligence. You've got to cover the multiple views and the relative credibility of each view," said Schneider, a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. "But that is not usually the problem of the well-trained reporters, who understand what is credible.

"The problem is CNN just fired their science team. Why didn't they fire their economics team or their sports team?" "Why don't they send their general assignment reporters out to cover the Superbowl?" Schneider said. Researchers have to do their part, too, he said, by clearly explaining issues to reporters in succinct terms.

…Telling the developing world they can't use energy resources they have at hand, such as coal and natural gas, won't have any effect unless we offer them alternatives that are cleaner, Schneider said. He said the U.S. has to accelerate the rate at which we are developing green energy sources such as solar and wind.

A four-year-old news boy in Tampa, Florida, 1913

Decisive action needed as warming predictions worsen, says expert

EurekAlert: Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising more rapidly than expected, increasing the danger that without aggressive action to reduce emissions the climate system could cross a critical threshold by the end of the century, warns a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Studies indicate that greenhouse warming could trigger a vicious cycle of feedback, in which carbon dioxide released from thawing tundra and increasingly fire-prone forests drives global temperatures even higher.

Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and co-chair of the IPCC Working Group 2, will address these issues at a symposium titled "What Is New and Surprising since the IPCC Fourth Assessment?" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.

…"The data now show that greenhouse gas emissions are accelerating much faster than we thought," says Field. "Over the last decade developing countries such as China and India have increased their electric power generation by burning more coal. Economies in the developing world are becoming more, not less carbon-intensive. We are definitely in unexplored terrain with the trajectory of climate change, in the region with forcing, and very likely impacts, much worse than predicted in the fourth assessment."

New studies are also revealing potentially dangerous feedbacks in the climate system that could convert current carbon sinks into carbon sources. Field points to tropical forests as a prime example. Vast amounts of carbon are stored in the vegetation of moist tropical forests, which are resistant to wildfires because of their wetness. But warming temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns threaten to dry the forests, making them less fireproof.

….Warming in the Arctic is expected to speed up the decay of plant matter that has been in cold storage in permafrost for thousands of years. …"The IPCC fourth assessment didn't consider either the tundra-thawing or tropical forest feedbacks in detail because they weren't yet well understood," he says. "But new studies are now available, so we should be able to assess a wider range of factors and possible climate outcomes. One thing that seems to be certain, however, is that as a society we are facing a climate crisis that is larger and harder to deal with than any of us thought. The sooner we take decisive action, the better our chances are of leaving a sustainable world to future generations."….

Tundra, in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Center for Biological Diversity declares legal war on global warming

Environment News Service: To fight climate change, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity Thursday opened a new law institute in San Francisco and announced the dedication of an initial $17 million to the project. The Climate Law Institute will use existing laws and work to establish new state and federal laws that will eliminate energy generation by the burning of fossil fuels - particularly coal and oil shale.

Burning these materials emits greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that have already raised the planetary temperature, threatening the widespread extinction of species, sea level rise and ocean acidity, food and water scarcity, heatwaves, wildfires and floods. "Global warming is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. It is the defining issue of our time," said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center.

"To meet the challenge, the Center for Biological Diversity has created the Climate Law Institute to extend the reach of current environmental and human health laws to encompass global warming, pass new climate legislation, and reinvent America's approach to protecting endangered species and public lands," he said.

…Since the early 1990s the Center has used existing laws and advocated for new laws and policies to protect rare and imperiled species, first in the Southwest, and later across the country. With the creation of the Climate Law Institute, the group is reorganizing to integrate global warming into all of its activities….

Polar bear says, "I'm sending my lawyer after you!"

Addressing carbon on land is essential for stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory: Putting a price tag on carbon dioxide emitted by different land use practices could dramatically change the way that land is used - forests become increasingly valuable for storing carbon and overall carbon emissions reductions become cheaper, according to research presented today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Without valuing the carbon in land, we risk losing large swaths of unmanaged ecosystems to agricultural crops and biofuels," said speaker Leon Clarke of the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., a collaboration between the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., and the University of Maryland.

Most analyses of future global carbon dioxide output mainly consider carbon emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes, or otherwise include only parts of the global carbon cycle. This could lead to dramatic changes in how people use land as they cut down trees to grow food and bioenergy crops, according to some studies. This study is the first to value carbon in all natural and human systems.

The scientists found that addressing the land-based carbon is essential for stabilizing greenhouse gases at low levels. Overall, land contains 2,000 billion tons of carbon, compared to the 750 billion tons in the atmosphere. In addition, forests hold more carbon than grazing does. Converting land from forest to food or bioenergy crops releases carbon into the atmosphere. Conversely, turning agricultural land back into forests tucks carbon away on land, reducing it in the atmosphere…..

Tenacious drought in Latin America

IPS, via Tierramérica: For months now, yellowed pastures, cracked soil and dead livestock have been the landscape of what otherwise are the most productive farming areas of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. Scientists say it is so far impossible to determine if the drought is a manifestation of climate change processes. "Climate change cannot be characterised by one single event, but rather by a series over the long term," University of Buenos Aires climatologist Vicente Barros, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Tierramérica.

Some experts believe the lack of rain could be related to the influence of La Niña, the cool phase of the cyclical climate event known as El Niño/Southern Oscillation, which changes the surface temperature of equatorial Pacific Ocean currents and affects the region's climate. "La Niña is still very strong and the forecasting models aren't adjusted to reflect the disturbances it causes," agricultural engineer Eduardo Sierra, an Argentina climate expert, finds himself explaining to someone almost daily.

In 2007, the IPCC and former U.S. vice-president Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for their contribution to building knowledge and raising awareness among the public about climate change over the past two decades.…Barros, along with experts José Marengo of Brazil and Madeleine Renom of Uruguay, told Tierramérica that it is impossible to assert that the current drought is an unequivocal manifestation of climate change, because the weather changes must be assessed over the long term.

