Civil engineers destroy a test levee in the Netherlands

Rennselaer news release: Civil engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were part of an international research team that collapsed a full-scale dike this week in The Netherlands. The test dike was embedded with advanced sensors and traditional measurement instruments, and results of the study are expected to help validate powerful new technologies for monitoring the health of aging flood-control infrastructure.

The dike was situated in a specially constructed basin, which the researchers filled with water. The slow addition of water into the basin increased the pressure on the dike. Water forced its way into the dike, and eventually softened the bottom of the dike and shifted the earth underneath, prompting the overall structure to collapse. The study was led by Dutch research institute Deltares, in partnership with Rensselaer and 14 other companies and universities from around the world. It was the research team’s third full-scale levee test collapse this summer. The full results of the tests will be presented at the Flood Risk Conference in November 2012 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

“The failure of flood-control infrastructure is very real, and can lead to catastrophic flooding as we unfortunately witnessed in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina,” said Tarek Abdoun, associate dean for research and graduate programs in the School of Engineering and the Judith and Thomas Iovino ’73 Career Development Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rensselaer. “A large-scale test like this can help supply us with invaluable data to inform and validate our efforts to create a long-term, real-time monitoring system that can assess the health of levees and help identify the vulnerability of levee or dam sections before they fail.”

...The collapsed dike was fit with a large number of different sensors, including SAPP (shape-acceleration-pore pressure) arrays that were developed through a partnership between Rensselaer and industrial collaborator Measurand. SAPP sensor arrays are designed to be installed into the ground, beneath and around levees and dams. The cost-effective arrays accurately measure soil deformation, vibration, and pore pressure at critical points of a flood-control system....

Photo from the Rennselaer web site

Pakistan flood compensation after assessment

Pakistan Today: Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf said on Saturday that the federal government is currently collecting the data on the damages caused by rain and floods in the country and that any compensation package would be announced once the compilation has been completed.

The prime minister though assured that the government will compensate the people for their damaged crops and houses, and will rehabilitate them, restore ruined infrastructure. He also directed Minister for Climate Change Rana Farooq Saeed to facilitate the flood-hit communities at all costs.

He announced a package of Rs 100 million for the provision of food, tents and other relief goods to the thousands, who have been displaced, and a compensation of Rs 400,000 for each of the 15 people, who lost their lives in the flash floods.

The Baitul Maal has also been instructed to buy essential items from Utility Stores and provide them to the affected people as soon as possible.

Ashraf said that the government was ensuring the speedy transportation of medicines to the affected areas, which will be provided to the people free of charge to save them from diseases. He announced raising the height of a dam in Rojhan Mazari by four feet. Rojhan Mazari has already been declared disaster hit....

A correction from the California Department of Insurance

Oh, the perils of being a link blog -- if the story I link to has a mistake, we need to correct it. Byron Tucker, a deputy insurance commissioner in the California Department of Insurance, got in touch with Carbon Based today, pointing out that a story we linked to yesterday was inaccurate.  Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has not endorsed the report from Ceres. Don Jergler at the Insurance Journal has already made this correction. 

Tucker gave us the following statement: “Ceres should be commended for its hard work in this area and a thoughtful report which highlights some of the potential risks climate change and extreme weather events present to the insurance industry,” said California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones.  “We will evaluate this report and consider its findings and recommendations in conjunction with our Climate Risk Survey results. Data of this nature can be very useful in ongoing risk analysis to help insurers and regulators identify areas of concern posed by climate change.”  

Gandara barangays train on increasing resilience of communities to disaster

Ninfa Iluminda B. Quirante in the Philippine Information Agency:  Plan International with partners has given 10 Gandara barangays more focus on disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation skills to increase communities’ resilience to disaster.

Barangay folks and officials from Barangays Tambongan, Natimonan, Concepcion, Nacobe, Tagnao, Catorse de Agosto, Casab-ahan, San Agustin, Sto Nino, and Pizarro learned today about Building Capacity of Local Governments and Civil Societies and Communities on Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation.

These barangays have functional Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction Management Councils (DRRMC), according to Catorse de Agosto Barangay Captain Charlon Piczon.  But disaster preparedness was more detailed as resource speakers brought in by Plan International started to present the duties and responsibilities of the local DRRMC.

These barangays have occasionally been flooded as the Gandara River tends to swell and overflow inundating homes and farmlands.  Most of these barangays have settled in the riverbanks.

Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction Management Officer (MDRRMO) Maximo Arcos is quick to say that no casualty has been recorded despite the frequent flooding.  But Plan International and partners Oxfam, Care, Christian Aid (CA), Handicap International, and Action Against Hunger would not want to risk children experiencing the horrors of flooding.

“Finding long-term solutions to build resiliency among these poor people in high-risk communities has been the objective of the partners and Plan International,” according to a statement from Program Unit Manager Fe Montano....

A street in Tarangnan, on the Philippine island of Samar, shot by Mjdspider, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Satellite imagery leaves questions about forage for wildlife

SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry: Satellite imagery helps researchers scan vast landscapes to learn about vegetation available to grazing mammals but the technology may not supply all the data necessary to determine if the animals have access to a healthy diet, according to a paper published this month in the "Journal of Wildlife Management."

The paper, recently published by a research team including Dr. Sadie Ryan of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), is based on a two-year study of African buffalo in a South African savanna ecosystem.

