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Climate change: Trends, Risks and signals |
Published
Saturday, December 7, 2002, in the Oakland Tribune
Rapid climate change predicted
Scientists
find mounting evidence that droughts, rising seas may
be
coming soon
By Douglas Fischer
SAN FRANCISCO -- The Earth's climate is capable
of faster, more
precipitous swings than scientists
imagined, a finding that stands on
its head the
notion that society has ample time to deal with global
warming's effects.
The new scientific findings,
unveiled Friday at the annual American
Geophysical
Union meeting here, suggest that climate can change
abruptly -- in less than a decade rather than centuries
as previously
thought -- when the Earth crosses
certain "thresholds:" a subtle shift
in
ocean currents, the melting of an icecap or, as some
fear, the
atmosphere warms due to greenhouse gases.
The historical record is breathtaking, said Jonathan
Overpeck, a
University of Arizona professor and
director of the Institute for
Study of Planet Earth
who has served on several government panels on
global
warming:
* One-hundred-year "mega-droughts"
that left the Midwest covered with
sand dunes
* El Ninos lasting 25 years or more.
*
Oceans that rise one to two inches per year, versus
the more
leisurely one to two millimeters assumed
by most climate change
models.
Scientists
don't understand what triggers such swings, but they
are
finding evidence in every ice core they drill,
lake bed they probe and
tree trunk they sample.
"We certainly need to figure it out quickly,"
he said. "The Arctic is
already melting."
"If you look far enough just about anywhere
you'll find evidence of
abrupt change," he
added. "To assume you're living somewhere in the
world that doesn't have (abrupt change) is the wrong
assumption."
The findings promise only
to extend the gulf between scientists who
warn of
global warming's dire effects and politicians still
grappling
with the concept that the climate is changing.
"We have built our infrastructure, our water
systems, our aqueducts,
our reservoirs, as though
the climate of the future is going to look
like
the last 50 years," said Peter Gleick, a climate
scientist and
director of the Oakland-based Pacific
Institute for Studies in
Development, Environment
and Security. "There's a good chance that it
isn't. And we're not ready for that."
"Policy-makers haven't come to grips with the fact
that climate is
changing at all in the United States,
much less the possibility that
those changes could
be very abrupt and dramatic," he added.
Most fearsome, Overpeck said, is the inability to predict
when the
climate might trip over one of these thresholds
and suddenly change.
The climate record of
the western United States, for instance, is
littered
with examples of mega-droughts so severe the 1930s dust
bowl
seems a mere inconvenience in comparison. But
there's no telling when
the current, relatively
stable pattern of abundant moisture in the
Midwest
and West may end.
Much of the West, including
Southern California, has been locked in a
drought
for several years. "We don't know whether that
drought will
last two more years or two more decades,"
Overpeck said.
A rising sea level is another
well-publicized effect of global
warming: As temperatures
rise, polar icecaps melt and low-lying
coastal areas
are flooded.
Throughout the 1990s -- and during
the last big glacial melt 10,000
years ago -- the
seas rose one to two millimeters every year, giving
policy-makers the sense that plenty of time is available
to chart a
solution.
New predictions by
Overpeck and others suggest the current warming
trends would have the seas rise by as much as two inches
a year --
something that happened 130,000 years
ago -- and that sea level could
top out 15 feet
above current levels by 2130.
"Our grandchildren
are going to live in that warm world," he said.
Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com
------------------------------------
INDONESIAN
WILDFIRES ACCELERATED GLOBAL WARMING
ENS
November
8, 2002
Internet: http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-08-06.asp
WASHINGTON, DC, November 8, 2002 (ENS) - Wildfires that scorched parts of Indonesia in 1997 spewed as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire planet's biosphere removes from it in a year, shows new research published this week. The fires, which destroyed thousands of forest acres and left peat bogs smoldering for months, released as much as 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon - mostly in the form of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) - into the atmosphere. A team of scientists led by Susan Page from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom attempted to estimate the mount of carbon released by the 1997 fires, and their potential effects on global warming. In an article published in the November 7 issue of the journal "Nature," the researchers conclude that these fires were "a major contributor to the sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations detected in 1998."
>From 1997 to 1998, the growth
rate of CO2 in the atmosphere nearly doubled, from an
average of 3.2 gigatons per calendar year to 6.0 gigatonnes,
the highest value on record. Most of the carbon released
in the Indonesian fires came not from burning trees
but from smoldering peat bogs which lost between 25
and 85 centimeters (about 10 to 33 inches) of their
depth in the fires. Tropical peatlands form one of the
largest land reserves of organic carbon. Peat is a carbon
rich soil made of compacted, decayed vegetation. Peat
bogs like those found in Indonesia normally support
lush swamp forests over peat deposits that can be up
to 20 meters (66 feet) thick. But when forest clearing,
drainage and drought begin to dry out these peatlands,
they become susceptible to fire - as was demonstrated
during the 1997 El Niño driven dry season.
Using
satellite images of a 2.5 million hectare study area
in Central Kalimantan, Borneo, from before and after
the 1997 fires, the researchers calculates that about
32 percent, or almost 800,000 hectares, of the area
had burned. Peatlands accounted for 91.5 percent of
the burned area, or about 730,000 hectares. "Using
ground measurements of the burn depth of peat, we estimate
that 0.19-0.23 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon were released
to the atmosphere through peat combustion, with a further
0.05 Gt released from burning of the overlying vegetation,"
the team wrote in the "Nature" article. "Extrapolating
these estimates to Indonesia as a whole, we estimate
that between 0.81 and 2.57 Gt of carbon were released
to the atmosphere in 1997 as a result of burning peat
and vegetation in Indonesia," an amount equal to
between 13 and 40 percent of the average annual carbon
emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels around
the world.
The CO2 released by the fires was more
than all the carbon taken up by all living things on
the planet - collectively known as the biosphere - in
a single year. The 1997 fires were therefore likely
responsible for the massive boost in CO2 emissions seen
in 1997-1998 - the largest annual increase in atmospheric
CO2 concentration detected since records began in 1957,
according to the researchers. Indonesia's 1997 and 1998
fire seasons were massive, destroying about 10 million
hectares (38,600 square miles) of Indonesia's national
forests, recognized as one of the world's centers of
biodiversity. More than 20 million people were exposed
to breathing extremely high levels of pollutants known
to cause both acute and long term health effects. Schools
and businesses were closed in Malaysia and people were
advised to remain indoors.
But the problem did not
end with the easing of the dry El Niño weather
pattern. Wildfires, mostly sparked by humans clearing
forest for agriculture, and exacerbated by increased
logging in the years following the fires, caused major
problems again in 2000, and problems may be cropping
up again this year.
These fires destroy some of
the habitat on which a variety of endangered species,
such as bears, elephants, rhinos, tigers and orangutans,
depend. Birute Galdikas, a primatologist who began her
orangutan research in 1971, said the number of orangutans
in Indonesian Borneo has been halved in the past decade,
partly due to the fires as well as logging and mining.
But besides the catastrophic effects that tropical wildfires
may have on biodiversity, researchers must consider
the impact that relatively small areas of fire may have
on the planet as a whole, through their contributions
to global climate change. Natural, undamaged peat swamp
forest is "essential to maintain high water levels,
protect the peat carbon store and facilitate future
carbon sequestration from the atmosphere," the
researchers conclude.
That position is echoed by an essay that accompanies the "Nature" article, written by two scientists from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. The researchers, David Schimel and David Baker, note that Susan Page and her colleagues have shown that "abrupt events can have an appreciable effect on the carbon cycle." "Most observing systems and modeling strategies assume that, to affect the carbon cycle, processes must occur over thousands of square kilometers or more," they write. "But especially in areas of high carbon density, catastrophic events affecting small areas can evidently have a huge impact on the global carbon balance." The Indonesian wildfires show that attempts to slow the rate of global warming will have to focus not only on reducing direct human caused carbon emissions from factories, power plants and vehicle tailpipes, but also on efforts to stem the unsustainable destruction of massive carbon stores such as those found in tropical forests and peat bogs.
If tropical peat forests continue to be destroyed by logging, development and fire, "there will be a continued release of carbon through decomposition of the exposed peat surfaces that, in turn, will place this large carbon store at further risk," write Page and her colleagues. "Tropical peatlands will make a significant contribution to global carbon emissions for some time to come unless major mitigation, restoration and rehabilitation programs are undertaken."
Tuesday, August
13, 2002
By Associated Press
HANOI, Vietnam
— Nearly half a million people in central Vietnam
are suffering from water shortages caused by a two-month
drought, state-controlled media reported Monday.
The drought has hit 84,000 hectares (207,500 acres),
or nearly one-third, of the rice fields in the central
region, Thoi Bao Kinh Te Vietnam (Vietnam Economic Times)
quoted Nguyen Dinh Ninh, deputy director of the Water
and Irrigation Projects Management Department, as saying.
About 42,000 hectares (105,000 acres) of rice fields
are badly affected, and 23,500 hectares (58,000 acres)
of crops could be lost, Ninh was quoted as saying.
The drought is not expected to affect Vietnam's
rice exports because the central region is not a main
rice growing area.
Most reservoirs in central Vietnam
cannot supply water for irrigation, because water levels
in rivers and streams in the region have fallen 0.3
to 0.4 meter (about one foot) lower than the average
for many years, he said. As water levels in the rivers
have dropped, salt water from the ocean has encroached
as far as 15 to 30 kilometers (10 to 20 miles) up the
rivers, hurting farm production, Ninh said.
The
drought has had little affect on coffee production in
Daklak province, a key coffee-growing area in the Central
Highlands, said an official in the province's Agriculture
and Rural Development Department.
As central regions
suffer from drought, heavy rains have swollen rivers
in northern Vietnam. Water levels in the Red River and
Thai Binh River systems in northern Vietnam are rising
following more than 200 millimeters (7 inches) of rain
over the weekend, the National Center of Hydrometeorology
said.
Copyright 2002, Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
------------------------------------
LONDON - A three-km (two-mile) thick cloud of
pollution shrouding southern Asia is threatening the
lives of millions of people in the region and could
have an impact much further afield, according to a United
Nations-sponsored study.
