Caribbean sees worrying rise in climate-sensitive diseases

Desmond Brown in IPS: Caribbean countries, struggling to emerge from a slump in exports and falling tourist arrivals brought on by the worldwide economic crisis that began five years ago, have one more thing to worry about in 2014.

Dominica’s chief medical officer, Dr. David John, said climate change and its effects are taking a toll on the health of people in his homeland and elsewhere in the region.  “You have seen what is happening [with] the effects of climate change in terms of our infrastructure, but there are also significant effects with regards to climate change on health,” John said, adding that “these effects relate to the spread of disease including dengue fever and certain respiratory illnesses.”

John said the Dominica government would be seeking assistance from international agencies, including the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), to mitigate “the effects of climate change on health as it relates to dengue, leptospirosis and viral disease.”

In late 2012, the Ministry of Health in Barbados alerted members of the public about a spike in leptospirosis cases. Senior Medical Officer of Health-North Dr. Karen Springer said then that five people had contracted the severe bacterial infection, bringing the number of cases for the year to 18.

Springer explained that the disease, which includes flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, chills, nausea and vomiting, eye inflammation and muscle aches, could be contracted through contact with water, damp soil or vegetation contaminated with the urine of infected animals. Bacteria can also enter the body through broken skin and if the person swallows contaminated food or water....

A scanning micrograph of leptospira, from the CDC

No-till soybean fields give (even some rare) birds a foothold in Illinois

Seed Daily via SPX: Researchers report in a new study that several bird species - some of them relatively rare - are making extensive use of soybean fields in Illinois. The team found significantly more birds and a greater diversity of bird species nesting, roosting and feeding in no-till soybean fields than in tilled fields.

The team spent about 13 weeks each spring and summer in 2011 and 2012 scouring a total of 24 fields (12 per year) in two counties in Central Illinois. The fields were 18 to 20 hectares (44-49 acres) on average, and the researchers walked roughly 3,200 kilometers (1,988 miles) in the course of the study.

The team found more bird nests and greater species diversity in the no-till fields than in the tilled soybeans. Nest losses were high, however. About 80 percent of nests in the no-till fields and more than 90 percent in tilled fields failed as a result of predation or the onset of farm operations before eggs hatched or young birds were ready to fly.

High mortality is fairly common in bird nests, however, and while the losses in no-till soybean fields were greater than those seen in pristine grasslands, they were not much worse, the researchers said. A paper describing the research appears in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment.

"I was surprised to see all the different birds that are using these agricultural fields - especially during spring migration," said Kelly VanBeek, a wildlife biologist at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who conducted the study while a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "I was shocked by the variety of sparrow species that we saw - white-crowned sparrows and white-throated sparrows, for example."...

A sunset driving between field in central Illinois, shot by ParentingPatch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

North and tropical Atlantic Ocean bringing climate change to Antarctica

Newswise via New York University: The gradual warming of the North and Tropical Atlantic Ocean is contributing to climate change in Antarctica, a team of New York University scientists has concluded. The findings, which rely on more than three decades of atmospheric data and appear in the journal Nature, show new ways in which distant regional conditions are contributing to Antarctic climate change.

“Our findings reveal a previously unknown—and surprising—force behind climate change that is occurring deep in our southern hemisphere: the Atlantic Ocean,” says Xichen Li, a doctoral student in NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the study’s lead author. “Moreover, the study offers further confirmation that warming in one region can have far-reaching effects in another.”

...Using a time-series analysis, in which the scientists matched changes in the North and Tropical Atlantic’s SST with subsequent changes in Antarctic climate, the researchers found strong correlations. Specifically, they observed that warming Atlantic waters were followed by changes in sea-level pressure in the Antarctic’s Amundsen Sea. In addition, these warming patterns also preceded redistribution of sea ice between the Antarctic’s Ross and Amundsen-Bellingshausen-Weddell Seas.

...The first part of the study, using the observational data, found a link, or correlation, between the Atlantic and Antarctic data sets. But a correlation means simply that two things appear to happen in conjunction and does not explain what may be causing a phenomenon. The second used a global atmospheric model, which allowed the researchers to create a simulated warming of the North Atlantic. The model responded, as the researchers had suspected, by "changing" the climate in Antarctica.

"While our data analysis showed a correlation, it was the use of a state-of-the-art computer model that allowed us to see that North Atlantic warming was causing Antarctic climate change and not vice versa," he said.

The study’s findings raise a number of deeper questions, such as, is Antarctic sea-ice change fundamentally different from the well-reported changes in the Arctic? In contrast to the sea-ice decline over the Arctic, Antarctic sea ice has not diminished. Rather, it has redistributed itself in ways that have perplexed scientists, with declines in some areas and increases in others....

The first flight of Operation Ice Bridge’s Antarctic campaign flew Oct. 16, 2009, along the Amundsen Coast. The aircraft’s downward-looking Digital Mapping System camera captured images of sea ice from an altitude of at least 20,000 feet.

Australia's drinking water at risk from extreme weather events

Space Daily via UPI: Australia's drinking water is at risk from extreme weather, a new study says. The study, commissioned by the United States-based Water Research Foundation, says flooding, prolonged rainfall, drought, cyclones and bush fires impact surface water quality. Such weather events, it says, are predicted to become more frequent and intense in many parts of Australia due to climate change.

"We need to focus on building resilience into our future supplies," said Stuart Khan, an associate professor of the school of civil and environmental engineering at the University of New South Wales, and lead author of the report, in a news release.

