Mexican fisherwomen organise against climate change

Emilio Godoy in IPS: Every night, Adlemi Marrufo goes out to catch bait crabs used to fish for octopus in this small seaside town and others along Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, as part of a women's cooperative that is working to adapt to and fight climate change. The longnose spider crab (Libinia dubia), known locally as the "maxquil" crab, is fished from August to December in San Felipe, where Marrufo, who everyone calls "Doña More", has been mayor since 2010.

"We haven't received support, and I think it would be difficult to get any. Even in our community, we have problems with the men, who wonder how we can do their work," Marrufo tells IPS as she gets her fishing gear ready on her boat, "Rebeca". In 1999, she was one of the founders of the Mujeres Trabajadoras del Mar cooperative, currently made up of 13 fisherwomen. The women's cooperative emerged as a collective effort to adapt to climate change, the effects of which are increasingly being felt on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, which bathes the shores of this fishing village at the top of the Yucatan Peninsula in southeast Mexico.

San Felipe, which has a population of 1,850, is one of the 25 coastal towns in Mexico most exposed to the effects of global warming, in the form of stronger hurricanes, heavier and more frequent flooding and increasing changes in the availability of seafood species, which has caused problems for fishing, the town's main economic activity.

...The women in the cooperative, who were trained in "mangrove ecology" a year after the hurricane, have played a key role in restoring the mangroves, which are vital to keeping water temperatures from climbing too high in the lagoon, an important breeding ground for species ranging from lobsters to the longnose spider crab....

A burst of colour lights the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico off the Yucatan Peninsula. The swirls of tan, green, blue, and white are most likely sediment in the water. From NASA

Newly discovered Icelandic current could change climate picture

Terra Daily: If you'd like to cool off fast in hot summer weather, take a dip in a newly discovered ocean current called the North Icelandic Jet (NIJ). You'd need to be far, far below the sea's surface near Iceland, however, to reach it. Scientists have confirmed the presence of the NIJ, a deep-ocean circulation system off Iceland. It could significantly influence the ocean's response to climate change.

The NIJ contributes to a key component of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), critically important for regulating Earth's climate. As part of the planet's reciprocal relationship between ocean circulation and climate, the AMOC transports warm surface water to high latitudes where the water warms the air, then cools, sinks and returns toward the equator as a deep flow.

Crucial to this warm-to-cold oceanographic choreography is the Denmark Strait Overflow Water (DSOW), the largest of the deep, overflow plumes that feed the lower limb of the AMOC and return the dense water south through gaps in the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.

For years it has been thought that the primary source of the Denmark Overflow was a current adjacent to Greenland known as the East Greenland Current. However, this view was recently called into question by two oceanographers from Iceland who discovered a deep current flowing southward along the continental slope of Iceland. They named the current the North Icelandic Jet and hypothesized that it formed a significant part of the overflow water....

Northern part of Denmark Strait showing the location of the newly discovered deep current in relation to the known existing pathway of dense water. (Graphic by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Investments in pastoralism offer best hope for combating droughts in Africa's drylands

EurekAlert: As hunger spreads among more than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa, a study by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) of the response to Kenya's last devastating drought, in 2008-2009, finds that investments aimed at increasing the mobility of livestock herders – a way of life often viewed as "backward" despite being the most economical and productive use of Kenya's drylands – could be the key to averting future food crises in arid lands.

The report, "An Assessment of the Response to the 2008-2009 Drought in Kenya," suggests that herding makes better economic sense than crop agriculture in many of the arid and semi-arid lands that constitute 80 percent of the Horn of Africa, and supporting mobile livestock herding communities in advance and with timely interventions can help people cope the next time drought threatens.

The authors say that encouraging livestock herders to switch to farming crops or to move to cities is simply unrealistic in this region's great drylands, which will not support row crops without extensive irrigation, which is scarce and often impractical. An estimated 70 million people live in these arid lands, and many of them are herders. In Kenya, the value of the pastoral livestock sector is estimated to be worth US$800 million. And the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa, which takes a regional approach to combating drought in six countries of the Horn, estimates that over 90 percent of the meat consumed in East Africa comes from pastoral herds.

"Drylands in the Horn of Africa are too large to ignore," said Jan de Leeuw, an ecologist at ILRI and a lead author of the drought report. "With only 20 percent of Kenya's land suitable for arable crop production, and with an expanding population, the country cannot continue ignoring these dry areas without facing significant challenges in ensuring sufficient food production. Some of the worst impacts of the drought can be avoided if the region's dryland livestock systems are well regulated."

The best way to prevent famine in arid lands is to ensure herder access to critical dry-season grazing and watering areas. All the herders interviewed for the report said that obstacles to the movement of their herds – caused by lack of roads, land conflicts and demographic pressures – constituted the largest problem they had in protecting their animals and livelihoods....

An N'Dama cattle herd in West Africa, shot by ILRI, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Officials eye Irene, begin preparations

Ray Gronberg in the Herald-Sun (North Carolina): Local officials have begun preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Irene, even as they hope weather patterns push the storm far enough to the east for the Triangle to miss its worst effects. Projections at 5 p.m. on Tuesday were calling for Irene to pass along the North Carolina coast on Saturday.

Federal officials, though, cautioned that the season’s ninth named hurricane is a big storm that will make itself felt up and down the county’s eastern seaboard. “Just about everyone who lives on the East Coast needs to be prepared for it,” National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read told reporters during a Tuesday morning conference call.

To Federal Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate, Irene’s predicted track at that time was looking like those of Hurricanes Bertha and Floyd, 1996 and 1999 storms, respectively, that caused significant destruction in eastern North Carolina. A subsequent update of the projected track moved it a bit more to the east. But state and local officials are taking no chances.

In Durham, Emergency Management Director Jeff Batten asked police, fire and other officials to review their emergency plans, to ensure that each of their departments “understand what their role and responsibilities are” if Irene causes trouble here....