It said the cloud, a toxic
cocktail of ash, acids, aerosols and other particles,
was damaging agriculture and changing rainfall patterns
across the region which stretches from Afghanistan to
Sri Lanka.
The lives of millions of people were
at risk from drought and flooding as rainfall patterns
were radically altered, with dire implications for economic
growth and health.
"We have an early
warning. We have clear information and we already have
some impact. But we need much, much more information,"
U.N Environment Programme chief Klaus Toepfer told a
news conference.
"There are also global implications
not least because a pollution parcel like this, which
stretches three km high, can travel half way round the
globe in a week."
Toepfer said the
cloud was the result of forest fires, the burning of
agricultural wastes, dramatic increases in the burning
of fossil fuels in vehicles, industries and power stations
and emissions from millions of inefficient cookers.
He said the U.N.'s preliminary report into what
it dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud" was a timely
reminder to the upcoming Earth Summit in Johannesburg
that action, not words, was vital to the future of the
planet.
"The huge pollution problem
emerging in Asia encapsulates the threats and challenges
that the summit needs to urgently address," he
said.
"We have the initial findings and the
technological and financial resources available. Let's
now develop the science and find the political and moral
will to achieve this for the sake of Asia, for the sake
of the world," he added. RESPIRATORY DISEASE RISK
Professor Victor Ramanathan, one of the more than
200 scientists involved in the study, said the cloud
was cutting the amount of solar energy hitting the earth's
surface beneath it by up to 15 percent.
"We
had expected a drop in sunlight hitting the earth and
sea, but not one of this magnitude," he said.
At the same time the cloud's heat-absorbing properties
were warming the lower atmosphere considerably, and
the combination was altering the winter monsoon, leading
to a sharp reduction in rainfall over parts of north-western
Asia and a corresponding rise in rainfall over the eastern
coast of Asia.
The report calculated that
the cloud - 80 percent of which was man-made - could
cut rainfall over northwest Pakistan, Afghanistan, western
China and western central Asia by up to 40 percent.
Apart from drastically altering rainfall patterns,
the cloud was also making the rain acid, damaging crops
and trees, and threatening hundreds of thousands of
people with respiratory disease.
Nobel laureate
Paul Crutzen - one of the first scientists to identify
the causes of the hole in the ozone layer and also involved
in the U.N. report - said up to two million people in
India alone were dying each year from atmospheric pollution.
"If present trends as they are continue, then
we have a very serious problem," he said.
The report called for special monitoring stations to
be set up watch the behaviour of the cloud and its impact
on people and the environment.
"The concern
is that the regional and global impacts of the haze
are set to intensify over the next 30 years as the population
of the Asian region rises to an estimated five billion
people," the report said.
A spokeswoman
for environmental group Friends of the Earth said urgent
action was needed.
"Actions must include phasing
out fossil fuels and replacing them with clean, green,
renewable energy and tough laws to protect the world's
forests," she said.
Story by Jeremy Lovell
Story Date: 13/8/2002
------------------------------------
Sat Aug 10, 8:31
PM ET
EDITOR'S NOTE: A recent U.S. report
to the United Nations on global warming acknowledges
that the phenomenon is real and that people must adapt
to "inevitable" change. The Associated Press
visited six regions of the United States especially
vulnerable to climate change to explore the adaptations
that may lie ahead.
By MATT CRENSON
AP National Writer
ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES,
Louisiana (AP) — At the end of the road to Isle
de Jean Charles, Louisiana, a patchwork of dusty green
salt grass and sparkling blue water extends untouched
to the horizon.
Stilt-legged egrets wing the sky
or stand frozen in the grass. Occasionally a fat mullet
heaves itself out of the water and falls back with a
gentle plop.
This beautiful vista is as
sure a sign of ecological destruction as the scraped,
barren soil of a Superfund site.
A few decades
ago Isle de Jean Charles was a patch of high ground
in a sea of grassy marsh teeming with catfish and crawdads.
Today the small community is a true island, regularly
flooded during storms and sometimes even at high tide.
In a few years it will be submerged completely.
Deme Naquin, 75 years old, remembers paddling a flat-bottomed
pirogue to school as a boy. Now he's getting ready to
leave the only place he has ever called home. The U.S.
government has offered to resettle the island's 270
residents because a new hurricane protection plan leaves
them outside the ramparts.
Some people want to
stay. But Naquin and his family are ready to take the
government's offer.
"Another hurricane and
the road's going to be gone," says Chad Naquin,
Deme's 29-year-old grandson. "It would be hard
to leave, but in the long run it would be the best thing."
A widely publicized government report recently
predicted that sea-level rise caused by global warming
could swallow sizable chunks of the coastal United States
in the coming century. In Louisiana, that future is
already here.
Up to 35 square miles (90 square
kilometers) of Louisiana's wetlands sink into the Gulf
of Mexico each year. To date, an area the size of Cyprus
has been lost. In some places the coastline has retreated
30 miles (50 kilometers).
If scientists'
global warming projections prove correct, virtually
every state along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts will
have problems similar to Louisiana's by the middle of
the century. In a worst-case scenario, sea level would
be 44 inches (112 centimeters) higher 50 years from
now. If it is, 23,000 square miles (58,880 square kilometers)
of land along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts will disappear.
Low-lying cities such as Miami, Houston, Wilmington,
North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina, will
face many of the same problems New Orleans grapples
with today.
Beyond the United States, low-lying
coastal countries such as the Netherlands, Bangladesh
and the Bahamas stand to lose large swaths of territory.
"We're not going to be the only ones in the
boat," says Al Naomi, a project manager in the
New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"We're just in the boat first."
People
have been messing with the landscape of southern Louisiana
for centuries, building ever-higher levees along the
Mississippi and its tributaries to protect themselves
from floods. For the last 50 years they have even redirected
the flow of the river itself.
The results have
been catastrophic. South Louisiana requires a constant
supply of mud and fresh water to keep itself above sea
level, and channelizing the Mississippi River has deprived
the landscape of that vital resource.
The Mississippi
River literally built southern Louisiana, dropping countless
tons of mud at the edge of the continent to form a delta.
Over millennia the mud washed across the landscape during
spring floods, settling in swamps and marshes to nourish
plant growth. Every thousand years or so the river changed
course to fill in a nearby low spot.
Eventually
the Mississippi built a broad swath of wetlands nearly
300 miles (500 kilometers) long. If you look at a map
of the state, virtually everything south of Interstate
10 was dropped there by the river.
Now mud that
would have settled into the swamps of the Atchafalaya
or Barataria Bay shoots out into the Gulf of Mexico,
never to be seen again. Meanwhile the land is compacting,
slowly turning to clay as it sinks under its own weight
and squishes itself dry.
Sinking land due to mismanagement
of the Mississippi River and rising sea level caused
by global warming work in tandem, erasing Louisiana's
coastal wetlands.
The loss of coastal wetlands
threatens to devastate the state's fishing industry,
worth dlrs 2.2 billion a year. Fish, crabs, shrimp and
other animals rely on wetlands as a nursery, where their
young can find plenty of food without exposing themselves
to predators. By some calculations, Louisiana's wetlands
are involved in producing as much as 40 percent of the
seafood caught in the United States.
"The
biological productivity of the Barataria and Terrebone
Basins alone dwarfs that of the Everglades, which our
country is willing to spend billions to restore,"
says Ted Falgout.
Falgout is no rabid environmentalist,
intent on saving every square inch of marsh no matter
what the cost. As executive director of the GreaterLaFourche
Port Commission, he manages the country's largest transportation
hub for offshore oil and gas drilling. There are 600
offshore drilling platforms within 40 miles (64 kilometers)
of the port.
The road connecting Port Fourchon
to civilization, Louisiana Route 1, sits four feet (1.2
meters) above sea level for its final 18 miles (29 kilometers).
If a hurricane were to wash it away, nearly 20 percent
of the total U.S. oil supply would be jeopardized. Gasoline
prices might triple, Falgout warns.
More
frightening to emergency planners is what a major hurricane
could do to New Orleans. High winds and low atmospheric
pressure actually raise sea level beneath and in front
of a hurricane, sometimes as much as 25 feet (7.5 meters).
In New Orleans, the only levees high enough to stop
a wall of water that big are along the Mississippi,
not around the city's perimeter.
A direct hit to
New Orleans by a hurricane with sustained winds above
110 mph (177 kph) would overwhelm the city's ramparts,
filling the city with water as if it were a sinking
canoe.
This is far from an abstract threat.
New Orleans residents who were children in 1965 remember
cowering in their homes during Hurricane Betsy thinking
they were going to die. Hurricane Camille, one of the
two strongest hurricanes ever to hit the United States,
struck Louisiana in 1969 but largely spared New Orleans.
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit the sparsely inhabited
Atchafalaya basin but still caused significant damage.
And in 1998 an evacuated New Orleans was again spared
when Hurricane Georges veered east.
The
Red Cross estimates that 25,000 to 100,000 people could
die if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. The relief
agency is so pessimistic about southern Louisiana's
prospects in the face of a major storm that it recently
closed all of its relief centers south of Interstate
10, which runs across the state from Lake Charles to
New Orleans. Why offer hurricane relief in an area that
people are better off abandoning in a hurricane?
Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State
University Hurricane Center, describes a horrific ordeal
for anybody unfortunate enough to be in the city when
the hurricane hit.
"If you survive the flying
debris and your house collapsing," van Heerden
says, "then you're going to have to deal with a
minimum of 13 feet (3.9 meters) of water."
Because New Orleans essentially sits in a bowl
ringed by its protective levees, that water would stand
around for weeks or months until officials could find
a way to breach a levee to drain it. The stagnant pool
would probably be contaminated with toxic waste from
the dozens of petrochemical plants that line the Mississippi,
as well as human waste and decomposing carcasses.
"This is a dlrs 50 billion disaster," van
Heerden says, surveying the expensive new housing developments
on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. "And in a
month we could have it."