"This means designing systems that are more protected from the impacts of climate change and that have greater flexibility to respond to extreme weather events. This could be partially brought about through a diversification of water sources."

The report comes as Australia broke another heat wave record, with the temperature in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, reaching 114.8 degrees Friday. Bush fires raged across the southeast last week, with more than 100 blazes in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales....

A break away! This oil painting on canvas depicts a late 19th century Australian scene, in the Riverina district during a drought. A mob of sheep is being moved by drovers through a parched landscape in search of water and green pastures. Smelling water, the thirsty sheep stampede downhill towards a dam, as one drover tries desperately to turn them around and save them from being crushed and drowned. A second drover (on the left-hand side, almost hidden by the dust) and two dogs – one having just been knocked over by some sheep – are unable to help. The painting is in the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Great Lakes evaporation study dispels misconceptions, points to need for expanded monitoring program

University of Michigan News: The recent Arctic blast that gripped much of the nation will likely contribute to a healthy rise in Great Lakes water levels in 2014, new research shows. But the processes responsible for that welcome outcome are not as simple and straightforward as you might think.

Yes, extreme winter cold increases ice cover on the Great Lakes, which in turn reduces evaporation by preventing water vapor from escaping into the air. But this simplistic view of winter ice as a mere "cap" on Great Lakes evaporation is giving way to a more nuanced conception, one that considers the complex interplay among evaporation, ice cover and water temperature at different times of year.

In a report released today by the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center (GLISA)—a federally funded collaboration between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University — a team of American and Canadian scientists notes that while ice cover affects evaporation, the reverse is true as well: evaporation rates in the autumn help determine the extent of winter ice cover.

High evaporation rates in the fall can nearly offset water-level gains that result from extensive winter ice cover, complicating efforts to forecast Great Lakes water levels, which have declined in most of the lakes since the late 1990s, rebounding somewhat during a wet 2013.

The newfound appreciation for evaporation's varied roles reveals gaps in our current understanding of fundamental environmental processes and highlights the need for sustained funding for the project's Great Lakes evaporation monitoring network, said John Lenters, the study's lead investigator and a senior scientist at Ann Arbor-based LimnoTech, an environmental consulting firm.

The binational group's network of five stations is one of the few sources of direct, year-round observations of Great Lakes evaporation. "It's our hope that we will soon have the funding and infrastructure in place to maintain—and even expand—the network well into the future," Lenters said. "This will be extremely important for improving Great Lakes water-level forecasting and for understanding the long-term impacts of climate change."...

A weather station on Granite Island, Lake Superior. This weather station is part of a five-site network to measure year-round Great Lakes evaporation. In addition to evaporation, the weather station measures air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, carbon dioxide, wind speed and direction, precipitation, solar radiation, and water temperature. Image credit: John Lenters

The impacts of human responses to climate

A press release from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School: ....[A] Princeton University research team has created a model to evaluate how a human response to climate change may alter the agricultural utility of land. The study, featured in Conservation Biology, provides a readily transferable method for conservation planners trying to anticipate how agriculture will be affected by such adaptations.

"Humans can transform an ecosystem much more rapidly and completely than it can be altered by shifting temperature and precipitation patterns," said Lyndon Estes, lead author and associate research scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs. "This model provides an initial approach for understanding how agricultural land-use might shift under climate change, and therefore which currently natural areas might be converted to farming."

...Before determining how climate change could impact the crops, the team first needed to determine which areas have been or might be farmed for maize and wheat. They created a land-use model based on an area's potential crop output and simulated how much of each crop was grown from 1979 to 1999 – the two decades for which historical weather data was available. They also calculated the ruggedness of each area of land, which is related to the cost of farming it. Taking all factors into account, the model provides an estimate of whether the land is likely to be profitable or unprofitable for farming.

...They found that most conservation lands currently have low agricultural utility because of their rugged terrain, which makes them difficult to farm, and that they are likely to stay that way under future climate-change scenarios. The researchers did pinpoint several areas that could become more valuable for farming in the future, putting them at greater risk of conversion. However, some areas were predicted to decrease value for farming, which could make them easier to protect and conserve.

"While studying the direct response of species to climatic shifts is important, it’s only one piece of a complicated puzzle. A big part of that puzzle relates to how humans will react, and history suggests you don’t need much to trigger a change in the way land is used that has a fairly long-lasting impact. " said Estes. "We hope that conservation planners can use this approach to start thinking about human climate change adaptation and how it will affect areas needing protection."...

Female figurine. Terracotta. 2700-2000. From a series of figurines of Mature Harappan sites : Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Dholavira, Banawali and Kalibangan. National Museum, New Delhi. Shot by Ismoon, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

South Africa evaluates Namibia's drought priorities

Albertina Nakale in AllAfrica.com via New Era (Namibia): Delays in processing the N$100 million pledged by South African President Jacob Zuma in drought relief aid last November have been attributed to needs and priorities listed by the Namibian government, which the South African High Commission in Windhoek says "cannot be supported."

However, it has emerged that the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) and relevant stakeholders are currently evaluating those needs and priorities with a view to structuring the package of assistance in order to give effect to president Zuma's pledge as soon as possible. The South African High Commission indicated the provision of technical aid and expertise with boreholes, provision of water tankers, the procurement of seed and food for feeding programmes listed by Namibia cannot be supported.