The three agree that "what can be attributed to climate change is the greater climate variability, like fluctuations in the maximum and minimum rainfall, and the greater frequency, and in some cases the intensity, of extreme phenomena," summarised Renom, meteorologist and professor at the University of the Republic of Uruguay….

A cool-water anomaly known as La Niña occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean throughout 2007 and early 2008. In April 2008, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that while the La Niña was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation—a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern—had shifted to its cool phase. This NASA image shows the sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean from April 14–21, 2008. The anomaly compares the recent temperatures measured by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite with an average of data collected by the NOAA Pathfinder satellites from 1985–1997. Places where the Pacific was cooler than normal are blue, places where temperatures were average are white, and places where the ocean was warmer than normal are red.

Farming sector aims to clean up its carbon act

EurActiv: Use of fertiliser usage and other modern agricultural practices can help to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure food security, argued business representatives and experts at a conference yesterday (12 February).

Speaking at the conference, president of the European Fertiliser Manufacturers Association (EFMA) Tor Holba said "emissions can be reduced by 50% with new N2O cleaning technology and energy efficiency, 'tailormade' fertilisers and modern agricultural practices". "Agriculture has a very significant role to play in mitigating greenhouse gases," said Pete Smith, professor of environmental sciences at the University of Aberdeen.

…The use of fertilisers on a global scale is known to emit significant quantities of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Emissions come about through the production of fertiliser, which releases methane, nitrous oxide, ammonia and carbon dioxide.

Agriculture and forestry were left out from plans to extend the EU's CO2 emission trading scheme after 2012. The decision was made due to difficulties related to measuring emissions from these sectors accurately....

Statue of the semeur de Grande-Anse, shot by Adqproductions, Wikimedia Commons, nder the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

Life or lifestyle, warns fire chief after Victoria bushfires

The Australian: Russell Rees, chief officer of Victoria's Country Fire Authority, yesterday said firefighters could no longer guarantee saving the lives of those who chose to surround themselves with vegetation despite the obvious fire risks. His warnings came as it emerged that Victoria had ignored repeated demands to reduce bushfire hazards and crack down on "tree-changer" housing estates in the years leading up to Saturday's deadly fires, which are believed to have killed more than 200 people and left 7000 homeless.

The state was berated by the federal government in 2007 for ignoring some of the findings of two national bushfire inquiries held after the 2003 Canberra blaze. As shattered communities prepare to rebuild from the ashes, the Australasian Fire Authorities Council yesterday called for more controls over housing development in bushland on the urban fringe.

The CFA's Mr Rees told The Weekend Australian that firefighters were on the "receiving end" of the tree-change trend in which people choose to escape urban living for a bush lifestyle amid dense vegetation on the fringes of major cities. "We've got to choose," he said. 'If we choose to live in this way, then who do we blame? My fear is that people will say the fire service failed (last Saturday) and I will go to my grave saying we fought our guts out….”…

Little Desert, Victoria, Australia, shot by Mussklprozz, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

Britain should prepare for massive loss of landmass, warn engineers

Guardian (UK): Ministers should prepare the British people to "adapt" in the longer term to a landscape devastated by climate change, including the possible abandonment of parts of London and East Anglia, a leading industry body warns today. Action to curb carbon emissions is failing, so the UK should immediately change the way it designs buildings, transport and energy infrastructure in preparation for aworld potentially characterised by extreme heat and high sea levels, argues the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in a new report.

The institute said it wanted its latest research to provoke serious action for future planning "not just for the sake of our planet but also for the human race. Yes, we need to mitigate [emissions] – but the evidence shows this is not working alone." Even with significant global commitment to avert climate change it could be many centuries before average temperatures can be stabilised, says the document, Climate Change: Adapting to the Inevitable?, which was described by environmentalists as a "wake-up call" for government.

IMechE said that sea levels are predicted to rise by 2m by 2250 and 7m by the end of that century. "A seven-metre rise in sea levels would impact on vast areas of the UK, including parts of London which border the Thames,[such as] Canary Wharf, Chelsea and Westminster, all of which would need to be abandoned," the report argues….

"The Pool from London Bridge: Morning" - lithograph by W. Parrott, 1841

Aerosols may have a big impact on Australian rainfall, climate change

Science Daily: Aerosols may have a greater impact on patterns of Australian rainfall and future climate change than previously thought, according to leading atmospheric scientist, CSIRO’s Dr Leon Rotstayn. “We have identified that the extensive pollution haze emanating from Asia may be re-shaping rainfall patterns in northern Australia but we wonder what impact natural and human-generated aerosols are having across the rest of the country,” Dr Rotstayn said.

Aerosols are fine particles suspended in the atmosphere. Sources of human-generated aerosols include industry, motor vehicles and vegetation burning. Natural sources include volcanoes, dust storms and ocean plankton. Human-generated aerosols have long been known to exert a cooling effect on climate. This has partly masked the warming effect of increasing greenhouse gases. As aerosol pollution is predicted to decrease over the next few decades, unmasking of the greenhouse effect may lead to accelerated global warming.

However, in an address February 13 to the International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorology and Oceanography in Melbourne, Dr Rotstayn said aerosols are much more than a 'negative greenhouse gas' because they can actively force changes in winds and ocean currents by altering the distribution of solar heating at the earth’s surface.

“Recent climate modelling at CSIRO shows that there may be important effects on Australian climate due to aerosol pollution from the Northern Hemisphere. These include an increase of rainfall in north-western Australia, and an increase of air pressure over southern Australia, which may have contributed to less rainfall there…..

Rain drops on a window, shot by Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2