"This is the first time this kind of study has been done in a tropical landscape," Ryan said. She said the research tested the common assumption that reflected greenness, detected through remote sensing, indicates the quality of the forage.

"The crux of it is that researchers keep using this index, called the Normalized Vegetation Difference Index, as a measure of good vegetation without actually assessing if it is good vegetation," Ryan said. "We see now it's a good tool for gathering one kind of information, but not for another."

In reality, she said, data derived through remote sensing in this landscape offered dependable information about the protein content in vegetation but little about whether the plants contain sufficient levels of phosphorous animals need to produce protein that helps build muscles....

United Nations launches initiative to plug 'gaps' in Thai disaster management

Phuket Gazette (Thailand): Marking nearly one year ago since floodwaters inundated most of Thailand and its capital Bangkok, the Royal Thai Government and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) launched a new initiative today to boost the capacity of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (DDPM) to be able to respond to large-scale floods and other natural disasters.

The DDPM is the central agency in Thailand responsible for coordinating disaster response and disaster risk reduction. Its Phuket office features frequently in the news, particularly during monsoon season floods and in the days before and after tsunami drills and tower tests.

“This partnership with UNDP is an opportunity to enhance the level of knowledge and the disaster management capacity of Thailand to acceptable international standards,” said Bangkok-based Wiboon Sanguanpong, Director-General of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation.

“Disaster severity is increasing and is impacting Thailand to a much greater extent. Department staff and the organization as a whole need to learn new knowledge and skills to deal with the increasing complexity.”

The three-year initiative will strengthen the capacity of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation to adapt to disasters when they occur, by boosting the institutional capacity of both the Department and related line ministries to be better prepared to address climate change and environmental security issues....

Thai military and volunteers work to repair a leak in a dike on the canal in On Nut, Bangkok. The flooding was a mere 300 meters away from Bangkok's main thoroughfare Sukhumvit, but has been contained, October 31, 2011. (VOA)

Governments must recognize their stock of risk – MDG Report

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: UNISDR chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed the focus on the importance of systematic recording of disaster losses and impacts contained in the 2012 MDG Gap Task Force Report launched by the Secretary-General yesterday.

Ms. Wahlström said: "Access to information is critical to successful disaster risk management. You cannot manage what you cannot measure. The 43 countries which have established and institutionalized national disaster loss data bases are leading the way when it comes to a coherent and targeted response to investment in resilient infrastructure.

"Ultimately, good disaster management makes a strong contribution to poverty reduction by eliminating recurring disaster losses from extensive disaster events such as floods and storms and avoiding interruptions to food supply, health service provision, education and public transport."

The Report entitled "The Global Partnership for Development: Making Rhetoric a Reality" warns that the risk of disasters is increasing in developed and developing countries.  The population living in flood-prone river basins has increased by 114% over the last forty years and on cyclone-exposed coastlines by 192%. More than half the world's largest cities are located in areas of high risk from the occurrence of earthquakes. With growing exposure, the risk of economic loss is increasing.

The report points out: "Further progress in risk reduction will depend on Governments taking decisive steps to explicitly recognize their stock of risk. A crucial first step involves the systematic recording of disaster losses and impacts, and the institutionalization of national disaster inventory systems." ...

November 7, 1824 in the square at the Bolshoi Theatre. Painting by F.Y. Alexeev.

Glacier drainage

Andy Soos in Environment News Service: Fast-flowing and narrow glaciers have the potential to trigger massive changes in the Antarctic ice sheet and contribute to rapid ice-sheet decay and sea-level rise, a new study has found. These glaciers are suspected to act as a sort of stream that drain off inland ice sheets. Research results published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveal in more detail than ever before how warming waters in the Southern Ocean are connected intimately with the movement and thinning of massive ice-sheets deep in the Antarctic interior.

"It has long been known that narrow glaciers on the edge of the Antarctica act as discrete arteries termed ice streams, draining the interior of the ice sheet," says Dr Chris Fogwill, an author of the study and an ARC Future Fellow with the UNSW (University of New South Wales)Climate Change Research Center.

"However, our results have confirmed recent observations suggesting that ocean warming can trigger increased flow of ice through these narrow corridors. This can cause inland sectors of the ice-sheet - some larger than the state of Victoria - to become thinner and flow faster."

The researchers, led by Dr Nicholas Golledge from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, tested high-resolution model simulations against reconstructions of the Antarctic ice sheet from 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum.

They used a new model, capable of resolving responses to ice-streams and other fine- scale dynamic features that interact over the entire ice sheet. This had not previously been possible with existing models. They then used this data to analyze the effects of a warming ocean over time.

The results showed that while glacier acceleration triggered by ocean warming is relatively localized, the extent of the resultant ice-sheet thinning is far more widespread. This observation is particularly important in light of recently observed dynamic changes at the margins of Antarctica. It also highlighted areas that are more susceptible than others to changes in ocean temperatures....

Shackleton's ship, Endurance, trapped in the ice of the Weddell Sea. Frank Hurley took this indelible shot

Drought, climate change posing threats to Colorado economy

Kirk Siegler in KUNC.org: This year’s stubborn drought and the changing climate will have serious consequences for Colorado’s multi-billion dollar recreation and farming industries, as well as the state’s forests that have seen severe, un-naturally large wildfires recently.  Those are just a two of the takeaways from a two-day statewide drought conference that's wrapping up Thursday in Denver.