New Era reported exactly three months after Zuma pledged N$100 million in drought relief aid that the donation remains entangled in bureaucratic red tape. However, the South African High Commission denies that there is any bureaucratic red tape involved and that everything is moving accordingly. Regarding the latest developments on the pledge, Frans Kapofi, Secretary to Cabinet said the Namibian government is still awaiting the donation. "We are still waiting whatever will come from South Africa. The South African government has committed itself to support Namibia and it is a welcome commitment. We are waiting for such support and hopefully it will be forthcoming," Kapofi said on Monday.

On the contrary the South African High Commissioner to Namibia, His Excellency Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini yesterday said that since early December last year, the two governments have been in discussions to facilitate the package of assistance that is aligned to the current needs and priorities of the Namibian government's drought relief response plan....

The view here at Carbon Based

Still and very cold, at least to my spoiled point of view.  No major consequences from the snow, which was light here in the northwest corner of Connecticut.

The worst part is listening to the usual suspects bray that it's cold, therefore global warming doesn't exist, is a conspiracy of grant-grubbing scientists, etc.

Climate change: don't get scared, get ready

Ida Auken (Denmark's environment minister) in the Sustainable Business blog at the Guardian (UK): ...I recently put forward a climate adaptation plan which contains more than 60 action points. This was developed in a cross-ministerial process directly involving nine ministries and several stakeholders. We substantiated the government adaptation efforts by asking the "usual suspects" two questions: what is most important for adapting to climate change? And who else do we need to talk to as we prepare our climate adaptation plans?

...With the climate adaptation plan, homeowners are focusing on mitigation of flooding risks, which gives work to smaller entrepreneurs. Municipalities are hiring medium-sized entrepreneurial companies, which specialise in flood-proof road solutions, and finally, larger consulting companies are finding it easier to sell their services around the world, based on the Danish experience.

Architects and utilities have started thinking in new ways about water storage. For example, instead of building a large concrete reservoir, the city of Roskilde decided to turn a field into a gigantic skateboard area, which can store as much water as 10 Olympic-size swimming pools during heavy rainfall. A technical installation in the city went from being a blind spot to a contribution to life and public health.

We changed the rules for water pricing so that a local government could choose to use their roads for transporting rainwater by designing them differently and maybe using permeable asphalt. We enabled them to create nature areas for storing rain
water to the benefit of the local citizens (and house prices). But all of this is contingent upon them demonstrating that the alternative solutions are less expensive than building new waste water treatment plants or expanding the sewers.

I also challenged our insurance companies, by asking them: "Given that you can raise prices with reference to large storms and damages, why don't you lower your prices again when house owners or local governments make their house or local area climate-proof?" This is exactly what three of the largest insurance companies in Denmark did. They now offer discounts on house insurance for homeowners, who have taken steps to avoid flooding of their properties...

A canal in Copenhagen, shot by Zairon, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Major El Nino events likely to double

The Conversation: An international team of researchers have predicted that extreme El Nino events are likely to double in the next century, from once every 20 years to once every ten, thanks to climate change.

Extreme El Nino events occur when more than five millimetres of rain falls a day in the eastern equatorial Pacific region around Central and South America.

These extreme events can severely disrupt global weather patterns, affecting ecosystems, agriculture, tropical cyclones, bushfires, floods and other extreme weather events.

Lead author of the study, Dr Wenju Cai, from CSIRO, said that the further the warming in the east Pacific stretched, and the higher the temperatures reached, the more extreme the El Nino.

They found global warming would alter background climate conditions, meaning it would take weaker changes in ocean temperatures to prompt an extreme El Nino.

A NOAA chart of El Nino conditions

Climate-induced migration creates perils, possibilities

Elizabeth Blunt in IRIN: For Pacific islands like Palau, Tuvalu and Kiribati, the implications of climate change are clear - and devastating. Already, these governments have begun to plan for a future in which entire populations have to relocate as their islands vanish under the rising sea. But climate change also threatens ways of life in subtler ways, leaving families around the world to work out for themselves how to cope.

Octavio Rodriguez, from Sucre, Colombia, said, “Rains recently have been intense - very intense. Years ago, the rainy season lasted two months, November and December, and water levels reached 20 to 30cm. Now, in the last six to seven months, they've reached over 2m. We've never seen this before. We don't want to leave our land: here are our past, our memories, our ancestors. We don't want to move to other parts; we don't know what to do there. We would turn into delinquents. We'd enter into a cycle of poverty which happens in the cities.”

Rodriguez’s was one of many voices captured in Moving Stories, a new compilation of interviews from the Climate Outreach and Information Network, which reveals the discussions taking in climate change-affected areas. For many, the issue is how to modify their way of life without abandoning everything they know.

Pastoralists may be able to change their grazing grounds, or range further from their main base for longer periods each year. But Hindu Oumarou Ibrahim, from Chad, worries that even these strategies may have their limits. “As a means of survival for us and our animals, we are forced to continuously migrate,” he said, “despite all the risks involved. This is our form of adaptation. We have always mastered it, but if nothing is done to ensure the safety of our space and activities, we risk one day being forced to abandon our way of life.”

Meanwhile Miguel, a farmer from Hueyotlipan, Mexico, works away from home to supplement failing harvests. “The rain is coming later now,” he said, “so that we produce less. The only solution is to go away, at least for a while. Each year I am working for three to five months in Wyoming [in the US]. That's my main source of income. But leaving my village forever? No, I was raised here and here I will stay.”...