Irene became the first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic season this weekend. The storm, with 80 mph sustained winds, passed over Puerto Rico on Sunday, and is now on a path towards the Bahamas and Florida coastline. A ridge of high pressure to the north of the storm, around Bermuda, should stay in place over the next few days, forcing the storm along a west-northwest path. Irene is expected to strengthen over the next 48 hours, potentially into a Category 2 hurricane. This image from the GOES-East satellite shows the storm on August 22, 2011 at 1345z.

Thawing permafrost could release vast amounts of carbon and accelerate climate change by the end of this century

Dan Krotz in the Lawrence Berkeley National Labotatory News: Billions of tons of carbon trapped in high-latitude permafrost may be released into the atmosphere by the end of this century as the Earth’s climate changes, further accelerating global warming, a new computer modeling study indicates. The study also found that soil in high-latitude regions could shift from being a sink to a source of carbon dioxide by the end of the 21st century as the soil warms in response to climate change.

The research was led by Charles Koven of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). He conducted the research with a team of scientists from France, Canada, and the United Kingdom while he was a postdoctoral researcher at France’s Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement. The modeling was conducted at a supercomputing facility run by France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission.

...Their findings counter results from a comparison of models that was included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 fourth assessment report. The comparison found that climate change will spark a growth in high-latitude vegetation, which will pull in more carbon from the atmosphere than thawing permafrost will release.

But unlike earlier models, the new model includes detailed processes of how carbon accumulates in high-latitude soil over millennia, and how it’s released as permafrost thaws. Because it includes these processes, the model begins with much more carbon in the soil than previous models. It also better represents the carbon’s vulnerability to decomposition as the soil warms.

As a result, the new model found that the increase in carbon uptake by more vegetation will be overshadowed by a much larger amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. “Including permafrost processes turns out to be very important,” says Koven, who joined Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division as a staff scientist earlier this year. “Previous models tended to dramatically underestimate the amount of soil carbon at high latitudes because they lacked the processes of how carbon builds up in soil. Our model starts off with more carbon in the soil, so there is much more to lose with global warming.”...

A sink becomes a source, as revealed by these two simulations of net CO2 fluxes due to climate change at the end of 21st century. The control simulation on the left did not include permafrost processes. The permafrost simulation on the right included processes that depict how carbon accumulates in soil and how it decomposes. In the latter simulation, large carbon losses are seen in central Canada where substantial permafrost stocks exist that are vulnerable to warming. Units are in grams of carbon per square meter per year.

Nepal dams won't stop Indian floods

Joydeep Gupta in China Dialogue: “Every monsoon when there is a flood in Bihar, including this year right now, local politicians blame Nepal and the lack of dams there” For decades, Indian planners working to harness the waters of the Ganges and its tributaries have believed building dams in Nepal will save Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh from the floods that occur almost every year. A recent comprehensive study led by the World Bank says this belief is no more than a myth.

The belief was that there were substantial upstream reservoir storage possibilities in the Ganges basin that straddles India, Nepal and Bangladesh. But the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment (SBA) coordinated by the World Bank and carried out by experts in the region has found that the largest 23 dams that have been conceived would only hold an additional 13 percent of the annual flow of water. The preliminary findings of the SBA have been presented to government officials in all three countries and were unveiled in public at the World Water Week in Stockholm.

The experts working with the South Asia Water Initiative (SAWI) coordinated by the World Bank found that in terms of flood control, there would be little basin-wide effect of upstream storage, and that effects were unlikely at the sub-basin level either. The models – developed by the Institute of Water Management in Bangladesh, the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and RMSI, a consultancy firm in India, and vetted by SAWI experts – showed that at the sub-basin level, the dams would reduce peak flows, but would not necessarily reduce floods. Most rivers in the basin are largely embanked, and local rainfall and embankment failures cause the most flooding, the study found....

Bihar flooding in 2008, shot by Sharada Prasad, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Namibian towns must plan for disasters

John Ekongo in AllAfrica.com via New Era (Namibia): Municipalities in the country have been urged to consider putting into place policies that will address issues of global warming in their own backyards in the event of an emergency. Governor of the Erongo Region, Cleophas Mutjavikua, brought this concern to the fore yesterday while addressing the three-day African Mayor's Climate Change Declaration Conference in Walvis Bay.

He said Namibia is one of the countries that will be adversely affected by global warming and climate change because of its aridity, hence Namibian town authorities should prioritise climate change issues. "The country is characterised by high climate variability, evident from persistent droughts, unpredictable and variable rainfall patterns, variability in temperatures and scarcity of water. The country also experiences high solar radiation, low humidity and high temperatures," he said.

Mutjavikua expressed concern that many local authorities are highly vulnerable to climate change and few possess capacity for adaptation - let alone capacity to deal with disaster associated with climatic change.

Over the years, Rundu, Windhoek, Oshakati, Ondangwa, Walvis Bay and Henties Bay have all experienced the harsh realities of climatic change - with floods, heavy rainfall, pest-infested crop fields and rising river levels all threatening livelihoods and infrastructure in the towns. Towns can only mitigate the impact of climatic change if they start taking global warming issues seriously, said Mutjavikua...

An aerial view of Windhoek, shot by Brian McMorrow, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Mandurah's climate change challenge

Andrew O'Connor in ABC News (Australia): It was a grim warning that placed Mandurah on the leading edge of a change that could radically reshape one of the nation's fastest-growing seaside communities. Climate change not coming to Western Australia - it's already here.

The Climate Commission's travelling roadshow, led by former Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, rolled through the South West armed with a new report and a clear message - we must act now. The report, "The Critical Decade", condensed existing research and focused solely on the impact of climate change on Western Australia.

...For coastal communities the most ominous of the report's statements was about rising sea levels which it says "will exacerbate existing vulnerability to flooding and beach erosion." According to Climate Commission member, Professor Lesley Hughes, that rise, which is happening worldwide, is happening relatively quickly.

...With large areas of development in low lying areas, Mandurah is particularly vulnerable to erosion and flooding. One person who is not alarmed is the city's mayor Paddi Creevey whose council has already spent years preparing to weather whatever storms climate change may bring. "There's nothing to panic about, we are very much open for business but we will be well-prepared," she said.