Thursday morning, Colorado water managers, policy experts and decision makers got some advice from a nearby state that was in our position last year – Texas.

Mike Bewley of that state’s Division of Emergency Management headed response efforts to one of the worst droughts to hit the Lonestar State since the 1950s that led to water rationing, ranchers being forced to sell off their cattle herds, wildfires. Sound familiar?

"Everyone knows we built the West during a 25 year wet period. This is a problem for the western United States," Bewley said. "Everyone knows we built the West during a 25 year wet period, I heard someone say the other day ‘we haven’t had normal rainfall in Texas in 15 years,’ and I’m like, well maybe that’s not normal anymore."

Texas was first through the door, but not the last, Bewley warned. "If you’re in the western United States, it’s coming your way, it’s just my opinion, my gut feeling, I have no scientific basis to say that, but it’s coming," he said....

Daughter of miner in front of company store. Calumet Fuel Company, Delcarbon #2 Mine, Delcarbon, Huerfano County, Colorado.

Report points to insurance industry’s vulnerability to climate change

Don Jergler in the Insurance Journal: A report out Thursday urges the insurance industry to act to protect itself and the community against the increasing frequency of extreme weather due to climate change. In short, the report, its authors and those endorsing it want more efforts made to calculate climate change into risk management.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones and Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler were among those who endorsed the report’s recommendations, and Kreidler spoke during a conference call with the press on Thursday on behalf of the report, urging a change by the industry and his fellow regulators.

The report, “Stormy Future for U.S. Property/Casualty Insurers: The Growing Costs and Risks of Extreme Weather Events,” provides tools for insurance regulators and investors to engage industry and protect consumers, its authors say.

Ceres, the nonprofit that advocates for environmental leadership, authored the report, which builds on this summer’s devastating drought and record high temperatures and notes that extreme weather events pose a great risk to U.S. property/casualty insurers, which were hard hit by last year’s $32 billion in insured losses....

Flow of Merced River after Autumn's rain storm in Yosemite Valley, shot by Brocken Inaglory, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Sustainable coastal management and climate adaptation examined in new book

Phys.org: Sustainable management of Australia's much-loved coast is complex and challenging. Much is already known about coastal environments, but to date, coastal management has had limited success; in some cases management decisions have made problems worse.

Many CSIRO researchers have contributed to a new book, Sustainable Coastal Management and Climate Adaptation: Global Lessons from Regional Approaches in Australia, being launched today at the Coast to Coast conference in Brisbane.   Australia's coast is shaped by severe events such as cyclones and floods, and climate change is increasing their number and intensity. This book examines past, present and possible future coastal management and research, based on real cases.

CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship Acting Science Director, Dr Andreas Schiller, says that our coastal populations are growing, increasing social, environmental and economic vulnerability to these hazards. "This book explores the evolution of coastal management in Australia and provides critical insights into contemporary experience and understanding," Dr Schiller said. "It draws on contemporary theory and lessons from case examples to highlight the roles of research and community engagement in coastal management. "

The book concludes with a chapter of recommendations, which can help guide coastal management and research around the world." The book is produced by the Coastal Collaboration Cluster, which includes researchers from CSIRO, Curtin University of Technology, Deakin University, Flinders University, the University of Adelaide, University of the Sunshine Coast, University of Tasmania and University of Wollongong....

Man-made English saltmarshes 'failing to meet European plant standards'

Jessica Aldred in the Guardian (UK): Man-made English salt marshes are failing to meet European conservation regulations that stipulate they should be as rich in plant life as natural wetlands, a new study warned on Thursday.

Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water brought in by the tides, and are found all around the coastline of Great Britain. They are important ecosystems that provide essential food, refuge or habitat for fish, invertebrates and birds. The flowering plants that live there are very specialised, as only a few species can tolerate the salty conditions.

Scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) compared the vegetation of 18 marshes created as part of man-made changes to the coastline since 1991, and 17 marshes created accidentally by storm surges since 1881, with 34 natural salt marsh sites in the UK.

They found that the artificially created salt marshes suffered significantly reduced biodiversity. Characteristic perennial plants such as sea lavender (Limonium vulgare), sea thrift (Armeria maritima), sea arrowgrass (Triglochin maritima) and sea plantain (Plantago maritima) were very poorly represented, while shrubs such as sea purslane (Atriplex portulacoides) were becoming dominant..

Under the EU habitats directive, new salt marsh must be created every time natural salt marsh is lost to coastal development or erosion caused by sea-level rise. New marshes must display "equivalent biological characteristics" to their natural counterparts....

Bog flora at Bannow, shot by Pam Brophy, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Shrinking snow depth on Arctic sea ice threatens ringed seal habitat

Nancy Gohring in the University of Washington News: As sea ice in the Arctic continues to shrink during this century, more than two thirds of the area with sufficient snow cover for ringed seals to reproduce also will disappear, challenging their survival, scientists report in a new study.

The ringed seal, currently under consideration for threatened species listing, builds caves to rear its young in snow drifts on sea ice. Snow depths must be on average at least 20 centimeters, or 8 inches, to enable drifts deep enough to support the caves.

“It’s an absolute condition they need,” said Cecilia Bitz, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. She’s a co-author of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

But without sea ice, the platform that allows the snow to pile up disappears, ultimately reducing the area where the seals can raise their pups.