Super typhoon victims flee again as rains flood southern Philippines

Erik de Castro in Reuters: Emergency workers evacuated thousands of people across the southern Philippines on Tuesday, including many already made homeless by a typhoon in November, after three days of rain flooded towns and farmland.

Hundreds of survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, were forced to flee by tropical depression "Agaton" after emergency shelters were damaged or destroyed on the eastern central island of Samar. Tents collapsed under the weight of the rain and emergency plastic sheets have been torn away, humanitarian agency Oxfam said.

An average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year with Haiyan slamming into central islands on November 8, killing more than 6,100 and wiping out entire coastal communities in Leyte and Samar.

More than 200,000 people have been taken to shelters over the last three days as flood waters rose, but hundreds were still marooned on the roofs of their houses on Tuesday, said Eduardo del Rosario, executive director of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

Del Rosario said 42 people had been killed, 65 had been injured and damage to property and farms had reached 367 million pesos ($8.13 million). "Our troops are trying to reach them and bring them to safer ground," del Rosario said....

The water cycle amplifies abrupt climate change

A press release from the Helmholtz Center in Potsdam: The role of the hydrological cycle during abrupt temperature changes is of prime importance for the actual impact of climate change on the continents. In a new study published in Nature Geoscience online (January 19, 2014) scientists from the University of Potsdam, Germany and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences show that during the abrupt cooling at the onset of the so-called Younger Dryas period 12680 years ago changes in the water cycle were the main drivers of widespread environmental change in western Europe. The team of scientists analyzed organic remains extracted from Meerfelder maar lake sediments from the Eifel region, western Germany, to reconstruct changes in precipitation patterns in unprecedented detail. They were able to show that the intrusion of dry polar air into western Europe lead to the collapse of local ecosystems and resulted in the observed widespread environmental changes at that time.

The exact sequence of events during abrupt climate changes occurring over only a few years is one of the great unknowns in paleoclimate research. The new results presented here were obtained by using a novel method, where molecular organic remains derived from plant fossils were extracted from precisely dated annually laminated lake sediments. The ratio of the heavy Deuterium to the light Hydrogen isotopes in these biomarkers can be used to reconstruct changes in precipitation regime and moisture sources with unprecedented detail.

... Dirk Sachse, the head of the workgroup at the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the Potsdam University explains: “In our new study we can show for the first time that this change in the pathway of westerly wind systems brought dry polar air into western Europe and this was the ultimate cause for the widespread disappearance of forests in the area.”

With these new results, the group also supports the hypothesis that this change in atmospheric circulation patterns over western Europe took place 170 years after the onset of cooling, as observed in the Greenland Icecores. The authors attribute this delay to the subsequent southward expansion of sea ice in the North Atlantic following the onset of cooling. This lead to a southward shift of the polar front channeling dry polar air into western Europe. “Our results also show that abrupt climate and environmental change may not be coeval on large regional scales, but can take place with substantial regional and temporal delays” explains Prof. Achim Brauer from the GFZ German Research Centre for the Geosciences.

The results of this study, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through its Emmy-Noether Programme and the Helmholtz Climate Initiative REKLIM, do not only show unequivocally that temperature changes can have regionally different impacts, but also that the water cycle acts as amplifier of change with potentially severe effects on continental ecosystems. ...

A view of the Meerfelder Maar, shot by Bungert55 , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

‘Useful and used’ data key to building resilience

Andy McElroy at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: The future resilience of the planet rests upon shortening the distance between emerging scientific evidence and actionable policy.  A High-Level Panel, titled ‘Perspectives on the Value of Earth Observations’, agreed on the importance of the “usability of information” in the International Strategy of Disaster Reduction and other global efforts to strengthen resilience.

Mr Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), said collaboration and coordination was crucial: “We need to join up the dots about what we know about how resources can be used and not be used in future.

“The world really is heading terribly in the wrong direction. We need to bring science to decision making. And in such a complex world, we can no longer afford the luxury of taking very narrow, specific responses.  “It is also important that we are not paralysed by waiting to have perfect information before we act. Such an approach has never been the basis for human decision making.”  Mr Steiner pointed to some “wonderful examples” of international cooperation – such as on weather patterns and pollution – that have contributed to a more resilient planet.

UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction Ms Margareta Wahlström said data had to be “useful and used”.  “Th
ere is a huge gap between the capability of science and technology and what practitioners and policymakers do with this data. Lots of the best data needs an expert to interpret it, which means that it is not sufficiently accessible,” Ms Wahlström said.

Prof. Philippe Gillet, Acting President of Ecole Polytechnique, Federale Lausanne, said data alone was useless: “It needs to be processed and fitted into models and the better the models, the better our understanding of the way our planet functions.”  He pointed to an exciting future centred on the potential of ‘Big Data’ coupled with the ubiquity of smartphones. “This is changing the way we do science. Every citizen has the potential to become a scientist.”

Mr Serge Troeber, Chief Underwriting Officer, Corporate Solutions in Swiss Re, said his company was already reaping the benefits of collaborating over data. He cited the use of satellite imagery from the European Space Agency to help assess damage from floods in Canada last year as one example.  “Climate change is affecting the insurance industry considerably; we need to consider whether today’s one-in-100 years flood is tomorrow’s one-in-30-years flood,” he said. ...