Experts agree
that healthy coastal wetlands provide the best defense
against such a catastrophe. Marshes and swamps attenuate
the storm surge as it comes ashore, softening the blow
to any cities behind them. Experts differ on the exact
figures, but a common rule is that traversing 1.5 miles
(2.4 kilometers) of wetlands diminishes a storm surge
by a foot (30 centimeters).
With 30 miles (50 kilometers)
of wetlands lost in some parts of coastal Louisiana,
a storm like Hurricane Betsy would be far more destructive
to New Orleans today than it was nearly 40 years ago.
"Without the wetlands," Naomi
says ominously, "you're not going to have the city."
Some scientists believe they can rebuild the wetlands
by further manipulating the Mississippi. A coalition
of 11 state and federal agencies has assembled a plan
called Coast 2050, and is lobbying the U.S. Congress
to foot a major part of the dlrs 14 billion price tag.
Coast 2050 would divert Mississippi water into
dying wetlands. It would shore up barrier islands and
plug canals that allow salt water to penetrate freshwater
marshes. It proposes erosion control projects, plantings
to help establish new wetlands and breakwaters to protect
fragile coastlines.
Its proponents say that Coast
2050 will prevent another Rhode Island's worth of wetlands
from being washed away by the middle of this century.
But will it work?
Coastal geologist
van Heerden dismisses the plan as an unscientific "shopping
list" that doesn't sufficiently imitate the natural
functions of the Mississippi River system.
"It
was basically put together by bureaucrats," he
says.
And politics might prevent many of
the Coast 2050 proposals from ever being built. The
Davis Pond diversion, a demonstration project upstream
of New Orleans, still is not operating almost 40 years
after it was first authorized. Fishermen who worried
that fresh water spilling into the marsh would ruin
their catch filed lawsuits that took years to settle,
and local residents concerned about flooding demanded
design changes. Meanwhile, thousands of acres (hectares)
of wetlands have been lost.
In his SUV, cruising
along Interstate 10 just inches above the marsh, van
Heerden surveys a landscape that is already below sea
level and envisions a bleak future.
"This
is a lesson for many other states that have coastal
wetlands," he says. "The problem, unfortunately,
is only going to get worse."
___
Coast
2050: http://coast2050.nwrc.gov/
U.S. Global Change Research Project:
www.usgcrp.gov
U.S. Climate Action Report: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications/car/index.html
------------------------------------
BBC News -
Thursday, 8 August, 2002, 17:04 GMT 18:04
UK
The environmental
group Greenpeace has released photographs which it says
dramatically illustrate the changes being wrought by
global warming.
Greenpeace activists travelled
to the coast of the Norwegian island of Svalbard, 600
kilometres (375 miles) north of the country's mainland,
in the ship Rainbow Warrior.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
" The blame can be put squarely on human activity
" - Greenpeace
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The have released a photograph they took there,
along with one taken from almost exactly the same spot
in 1918, to illustrate how much the Blomstrandbreen
glacier has retreated.
"The blame can be put
squarely on human activity," Greenpeace says in
a statement on its website.
"Our addiction
to fossil fuels releases millions of tonnes of greenhouse
gases into the atmosphere, and this is what is causing
temperatures to rise, and our future to melt before
our eyes."
The contrast between the two photos
is stark. In the 1918 photo, the horizon is dominated
by a massive white glacier, the island's mountains almost
hidden.
In the 2002 photo, the glacier is almost
gone, leaving chunks of ice floating in the water and
the mountains almost bare.
Rising waters
Greenpeace's
photos echo the results of a recent study of Alaskan
glaciers by US scientists that concluded the ice was
melting even faster that previously thought.
The
resulting melt waters, researchers said, could drive
up global sea levels by 0.14 millimetres a year.
But Keith Echelmeyer, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Geophysical Institute, who conducted that study, said
it wasn't clear whether man-made global warming was
the culprit.
Other factors, such as a reduction
in snowfall, could also be to blame for the shrinking
glaciers, he said last month.
------------------------------------
PANAMA
CITY, Panama, August 7, 2002 (ENS) - Human activities
are changing the global climate, and these changes are
having far reaching effects on tropical forests, according
to scientists from around the world gathered here last
week for the Association for Tropical Biology annual
meeting. Tropical forest in Belize (Photo courtesy World
Rainforest Movement (WRM) )
The scientists were
hosted in Panama City by the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute. They explored the Smithsonian's tropical
biology research station at Barro Colorado, located
on the hilltop that became an island when central Panama
was flooded during the construction of the Panama Canal
in 1911.
The Association for Tropical Biology says
that tropical forests are undergoing unprecedented changes
as 1.2 percent of the remaining forest is removed each
year, as atmospheric carbon dioxide which fuels plant
growth increases by 0.4 percent each year, and as global
climate change begins in earnest.
Yadvinder
Mahli from the University of Edinburgh's Institute of
Ecology and Resource Management provided an overview
of ongoing climate changes as a result of increasing
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Since the mid-1970s all tropical forest regions
have warmed, Mahli said, although with regional variation
in intensity. There has been even more regional variation
in precipitation, but there appears to have been an
overall global decline. No global trend in dry season
intensity has been detected. Road through tropical forest
in Bolivia (Photo courtesy WRM)
Higher global temperatures
and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the major
greenhouse gas, will increase the amount of carbon stored
by tropical forests by stimulating tree growth, data
analysis and models have suggested.
University
of Missouri scientist Deborah Clark, who works at the
La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, re-evaluated
the evidence and told the symposium that tropical forests
may not be carbon sinks that can be used to absorb carbon
dioxide generated by the burning of fossil fuels.
Instead, tropical forest may end up contributing
even more carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere as
temperature rises, she said.
Data from La Selva
show a strong negative correlation between tree growth
and higher temperatures. Temperatures experienced by
canopy leaves may be close to the point at which respiration
exceeds photosynthesis so that net production of carbon
dioxide results, Clark suggests.
Positive feedback
between higher temperatures and CO2 production by tropical
forests could be catastrophic by resulting in accelerated
increase in global CO2 levels, she said.
Dr. Oliver
Philips of the University of Leeds School of Geography
presented analyses, conducted with Malhi and others,
of data from permanent plots in mature forests throughout
the tropics.
Tree turnover, the difference
between mortality and the recruitment of new individuals
into the population through growth, has doubled throughout
the tropics in recent decades, he said, from one percent
annually in the 1950s to two percent in the 1990s.
The total area of the plot occupied by tree stems has
increased in Amazonia, but not in the rest of the tropics,
and large lianas have increased in western Amazonia.
Such widespread changes over such large areas suggest
that a common mechanism is at work, said Dr. Philips.
Copyright
Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All Rights Reserved.
------------------------------------
6th August
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHNOM PENH - Cambodia's worst drought in 20 years
has damaged thousands of hectares of newly planted rice
in several provinces and the lack of rain continues
to threaten crops elsewhere, officials said on Monday.
Nhim Vanda, vice-chairman of the National Disaster
Committee, said a two-month long drought had damaged
more than 50,000 hectares (124,000 acres) of rice -
around 10 percent of the country's crop planted so far.
The rest of Cambodia's 450,000 hectares
of wet season-planted rice could suffer the same fate,
he said.
"According to our research, it is
the worst drought in 20 years. There is nothing we can
do about that," Nhim Vanda said after a meeting
with Cambodian Red Cross officials on how to handle
the problem of looming food shortages.
The
drought has forced farmers to delay the planting of
wet season rice, which normally accounts for the lion's
share of total output and is planted between late June
and the end of September.
The prolonged
drought means farmers are unlikely to have the time
to sow much more than the 500,000 hectares already planted.
As a result, overall rice plantation has fallen
from an initially targeted 2.2 million hectares for
2002/03, Nhim Vanda said.
Officials blamed the
El Nino weather phenomenon for the drought and said
it would hit Cambodia's overall production.
The
southeast Asian country had previously predicted a total
rice output of 4.7 million tonnes for 2002/03, up from
4.1 million the previous year.
Story Date: 6/8/2002
------------------------------------
BAGUTIA,
Bangladesh - Momena Begum sits clutching her younger
brother as their mother pushes their raft made of lashed
together banana trees through waist-deep water in Bagutia
village.
Momena's family is one of hundreds
displaced by Bangladesh's worst floods in four years
- but a fact of life in villages like Bagutia, where
flood waters have forced inhabitants to relocate at
least three times in the past 14 years.
Prime Minister
Begum Khaleda Zia visited flood-stricken areas in northern
Sirajganj district, about 50 km from Bagutia, on Monday,
imploring villagers to persevere. "We are familiar
with disasters including floods and so face it boldly,
with courage and fortitude," state television quoted
Khaleda as saying.
"The government
will provide necessary assistance to rebuild lives of
the flood victims," she said.
Bangladesh's
chronic floods have forced people to keep moving in
search of drier land. "Virtually, we have been
made like nomads or gypsies moving from one place to
another. We do not have permanent homes," said
Nowsher Ali in Bagutia.
"Today you
see us here but next year it may be at a different village,"
he said. Most of their rice crops were washed away by
the floods while the voracious Jamuna river swallowed
hundreds of homes in this village alone.
Bangladesh,
a country of 130 million people, relies heavily on agriculture
and the floods, an almost annual event in this South
Asian country, often play havoc with farming. The floods
are caused by monsoon rains and upstream water coming
from neighbouring India. This year, they have inundated
the homes of some five million people and damaged 300,000
hectares (750,000 acres) of rice crops, according to
official estimates. Independent sources say the picture
is worse than the official figures show.
LIVING
WITH FLOODS
The headmaster of Bagutia school
said the students, many of whom are having trouble meeting
school tuition fees, are lucky to have a roof over their
classroom.
"We do not have a permanent
building or shed," Mohammad Anwarul Huq said, adding
that "every time there is a bad flood, full or
part of the school was swept away." The floods
have been receding in the country's north since Friday,
revealing wrecked homes and ruined rice patties.