Bitz typically focuses on studying the area and thickness of sea ice. “But when a seal biologist telephoned and asked what our climate models predict for snow depth on the ice, I said, ‘I have no idea,’” she said. “We had never looked.”

That biologist was co-author Brendan Kelly of the National Science Foundation and he was curious about the snow depth trend because he was contributing to a governmental report in response to the petition to list the seals as threatened.

The researchers, including lead author and UW atmospheric sciences graduate student Paul Hezel, found that snowfall patterns will change during this century but the most important factor in determining snow depth on the ice will be the disappearance of the sea ice....

A ringed seal in its lair, shot by Brendan Kelly, found on the University of Washington website

Wildfires in the western US have worsened in past decade, analysis shows

Janet Zimmerman in the Press-Enterprise (California): Wildfires in the West have been larger and more frequent in the past decade than in any of the 30 years before that, according to an analysis of U.S. Forest Service data released Tuesday, Sept. 18.

The news may come as little surprise after a summer of devastating blazes across Colorado, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and Northern California in a season that is shaping up to be one of the worst on record in the western United States. The official fire season won’t be over for two more months.

"This is not an encouraging trend," said Richard Wiles, director of research for Climate Central, a Princeton, N.J.-based nonprofit group that studies the science of climate change.

Climate Central analyzed 42 years of data for its report, "The Age of Western Wildfires," and chose Forest Service statistics because they were the most complete, Wiles said. The past decade has been the worst for the sheer size and number of fires, a trend that will become the new normal, the report says.

When compared to the average year in the 1970s, in the past decade there were:

• Seven times more fires over 10,000 acres each year.
• Nearly five times more fires larger than 25,000 acres each year.
• Twice as many fires over 1,000 acres each year, with an average of more than 100 per year from 2002 through 2011, compared with fewer than 50 during the 1970s...

Forest fire photo by the US Department of Agriculture, location unknown

Climate scientists put predictions to the test

Daniel Stolte at the University of Arizona News: Climate-prediction models show skills in forecasting climate trends over time spans of greater than 30 years and at the geographical scale of continents, but they deteriorate when applied to shorter time frames and smaller geographical regions, a new study has found. 

Published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, the study is one of the first to systematically address a longstanding, fundamental question asked not only by climate scientists and weather forecasters, but the public as well: How good are Earth system models at predicting the surface air temperature trend at different geographical and time scales?

Xubin Zeng, a professor in the University of Arizona department of atmospheric sciences who leads a research group evaluating and developing climate models, said the goal of the study was to bridge the communities of climate scientists and weather forecasters, who sometimes disagree with respect to climate change.

According to Zeng, who directs the UA Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center, the weather forecasting community has demonstrated skill and progress in predicting the weather up to about two weeks into the future, whereas the track record has remained less clear in the climate science community tasked with identifying long-term trends for the global climate.

“Without such a track record, how can the community trust the climate projections we make for the future?” said Zeng, who serves on the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate of the National Academies and the Executive Committee of the American Meteorological Society. “Our results show that actually both sides' arguments are valid to a certain degree.”

“Climate scientists are correct because we do show that on the continental scale, and for time scales of three decades or more, climate models indeed show predictive skills. But when it comes to predicting the climate for a certain area over the next 10 or 20 years, our models can’t do it.”...

These maps show the observed (left) and model-predicted (right) air temperature trend from 1970 to 1999. The climate model developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is used here as an example. More than 50 such simulations were analyzed in the published study. (Illustration: Koichi Sakaguchi)

Mass slaughter of farm animals set to push food prices up 14%

Rupert Neate and Josephine Moulds in the Guardian (UK): The mass slaughter of millions of farm animals across the world is expected to push food prices to their highest ever levels. As well as hitting consumers' pockets, the predicted 14% jump in food prices will also dash the Bank of England's hopes of pushing inflation down to 2% by next year.

Farmers across the world have begun a mass slaughter of their pig and cattle herds because they cannot afford the cost of feed, which has soared following the worst US drought in living memory, according to a report published on Wednesday.

Experts at investment bank Rabobank warn that the mass "herd liquidation" will contribute to a 14% jump in the price of the average basket of food by next summer. On Tuesday, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) said lower food prices had help bring inflation down to 2.5% in August.

That brings it closer to the Bank's 2% target and should help consumers who have seen their spending power shrink as wages fail to match inflation. The Bank expects inflation to ease below the 2% target by early next year, but that could be scuppered by rising food, oil and commodity prices.

Rabobank said the slaughter of millions of pigs has already led to a 31% increase in the price of pork and the costs of other meats are also expected to soar as "US livestock herds are likely to be liquidated at an accelerating pace in the first half of 2013"....

Image by Vabampidis at en.wikipedia, public domain

East Timor may take climate refugees

Geraldine Coutts of Radio Australia interviewed the President of Kiribati: The president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, has been awarded the 2012 Hillary Laureate for leadership for raising global awareness about the effects of climate change on Pacific Nations.

The Hillary Institute of International leadership says President Tong's tireless efforts have been dramatic and pointed out how big nations are unfairly impacting smaller ones.

Some village communities from Kiribati's 32 pancake-flat coral atolls have had to be re-located because of climate change.