The International Space Station seen from the Discovery Space Shuttle

California drought brings 'unprecedented' fire danger

Joseph Serna in the Los Angeles Times: California is bracing for what officials fear could be an unprecedented winter fire season fueled by record dry conditions that show no signs of letting up. January is typically a time when forest fire camps and air bases are closed and seasonal firefighters go home. But not this year. the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has responded to 150 wildfires so far. During the same period last January, there were none, and the historic average is 25.

Fire officials pointed to coastal fires in Humboldt and San Mateo counties in the last two weeks as examples of the conditions they’re facing. The Humboldt fire spread across 333 acres in four days, shocking firefighters because the region is usually damp with rain at this time of year.

“In the winter when we see a fire…it typically will burn at a slow rate of spread. And take an engine to put it out,” said Calfire spokesman Daniel Berlandt. “This season, it’s taking a much larger response and even some aircraft because the grass and the brush wants to burn.”

Across California, vegetation that typically rehydrates with rain between December and April continues to get dryer and more dangerous. The fires so far this winter have been relatively moderate compared with some of the state’s largest, but officials worry that the fires will get worse as the fuel gets even dryer.

...Forecasters say there is little relief in sight. The National Weather Service last week released a forecast for the southwestern United States calling for unseasonably dry and hot conditions....

FEMA photo of a 2007 fire in southern California

Large old trees grow fastest, storing more carbon

A press release from the US Geological Survey: Trees do not slow in their growth rate as they get older and larger — instead, their growth keeps accelerating, according to a study published today in the journal Nature. "This finding contradicts the usual assumption that tree growth eventually declines as trees get older and bigger," says Nate Stephenson, the study's lead author and a forest ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "It also means that big, old trees are better at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere than has been commonly assumed."

An international team of researchers compiled growth measurements of 673,046 trees belonging to 403 tree species from tropical, subtropical and temperate regions across six continents, calculating the mass growth rates for each species and then analyzing for trends across the 403 species. The results showed that for most tree species, mass growth rate increases continuously with tree size — in some cases, large trees appear to be adding the carbon mass equivalent of an entire smaller tree each year.

"In human terms, it is as if our growth just keeps accelerating after adolescence, instead of slowing down," explains Stephenson. "By that measure, humans could weigh half a ton by middle age, and well over a ton at retirement."

This continuously increasing growth rate means that on an individual basis, large, old trees are better at absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon that is absorbed or "sequestered" through natural processes reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and can help counter-balance the amount of CO2 people generate.

However, the researchers are careful to note that the rapid absorption rate of individual trees does not necessarily translate into a net increase in carbon storage for an entire forest. "Old trees, after all, can die and lose carbon back into the atmosphere as they decompose," says Adrian Das, a USGS coauthor. "But our findings do suggest that while they are alive, large old trees play a disproportionately important role within a forest’s carbon dynamics. It is as if the star players on your favorite sports team were a bunch of 90-year-olds."...

Albert Bierstadt's painting of a sequoia, circa 1860-1870

Floods force thousands to evacuate in Indonesian capital

Kanupriya Kapoor in Reuters: Monsoon rains have inundated parts of the Indonesian capital, forcing more than 30,000 people to evacuate and posing a challenge for its wildly popular governor, Joko Widodo, a possible presidential candidate. Soldiers were deployed to help nearly 50,000 residents in the sprawling city of 10 million people, as floodwaters reached three meters (9.8 ft) in some districts, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency said.

Last year's rainy season brought Jakarta to a standstill, causing a river in the city to breach its banks and swamp the central business district, leaving thousands stranded and causing $580 million in damage to property and companies.

Heavy rains are forecast this week, potentially worsening floods which have killed seven people, mostly from electrocution, and forced thousands to seek refuge at temporary shelters, including schools and mosques.

Jokowi, as the governor is known locally, came to office in late 2012 with promises to improve the city's creaky infrastructure, strained by chronic floods and traffic. The presidential favorite has since launched a number of initiatives to alleviate flooding, including clearing riverbanks of illegal housing and rubbish, and creating more green spaces and drainage to absorb rainwater.

But until those efforts show results, he could face criticism over flood management, especially if the waters rise and more districts are affected. The floods have already caused about $80 million in damage, said the Disaster Mitigation Agency...

A car during a January 2013 flood in Jakarta, VOA Indonesian Service

Budgeting for climate essential in Zimbabwe

Jeffery Gogo in AllAfrica.com via the Herald (Zimbabwe): Zimbabwe last year invested US$326 million in capital assets across the public sector, accounting for just 9 percent of Government's total expenditures. Capital expenditures by the private sector will be much bigger, but figures are not immediately available. However, Government's capital investments in recent years have fallen far below its own long-term target of 14,6 percent of cumulative expenditures, as indicated under the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP), an infrastructure development initiative.

The international best practice of capex as a percentage of total expenditures is 30. These financial investments face greater risk from extreme climate and weather events such as tropical cyclones, which have increased in frequency during the last 15 years, causing manifold damage to property and public infrastructure.

Climate change and variability usually impacts directly on capital investments, leading to deep and widespread losses, degradation or destruction of key infrastructure, disruption of supply chains and can lead to serious changes in the availability of important natural resources, according to new research by the American Meteorological Society's Policy Programme.

"Even small changes in weather can impact operations in critical economic sectors," said the Society. "As a result, maximising returns on financial investments depends on accurately understanding and effectively accounting for these risks."...