The City of Mandurah has largely sidestepped the controversy and politics of climate change, instead focussing on the practical, local steps it can take to prepare for any contingency. Ms Creevey says that work started in 2007 and has included a range of vulnerability assessments and other measures.

"We've had our staff working in collaboration with universities, CSIRO and other places," she said. "We've done a vulnerability assessment to understand for ourselves where we need to pay attention and we've been working closely with the state and commonwealth departments to really try to make ourselves ready and, importantly, to educate our community for what we will need to face."...

Port Bouvard Bridge over the Dawesville Channel south of Mandurah, Western Australia, shot by Orderinchaos, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Hurricane Irene hits the Caribbean

Al-Jazeera.net: The first hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic Hurricane Season has developed in the Caribbean. Irene, the ninth storm of the season, developed over the Leeward Islands of Guadeloupe and Dominica and strengthened as it barrelled west towards Puerto Rico and Hispaniola.

As the storm crossed Puerto Rico, the winds topped 120kph, and Tropical Storm Irene was reclassified as Hurricane Irene; the Caribbean Islands began to prepare for the worst. Before making landfall in Puerto Rico, the authorities identified the storm as potentially life-threatening. "We have to take this seriously," the Puerto Rico governor, Luis Fortuno, warned.

The ban on Sunday morning shopping was lifted so residents could stock-pile canned food and bottled water, and would not need to venture out in the storm. Emergency shelters were opened and people in flood zones were urged to use them. People in secure houses were ordered to stay inside and stay off the roads until the storm had passed.

The hurricane flooded streets and caused rivers to overflow their banks, as it raged over the island. Winds brought down trees and left more than a million Puerto Ricans without power, but there were no immediate reports of any deaths. Schools and government offices will now remain closed on Monday, whilst the clear-up operation is underway.

After hitting Puerto Rico, the hurricane is now heading towards Hispaniola, the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. A hurricane warning has already been issued for the north coast of the Dominican Republic and although the storm is only a category one hurricane at the moment, there are concerns that it will strengthen in the next few days.

Hurricane Irene is a slow-moving storm, moving northwest at only 19 kph, which is not good news. The longer the storm is over an area, the more rain and damage it will cause. The hurricane is expected to swamp Hispaniola, the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands with 25cm of rain, and some spots could see up to 50cm. This will cause life-threatening flash-flooding and mudslides….

Tropical Storm Irene (now officially a hurricane) gaining strength on August 21, 2011. From NASA

Nausori vulnerable to climate change

Mary Rauto in the Fiji Times online: The protection of key infrastructure from climate change is important. Speaking at the opening of the baseline report presentation and vulnerability assessment for Nausori Urban and peri-urban area, Deputy Director Environment Aminiasi Qariqari said no nation, large or small, wealthy or poor, could escape the impact of climate change.

He said a team of consultants have been conducting research and assessing the Nausori area for its vulnerabilities to climate change, especially during extreme weather conditions. "The protection of key Infrastructure is vital as it supports or interconnects with other sectors within the Nausori urban center and peri-urban project area," he said.

"These other sectors also play a key role in the effects of climate change on the project area and also its exacerbation of climate change impacts." Mr Qariqari said Nausori or the Rewa delta was flood-prone and of concern was the impact of extreme floods on key infrastructure skeleton to the operational well-being of the population of Nausori, its surroundings and those who accessed it.

"The identification of these risks and vulnerable assets with appropriate implementation of adaptation plans before an extreme climatic event occurs would assist in the sustainable existence of the urban centre in the future," he said….

Taken by Merbabu in Fijian village of Navala in the Nausori Highlands in mid 2000, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic

Time to begin anticipating and adapting to climate change

PhysOrg: Despite the uncertainties surrounding climate change, it is time to start developing effective strategies that will keep the nation's transportation systems and other critical infrastructure running in the face of the adverse impacts that seem increasingly likely to occur.

This consensus emerged from a two-day leadership summit that brought together major stakeholders from the $1 trillion-plus freight transportation sector with climate change researchers to discuss the issue for the first time. The meeting was held in June at Vanderbilt University and was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Transportation Research (VECTOR), Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment (VIEE) and the University of Memphis' Intermodal Freight Transportation Institute.

"It is increasingly clear that climate change will have potentially large impacts on the nation's highways, railroads, waterways, airports and pipelines. In all likelihood, these impacts will increase in the future, so we have to learn how to plan ahead," said George Hornberger, director of VIEE and distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering.

According to the University Center for Atmospheric Research, more than 75 percent of natural disasters are triggered directly or indirectly by weather and climate. In the U.S., more than a quarter of our gross national product (+$2 trillion) is sensitive to weather and climate events, which affect our health, safety, economy, environment, transportation systems and national security. Each year, the U.S. sustains billions of dollars in weather-related damages caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, flooding, heavy snows and drought. The threats associated with extreme weather and climate change are substantial and adapting to climate change will be crucial to economic and social stability, for example by making future water, food and energy supplies reliable and sustainable. Contributing to these costs is the problem of the nation's aging infrastructure, which needs $2.2 trillion in improvements to meet today's demands, according to the 2009 National Infrastructure Report Card by the American Society of Civil Engineers….

A clear day on the Autobahn, shot by Danny Steaven, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic license

'Perfect storm' brewing among Kenya's urban poor

IRIN: The food crisis that is devastating lives and killing children throughout the Horn of Africa is not restricted to the arid lands where media attention and donor dollars are now focused. In informal urban settlements, malnutrition affects thousands of children but remains largely overlooked. Over the past five months, Concern Worldwide has recorded a 62 percent increase in cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) at clinics it supports in Nairobi slum areas.

"Since we are only reaching 33 percent of the slum population we know there are likely to be lots more people not getting help," said communications manager Elizabeth Wright. “Everything is sort of combining for a perfect storm,” Wright told IRIN. “We’re going to be seeing a full-scale nutritional emergency in the urban context. It will be too late.”