Anote Tong, Kiribati President [said]: "The most severe impact is the waves and the ocean on the shoreline. We've had some villages that have had to be totally relocated. There have been a number of villages now that have had similar problems with intrusion of the seawater into the fresh water ponds affecting food crops and so it's an ongoing but I think more frighteningly it's an increasing phenomenon and that is, I think perhaps, the most worrying factor.

...COUTTS: So a lot more people are in danger?

TONG: Oh I see this as getting worse, as the projected scenario of events as the impact of sea level rise get worse; we can anticipate an increase in frequency of occurrences like this....

...COUTTS: Well what are the choices? Where could you go? Are you negotiating to get land elsewhere?

TONG: Well we've been looking, there haven't been a great numbers of offers coming forward but I'm very happy to say that a number of pacific countries have come forward. East Timor has made a concrete offer and we've yet to discuss that in more detail. This is a new development and it's very encouraging because we don't choose just to go somewhere because we cannot do that...

Portraits of drought: Corn growers hit hardest

Judy Keen in USA Today: The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated last week that U.S. farmers will harvest 10.7 billion bushels of corn this year, the smallest crop in six years and down 13% from 2011. Forty-one percent of the Illinois corn crop is rated very poor, and 34% is in poor condition. Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota and Indiana are the top-producing corn states.

Paul Bertels of the National Corn Growers Association says farmers are at a crucial moment. "They are going to start making planting decisions (for next year) when they step off the combine," he says, and they could face seed shortages.

Rain from Hurricane Irene last month "was about a month to six weeks late for us," Harvey says. The corn crop was already too far gone to be helped. But Irene's moisture and rain that has fallen since then did help the soybean crop, which hasn't been harvested here yet.

The rain revived the green in pastures, ditches and yards, Harvey says, but looks can be deceiving. "The scary thing with this drought is the implications are in the future," he says. Everyone hopes for a wet winter....

A cornfield near Penn Yann, New York, shot by Jlantzy (Jamie Lantzy), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Putting up a green shield against the Mongolian desert

Manipadma Jena in IPS: ...Lianjun’s half hectare of farmland sports neat spaced-out rows of maize crops, as in that of Hua Limei, his neighbouring farm owner, and most others on that stretch. “We earn around 400 yuans (63 dollars) from each harvested mu (15mu equals one hectare),” Limei tells IPS.

...It’s hard to believe that these farmlands and Taipingdi township were harsh sandy deserts just 60 years back. At that time, less than 66 hectares of forest were edged in by 4,500 sand dunes. Lianjun’s grandfather barely eked out a fourth of what he harvests today. Today deep forest belts shelter 10,000 hectares of Taipingdi farmland.

...As the sand progressively degrades the farmland, growing poverty creates a vicious cycle. “The poorer the farmer, the more he’s desperate to get from the land. Consequently over-farming leads to worse degradation and he loses more than he gains,” 34-year old BaoYongxin, an activist farmer from Aohan county tells IPS in Chifeng city.

...At the forest department training centre they were told about various conversion methods: covering the shifting sands with a plastic net; chemical treatment to bind the surface sand; and containing sand mobility by regular interval fencing with shrubs, stone and straw.

The Aohan community chose a combination of mechanical and biological measures to re-vegetate and reforest its land. The checker board method, after the dunes had been somewhat leveled by machine, was to draw three-feet squares that were then closely barricaded by 25 cm lengths of straw with half of their length secured into the sand....

A potato harvest in Mongolia, USAID photo

Typhoon Sanba batters both Koreas, drenches Japan

NBC News: A powerful typhoon lashed North and South Korea with strong wind and heavy rain Monday, killing at least one person, leaving dozens of others homeless and cutting power to many homes and businesses in the South.

In North Korea, rain drenched parts of the country, including the eastern coastal city of Wonsan, but did not reach the capital, Pyongyang, which was windy Monday but was spared the heavy rains that lashed the South Korean capital.

Typhoon Sanba, which battered southern South Korea around midday Monday, was pushing northward and expected to move into eastern waters later in the day.

Sanba knocked out power to about 26,900 homes and shops in South Korea, the state-run National Emergency Management Agency said. The storm also forced cancelations of about 330 flights and 170 ferries, it said. Huge waves battered the southern coast.

A 50-year-old woman died in a landslide in southeastern South Korea, and another woman was injured in a separate landslide, agency officials said. More than 170 people were left homeless, they said.

Before reaching South Korea, the storm hit Japan. About 67,000 homes in southwestern Japan lost power and some areas flooded. A man drowned Sunday while swimming in high waves off the southern Japanese island of Ishigaki, according to the coast guard....

Typhoon Sanba on September 15, 2012

Shrinking lake threatens livelihoods in Malawi

IRIN: Mposa Village, in south-eastern Malawi’s Machinga District, used to sit on the shores of Lake Chilwa. Now its residents, who have long relied on the lake to earn a living, have to walk two hours to reach its edge.

Lake Chilwa, Malawi’s second largest lake, used to measure 60km by 40km, but it is shrinking after two years of below-average rainfall. Its shores have moved about 15km inward, and experts warn that if the coming rainy season does not bring adequate rainfall, the lake could dry up completely.

The falling water levels are already having a major economic impact on the 1.5 million people in three districts - Machinga, Zomba and Phalombe - who rely on the lake for fishing and farming. In a normal year, Lake Chilwa supplies up to 20,000 tons of fish, accounting for about 20 percent of all fish catches in Malawi. As parts of the lake have dried up, catches have fallen, although it is not yet clear by how much.