Meltwater from Tibetan glaciers floods pastures

A press release from the University of Zurich: The earth is warming up, the glaciers are shrinking. However, not all meltwater is causing sea-level rise as feared. In Tibet, as measurements taken by an international team of researchers including the University of Zurich reveal, a significant proportion of the meltwater remains on land. The consequences are, however, equally negative: it can cause lakes without an outlet to overflow and flood valuable pastureland.

Glaciers are important indicators of climate change. Global warming causes mountain glaciers to melt, which, apart from the shrinking of the Greenlandic and Antarctic ice sheets, is regarded as one of the main causes of the present global sea-level rise. Tibet’s glaciers are also losing mass clearly, as scientists from the universities of Zurich, Tubingen and Dresden reveal using satellite-based laser measurements. Over the last decade, the research team has detected a “clear loss in mass of around 16 gigatons a year in around 80 percent of the Tibetan glaciers,” says Tobias Bolch, a glaciologist from the University of Zurich involved in the study – that’s more than four times the volume of water in Lake Zurich and around six percent of the total loss in mass of all the glaciers on Earth.

However, the measurements also bore some positive news: Some glaciers in the central and north-western part of the Tibetan Plateau have actually grown in mass. While the glaciers in the monsoon-influenced southern and eastern part of the plateau h
ave melted significantly, the scientists recorded a neutral or even slightly positive result in the continental central and north-western area of the country. Nonetheless, as Bolch notes, “On average, the entire region is clearly characterized by a loss in mass.”

At a first glance, the evidence that not all of the meltwater flows into the ocean via the large Asian currents and causes the sea level to rise seems positive. “However, flooding is still a problem,” says Bolch. After all, a large proportion of the melt – around two gigatons a year, as scientists have quantified for the first time – flows into lakes without an outlet on the plateau, causing them to burst their banks. “In many regions, this means that valuable pasture areas become submerged,” explains the glaciologist.

Stretching over an area of around 40,000 square kilometers, the Tibetan Plateau’s glaciers account for over a third of High Asia’s ice cover and are about twenty times the size of the ice surface of the Alps. For their study, the international team of researchers evaluated satellite-based laser measurements of the glacier surfaces on the Tibetan Plateau between 2003 and 2009. “Thanks to these measurements, we were able to gauge the temporal changes of the glacier heights and – combined with a detailed glacier inventory – changes in mass of the glaciers in Tibet, which are extremely difficult to access,” say Tubingen scientists Niklas Neckel and Jan Kropacek, explaining the measuring technique....

Midui glacier in Tibet, shot by Jan Reurink, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Geoengineering isn’t worth the risk

Roger Williamson in SciDev.net: ...It’s easy to see why geoengineering is attractive to scientists. Finding a technological fix for climate change is a nice, big, juicy project, with lots of scope for lucrative research applications and the chance of a place in the pantheon of scientific greats or even a Nobel Prize. And from the point of view of diplomats too, at a time when climate talks are in trouble, it is tempting to hope for a solution that avoids excessive negotiations.

But the implications of such grandiose engineering projects are far from clear. So, as well as considering the statutory regulation of geoengineering research, policymakers should think over the ethics of investing in such strategies — given their uncertainty, would the money be better spent elsewhere?

As an illustration, a study published last week by researchers from the University of Reading, UK, suggests that large geoengineering efforts could have side effects that would disproportionately harm the globe’s poorest people. [1] It argues that a massive injection of sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere may well lower average global temperatures by reflecting sunlight, but this could also cause huge changes to rainfall patterns around the equator — with potentially devastating impacts for poor people.

Andrew Charlton-Perez, the lead author of the study, said in a statement: “We have shown that one of the leading candidates for geoengineering could cause a new, unintended side effect over a large part of the planet. A reduction in tropical rainfall of 30 per cent would, for example, quickly dry out Indonesia so much that even the wettest years after a man-made intervention would be equal to drought conditions now.”

Here is an example of where society should employ the precautionary principle, the basis of European legislation regarding environmental protection...

The sorcerer's hat, worn by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, shot by Fabi1994, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Small projects, big changes in climate risk in Honduran slums

Thelma Mejia in IPS: For some 250,000 shantytown-dwellers in the Honduran capital, fear of dying or losing their home due to a landslide or other weather-related event has been reduced, thanks to a global warming mitigation plan that has carried out small infrastructure works in 180 ecologically and socially vulnerable neighbourhoods.

The 100×100 Plan – one hundred works in the same number of days – is part of a climate change risk mitigation project financed by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) with a 26-million-dollar credit granted on concessionary terms.

...The more than 100 small projects are scattered all over the city of Tegucigalpa, which is home to 1.8 million of Honduras’s 8.5 million people.

Tegucigalpa and the adjacent city of Comayagüela – also known as the Central District – make up the capital of this impoverished Central American country. The city’s vulnerability increased when Hurricane Mitch left at least 11,000 dead and 8,000 missing in 1998, besides causing enormous damage to infrastructure.

The capital, located in a chain of mountains that reach 1,300 metres in height, was among the most affected parts of the country. And 15 years after the catastrophe, there are still areas where time has stood still, and the ruins of houses are still standing. The 180 neighbourhoods selected for the project are home to the poorest of the poor, who live on hillsides where mudslides and landslides can occur after just one hour of heavy rain.

...Johan Meza, in charge of mitigation projects in the 100×100 Plan, told IPS that the small infrastructure works include the construction of ditches, gutters, stairways, evacuation routes, pedestrian bridges, and storm water drains...