Peter Hailey from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) concurred: “The food crisis, the fuel crisis, and so on are probably affecting people in urban areas more than in the north.”

While the 2.3 percent global acute malnutrition (GAM) rate Concern found in many of Nairobi's slums falls well below the emergency threshold of 15 percent, more than 8,600 children under five are acutely malnourished in these areas. By contrast, because of its sparser population, northern Isiolo district's 15.7 percent GAM rate equates to fewer than 3,000 children under five who are acutely malnourished. “This is not as visible as cattle and goats dying,” said Amina Abdulla, programme manager for urban livelihoods and social protection at Concern. “But the crisis is as severe.” …

A view of Nairobi's Mathare Valley slum, a striking photo by Claudio Allia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Measurements at California pier reveal extent of leakage from damaged Fukushima reactor

University of Califorinia at San Diego: Atmospheric chemists at the University of California, San Diego, report the first quantitative measurement of the amount of radiation leaked from the damaged nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.

Their estimate, reported August 15 in the early, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on a signal sent across the Pacific Ocean when operators of the damaged reactor had to resort to cooling overheated fuel with seawater. “In any disaster, there’s always a lot to be learned by analysis of what happened,” said senior author Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego. “We were able to say how many neutrons were leaking out of that core when it was exposed.”

On March 28, 2011, 15 days after operators began pumping seawater into the damaged reactors and pools holding spent fuel, Thiemens’ group observed an unprecedented spike in the amount of radioactive sulfur in the air in La Jolla, California. They recognized that the signal came from the crippled power plant.

Neutrons and other products of the nuclear reaction leak from fuel rods when they melt. Seawater pumped into the reactor absorbed those neutrons, which collided with chloride ions in the saltwater. Each collision knocked a proton out of the nucleus of a chloride atom, transforming the atom to a radioactive form of sulfur.

When the water hit the hot reactors, nearly all of it vaporized into steam. To prevent explosions of the accumulating hydrogen, operators vented the steam, along with the radioactive sulfur, into the atmosphere. In air, sulfur reacts with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide gas and then sulfate particles. Both blew across the Pacific Ocean on prevailing westerly winds to an instrument at the end of the pier at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography where Thiemens’ group continuously monitors atmospheric sulfur.

Using a model based on NOAA’s observations of atmospheric conditions at the time, the team determined the path air took on its way to the pier over the preceding 10 days and found that it led back to Fukushima....

Air laden with radioactive sulfur can be traced to the source near the Fukushima reactor in Japan using data collected by NOAA. Image Credit: Gerardo Dominguez

Amid Texas drought, a water war brews

Bigad Shaban in CBS News: A drought in Texas is reaching historic proportions. The record drought has cost state farmers more than $5 billion in lost crops and livestock. …Lamar and Kelly Anderson's livelihood depends on Lake Conroe. But the worst one-year drought in Texas history is drying up the 19-mile lake -- and the Andersons' marina business.

"I have two small children that are 9 and 11," said Kelly Anderson. "We've got to take care of our kids, and what the future holds is so unknown, that it's just very scary." Water levels are dropping at the rate of two feet a month, not just because of the sun. Sixty miles away, a thirsty Houston has started sipping Lake Conroe's water.

One-hundred-and-fifty-million gallons of water now flow out of Lake Conroe through a spillway every day destined for the taps of Houston. That's enough water to supply the daily needs of 750,000 people. Lake Houston is a main source of water for the area's two million people. The reservoir's water level is critically low.

…Lake Conroe was built to supply Houston during a water shortage. This is the first time in 23 years it's been tapped. Houston Mayor Annise Parker makes no apologies. "It is what it is," she said. "There may be recreational impacts. We have to provide the necessary water to our population."…

Aerial view of the Barbour's Cut area on the Houston Ship Channel in Houston, Texas, USA, before 1995. Shot by US Army Corps of Engineers

Harvey bears down on Belize

Terra Daily via AFP: Tropical Storm Harvey made landfall on Belize on Saturday, but forecasters said it was expected to fizzle out after dumping heavy rains over Central America. The eye of the storm made landfall near Dangriga and weakened as it moved farther inland.

It was moving westward at a speed of 21 kilometers (13 miles) per hour, with maximum sustained winds near 80 kilometers per hour, the Miami-based US National Hurricane Center said in its 2100 GMT advisory. Located about 70 kilometers from Belize City, the storm was forecast to continue moving inland over Belize before hovering over northern Guatemala later Saturday.

Harvey was expected to produce total rain accumulations of eight to 15 centimeters (three to six inches) across Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, with up to 25 centimeters in isolated areas.

"These rains could produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, especially over higher terrain," the NHC said. In Belize and Guatemala, authorities warned people about the risks of heavy rains and a tropical wave along the Caribbean coast, but there were no reports of damage or casualties. "The phenomenon did not cause loss of life or infrastructure damage," said a top emergency services official, Juan Jose Reyes….

Tropical Storm Harvey just north of Honduras on August 19, 2011

Lagos policy framework to curb a changing climate

Femi Amele in Next (Nigeria): As Lagos State continues to be on the receiving end of adverse climate change effects through heavy downpours and an often unpredictable weather, experts on climate change met on Thursday, to review a policy draft that would address climate change issues. The 75-page document would, hopefully, address concerns ranging from mitigation, adaptation, and environmental issues in the state.

The discussion which was organized by the Lagos State Ministry of Environment; Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA); and Policy Advocacy Project Partnership on Climate Change in Lagos State focused on exploring adaptation and disaster risk management, climate change mitigation and low carbon economy, and climate change governance. The policy framework extended into agriculture and food security; human settlement, security and health; and coastal and natural resources management.

…Sulaiman Arigbabu, head, Environment and Sustainable Development at HEDA, described the exercise as one in which stakeholders are attempting to demystify climate change to the populace and propose the avenues to engage the issues developing with an efficient framework. Mr Arigbabu stated that there is a need to develop proper policy documents and subject it to a validation exercise whereby Lagos State and relevant ministries, departments and agencies within the state can make proper input, so that it can be properly enriched.