Jahangir Alam Prodhan, a teacher in Bagutia, said the
regular flooding has toughened the village, making residents
more resilient and courageous. Villagers brave stormy
nights, floating on rafts with no cover, their children
playing in the murky, swirling waters, often living
on just one full meal every two or three days. "We
have learned to live with odds," said Ambia Begum
of Bagutia. She said no relief goods had yet been supplied
by the authorities although getting dry food and clean
water posed serious health problems.
The
natural disasters have had other dislocating effects,
forcing rural workers to seek jobs in the cities. "They
work as rickshaw-pullers, porters, brick breaker at
construction sites and in case of finding no work, they
turn to crime," another Bagutia resident said.
Dhaka municipal officials said about a quarter
of the city's nearly 10 million people were migrants
from villages who had lost their homes to mighty rivers
and in floods. "Never shall we settle anywhere
permanently," said Bagutia's Mohammad Sirajul Huq,
a retired air force officer.
"But we are brave
enough to face the floods," he added. Story by
Anis Ahmed
Story Date: 6/8/2002
------------------------------------
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
By ALANNA MITCHELL
EARTH
SCIENCES REPORTER
Monday, August 5, 2002
– Print Edition, Page A1While premiers and federal
cabinet ministers wrangle over whether Canada should
be the final signatory to ratify the Kyoto Protocol,
the Northern Hemisphere is in the grip of perhaps the
hottest and weirdest summer ever because of greenhouse-gas
pollution in the air.
The extreme weather
-- heat waves, droughts, floods and other nasties --
has been felt across the Middle East, through Europe
and into parts of Asia, as well as Canada and the United
States. Already, the British Meteorological Office has
calculated that temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere
were 0.73 C above average, making it the hottest half-year
on record.
The Kyoto Protocol is meant to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions to below 1990 levels. So many
other countries have ratified the agreement already
that, if Canada agreed to sign, the treaty could take
effect.
Instead, emissions are rising. And because
the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
is getting denser by the day, the bizarre weather is
fated to get worse, said Gordon McBean, head of the
Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at the University
of Western Ontario. "Around the world, the data
on the economic costs of extreme weather show a doubling
every several years," said Professor McBean, former
head of Canada's weather service.
In the
1990s, for example, economic losses from extreme weather
amounted to $399-billion (U.S.), up from $74.5-billion
in the 1970s in constant dollars.
This year, it's
difficult to find a spot on the northern half of the
globe where the weather has been unremarkable. Heat
waves throughout July were unrelenting.
Toronto,
along with most of Southern Ontario, has had a long
string of viciously hot and humid days this summer,
making July the fourth-warmest on record. By Aug. 1,
Toronto had implemented 11 heat alerts, in which community
buildings are opened to members of the public seeking
refuge from the high temperatures, and water is distributed
on some high-traffic street corners.
Although parts
of Alberta and Saskatchewan were hit by freak snow storms
and ground frost on the weekend, those provinces have
also experienced their share of hot, dry days that have
ruined most crops and left livestock farmers without
the needed hay to feed their animals. Much of what's
left of crops has been destroyed by grasshoppers.
Weird weather, though, has not been just a Canadian
problem. In Shanghai, China, bears in the zoo are so
overheated in the unusual spate of 35-degree weather
that they have stooped to begging soft drinks from passersby.
Russia, which, like Canada, will be among the countries
most sorely affected by climate change because it is
in the middle of a large northern continent, has had
its worst season for forest fires in 30 years.
Moscow
was so hot that by the end of July, 188 citizens had
drowned after hitting the vodka bottle for relief and
then taking a drunken dip.
Throughout the Middle
East, the temperatures were unbearable. Last week, Prince
Fahd bin Turki bin Saud Kabir, 25, a member of the Saudi
royal family, died during a car trip through the desert
along with two companions. The Saudi royal court said
he died of thirst as the temperature hit 47 in Riyadh.
In Lebanon, the heat reached 40 and was so intense
that it caused dozens of fires.
In Bahrain, it felt
more like a crushing 54, with the wind and humidity.
And Iraq, Egypt, Oman and Kuwait were almost as torrid.
Europeans simply sweltered. In Athens, the temperature
hit 41. In the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, temperatures
were at least six degrees above normal at times during
July. It was so hot in Italy that the Belvedere Glacier
on Mount Rosa in the Alps melted, creating a massive
lake that threatened to drown the ski resort.
Glacier
specialists in Europe attributed the phenomenon to global
climate change, which is caused by the emission of greenhouse
gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air. The gases
act like a blanket, trapping heat above the Earth and
forcing average temperatures to rise. They also cause
weather to become erratic. As a result of greenhouse
gases, scientists expect to see a raft of higher temperatures,
as well as more extremely hot days.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
------------------------------------
Exotic marine species
are turning up unexpectedly in the cold waters of the
North Atlantic. This may be exciting as a spectacle,
says Steve Connor, but it suggests that something sinister
is going on
05 August 2002
The Independent,
UK
First there was the flying gurnard, followed
a couple of years later by the
blue marlin. Two
years after that came the first appearance of the
sharp-nosed shark and a year after a fine specimen of
the big-eye tunny. In
more recent years we've seen
the short-snouted seahorse, saddled seabream
and
sailfin dory - to name but a few of the strange fish
seen off the
coastline of Britain.
Flying
gurnards, which have greatly elongated pectoral fins
that enable them
to move quickly through the water,
were previously unknown to British waters
before
1980, when the first one was caught in the nets of Cornish
fishermen.
The same goes for the sharp-nosed shark,
the first recorded specimen being
caught just south
of the Lizard in 1984. During the Eighties, a new species
of tropical or semi-tropical fish tended to be recorded
once every couple of
years but during the Nineties
the new arrivals became even more frequent.
Towards
the end of the decade first-recorded arrivals of new
fish species
were nearing two every year - culminating
in the appearance of both the
big-eye thresher shark
and the barracuda in 2001.
The past 20 years
has seen an ever-more diverse array of exotic fish from
warmer, southern waters swimming north into British
coastal waters. And it's
not just fish. Tropical
plankton have been seen moving north, as well as
warm-water sea snails and other invertebrates normally
seen much further
south. Earlier this year an unusual
lobster was caught off the Isles of
Scilly. The
5in-long (12cm) slipper lobster, Scyllarus arctus, is
normally a
native of the Mediterranean and only
a dozen have been sighted in Britain in
250 years
of record keeping. But this specimen, brought up off
St Mary's in
the Scillies, was the fifth specimen
to be caught since 1999.
(It is not just
Britain, of course, that is seeing this trend. President
Bush was recently photographed landing a huge striped
bass that his daughter
Jenna had caught on a fishing
holiday off the coast of New England. Striped
bass
is a warmer-water species, which only a generation ago
would never have
been seen so far north along America's
Atlantic coast.)
The question arises as to
what is going on? Are these strange foreigners
blown
off course by storms and strong currents? Are they the
result of a
statistical blip caused by better record
keeping? Or is their appearance an
indication of
something more sinister - namely a genuine change in
the
temperature of the seas caused by global warming?
Some scientists believe it
is the latter and think
they now have more than a smoking gun to show it.
The first systematic study of marine records dating
back 40 years points to
a strong link between the
northward migration of fish and rising sea
temperatures.
A team of marine biologists has for the first time linked
the
arrival of tropical and semi-tropical fish off
the coast of Cornwall - the
southern-most tip of
the British mainland - to increases in the average
temperature of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Studying
records dating back to 1960, the scientists found that
more exotic
species of fish are being caught or
washed ashore now than ever before and
that the
sightings can be directly linked to a corresponding
rise in sea
temperatures. The link is a "significant
correlation" and could explain why
Cornwall
in particular has seen so many exotic species of marine
wildlife
coming from warmer regions of the world,
says Tony Stebbing, a recently
retired biologist
from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, who was funded
by the
Natural Environment Research Council.
"As the world warms, the only way for wildlife
species to live in the
temperature they prefer is
to move their ranges slowly poleward," says
Stebbing, the lead author of the study published in
the Journal of the
Marine Biological Association.
This is especially true for fish, a
cold-blooded
animal that has to rely on the outside heat of its watery
environment to control its own body temperature.
"Fish are good indicators of temperature
change because they are unable to
regulate their
temperature independently of the surrounding water.
They,
therefore, swim to keep themselves in waters
of their preferred temperature
range. Not only are
changes in fish distribution likely to reflect
temperature
increases, but the arrival of new fish species are well
monitored by fishermen, as well as scientists,"
Stebbing says.
Climate modelling and temperature
records suggest that species would have to
move
north at a rate of between 50km and 80km (31-50miles)
per decade in
order to maintain a constant average
temperature of their surrounding
environment. The
Cornish peninsula would be the first bit of Britain
to
detect this. As Stebbing says: "It is as
though Cornwall is at the bow of
ship which is slowly
steaming south at a speed of between 50km and 80km a
decade."
Trawling through the archives
of the Cornwall Biological Records Unit, the
researchers
- Stella Turk, Alwynne Wheeler and Bob Clarke - attempted
to
document the first sightings of warm-water fish
since 1960. The team decided
to concentrate on appearances
that were made within 12 miles of the
coastline,
as recorded by the Environmental Records in Cornwall
and the
Isles of Scilly Automated (Erica) database.
The records revealed that, in
fact, it wasn't until
about 1980 when the first new fish appeared - it was
the famous flying gurnard. Over the past 20 years, 17
more were recorded,
including the Barracuda caught
six miles off the Lizard.
At the same time,
the team looked at temperature records of the North
Atlantic compiled by American scientists to try to see
if there was any
correlation. What was intriguing
was that it took until the end of the
Seventies
for average sea temperatures to rise consistently above
the
average for the period, and that the rise in
temperature over the past 20
years or so has been
accelerating, just like the accelerating appearance
of
new species of fish off Britain.
Oceans
in general have warmed by an average of 0.06C over the
past 40 years
but the surface water, where many
fish live, has risen faster, by up to
0.31C. The
North Atlantic in particular is warming faster than
any other
ocean with a temperature increase of 0.5C
over the past 20 years - a rise
that is increasing
at an accelerating rate.