A shanty town in Tegucigalpa, shot by Brooke Novak, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Bangladesh teaches disaster preparedness to reduce risk

IRIN: Bangladesh is working to enhance children’s understanding of disaster preparedness with the introduction of 10 new supplementary books for teaching the subject, which has been part of the education curriculum in primary and secondary schools since 2004.

“With these books, students will be taught about disaster… [preparedness] by rhymes and stories, so that they can understand the risks,” Shafikur Rahman, chairman of the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), told IRIN.

In the Bangladesh 2010 National Education Policy disaster preparedness is cited as a core area to be incorporated into the curriculum, “to build students as skilled human resources to fight the challenges of the world threatened by climate change and other natural disasters, and to create in them a social awareness about environment." The Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre lists this low-lying nation of 155 million people as one of the most disaster-prone states in the world, with cyclones entering the Bay of Bengal and making landfall along the Bangladesh coast almost every year.

More than two-thirds of the country’s 64 districts are prone to natural disasters, including cyclones, floods, landslides, tornadoes and drought. The Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP) of the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief is providing financial and technical support to incorporate disaster preparedness in the Bangladesh school curriculum....
Rural Bangladesh children, shot by Mark Knobil , Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Cyclone heading for Mozambique's coast

AllAfrica.com via Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique: A tropical cyclone has formed in the Mozambique Channel, and is forecast to make its way towards the Mozambican coast over the next three days, bringing strong winds and torrential rain to the south of the country.

Cyclone Deliwe has moved down the western coast of Madagascar, picking up speed. According to the US navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Centre (JTWC), at 06.00 on Friday the cyclone was generating winds of 83 kilometres an hour, with gusts of over 100 kilometres an hour.

As it moves over open water, the storm is expected to gather strength. The forecast for Saturday morning is for winds of up to 120 kilometres an hour.

It is not yet clear whether Deliwe will strike the Mozambican coast, but the National Meteorology Institute (INAM) warns that it is heading towards Inhambane province. Thunderstorms and heavy rains can be expected in the southern part of the Mozambique Channel over the next four days.

The cyclone is moving west at a speed of 12 knots (22 kilometres an hour). It will create dangerous conditions at sea, with waves up to five metres high...

UK government admits flood spending drop

The Guardian (UK): The government has been forced to backtrack on its claims about flood defence spending, admitting the figure has gone down rather than up. The environment minister Dan Rogerson conceded on Thursday night that spending had fallen to £2.34bn in the current four years compared with £2.37bn previously. The environment secretary, Owen Paterson, had previously claimed the Tory-led coalition was spending "more on flood defences than any previous government".

The Environment Department had also said spending was at record levels. Rogerson said the discrepancy was regretted but add it was "minor" and caused by the complexity of flood funding. But environmental campaigners said ministers had misled parliament and the public by claiming the Government was spending more on flood defences.

David Cameron told the Commons earlier this month: "In this current four-year period we are spending £2.3bn, compared with £2.1bn in the previous period." It was later revealed those figures had been miscalculated.

The government's flood defence spending figures include not only its own contribution but "partnership" contributions it hopes to attract from councils.

Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Guy Shrubsole said: "Owen Paterson's own department has now been forced to admit it has cut flood defence spending, despite claims to the contrary by the beleaguered environment secretary. On the basis of these figures it appears both Mr Paterson and the prime minister have misled parliament and the public."...

The Talsarnau flood embankment overcome by high tide, shot by Arthur C Harris, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Dangerous pollution hits China's capital

Terra Daily via AFP: China's capital was shrouded in dangerous smog on Thursday, cutting visibility down to a few hundred metres as a count of small particulate pollution reached more than 25 times recommended levels.

A grey haze filled the sky, leaving an industrial, burning smell hanging in the air as PM2.5 reached over 500 micrograms per cubic metre in parts of Beijing, according to official statistics. Figures from the US embassy, which also monitors air quality, reached more than 671 in the early morning. The WHO recommends an exposure level of no more than 25 over a 24-hour period.

The official air quality index reached the top of the scale at 500. China's cities are often hit by heavy pollution, blamed on coal-burning by power stations and industry, as well as vehicle use, and it has become a major source of discontent with the ruling Communist Party.

"I can't believe how bad it is," said US tourist Richard Deutsch in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing, which was shrouded in heavy smog. "I have never experienced air this bad," said Deutsch, who is from Vermont. "It's worse than LA. I feel kind of bad for the people. It's taking years off their life."...

Smog in Beijing's Forbidden City, shot by Brian Jeffery Beggerly, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Australian wildfires rage out of control

Al-Jazeera.com: Dozens of wildfires were burning out of control in heatwave conditions across southern Australia, with at least one person confirmed dead.

Fire authorities on Friday said 68 fires were burning across Victoria state and another 16 were blazing across neighboring South Australia state. Both states have endured several days of temperatures exceeding 40C, with winds intensifying the fire risk as they gathered pace.

The Victoria police chief commissioner, Ken Lay, said on Friday that one person died at their home northwest of Melbourne, and that the death was "fire-related".

Residents in the region were advised to evacuate their homes, but several people decided to stay and protect their properties, said the Victoria fire commissioner, Craig Lapsley.

"They have a right to do so ... but they also take on that risk themselves," he said. "They risk the fact that these fires will be very intense and erratic this afternoon."

More than 400 heat exposure cases and 51 heart attacks have been reported in the state since Tuesday - a significant increase on normal figures. Fire conditions in Victoria are at their worst since 2009, when wildfires killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes...