….Among the issues highlighted in the document include: Adaptation and disaster risk management: That Lagos State could, by the year 2100, have experienced a ocean surge level rise of 2 metres, lost part of its inlands and incurred a financial loss estimated at about $500 billion according to details that emerged from its 2nd annual climate change summit. A condition that can be averted if, according to the policy draft, challenges such as lack of resources to improve climate and weather observations, data collection, vulnerability and adaption assessments; analysis of potential climate change impacts; and gaps in awareness and understanding of risks are effectively curbed….

The Atlantic coastline of Lagos, by Contimm

Caritas urges climate policy response

Tim Wallace in the Record (Australia): In the report, “A Just Climate: Our Responsibility To Act”, the Australian branch of the international Catholic aid and development agency argues the climatic effects of global warming have already caused significant social trauma in some of the world’s poorest communities. It calls on “political parties of all persuasion to implement policies that will better serve communities in Australia and overseas who are currently struggling with the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation”.

The report states: “At present, there are considerable environmental, economic and social barriers to the widespread implementation of adaptive schemes. In the countries where Caritas Australia works, the unavailability of resources for building adaptive capacity presents a particular challenge.“ Caritas Australia spokesperson Kristy Robertson said the agency did not wish to become embroiled in hotly contested political arguments about the causes of global warming. Rather, she said, the agency wanted to reflect the perspective of the communities with which it worked and focus attention on responding to the effects.

The report, nonetheless, does not shy away from advocating “a mixed approach to climate change strategy that includes mitigation, adaptation, finance, and technological development and transfer”. These four policy “building blocks” implicitly accept the mainstream scientific view that a warming world is being driven by the industrial emission of greenhouse gases combined with large-scale changes in land use. In terms of mitigation, the report argues developed countries “must accept that they have drawn on the Earth’s resources since industrialisation at the expense of the world at large, and must therefore take the lead in mitigation efforts”. …

The earth seen from Apollo 17

Developers withdraw opposition to Bay Area planning document that takes sea level rise into account

Julia Scott in the Bay Area News (San Francisco): The Bay Area's most powerful developers, trades councils and chambers of commerce have withdrawn their opposition to a planning document that makes sea level rise part of the approval process for new development at the edges of San Francisco Bay.

The Bay Conservation and Development Commission will discuss the draft Bay Plan Amendment concerning climate change -- the region's first effort to codify the long-term threat of sea level rise as a factor in the development of low-lying areas that surround the bay -- at its meeting Sept. 1.

Despite the announcement that groups like the Bay Planning Coalition and the Bay Area Council are withdrawing opposition, several city officials still have problems with the fact that the BCDC, which normally just regulates public access, is taking on the role of land use arbiter. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed sent in a letter of objection, and officials in Martinez, Fairfield and Suisun City continue to oppose the amendment.

….BCDC Executive Officer Will Travis said his agency's goals and jurisdiction have been "deeply misunderstood." The commission only has power to deny projects within a 100-foot shoreline band around the bay, and it cannot deny a proposalvbased on whether it adequately addresses the impacts of sea level rise or flooding.

"The logic has been, 'We can't afford to deal with the problem and, therefore, the problem can't exist.' We realize it takes a long time to get an awareness of why these changes are necessary. We're in the first stages of that," said Travis. The Bay Plan Amendment requires projects to submit a risk assessment that takes into account both flood risk and sea level rise, and have a plan to cope with all eventualities…

The Golden Gate Bridge shot by Mila Zinkova, who photographs more than polar scenes. Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon up 15%

AFP: Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon increased by 15 percent during the past 12 months, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said Wednesday. From July 2010 to July 2011 the vast South American rainforest lost 2,654 square kilometers (1,649 square miles) of vegetation in the states of Mato Grosso and Para, according to a preliminary analysis of satellite photos.

The year before, 2,295 square kilometers (1,426 square miles) were destroyed over that time period. This July, 225 square kilometers (139 square miles) were lost to deforestation, though this was significantly less than the 485 square kilometers (301 square miles) destroyed in July 2010.

In April 477 square kilometers (296 square miles) were destroyed, with more than 95 percent of the devastation taking place in Mato Grosso, which is a major agricultural frontier used for cattle ranches and soybean farming. Wednesday's figures were calculated from a satellite system known as DETER, which detects in real time when an area larger than 61 acres is destroyed, though its results are not always exact due to cloud cover.

Brazil, the world's fifth largest country by area, has 5.3 million square kilometers of jungle and forests -- mostly in the Amazon river basin -- of which only 1.7 million are under state protection. The rest is in private hands, or its ownership is undefined….

Martin Johnson Heade's painting of a Brazilian forest (the artist lived from 1819 to 1904)

Obama administration debating care of national forests

Erin Kelly and Elizabeth Bewley at WBIR.com describe another environmental where the auspices for the right choice don't look good: The Obama administration is crafting a new plan to manage the nation's 155 national forests, including four in North Carolina and Cherokee National Forest in East Tennessee, for the next 15 to 20 years. At stake is the future of 193 million acres of forests and grasslands that are the nation's single largest source of drinking water and home to more than 15,000 species of plants and wildlife.

The U.S. Forest Service says the new plan, due by year's end, is urgently needed to replace the forest planning rule written in 1982 during the Reagan administration. That rule, which emphasized using the forests for logging, does not reflect the latest science on climate change and how best to protect wildlife and water, the Forest Service says. Forest plans are intended to provide a framework for the managers of individual forests and grasslands in the National Forest System to use in revising their own land-management plans, which they are supposed to do every 15 years.

The rule was never intended to last nearly three decades - about twice as long as expected. President Bill Clinton attempted to replace it in 2000, but his proposal was scrapped when President George W. Bush took office in 2001. Efforts by the Bush administration to draw up its own plan were derailed when the proposals were challenged by environmentalists and thrown out by federal courts.

As President Barack Obama's administration takes up the contentious issue, it is under intense scrutiny from competing interest groups that hope to shape the plan to their liking. Neither environmentalists nor business interests are happy with the first draft of the new rule. Conservation groups say it lacks adequate protection for wildlife and water and gives individual forest managers too much discretion in how to carry out the plan. Business groups say some of its provisions to protect species could end up kicking timber companies, ranchers and others off the land….