It is now understood
that something like 90 per cent of the heat generated
by global warming is locked up in the oceans. The increase
in temperature
this creates is not always equally
distributed. Surface waters are warmer,
presumably
because this is where the exchange of heat with the
atmosphere
takes place.
However, deeper
water is not immune to even bigger temperature rises.
Stebbing points out that the shelf-edge current, which
flows from Spain to
the Shetlands at a depth of
between 200 metres and 600 metres
(656ft-2,000ft),
has warmed by 2C between 1972 and 1992. Because this
current runs north at a speed of about 35 miles a day,
it is the most likely
route for some tropical and
semi-tropical species to find their way to
Britain.
Fishy visitors from foreign shores may be interesting
and welcome
spectacles but there is a serious side
to this migration polewards. As the
new immigrants
move in, some of our native species are moving north.
Cod, which is at the southerly most reach of its range
in Cornwall, is
particularly vulnerable to rising
sea temperatures. In the past, as cod have
dwindled,
it has been difficult to tease out the reason why. Over
fishing
has evidently played a major part, but these
latest findings suggest a more
complicated picture,
with rising sea temperatures exacerbating an already
difficult habitat problem for the nation's favourite
fish dish.
"Whatever the mechanism of
the northward shift in the distribution of fish
in European waters, the clear trends suggest they are
doing so in a way that
makes future changes predictable,"
Stebbing says. "They may help to forecast
changes
in the future distribution of commercial species due
to climate
change. It seems likely that in time
our fishing fleets will have to go
further north
to make commercial catches, while fish farming in our
native
waters will be able to grow more sub-tropical
species."
What began with the flying
gurnard may end with the disappearance of the cod
and the many other native fish of the British Isles,
which can no longer
take the heat of a warmer world.
------------------------------------
CNN – 31st July
MOSCOW,
Russia --Doctors are urging Muscovites to stay indoors
to avoid heavy white smoke from scores of forest fires
stoked by a record heatwave.
Hundreds of
firefighters, using helicopters, planes and dozens of
fire engines, are battling to control flames racing
across about 300 hectares (740 acres) of woodland south
of the Russian capital.
At least 119 peat fires
were ablaze in the Moscow region on Wednesday, up from
76 the day before, the Emergency Situations Ministry
said. Normally only a handful of such fires are reported
each summer.
The army was helping firefighters and
volunteers in Shatura, a town southeast of Moscow that
has been particularly badly affected.
Moscow's ambulance
service said about 5,900 people suffering from the effects
of the smog, expected to choke the city for another
five days, had called for urgent help over the past
24 hours.
Igor Elkis, head of the ambulance
service, said people with respiratory problems or heart
disease were most at risk.
"We have told people
to take their regular medication, to stay home if possible
and to hang wet sheets by their windows," he told
Reuters.
Weather forecasters said toxic fumes were
well above safety limits.
"We have registered
levels of nitrogen dioxide up to three times the norm,
and carbon monoxide up to twice the norm," a spokeswoman
for the Meteorology Office said.
"For
a big city, that is nothing extreme yet. It becomes
an emergency when we have quantities that are 20 times
the norm."
Forecasters said the heatwave would
continue until the weekend, with maximum temperatures
about 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).
"On Saturday
we could see some showers, which could help clean the
air, but the situation will not change radically,"
Alexander Lyakhov, head of the Meteorology Office, told
Russian television.
This summer has been
one of Moscow's hottest since records began in 1870,
with temperatures hovering about 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit)
for all of July.
Elsewhere in Russia about
110,000 hectares were ablaze, with the Far Eastern regions
of Yakutia and Kamchatka among the worst hit.
-back to 'Signals' page
-
------------------------------------
the Scotsman,
3rd August - Allan Hall in Berlin
Galcier archive website - photo examples
GERMAN geologists
have the most up-to-date equipment to measure global
warming. But their most dramatic tool is old picture
postcards, which bear stark witness to the retreat of
Alpine glaciers over the past 100 years.
Three
years ago a Munich-based team of geological climatologists
embarked upon a rummage through antiques shops, markets,
state archives and university libraries for old photos
and postcards of the type our great-grandfathers sent
home from the Grand Tour.
They collected 2,500
examples, each depicting the same thing: Alpine glaciers
in all their shimmering, icy glory.
The researchers
then went back to the exact spot from which the postcard
pictures were taken and took a fresh picture of the
glacier.
They collated a photo essay of extreme
climate change. In all cases, the glaciers have diminished
considerably, dramatically altering the landscape they
once dominated.
The scientists, working
in conjunction with Greenpeace, are using the pictures
as proof of climate warming in Europe.
By comparing
the old photos with modern ones, the Munich Society
for Environmental Research believes laymen will be able
to see with their own eyes how rapidly the glaciers
have melted.
According to the World Glacier Monitoring
organisation, glaciers are a "global thermometer"
and reflect the world’s rising temperature.
"They are the most visible sign of climate change,"
said a spokesman for the Munich team.
The great
glaciers of Switzerland, Austria, Italy and parts of
Germany are all in retreat.
From the middle of
the 19th century to about 1975, the giant ice fields
shrank about a third in area and lost about half of
their volume.
In the last 25 years, they have melted
even more quickly, losing an additional 20 to 30 per
cent of their water content.
The shrinkage of the
Alpine glaciers affects more than just the mountain
ecosystems.
Europe’s biggest rivers, including
Germany’s Rhine, the Rhone in France and Italy’s
Po, spring from the glaciers. If the glaciers dry up,
reservoirs will be endangered, the Munich researchers
warn.
In addition the retreating ice fields
loosen boulders, leading to erosion and avalanches.
For the experts meeting in Johannesburg at the
end of August for the UN Climate Summit, the shrinking
glaciers are a key indicator of global warming and a
cause for worldwide concern, the Society for Environmental
Research says.
Documenting the glacial melt is
not an easy task. The scientists have to find the exact
location depicted in the historical photos and the position
from which the picture was taken.
To do so, the
geologists spent months hiking through the Alps, liaising
with local climbers. They studied elevation maps, examined
satellite images and measured paths and meadows.
Equipped with the most modern surveying technology
such as UV-gauges on the one hand and historic hiking
maps on the other, the scientists were able to photograph
the 60 largest Alpine glaciers pictured on the postcards.
"We had to do a lot of climbing and clambering,"
said the team’s project leader, Wolfgang Zaengl.
"The postcards were our most invaluable tool."
Many of the old landscape markers, such as rock
formations, are covered in grass and trees, said a team
member, Sylvia Hamberger. "The old hiking paths
and glacier terraces have disappeared, making orientation
difficult."
The team was able to photograph
each of the glaciers and compare their size and shape
to those in the historical photos.
The results
of their research and the glacial photo documentation
have been published on the internet at www.gletscherarchiv.de.
Looking at the pictures, the differences between
then and now are obvious. The pictures tell the tragic
story: the glaciers are rapidly vanishing.
"We
are witnesses to the fastest glacial melting in a thousand
years," Mr Zaengl said.
"But today we
are lucky that we can still see the glaciers. Future
generations probably will not."
------------------------------------
Canadian Press - Sunday, August 04 – Online Edition, Posted at 12:28 AM EST
Calgary — About five centimetres
of snow fell Friday on communties along the foothills
of the Alberta Rockies as people flocked to national
and provincial parks for the August long weeked.
"We've got people walking around in toques and
scarves and have had a few shocked international visitors,"
said Marjorie Huculak, park manager for Banff National
Park. "It's pretty unusual to go from above average
temperatures to this."
Motorists were being
advised not to travel west of the Calgary on the Trans
Canada Highway.
Meanwhile, the sudden storm forced
two adults and four youths boating on a large reservoir
on to an island for more than five hours to wait for
rescuers.
RCMP were called at 7:30 p.m. Friday
when the boaters failed to return from a trip to Kinbrook
Island Provincial Park near Brooks, Alta., 150 kilometres
southwest of Calgary. No injuries were reported.
Friday's flurries set a record in Calgary for the earliest
August snowfall, with the previous record set in 1946.
On Aug. 15 of that year, 0.3 centimetres of snow fell
on the city.
While unpleasant, Calgary's
Friday low of 2 degrees was still no match for other
parts of the Prairies. In Saskatchewan, Environment
Canada reported 13 record lows, with the lowest being
-2.8 degrees in Spiritwood, 150 kilometres north of
Saskatoon.
At Camp Chief Hector, about a half hour's
drive west of Calgary, campers bundled up in sweaters
and crowded around an indoor fireplace for an evening
of games as the snow turned to rain.
"We'll
drink plenty of hot chocolate and then head to bed,"
camp director Jill Jamieson said.
She wasn't fazed
by the wonky weather.
"There is no bad weather.
Just weather. You just have to be prepared and make
sure you're always looking to the skies," she said.
Environment Canada was forecasting temperatures in the
area to rebound to 15 degrees Saturday — a far
cry from the sweltering heatwave that baked much of
the province in July.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
------------------------------------
LONDON,
England (Reuters) --The first six months of the year
have been the second-warmest ever and average global
temperatures in 2002 could be the highest ever recorded,
British weather experts said Thursday.
"Globally
2002 is likely to be warmer than 2001, and may even
break the record set in 1998," said Briony Horton,
the Meteorological Office's climate research scientist.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
the body that advises governments on long-term climatic
variations, blames global warming, caused by rising
emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the
atmosphere, for the rise in temperatures, a Met Office
spokesman said.
"We agree with them,"
he told Reuters. "Since 1970 there has been a marked
trend in the rise of global temperatures.
"The
actual rise prior to 1970 was partly man-made and partly
due to natural effects. But since 1970 scientists are
in fairly general agreement that warming can be attributed
to man's polluting activities."
The
Met Office said global temperatures were 1.03 degrees
Fahrenheit (0.57 Celsius) higher than the long-term
average of about 59 degrees (15 Celsius) in the period
from January to June.
In the nearly 150 years since
recording began, only in 1998 has the difference been
higher, 1.08 degrees (0.6 Celsius), and that was caused
by the influence of the El Nino weather phenomenon.