An October, 2013 fire in Lithgow, Australia, shot by Lithgowlights, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Indonesia floods leave 13 dead, tens of thousands displaced

Channel Newsasia: At least 13 people have been killed and 40,000 have fled their homes after torrential rain triggered flash floods and landslides on Indonesia's northern Sulawesi island, officials said on Thursday.

Rivers on the island's northern tip overflowed and burst their banks, sending torrents of water surging through the city of Manado and surrounding areas that swept away poorly-constructed houses and vehicles.

People waded through waist-deep water to get to safety, while some took to rubber dinghies to escape the rapidly rising flood waters. Many of those displaced took shelter in government buildings and churches in the Christian pocket of Muslim-majority Indonesia.

National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho described the flash floods as "massive", adding the rains had also triggered numerous landslides across the mountainous region. "Thirteen people were killed, two are missing and 40,000 people have been evacuated," he said....

Manado Bay in North Sulawesi, shot in 2009 by Sakurai Midori, Wikimedia Commons,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license 

Researchers target sea level rise to save years of archaeological evidence

Newswise via Florida State University: Prehistoric shell mounds found on some of Florida’s most pristine beaches are at risk of washing away as the sea level rises, wiping away thousands of years of archaeological evidence.

“The largest risk for these ancient treasure troves of information is sea level rise,” said Shawn Smith, a senior research associate with the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University.

But a joint project between Smith and the National Park Service is drawing attention to the problem to hopefully minimize the impact on the state’s cultural sites. Smith and Margo Schwadron, an archaeologist with the National Park Service, have embarked on a project to examine past and future changes in climate and how we can adapt to those changes to save areas of shoreline and thus preserve cultural and archeological evidence.

“We’re kind of the pioneers in looking at the cultural focus of this issue,” Smith said, noting that most weather and ocean experts are concerned about city infrastructure for coastal areas.

To complete the project, the National Park Service awarded Smith a $30,000 grant. With that money, Smith and former Florida State University undergraduate Marcus Johnson spent hours compiling modern, colonial and paleo weather data.

The focus of their initial research is the Canaveral National Seashore and Everglades National Park, which both have prehistoric shell mounds, about 50 feet to 70 feet high. Researchers believe these shell mounds served as foundations for structures and settlements and later served as navigational landmarks during European exploration of the region....

The beach at Canaveral National Seashore, National Park Service

Montana snowshoe hare study provides documentation of climate-change adaptation

Martin Kidston in the Missoulian (Montana): In the biting cold and snow-filled backcountry of the Seeley-Swan Valley, researchers from the University of Montana are looking for what should be nearly invisible. After all, snowshoe hares against a winter landscape shouldn’t be easy to spot, their camouflaged coat a point of remarkable adaptation.

Yet as the climate warms and the snow comes later and melts sooner, the white hare often finds itself out of sync with its surroundings. Whether the animal can adapt to the changes remains uncertain, and success or failure may implicate the future of the threatened Canada lynx.

“There’s no more specialized mammal species on Earth as Canada lynx are with hares,” sai
d former UM researcher Scott Mills. “There’s no way you can recover lynx without fostering strong hare populations.”

Now at North Carolina State University, Mills has studied hares for 15 years and counting. Aided by UM graduate students working from Montana, he and his team have compiled the nation’s largest body of field data on snowshoe hares.

Over the years, the work has ranged from the timing of the hares’ changing coat color to climate change and the impacts of pre-commercial thinning on forest habitat. Their findings appeared last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and, two weeks ago, the National Science Foundation moved to fund the study for five additional years at a cost of $400,000.

“The NSF recognizes this as one of the most important long-term studies of a forest species in the U.S.,” said Mills. “They like the fact that we’re working to understand the basic principles that drive population dynamics, and that we’re applying that in a number of ways, from recovering the Canada lynx to better forestry practices to understanding climate change.”...

A snowshoe hare, shot by Denali National Park and Preserve, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license 

Tacloban: In the jaws of a 'climate sandwich'

Pia Ranada in the Rappler: No wonder it was the worst hit by Super Typhoon Yolanda (international name: Haiyan). Tacloban City was deemed the most vulnerable to climate change among 4 Philippine cities assessed by a new study.

From a range of 1 to 10 – with 10 being most vulnerable – Tacloban was rated 6.74 in terms of how exposed it is to climate change impacts, like stronger storms, extreme droughts, sea level rise, and aggravated flooding and landslides.

The study, conducted by Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Philippines and BPI Foundation, gave this score based on 3 factors: climate or environmental exposure, socio-economic sensiti
vity, and capacity to adapt.

Tacloban's location on the country's eastern seaboard exposes it to many climate risks, like tropical cyclones during the southwest monsoon. Even before Typhoon Yolanda hit the city on Nov 8, 2013, Tacloban was already feeling the effects of a shifting climate.

Records show that from 1998 to 2011, there was a 257% increase in rainfall, from 1,853 mm to 4,768 mm. Over a 50-year period, the city has been hit by an average of 2.3 typhoons a year. No wonder more flooding has been reported by residents.

Geohazard maps of the city also show high susceptibility to landslides, particularly for its upland villages. Being only 3 meters above sea level, Tacloban is also threatened by sea level rise. Studies show that seas can rise by 4 to 6 meters due to climate change. For these reasons, Tacloban is said to be within the jaws of a "climate sandwich."...

Tacloban shortly after Haiyan in November 2013, shot by Trocaire, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr,  under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license