Tongass National Forest, shot by Mark Brennan, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

As water crises intensify, cities turn to rainwater harvesting

Good Environment: As cities around the world struggle to address water shortages, Dhaka, Bangladesh, is poised to become one of most populous cities in the world that requires new buildings to collect rainwater on their roofs. Rainwater harvesting is an old idea, but laws requiring the practice in urban areas are only starting to become mainstream. Bangalore, India already requires privately owned buildings to collect rainwater, and in western states in the U.S. are beginning to relax rules that make it illegal. In Dhaka, the city is planning on modifying its building code by the end of this year to make the change.

Why it’s a good idea. Growing cities are straining water resources and droughts can shut off water across a city, yet rainwater in urban areas can be a burden, rather than a boon. Floods of storm water run-off can overwhelm sewer systems, change the flow patterns of surface water, and impact animals and plants in the surrounding area. Meanwhile, Dhaka's population—more than 15 million people—requires 2.4 billion liters of water a day, but the city can only produce 2.1 billion liters. Stored rainwater can provide an alternative to polluted rivers and dwindling groundwater supplies for drinking.

Storing water on rooftops can also help cool a city: dry, hard surfaces absorb heat and release it slowly, creating a bubble of hot air around a city and increasing air conditioner use. And provide water to urban households from a centralized system requires about five times more energy than implementing rainwater harvesting, according to several studies. Climate change could make both droughts and floods more common: in both cases, rainwater harvesting can help mitigate the impact while drawing down carbon emissions....

Rush hour in Dhaka, shot by Soman, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Lime improves Kenya's maize harvest

Isaiah Esipisu in IPS: As the world’s worst food security crisis continues across the Horn of Africa, including in Kenya, some smallholder farmers in the western part of the country are still feeding their families with last year’s abundant harvest. This is thanks to an agricultural programme focusing on reviving the fertility of the soil in the region.

According to David Mbakaya, a soil scientist at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), early findings from on going research established that the soil in Western Province was too acidic for maize production due to climatic factors and the overuse of nitrogenous fertilisers. "From field trials we have discovered that the average Potential of Hydrogen (pH) levels in soil within the region stands at 4.5 – meaning that such soil can hardly support growing maize," said Mbakaya.

Scientifically, the neutral pH level, where it is neither acidic nor alkaline, is seven. Anything below seven is acidic, and above that is alkaline. However, maize can withstand mild acidity ranging from 5.5 to 6.5. Research scientists at KARI – Kakamega branch, with funding from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, encouraged farmers to neutralise their soil using lime - a soil additive made from pulverised limestone or chalk. It is cheaply available in Kenya.

"I tried liming my land for two seasons, and the results are astounding," said Isaac Ochieng Okwanyi, a 29-year-old father of two who began farming after he was evicted from Nairobi’s Mathare slum in 2008 following the country’s post election violence….

Maize on a Mount Kenya farm, shot by CIAT, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Time to anticipate and adapt to climate change

Research & News at Vanderbilt: Despite the uncertainties surrounding climate change, it is time to start developing effective strategies that will keep the nation’s transportation systems and other critical infrastructure running in the face of the adverse impacts that seem increasingly likely to occur.

This consensus emerged from a two-day leadership summit that brought together major stakeholders from the $1 trillion-plus freight transportation sector with climate change researchers to discuss the issue for the first time. The meeting was held in June at Vanderbilt University and was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Center for Transportation Research (VECTOR), Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment (VIEE) and the University of Memphis’ Intermodal Freight Transportation Institute.

“It is increasingly clear that climate change will have potentially large impacts on the nation’s highways, railroads, waterways, airports and pipelines. In all likelihood, these impacts will increase in the future, so we have to learn how to plan ahead,” said George Hornberger, director of VIEE and distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Infrastructure damage on the rise

According to the University Center for Atmospheric Research, more than 75 percent of natural disasters are triggered directly or indirectly by weather and climate. In the U.S., more than a quarter of our gross national product (+$2 trillion) is sensitive to weather and climate events, which affect our health, safety, economy, environment, transportation systems and national security. Each year, the U.S. sustains billions of dollars in weather-related damages caused by hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, flooding, heavy snows and drought. The threats associated with extreme weather and climate change are substantial and adapting to climate change will be crucial to economic and social stability, for example by making future water, food and energy supplies reliable and sustainable. Contributing to these costs is the problem of the nation’s aging infrastructure, which needs $2.2 trillion in improvements to meet today’s demands, according to the 2009 National Infrastructure Report Card by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Unless the nation begins taking appropriate measures, these costs are likely to increase: “It appears to us that more extreme weather events – like floods and hurricanes – are becoming more frequent and pronounced and we need to be prepared to adapt to the prospect that what have been episodic events in the past become chronic features of our operational landscape in the future,” observed Craig Philip, Chief Executive Officer of the Ingram Barge Company and a member of the conference steering committee….

A FEMA photo from New Orleans, LA, August 30, 2005 -- Aerial view of some of the damage related to Hurricane Katrina the day after the hurricane hit August 29, 2005. This is the levee on the east or lower side of the Industrial Canal that has been damaged by the hurricane storm surge and/or the barge which hit the canal flood wall. The view is looking south to the Mississippi River. The Industrial Canal is in the foreground and the North Claiborne Avenue (SR39) bridge is in the right middle distance

NASA research leads to first complete map of Antarctic ice flow

NASA: NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent's deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change. The team created the map using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites.

"This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."

Rignot and UC Irvine scientists Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.

Like viewers of a completed jigsaw puzzle, the scientists were surprised when they stood back and took in the full picture. They discovered a new ridge splitting the 5.4 million-square-mile (14 million-square-kilometer) landmass from east to west.

The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet (244 meters) annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration.

"The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on," said Thomas Wagner, NASA's cryospheric program scientist in Washington. "That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior."...