...Reduced sources of potable water, combined with poor sanitation in crowded areas that still have adequate water levels, likely contributed to a recent cholera outbreak.

...To sustain water levels, the lake needs 1,000mm of rain every year, but only received about 740mm during each of the last two rainy seasons, said Sosten Chiotha, a professor at the University of Malawi and an expert with the Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Programme (LCBCCAP). Chiotha is also regional director of the Leadership for Environment and Development in Southern and Eastern Africa (LEAD), a global non-profit....

Lake Chilwa view from space

‘More spent on climate change adaptation than on health sector’

V. Sridhar in the Hindu: The Union government’s spending on climate change “adaptation” is more than its spending on the health sector, said a top official of the Union Finance Ministry on Monday. Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a national workshop on financing strategies for implementing State-level action plans to counter the effects of climate change, Dipak Dasgupta, Principal Economic Adviser to the ministry, said the Union government spent 2.8 per cent of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010-11 on climate adaptation measures, which are intended to reduce the impact of global warming and climate change on various sections of the population. “We have not included the expenditures on mitigating the effects of climate change,” Mr. Dasgupta pointed out. These refer to the measures that are aimed at limiting the concentration of greenhouse gases that are the prime driver of climate change.

Mr. Dasgupta, who also heads the Climate Change Finance unit in the Finance Ministry, said the expenditure on adaptive measures, as a percentage of GDP, has doubled in the last decade. Mr. Dasgupta said more than 10 per cent of the annual budget of the Union government is devoted to such expenditures across all departments.

“The unpredictable nature of the weather, especially in terms of rainfall, is one of the main problems caused by climate change,” Mr. Dasgupta said, referring to the drought this year.

“The wide variation in weather is likely to seriously affect livelihoods across the country,” he added. He said temperatures in India are expected to increase by between 1.7 degrees Celsius and 2 degrees Celsius by 2030. While it is obvious that agriculture will be threatened, climate change “will also pose challenges to the way we manage urbanisation,” he added....

Sorting eggplants in Gujarat, shot by Arne Hückelheim, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

2012 drought in the US: How does it stack up?

Jonathan Knutson in Agweek: Charles Howe has suffered through his share of droughts, including the current one. When asked to compare this year’s drought with notorious ones of the past, the 68-year-old McLaughlin, S.D., farmer and seed dealer doesn’t hesitate. “This year isn’t as bad. It’s tough, but there were other years that were worse,” Howe says.

The full, final verdict won’t be in until the region’s late crops are harvested. But based on what’s known so far, this year’s drought isn’t as damaging to the Upper Midwest’s ag economy as drought in some previous years, area agriculturalists say.

True, many ranchers across the region are struggling with dried-up pastures and hayfields. But area crops, particularly wheat and other small grains, which were planted early and matured before the worst of the drought, have held up better than in some previous droughts.

...Douglas Hartwig, director of the Minnesota Field Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, says crops across the state look better than in some previous droughts.

For instance, USDA predicts Minnesota’s average corn yield this year at 155 bushels per acre, Hartwig says. In contrast, Minnesota corn yielded only 74 bushels per acre in 1988 and 64.5 bushels per acre in 1961, two of the region’s worst drought years. Farmers and others point to two big reasons this year’s drought has done less damage.

• Better farming practices, including no tillage, and improved crop varieties that need less moisture. No till is a system designed to conserve moisture; the soil is disturbed only by the hole or slit in which the seed is planted. “We do such a better job today with tillage,” Howe says. “And the genetics (of seed) are better, too.
• Heavy rains in 2011 left plentiful subsoil moisture in much of the region. This year’s crop was able to tap that moisture, reducing the impact of inadequate rain....

Severely eroded farmland during the Dust Bowl, circa 1930's. From the US Department of Agriculture

Drought in Poland reveals 400-year-old sunken treasures

Dagmara Leszkowicz in Reuters: A huge cargo of elaborate marble stonework that sank to the bottom of Poland's Vistula river four centuries ago has re-appeared after a drought and record-low water levels revealed the masonry lying in the mud on the river bed.

Archaeologists believe the stonework was part of a trove which 17th-century Swedish invaders looted from Poland's rulers and loaded onto barges to transport home, only for the booty to go to the bottom when the vessels sank.

Researchers knew about the artefacts, on the river bed where the Vistula passes through the Polish capital but, before the drought, retrieving them was a painstaking task because they were under several feet of water.

Now though, the masonry - large blocks of carved marble which were used in the columns, fountains, and staircases of Polish palaces - is lying exposed apart from a coating of foul-smelling yellow mud.

"The drought helped us a lot because what had been lying underneath is now at the surface," said Hubert Kowalski, Deputy director of the University of Warsaw Museum, leading the effort to retrieve the marble stonework....

The Vistula, in Krakow, shot by Radosław Drożdżewski (Zwiadowca21), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Most coral reefs are at risk unless climate change is drastically limited

Science Blog: Only under a scenario with strong action on mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and the assumption that corals can adapt at extremely rapid rates, could two thirds of them be safe, shows a study now published in Nature Climate Change. Otherwise all coral reefs are expected to be subject to severe degradation.

Coral reefs house almost a quarter of the species in the oceans and provide critical services – including coastal protection, tourism and fishing – to millions of people worldwide. Global warming and ocean acidification, both driven by human-caused CO2 emissions, pose a major threat to these ecosystems.