The figures also showed that the northern hemisphere
had its warmest-ever half year, with temperatures 1.31
degrees (0.73 Celsius) above the long-term average.
The Met Office compiles its figures from data collected
from observatories around the world, as well as from
ships at sea.
Copyright 2002 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
------------------------------------
PALLAVA BAGLA
NEW DELHI, JULY 25:
The current Indian drought may be directly linked to
the larger climate change that is affecting the globe,
feels R K Pachauri, chief of the UN-sponsored Inter-governmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Geneva. It’s a
position directly at odds with that taken by the Indian
Meteorological Department, which says there’s no
question of climate change.
Pachauri, who’s
also director-general of the Tata Energy Research Institute
(TERI), New Delhi, says ‘‘it’s been a
very peculiar summer this year and some perceptible
climate change is taking place in India’’.
‘‘There is a very strong reason
to connect the current drought to larger climate change
since what we are witnessing is a peculiar and sudden
variation in climate as predicted by experts studying
global warming’’, he says.
The third
assessment report put out by the IPCC in 2001 talked
in great detail about the impacts of climate change
on South Asia. In fact, it predicted the emergence of
drought and floods on this region, stating ‘‘there
are possibilities of unforeseen surprises in the future’’.
The way this year’s monsoon has behaved —
starting off normally, then suddenly petering out —
has no doubt surprised many climatologists. The IPCC
is a scientific expert body having 192 countries as
its members and is mandated by the UN to assess the
scientific, social, and economic issues related to human-induced
climate change.
Pachauri feels once the
delicate balance in the global circulation patterns
is disturbed due to man-made circumstances, ‘‘non-linear
and sudden changes are bound to be the outcome’’
and emphasises that this current erratic behaviour of
the monsoon is probably the first strong signal of climate
change having had a direct impact on India.
The
IPCC report had also predicted a rapid glacial melt
not just of the polar ice caps but also of the Himalayan
regions.
Evidence to that affect is found
in the Bhakra reservoir, which is essentially fed by
glacial melt and is more than full while other rain-fed
reservoirs are less than half full today. This, too,
hints at changing climate, Pachauri says.
Interestingly,
the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has never
acknowledged that global warming and climate change
are taking place and could seriously affect the pattern
of precipitation for India. In fact, the IMD goes to
great lengths to condemn any notions of climate change
despite the growing body of evidence from across the
globe.
S R Kalsi, IMD deputy director-general,
feels it is ‘‘incorrect to say that there
is a change in climate’’, adding that this
is merely a part of the ‘‘natural behavior
of the monsoon’’ borne out by the over 125
years of data with the IMD.
Pachauri reacts to
this by saying the IMD is ‘‘entitled to have
their opinions but the indications of climate change
are very strong since the curves from the world over
suggest a gradually warming Earth’’.
The TERI chief, who took over as chairman of the IPCC
this April, says India needs to step up its primary
research on climate change to fully understand the implications
of changing climate and to build suitable mitigation
measures. He calls for at least a 20-fold increase in
the spending on climate related research since the impact
of global warming will be felt by all sectors of the
Indian economy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2001: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay)
Ltd. All rights reserved throughout the world.
-----------------------------------
Thu Jul 25,12:16
AM ET
By Michael Christie
SYDNEY (Reuters)
- Sea temperatures at Australia's Great Barrier Reef
last summer were the warmest on record and this year's
El Nino event means the risk of mass coral bleaching
has increased considerably, scientists reported on Thursday.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS)
has just completed an atlas of sea temperatures over
the past decade and amalgamated it with historical data
to show 2002 was the warmest year for water temperatures
off northeast Australia since 1870.
The rise in
temperatures around the world's largest living organism
coincided with mass bleaching earlier this year that
affected around 60 percent of the Great Barrier Reef's
345,400 square km (133,300 square miles) of coral.
"Unless the corals can adapt and become acclimatized
then obviously the long-term future for the coral is
at risk," said AIMS oceanographer Craig Steinberg.
"The outlook isn't good. If coral can't adapt
then they're going to bleach and you get mass mortality."
The sea temperature over the last century has risen
by just half a degree Celsius.
But corals tend
to live within one to two degrees of their maximum temperature
threshold and a tiny increase is therefore enough to
ensure a major impact.
Bleaching occurs when coral
becomes stressed. It involves a breakdown in the symbiotic
relationship between the coral and algae and in severe
cases the coral will die.
The last time the reef's
coral bleached because of higher than normal temperatures
was in 1998, when the El Nino weather phenomenon warmed
the waters of the Pacific, bringing drought to eastern
Australia and floods to parts of Latin America.
GLOBAL WARMING
Last year was not an El Nino year,
making the high temperatures even more unusual and meaning
they were almost certainly a by-product of pollution-induced
global warming, said AIMS climate expert Janice Lough.
The onset of another El Nino this year, albeit
one that U.S. experts say is likely to be mild, has
increased the chances of another southern hemisphere
summer of high sea water temperatures at the start of
2003.
"We've changed the baseline. It is a
worry," Lough told Reuters from Townsville in the
far north of Queensland state.
Coral can recover
after mild bleaching.
But researchers fear that
its ability to overcome heat stress may be weakened
as high temperatures become more common.
AIMS researchers
are trying to establish whether coral has the ability
to adapt quickly to changing temperatures.
There
is evidence that they can over long periods of time,
but so far no indication of any short-term ability to
acclimatize.
In the meantime, there is not a lot
that can be done to protect the Great Barrier Reef --
one of Australia's main tourist attractions and a World
Heritage site.
"Reef managers can do all they
can to reduce all the other threats to coral reefs but
they can't solve individually the global problem (of
climate change)," said Lough.
"It's not
so much that the reef will die, it's that the reef will
change," she said. "If you sort of knock out
certain of the corals then other organisms might take
their place."
------------------------------------
ARMATREE, Australia - While Australians near
the coast delight in a winter that is warmer than average,
those in the outback reeling from drought fervently
hope for rain as dams dry up and crops lie barren under
a relentless sun.
Gripped in the iron clasp of
drought is two-thirds of the large agricultural state
of New South Wales (NSW) - an area about the size of
Greece. Another 17 percent is in partial drought.
Times are turning desperate for those who work the land
in one of the world's top food exporting nations, as
the drought is expected to be aggravated by the El Nino
weather phenomenon that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
said last week is forming.
In Armatree, a small
rural town about 300 km (190 miles) from the east coast,
farmers like Jenny and Craig Bradley spent a lot of
money preparing for a lack of rainfall.
They sowed
and fertilised all the paddocks on their sheep and cattle
property, then checked all livestock to sort out those
carrying offspring, and sold off the rest. They rationed
feed scrupulously. All to no avail.
"All the
money has been spent up front, and now it looks like
we may not get a return on any of it," Jenny Bradley
said.
BLEACHED LANDS
The dry winter air has
transformed once green countryside into bleached yellow
scrub. Roads wind through flat brown fields.
It
has been two years since substantial rain has fallen
in Armatree. Dams in the area have long since dried
up, leaving farmers to rely on water from borewells.
Not all have that.
Drought is part of life here.
A year ago farmers were rejoicing in the best prices
for decades for beef and wool. Now they are struggling
again.
"Of all the times to run into a drought,
when mutton, wheat and beef prices were so good, it's
just a shame," said Bradley.
"With high
commodity prices and the way things were going, a lot
of people took the plunge and bought more land. They'll
be finding it difficult (to cope now) with the debt,"
she said.
The drought is no longer just a threat
hanging over farmers. It is painfully tangible after
the planting window closed with only about 70 percent
of crops in the ground.
The Australian Bureau of
Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) recently
cut its national wheat crop forecast to 20.5 million
tonnes from original estimates of almost 24 million
tonnes. Some traders speak of 15 million tonnes.
The New South Wales government has come up with an assistance
package for 1,100 farms, but the aid is not enough.
The Bradleys have been hand-feeding their livestock
for most of this year from stocks of grain built up
when the spectre of drought first surfaced.
"We
haven't had to buy in any feed because that's a drought
management lesson we learnt from (the) 1994 (drought).
We've actually stored more grain than we've ever stored
before," Bradley said.
But only two months
of supplies are left.
Their cattle, presently grazing
for a fee on more fortunate farms with surplus feed,
will return in two weeks, just in time for calving.
More mouths will need to be fed.
CLOUDLESS SKIES
It leaves the Bradleys scanning cloudless skies
in the hope of rain. If none is received in the next
two weeks, a crop of oats that managed to scrape through
the dry soil will turn to waste.
Ten km (six miles)
down the road, cattleman David Tym was droving around
150 cattle along the thin strips of grassy land next
to the highway.
"Up in Coonamble they've closed
(stock routes) because there's no feed on them and there's
no water. It's a pretty desperate situation," Tym
said.
Drought means disaster across society for
remote Australian farming communities. Money runs out
as waterholes dry up.
"People just tighten
up, they don't spend the money because they haven't
got it," Bradley said. "You don't know how
long the drought is going to last so you save your cash
reserves and you just spend it on the items you need."
"The best we can do is learn...and prepare
for the next one," she added. Story by Justine
Toh
Story Date: 23/7/2002
All Contents
© Reuters News Service 2002
------------------------------------
By Larry Copeland
USA
TODAY
22nd July
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas
-- A.G. Fisher stands on a slippery, mud-coated surface
that's barely recognizable as his deck overlooking the
rain-swollen Guadalupe River. All around him, his family
drags out ruined furniture, carts away mud and sifts
through the ruins of their belongings.
''We were
just hoping and hoping for some rain,'' says Fisher,
74. ''We sure weren't hoping for this, though.''
The drought that has parched the state since 1998 is
finally over for portions of central Texas.
That's
the good news. The bad news is the end came at a staggering
cost: nine deaths and $1 billion in property losses
from flooding. Twenty-six counties were declared federal
disaster areas, and thousands of people were forced
from their homes.
Other parts of Texas would have
loved some of that rain. Brownsville, at the southern
tip of the state, is 39 inches below its normal rainfall
since 1998. Midland-Odessa has a 30-inch deficit; Corpus
Christi is 14 inches behind.