First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's ALOS PALSAR, the European Space Agency's Envisat ASAR and ERS-1/2, and the Canadian Space Agency's RADARSAT-2 spacecraft. The color-coded satellite data are overlaid on a mosaic of Antarctica created with data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. Pixel spacing is 984 feet (300 meters). The thick black lines delineate major ice divides. Subglacial lakes in Antarctica's interior are also outlined in black. Thick black lines along the coast indicate ice sheet grounding lines.

Dust storms in Arizona

Carly M. Price, Morgan Sailor and Angela Piazza in the Arizona Republic: A massive wall of dust struck the Valley on Thursday night, but microbursts throughout the area wreaked the most havoc. The scattered microbursts reached winds of up to 60 mph and knocked over trees and power poles that left 1,500 customers across the Valley without power and another 3,100 around Eloy and Casa Grande during the storm's peak.

The Eloy area was one of the earliest and hardest hit by the storm, with 25 to 30 power poles knocked over. Trees falling on power lines also caused power outages. The damaging winds collapsed walls and tore off the roofs of buildings. Shingles from roofs of houses in the San Tan Valley area were also ripped off. The punishing storms caused sporadic outages throughout the area.

Of the 1,500 Valley customers without power, 1,100 of those were in Peoria. As of this morning, only two customers did not have service restored in this area. Although the Eloy and Casa Grande areas were the hardest hit, APS Spokesman Dan Wool expects the remaining customers to be basking in their air-conditioning and drinking ice-cold water by noon.

Currently, 90 customers Valley-wide are sweating the effects of powerless homes, but only 30 of those are storm-related, SRP Spokesman Jeff Lane said. The remaining homes were undergoing routine, scheduled outages. "Crews worked overnight, and as of 7 (this morning), only 15 were without power," Wool said about the Eloy area....

A dust storm blowing into Ahwatukee, Phoenix, Arizona on 22 August 2003.Shot by Junebug172, Wikimedia Commons

Effective disaster reduction steps for Pakistan

Dawn (Pakistan): International aid agency Oxfam has said that an effective disaster reduction mechanism could have prevented the effects of fresh flooding in southern areas of Pakistan. It urged the government to urgently spend at least two per cent of its district budget on disaster risk reduction measures. “Failure to develop and implement effective disaster reduction relief measures after the lessons learnt from mega floods of 2010 will keep crippling country’s economy,” Oxfam said in a statement issued here on Thursday to mark the World Humanitarian Day.

The new flooding has put an additional stress on the government’s limited resources at a time when even a year after the 2010 floods many reconstruction and rehabilitation needs are still unmet, including the repair of embankments. This has particularly put the flood-prone areas at greater risk as the monsoon rains intensify. The fresh flooding has increased the number of those needing shelter, making 60,000 people homeless together with 800,000 people who are still without proper homes after the 2010 floods.

“Humanitarian assistance provides valuable and life-saving assistance to those in need during crises. However, it is the communities that face and cope with the first wave of disaster themselves before the government and aid workers can start their rescue and relief operations.

“Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that communities are better prepared for disasters so that they are less reliant on outside assistance and can help themselves by mitigating losses at an early stage of disaster,” said Neva Khan, head of Oxfam in Pakistan. She said: “It is unfortunate that despite being a disaster-prone country people still continue to suffer year after year, and absence of effective disaster reduction relief measures is the main reason....

Britons face insurance ‘crisis’ as UK trims flood defence

Ed Ballard in Bloomberg: ...Direct Line and Aviva Plc (AV/) are among British insurers threatening to tear up an agreement with the government that commits them to cover high-risk properties, even after claims rose threefold to 4.5 billion pounds in the last decade, because the U.K. is cutting spending on flood defenses. Smaller insurers not party to the so-called Statement of Principles are also cherry-picking low-risk homes and undercutting rivals, according to Aviva’s head of claims, Dominic Clayden.

...Britain’s coalition government is engaged in the biggest spending cuts since the Second World War to cut the country’s record budget deficit. It will reduce spending on flood defense to about 2.1 billion pounds over the next four years, from 2.36 billion pounds over the last four years, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Government projects range from the construction of concrete and metal barriers, to building pumping stations and replanting forests in floodplains. One plan to build a 150 million-pound barrier to protect the city of Leeds, England from the River Aire, is now unlikely to be fully funded by the government, according to the U.K.’s Environment Agency. That means “we may not be able to provide the same scale of defenses as originally planned,” the EA said. “Many schemes in areas at high risk will continue to receive full funding from government, whilst others will receive large contributions that will go a long way towards meeting the amount needed,” DEFRA said in an e-mailed statement.

...ABI members agreed to subsidize the insurance of risky properties until June 2013 by charging homeowners in safer areas more, according to the agreement. Homeowners in affected areas only pay 42 percent of the true cost of their insurance, according to data published by Axa SA (CS) last year. “While in force to 2013, the Statement of Principles is unsustainable for future use and was agreed under very different circumstances,” said Kate Syred, home commercial director of Direct Line in an e-mailed statement. “Since then our knowledge of flooding risk and its management is more advanced.”...

Some flooding at Victoria Station in London, shot by Frankie Roberto

Fudging in greenhouse gas stats?

EMPA, which is part of ETH (Switzerland): Fluorinated hydrocarbons are potent greenhouse gases, emission of which must be reduced under the Kyoto Protocol. If you rely on the official reports of the participating countries, the output of trifluoromethane (HFC-23) in Western Europe is indeed significantly decreasing. However, pollutant measurements carried out by Empa now reveal that several countries under-report their emissions. For instance, Italy emits 10 to 20 times more HFC-23 than it officially reports.

International agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) basically have one snag: it is almost impossible to independently verify whether participating countries abide by the agreement. Thus the evaluation of whether or not the countries have achieved their reduction targets is based on the official reports by the countries that are signatories to the UNFCCC (‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’). If they report reduced emissions they're sitting pretty; if not, they are pilloried.