“Our findings show that under current assumptions regarding thermal sensitivity, coral reefs might no longer be prominent coastal ecosystems if global mean temperatures actually exceed 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level,” says lead author Katja Frieler from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “Without a yet uncertain process of adaptation or acclimation, however, already about 70% of corals are projected to suffer from long-term degradation by 2030 even under an ambitious mitigation scenario.” Thus, the threshold to protect at least half of the coral reefs worldwide is estimated to be below 1.5 degrees Celsius mean temperature increase.

This study is the first comprehensive global survey of coral bleaching to express results in terms of global mean temperature change. It has been conducted by scientists from Potsdam, the University of British Columbia in Canada and the Universities of Melbourne and Queensland in Australia. To project the cumulative heat stress at 2160 reef locations worldwide, they used an extensive set of 19 global climate models. By applying different emission scenarios covering the 21st century and multiple climate model simulations, a total of more than 32,000 simulation years was diagnosed. This allows for a more robust representation of uncertainty than any previous study....

A coral reef in Papua New Guinea, shot by Brocken Inaglory, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Reducing disaster risk in the Pacific

UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: The 4th Session of the Pacific Platform for Disaster Risk Management opened today with a strong call for Pacific Island Countries and Territories, and donors to address the challenges of climate change in a smarter way.

Dr. Jimmie Rodgers, Secretary General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), said: "There are many of you here who represent the core leadership group for disaster risk management in our region and you have done a sterling job. For the future however I think you need to embrace more meaningfully the contribution of the various sectors and interest groups and work with them to bring about change and improvements.

"The collaboration with the Water and Sanitation sector at this year's meeting is a shining example but I think more can be done. We need to adopt a 'many partners-one team' approach and focus on improved coordination to address important cross-cutting challenges such as disaster reduction, climate change, food and water security. We must embrace strong engagement with civil society and the private sector."

The theme for this year's Pacific Platform is "Disaster Risk Management, Water Security and Climate Change -- Integrating our efforts for a more resilient Pacific." One anticipated outcome is a new regional action plan for water and sanitation in the Pacific. A road map to integrated disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation beyond 2015 is also foreseen.

In a video greeting to delegates its head, Margareta Wahlström, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, said the meeting is a "strong sign that the region is alive to the challenges and working hard to come up with solutions which will preserve your communities and build their ability to adapt in smart, innovative ways....

Joseph Heard's mid-19th century painting of the barque Sir Henry Pottinger during a cyclone in the Indian Ocean on 14 January 1848

Protecting biodiversity key to food security, adaptation

Johann Earle in Alertnet: Biodiversity conservation will be key to ensuring food security and effective adaptation in the face of climate change, says Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, secretary general of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

“Much of the response to climate change will have to be based on biodiversity,” said de Souza Dias, head of the CBD, launched in 1992 as part of an international effort to promote sustainable development while protecting ecosystems. “Part of the response will come from new technology, but a large part will come from biodiversity, for example, agriculture,” he said.

For instance, “agriculture will be very strongly impacted by climate change all over the world. How do we adapt agriculture to future climate conditions? With genetic resources, to adapt the crops… so if we lose biodiversity we will have fewer options to adapt,” he told journalists at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) World Conservation Congress last week.

He also pointed out as climate change increases the number of extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, conserving natural areas could help produce a “buffer effect” to absorb and lessen the impacts of extreme weather on agriculture. And preserving crop biodiversity means “you will also have a better chance of resisting attacks of pests and diseases,” he said.

Biodiversity losses, however, are continuing worldwide, despite efforts to reverse them, de Souza Dias said....

Buckwheat, shot by Andrew Butko, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Himalayan glaciers retreating at accelerated rate in some regions but not others; consequences for water supply remain unclear, says new report

National Academy of Sciences News: Glaciers in the eastern and central regions of the Himalayas appear to be retreating at accelerating rates, similar to those in other areas of the world, while glaciers in the western Himalayas are more stable and could be growing, says a new report from the National Research Council.

The report examines how changes to glaciers in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region, which covers eight countries across Asia, could affect the area's river systems, water supplies, and the South Asian population.  The mountains in the region form the headwaters of several major river systems -- including the Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers -- which serve as sources of drinking water and irrigation supplies for roughly 1.5 billion people.  

The entire Himalayan climate is changing, but how climate change will impact specific places remains unclear, said the committee that wrote the report.  The eastern Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau are warming, and the trend is more pronounced at higher elevations.  Models suggest that desert dust and black carbon, a component of soot, could contribute to the rapid atmospheric warming, accelerated snowpack melting, and glacier retreat.

While glacier melt contributes water to the region's rivers and streams, retreating glaciers over the next several decades are unlikely to cause significant change in water availability at lower elevations, which depend primarily on monsoon precipitation and snowmelt, the committee said.  Variations in water supplies in those areas are more likely to come from extensive extraction of groundwater resources, population growth, and shifts in water-use patterns.  However, if the current rate of retreat continues, high elevation areas could have altered seasonal and temporal water flow in some river basins.  The effects of glacier retreat would become evident during the dry season, particularly in the west where glacial melt is more important to the river systems.  Nevertheless, shifts in the location, intensity, and variability of both rain and snow will likely have a greater impact on regional water supplies than glacier retreat will. 