Around here, though,
rain that began June 29 caused flooding that affected
60,000 people in 32 counties. Rising water destroyed
or damaged about 5,000 homes.
Some of the hardest-hit
areas were along the Guadalupe and Comal rivers in New
Braunfels and surrounding Comal County. The skies finally
cleared here late last week, although forecasters say
there's a 20% chance of more rain later this week.
The torrential rain was triggered when an area of low
pressure sandwiched between two areas of high pressure
produced conditions that resembled a tropical storm.
Up to 30 inches of rain fell in some parts of the
Texas hill country by July 6. That shattered rainfall
records.
In San Antonio, 30 miles southwest of
here, the previous record for the entire month of July
(8.29 inches in 1990) was broken in just one day --
9.52 inches on July 1.
On that day, the Canyon Lake
Dam spillway north of New Braunfels began overflowing
for the first time since the reservoir was filled in
1968. Torrents of water cut a swath 200 yards wide through
the Horseshoe Falls Estates subdivision. The rush of
water flattened houses, uprooted huge trees and erased
a park.
Homes, businesses in peril
People devastated
by the flooding are trying to recover.
''We're here
to stay,'' says Fisher's wife, LaDonna, 73, as she stands
in what remains of her dining room. ''We're tough. I
just hope we never have to go through this again.''
It's understandable if the Fishers and the 36,500 residents
of New Braunfels are somewhat miffed at the gods of
irony for finally ending the long drought -- but at
such a dear cost.
''If anybody tells me again that
we need rain, I'm going to kick them,'' says Sue Phillips,
49, one of the Fishers' two daughters.
Many businesses
in this area might share that sentiment. Tourism is
the leading industry, and July is normally the busiest
month. Texans flock here for attractions such as the
Schlitterbahn water park and Natural Bridge Caverns.
Or they go ''tubing'' on the Guadalupe and the Comal.
But the rivers are so high that officials banned tubing
and rafting. They say it could be next year before the
popular recreational activities are allowed again.
''There's a big impression that this place is gone,
and it couldn't be further from the truth,'' says Michael
Meek, president of the local Chamber of Commerce. ''Our
No. 1 attraction, Schlitterbahn, and our other attractions
are open.''
The City Council agreed to spend $100,000
on emergency advertising to let tourists know. ''The
only thing missing right now is the river component,''
Meek says.
It's an important one. In a normal July,
more than 100,000 people might visit the two rivers.
Many of them stay overnight in the campgrounds or bed
and breakfasts. Or they shop at the outfitters along
the river between New Braunfels and Canyon Lake.Since
July 1, 33 New Braunfels businesses posted losses of
more than $8 million, and there are rumors of pending
layoffs, Meek says. ''They're the ones really hurting
right now.''
Sharon and Arlon Mosley operate River
Road Camp along the Guadalupe. The business has been
in his family for decades. It was flooded in 1972 and
again in 1998. ''But it was never as devastating as
this,'' Sharon Mosley, 36, says as she shovels mud into
a wheelbarrow inside the caretaker's quarters. ''Everything
is pretty much destroyed. We're just trying to salvage
what we can.''
Time to get out
What do you grab
when the river is rising and your heart is pounding
and you've been ordered to evacuate?
Darlene McClung
snatched her husband's patch collection and a few of
his guns. Barry McClung, a paramedic for 22 years, collects
uniform patches from fire departments and EMS units
around the nation.
He was on duty, so she took his
10 albums of patches, the guns and their two children.
He is now surrounded by drying photographs, mud-caked
dishes and piles of debris as he looks at the knocked-down
back wall of the four-bedroom brick ranch home where
they have lived almost four years.
''We moved here
just before the flood of '98 and didn't get hardly a
drop,'' says Barry McClung, 38. Like most residents
in Horseshoe Falls Estates, McClung says he did not
have flood insurance. ''We were told that we were not
in the flood plain here.''
Also like other residents,
McClung has high praise for the scores of volunteers
who have shown up here and are tirelessly toting out
furniture, carting mud and wiping down walls. One of
them, Jerry Garrett, had come from Harlan, Ky., a week
earlier. He has been spending 10-hour days helping people
clean up.
''When I prayed about this, if God didn't
want me here, I wouldn't be here,'' says Garrett, 35.
''It's as simple as that.''
Around the corner, Cindy
David, 37, is taking a breather from cleaning out the
brick vacation home that has been in her husband's family
since 1960. She and her husband, Allen, were at home
in Austin when they got a call telling them about the
mandatory evacuation. Among the things they saved were
precious vinyl LPs, dishes and an 1892 first printing
of a Mark Twain novel.
The house, now owned by her
husband and his brothers, had no flood insurance, she
says. ''Being a mile down from the dam, in theory, there
should be no way your house would flood.'' She says
the families are thinking about repairing the house
by paying cash as they go along. ''I'm thinking two
to three years,'' she says. ''We may get together and
decide to sell it.''
Barry McClung says he doesn't
know yet whether his home is salvageable.
''My
wife cries a lot,'' he says. ''I keep telling her she
needs to go and talk to somebody, but she won't go.''
As the afternoon sun bakes the mud piled before what's
left of his house, McClung looks skyward. ''I mean,
we were in a drought,'' he says. ''Burn bans were in
effect. Water rationing was in effect.
''We needed
the rain, and we got it all at once.''
------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jonathan Bor
Sun Staff
Originally published July 19, 2002
With the summer only half
over and Baltimore settling into a mental fog as thick
as the haze shrouding its buildings, health authorities
are issuing a warning that they hope will be taken seriously:
Heat kills.
It killed Haden Skinner, an 86-year-old
man who lived alone and was inclined to sit in his Brooklyn
apartment with the windows shut and an electric fan
recycling hot air. When he was discovered dead in his
recliner July 5, the indoor temperature measured 95
degrees.
It killed Gloria Turner, 67, who became
ill after waking recently in a 104-degree rowhouse in
lower Charles Village. Her companion called paramedics
after she started trembling so fiercely she could barely
let go of the bathroom sink, but she was close to death
by the time the ambulance arrived.
"I was here
and I saw it, but I still don't believe it," said
her friend, Edward Davis Eades, remarking how vibrant
she had seemed the day before.
The two are among
the 25 people who have died in Maryland of heat-related
illnesses since steamy, polluted air descended in late
June. The majority were in Baltimore.
Though most
of the deaths occurred during the first week of this
month, when temperatures exceeded 90 degrees for five
straight days and reached 100 on Independence Day, health
officials are concerned the current hot spell and others
that will likely follow could take a further toll.
Particularly at risk, they say, are the elderly and
people with heart disease, respiratory ailments and
other conditions that make their bodies less able to
cope. Most of the recent victims had underlying illnesses
- Skinner had heart disease and Turner had diabetes
and hypertension - but medical authorities found that
heat was a contributing factor in their deaths.
Dr. David Fowler, the state's medical examiner, noted
that in hot weather the body begins shunting blood to
the extremities in an effort to cool itself. This aids
in the evaporation of sweat but places undue pressure
on a heart that might already be diseased.
"They
wouldn't have died of the heat had it not been for this
pre-existing disease," said Fowler. "But they
get additional stress from the heat, and that pushes
them over." A few recent victims had Alzheimer's
or schizophrenia, which can make a person unaware of
the heat or what to do about it.
Dr. Peter L. Beilenson,
the city health commissioner, said his agency has taken
steps to protect vulnerable citizens.
Volunteers
who regularly visit elderly residents are opening windows,
running fans and taking seniors to air-conditioned shopping
malls, he said. The city has opened its clinics to people
who just want to cool off. Case workers who visit pregnant
women and the elderly are distributing information about
how to protect oneself from the heat.
But, in frequent
public appeals since heat first gripped the city, Beilenson
has asked people to check their elderly neighbors and
take them to air-conditioned places if necessary.
"I don't think there is a city in the country that
can systematically check on every person with a chronic
condition to make sure everyone is OK," he said.
Recently, experts have cast doubt on the ability of
fans to protect people on the most stifling days. Dr.
Michael McGeehin, an environmental hazards expert with
the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
said fans are incapable of evaporating a person's perspiration
when the temperature rises above the low 90s and the
air thickens with humidity.
Spending even an hour
in an air-conditioned mall will probably help more than
sitting by a fan that blows hot air all day long. So
will taking a cool shower or bath, he said.
It wasn't
until the 1990s that public health authorities began
widely to pay attention to the role that heat plays
in death rates. The trend started in 1993 when a heat
wave was blamed for 118 deaths in Philadelphia. In 1995,
Chicago experienced a weather disaster when 465 people
died of heat-related illnesses during two weeks in July.
Though some experts argued at the time that the numbers
were inflated - many of the people, they said, were
old and infirm and would have died anyway - the CDC
now says that reports of heat-related deaths are probably
low.
The case for heat as a contributing cause of
death is often a circumstantial one, said Fowler. Besides
conducting a physical exam and sometimes an autopsy,
medical examiners also check temperatures in the deceased's
home and see whether windows were open or fans or air
conditioning running.
Only in rare instances will
the medical examiner find that a person died solely
of classic hyperthermia - the effects of an elevated
body temperature brought on by the heat.
Such was
the case with a 23-year-old firefighter who died two
weeks ago after completing a 3-mile run during a training
exercise near Frederick. When paramedics arrived, his
temperature was 107.2 degrees.
Each year, about
400 deaths nationally are attributed to excessive heat,
according to the CDC. Though it might seem counterintuitive,
the deaths appear to be less common in the South than
in the more temperate mid-Atlantic and Midwest.
Larry Kalkstein, a climatologist with the University
of Delaware, said Southerners are more acclimated to
the heat. Also, their bodies do not have to adjust to
the temperature fluctuations common in such places as
Baltimore, Philadelphia or Chicago.
What's more,
the housing stock here is particularly unsuited to hot
weather. "You've got rowhomes with brick walls
and black tar roofs," he said. "They are like
brick ovens."
Haden Skinner lived in the downstairs
apartment of a two-story, flat-roof rowhouse in Brooklyn.