This could change soon. Pollutant analyses by Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, – at the Jungfraujoch research station at 3580 metres above sea level, among others – using a special gas chromatograph mass spectrometer called ‘MEDUSA’ not only enables the emission levels of more than 50 halogenated GHG to be quickly and precisely evaluated; they also make it possible to identify the emission sources regionally, thanks to atmospheric and meteorological computer models. The sobering result: Western Europe emits around twice as much HFC-23 as officially reported. A corresponding study was recently published in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’.

“Our results show that these types of measurements really are suitable for checking compliance with international agreements on air pollution control”, says Empa researcher Stefan Reimann from the ‘Air Pollution/Environmental Technology’ laboratory. It is true that the Kyoto Protocol did not specify any independent control mechanisms; this could, however, be of central importance in subsequent agreements with binding emission targets...

The Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps, where the atmospheric measurements in this study were taken, shot by Peter Alder, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

GM corn being developed for fuel instead of food

Suzanne Goldenberg in the Guardian (UK): US farmers are growing the first corn plants genetically modified for the specific purpose of putting more ethanol in gas tanks rather than producing more food. Aid organisations warn the new GM corn could worsen a global food crisis exposed by the famine in Somalia by diverting more corn into energy production.

The food industry also opposes the new GM product because, although not inedible, it is unsuitable for use in the manufacture of food products that commonly use corn. Farmers growing corn for human consumption are also concerned about cross-contamination. The corn, developed by a branch of the Swiss pesticide firm Syngenta, contains an added gene for an enzyme (amylase) that speeds the breakdown of starches into ethanol. Ethanol plants normally have to add the enzyme to corn when making ethanol.

The Enogen-branded corn is being grown for the first time commercially on about 5,000 acres on the edge of America's corn belt in Kansas, following its approval by the US Department of Agriculture last February. In its promotional material Syngenta says it will allow farmers to produce more ethanol from the corn while using less energy and water.

Meanwhile, campaigners say the corn will heap pressure on global food supplies and contribute to environmental degradation. They argue Enogen will lead to an increase in the amount of food crops going to fuel, leaving less for human consumption and leading to food price rises. That will lead to food price rises on the global market. "The temptation to look at food as another form of fuel to use for the energy crisis will exacerbate the food crisis," said Todd Post of Bread for the World, a Christian anti-hunger organisation....

From the pre-GMO era, over time, selective breeding modifies teosinte's few fruitcases (left) into modern corn's rows of exposed kernels (right). Shot by John Doebley, from a PLoS One Journal, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license

NOAA's National Weather Service taking action to build a 'weather-ready' nation

NOAA News: NOAA is launching a comprehensive initiative to build a "Weather-ready" nation to make America safer by saving more lives and protecting livelihoods as communities across the country become increasingly vulnerable to severe weather events, such as tornado outbreaks, intense heat waves, flooding, active hurricane seasons, and solar storms that threaten electrical and communication systems.

NOAA is also announcing that the United States has so far this year experienced nine separate disasters, each with an economic loss of $1 billion or more — tying the record set in 2008. The latest event to surpass the $1 billion price tag is this summer’s flooding along the Missouri and Souris rivers in the upper Midwest. This year’s losses have so far amounted to more than $35 billion.

"Severe weather represents a very real threat to public safety that requires additional robust action," said Jack Hayes, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service. "The increasing impacts of natural disasters, as seen this year, are a stark reminder of the lives and livelihoods at risk." In partnership with other government agencies, researchers, and the private sector, the National Weather Service is charting a path to a weather-ready nation through:

• Improved precision of weather and water forecasts and effective communication of risk to local authorities;
• Improved weather decision support services with new initiatives such as the development of mobile-ready emergency response specialist teams;
• Innovative science and technological solutions such as the nationwide implementation of Dual Pol radar technology, Integrated Water Resources Science and Services, and the Joint Polar Satellite System;
• Strengthening joint partnerships to enhance community preparedness;
• Working with weather enterprise partners and the emergency management community to enhance safety and economic output and effectively manage environmental resources....

Thames Water begins pipe replacement project near Olympic Park

Carys Matthews in edie.net: Thames Water is replacing century-old pipes near the Olympic Park in a bid to reduce leaks and bursts. The £630,000 project in Waltham Forest, London started last weekend (13 August) and will see the water company lay 1.8km of robust plastic piping in place of 100-year-old cast iron pipes.

As part of the project, which is expected to take around four months, pipes in Lea Bridge Road, Leyton, will initially be replaced before work can be done in other areas. According to Thames Water, the plastic pipes will significantly reduce the volume of water that is lost through leaks and help to avoid future disruption to services.

Thames Water's head of capital delivery, Lawrence Gosden, said: "The pipe we are replacing is old and leaky. Not only does this waste water, it also inconveniences people when we have to dig up the road and do repairs.

"While we apologise for the inevitable disruption work of this nature causes, replacing old and leaking mains is essential as our water resources come under increasing pressure from climate change and population growth."...

Construction in 2009 at what will be London's Olunder the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licenseympic Park, shot by Damien Everett, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,

Nigeria launches two satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters

Welcome to space, Nigeria! From the International Business Times: The "NigeriaSat-2" and "NigeriaSat-X" spacecraft were lofted into orbit aboard a Russian Dnepr rocket from a launch pad in the town of Yasny, southern Russia. Nigeria worked with UK engineers on the project and satellites, which are being monitored from two control stations in Guildford, UK, and Abuja in Nigeria.

Dr Seidu Mohammed, the Director-General of NASRDA, announced that the satellites would be launched in early July. Prof. Ita Ewa, the Minister of Science and Technology, said, "The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) has received confirmation from the launcher in Russia that the two satellites are now set for launch on the already scheduled date, having made all preparations both human and logistics for a successful launch."

Engineers say the satellites will provide Nigeria with the ability to enhance food security through monthly crop monitoring, advance the country's technological capability. They add that "imaging satellites" could have a variety of applications, including the monitoring of disaster-prone areas.

Both satellites were built at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford, under contract with the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA)....

The Benue River in Nigeria shot by NASA, an image I hope to soon replace with Nigeria's own space imagery