Melting of glacial ice could play an important role in maintaining water security during times of drought or similar climate extremes, the committee noted.  During the 2003 European drought, glacial melt contributions to the Danube River in August were about three times greater than the 100-year average.  Water stored as glacial ice could serve as the Himalayan region's hydrologic "insurance," adding to streams and rivers when it is most needed.  Although retreating glaciers would provide more meltwater in the short term, the loss of glacier "insurance" could become problematic over the long term....

Makalu in the Himalayas, shot by Ben Tubby, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate and food prices -- severe impact

Jaya Ramachandran in the Eurasia Review via IDN:  While there are hardly any signs of substantive and forward-looking agreements being reached at the United Nations climate change conference from November 26 to December 7, 2012 in Doha, latest research cautions that impact of climate change on future food prices is being underestimated.

“By the end of the most recent round of climate talks in Bangkok (August 30 to September 5), there was no movement from developed countries to increase the level of their ambition with regard to emissions reductions – the low pledges, subject to many conditions, made in Durban, South Africa, last December remain unchanged,” wrote Chee Yoke Ling and Hilary Chiew of the Third World Network (TWN) in an article for the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) web site.

“Even as scientific evidence mounts on worsening climate change, developed countries are not willing to meet their legal obligations to make deep greenhouse gases cuts under the Kyoto Protocol,” they concluded.

Representatives of civil society organizations reacted angrily at the end of the UN climate talks in Bangkok, and said it is apparent that the 8th annual session of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to be held in the Qatari capital Doha will not approve further action on climate change this decade.

“The United States government is opposed to a top-down structure under the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period,” said Meena Raman, legal advisor to the TWN. “The United States wants a voluntary pledging system to cut emissions that is not based on science nor based on equity.”

She added: “The United States and its allies want the UN to ‘be silent’ on issues where they haven’t yet reached agreement. To be clear that means they want the UN to be silent on solving climate change. The US is taking a wrecking ball to the climate convention and any hope of stopping run away climate catastrophe.”...

Threshing rice near Malang, in Indonesia. Shot by Dhr. J.D. (Jacob Derk) de Jonge (Fotograaf/ photographer), from the Tropenmuseum Collection, via Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

South Korea on high alert as Typhoon Sanba nears

AFP: South Korea was Sunday bracing for the arrival of its third major typhoon in two months, with school classes cancelled, ferry routes closed and thousands of ships sheltering in port.

Typhoon Sanba -- packing gusts of up to 48 metres per second -- was moving northward at a speed of 16 miles per hour (26kmh) about 50 miles off the Japanese island of Okinawa Sunday morning, Seoul's weather service said.

The typhoon killed one person and injured four in southwestern Japan, according to the Kyodo news agency, which added that another person remains missing. It also caused blackouts to 100,000 households, Kyodo said.

Sanba is expected to pass South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju Monday morning before pounding the peninsula in the evening, arriving more than 50 miles southeast of the capital before churning northwards, Seoul's weather service said.

Authorities have issued severe wind and heavy rain alerts for most of the southern coastal regions, warning of rainfall of up to 300 millimetres (11.8 inches) per hour in some regions.

About 4,800 ships in the southwestern port city of Yeosu have been taken out of the typhoon's path, while officials in the city and nearby areas have been put on high alert. School authorities in Jeju have ordered all schools in the island closed on Monday....

Typhoon Sanba on September 15, 2012, via NASA

The gravity of water

NASA Earth Observatory: The signature of drought was easy to read in the southern United States in the summer of 2011. It was in the brown, wilted crops and the bare fields. It was in the clouds of dust that rolled across the sky and in the shrinking reservoirs. It was in the fires that raced through crisp grasslands and forests, devouring homes and wilderness. It was in the oppressive heat that returned day after day.

Drought was harder to see as 2011 drew to a close. With the return of winter, rains began to fall and temperatures dropped. But the drought was still there, lingering beneath the surface. It was still apparent to hydrologists who test the wells that plunge deep into underground aquifers.

In Nebraska, Brian Wardlow and colleagues at the National Drought Mitigation Center watched the drought long before and after the average citizen paid heed. Wardlow develops satellite-based products that experts use—along with more traditional ground observations—to assess the severity of drought. Looking at measurements from the satellites, Wardlow could see broad-scale changes in groundwater supplies at varying depths over large swaths of the South.

Measurements of underground water storage (aquifers)—rather than surface water (lakes, rivers, etc.)—reveal the long-term effects of drought. This map shows ground water conditions in the U.S. during the week of November 28, 2011, compared to the long-term average. A time-series animation shows the evolution of ground water from 2002 to 2012. (Map by Chris Poulsen, National Drought Mitigation Center, based on data from the GRACE science team.)

After a year without much rain, it was no surprise that the drought lingered below the land’s surface. “Groundwater takes a long time to be depleted, but it takes a long time to be recharged as well,” says Wardlow, a remote sensing specialist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. From experience, he expected regional groundwater supplies to be diminished. But this time he could see it in greater detail than traditional well measurements had ever provided....

Measurements of underground water storage (aquifers)—rather than surface water (lakes, rivers, etc.)—reveal the long-term effects of drought. This map shows ground water conditions in the U.S. during the week of November 28, 2011, compared to the long-term average.  Map by Chris Poulsen, National Drought Mitigation Center, based on data from the GRACE science team.