Though air conditioners hung from many of his neighbors'
windows, the former railroad worker insisted on living
without one, according to maintenance man Lee McGee.
"He was a tough old man, very stubborn," said
McGee. "I'd say, 'Mr. Skinner, you can get one
for only $120,' but he wouldn't say anything."
Skinner was often seen dressed nattily in alligator
boots, a large hat and a wide belt with an oversized
buckle. He drove a car until the end of his life. But
he was showing his age, too, having become forgetful
and frail.
Frequently, he parked his car out front
with the engine running all night long. He had lost
considerable weight, and had recently fallen and broken
his arm.
McGee said he checked on the man daily,
opening windows that Skinner would predictably slam
shut. McGee didn't see him July 4 because he had the
day off.
The next morning, two days after anyone
had seen him, a concerned friend called police, who
entered the apartment and found Skinner dead.
"He
was in that old, large chair, looking like he had gone
to sleep," said McGee, who went in with them. "That's
where we found him."
Though Skinner's case
points to the dangers faced by people who live alone,
Turner's shows that living with a caring friend doesn't
guarantee safety when the summer turns brutal.
Turner,
a retired counselor for delinquent youths, and Eades
had lived together for 27 years in an immaculate rowhouse
where they kept fans running and windows open in hot
weather.
Eades said she religiously took insulin
for her diabetes and seemed healthy on July 4, when
they entertained friends.
"She was sitting
here laughing and joking," Eades said Wednesday
in the kitchen, where the thermometer read 94.
The
next morning, Eades found her shaking and talking incoherently
as she gripped the bathroom sink. He called 911, then
helped her to the floor and held her head while they
waited for the ambulance. By the time paramedics arrived,
she was no longer responsive.
The medical examiner's
office said she died of the combined effects of heat,
hypertension and diabetes. Tearfully, Eades said they
had been planning to get an air conditioner and had
friends lined up to help install it.
"It's
unbelievable," said Eades, struggling to cope with
the death of his friend. "She had a heart of gold
and she'd give you her last if you needed it. I wish
everyone could have known her."
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun
------------------------------------
----
Friday, 19 July, 2002, 01:30 GMT 02:30
UK
By David Willey
BBC correspondent in Rome
Italy plans to spend
hundreds of millions of dollars combating a drought
that has emptied reservoirs and withered crops in the
south of the country.
Four regions have already
declared a state of emergency, and the Italian authorities
have announced that due to an exceptionally hot summer,
fire has already destroyed twice as much forest land
as at this time last year.
All week, government
ministers have been meeting to draw up plans and find
extra money for drought relief.
The latest government
plan is expected to be approved at a full cabinet meeting
on Friday.
Leaky pipes
Temperatures of 40C
and above combined with a lack of water for irrigation
have left crops withered and dying. The tourist industry
is threatened by the irregular water supply, and there
is widespread theft of water in southern Italy, both
by small farmers and by the Sicilian mafia.
To
compound the water crisis, Italy has leaky reservoirs
and antiquated pipeline systems which lose up to 40%
of their water before it reaches the consumer.
Now, the government has decided to act. It says it will
provide millions of euros in compensation to farmers
ruined by the drought. Some of the aid will come in
the form of tax relief.
Aid package
Probably
due to global warming, rainfall has diminished by a
quarter in Italy during the last decade.
Meanwhile
a leading environmental organisation has warned that
forest fires rampaging through Mediterranean countries
this year will cause loss of bio-diversity and lead
to eventual desertification because of soil erosion.
Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece are the worst-affected
countries.
Pedro Regato, an expert from the World
Wide Fund for Nature, told the BBC that European Union
governments are wrong to invest more money in extinguishing
forest fires.
Instead they should prevent them
breaking out in the first place, through better management
practices.
He also criticised what he called the
perverse system by which temporary fire-fighters are
recruited each summer - who often set fires instead
of extinguishing them in the mistaken belief that this
guarantees them permanent jobs.
------------------------------------
BBC
News, 18th July
US scientists have found
that glaciers in Alaska are retreating much faster than
originally thought.
The researchers say the resulting
melt waters are sufficiently large to drive up global
sea levels by 0.14 millimetres per year. -
--------------------------------------------------
" Over the last five to 10 years there has been
an acceleration "
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Keith Echelmeyer
The study by Dr Keith
Echelmeyer, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical
Institute, and colleagues used laser altimetry to measure
the volume changes of 67 Alaskan glaciers from the mid-1950s
to the-mid 1990s.
Their work, published in the
journal Science, adds to the growing evidence that the
level of recent glacier wastage - from polar regions
to the tropics - has been underestimated.
Short
of data
"There is some historical evidence
that at the turn of the last century glaciers were thinning
but not so that people noticed it much," Dr Keith
Echelmeyer told the BBC.
"What we see over
the last 50 years is that they have thinned quite substantially
and then over the last five to 10 years there has been
an acceleration."
Scientists who suspect human
activities such as the burning of fossil fuels are causing
an unnatural global temperature rise believe glacier
wastage may be a good indicator of what is happening.
But Dr Echelmeyer is hesitant to say the recent
changes his team have seen are the result of a warmer
climate because he feels there is currently insufficient
data to come to firm conclusions.
Greatest loss
"Climate is changing and this is affecting
the glaciers - and they are being a good indicator of
that," he said.
"Now, whether it's warming
up of the climate or less snowfall, it is hard to say.
That will take further investigation and an analysis
of glacier flow, for example."
Glaciers in
Alaska and neighbouring Canada cover 90 thousand square
kilometres, or approximately 13% of the mountain glacier
area on Earth.
Dr Echelmeyer's team surveyed the
volume and area changes of part of this region from
an aircraft equipped with a laser altimetry system.
The researchers measured the volume loss by checking
glacier elevation and volume data on US Geological Survey
maps from the 1950s.
"Most glaciers have thinned
several hundred feet at low elevations in the last 40
years and about 60 feet at higher elevations,"
Dr Echelmeyer said.
Higher levels
The team
has calculated that Alaskan glaciers are responsible
for at least 9% of the global sea-level rise during
the past century, and Alaska's glaciers raise the level
of Earth's oceans by more than one-tenth of a millimetre
each year.
The study fits with a review of data
by Professor Meier and Mark Dyurgerov, of the University
of Colorado at Boulder, US.
They said glacier wastage
had been seriously underestimated by the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, which is trying to assess humanity's
influence on the global climate.
One of the reasons
for this, they said, was that the IPCC had not had access
to the latest Alaskan data.
"For the first
time we have some hard data from these glaciers which
we have suspected, but didn't know for sure, are major
contributors to the sea level change caused by glacier
melt," Professor Meier said after the Fairbanks
study was published.
The contribution from Alaska's
glaciers to the worldwide sea level rise "is even
more that what we had expected," he added.
Currently, measured sea levels are going up by about
0.8 millimetres per year with no apparent acceleration
in that increase.
------------------------------------
From Natalie Pawelski
CNN Sci-Tech
18th July 2002
(CNN) --A
new study indicates that glaciers in Alaska are melting
faster than previously thought, providing further evidence
of global warming, researchers said Thursday.
Scientists
have long warned that global warming -- when heat-trapping
gases force atmospheric temperatures to rise -- could
eventually raise sea levels to a dangerous point by
melting ice sheets and glaciers.
"The whole
issue of global climate change is important to everyone,"
said glacier expert Anthony Arendt of the University
of Alaska at Fairbanks. "The whole issue of sea-level
change affects people who live near the coast quite
directly. Just small changes in sea level can cause
very large incursions of water up along the coast and
can destroy valuable property there. It can move people
away from their homes."
Arendt and his colleagues
used a technology called laser altimetry to measure
volume changes of 67 Alaskan glaciers over four decades.
"Glaciers in Alaska seem to be thinning from the
mid-1950s to the mid-1990s," said Arendt, adding
that the thinning rate has about doubled between the
mid-1990s and 2001.
"We know that the climate
has had to change for that to happen," he said.
"Whether or not these changes in climate are due
to human influences, that's not for us to say, but it's
possible that it is linked to a larger-scale change
in global climate caused by human activity."
A panel of scientists that regularly reports to the
United Nations on global warming issues has projected
that sea level will rise between three inches and about
two-and-a-half feet during this century. But glaciers
melting faster than expected could increase that projection.
The study found that the Alaskan glaciers were thinning
enough to produce a sea-level rise of about .14 millimeters
per year -- melting almost twice as fast as the Greenland
ice sheet, the researchers said.
The survey, published
in the journal Science, relied on an airborne laser
and a satellite-based global positioning system to plot
the glaciers' altitudes and calculate their volume.
Comparisons were then made with topographic maps from
years before the 1990-technology was developed, to extrapolate
melting rates back to the 1950s.
The Environmental
Protection Agency says the Earth's temperature has risen
about 1 degree Fahrenheit during the past 100 years,
most likely because of global warming.
"Human
activities have altered the chemical composition of
the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases
– primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous
oxide," says a definition posted on the EPA Web
site. "The heat-trapping property of these gases
is undisputed although uncertainties exist about exactly
how Earth's climate responds to them."
Find
this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/07/18/glacier.melt/index.html
-back to 'Signals' page
-
------------------------------------
Wed Jul 17, 2:22 PM ET
By AMY LORENTZEN,
Associated Press Writer
VERDIGRE, Neb. (AP)
- Their numbers swelled by the drought, grasshoppers
and Mormon crickets are ravaging crops and pastures
across the West in what could be the biggest such infestation
since World War II.
"They're even eating the
paint off some of the houses," said Nebraska farmer
Robert Larsen, who raises alfalfa, corn, soybeans and
cattle on 1,600 acres where thousands upon thousands
grasshoppers jump out of the way as he walks by in what
looks like the parting of the sea.
The infestation
threatens the livelihood of farmers and ranchers already
suffering because of the dry spell.
Agriculture
officials are reluctant to put a dollar figure on the
damage so far this year. But last year, grasshoppers
and Mormon crickets — a black, wingless cousin
of the grasshopper — caused $25 million in crop
damage in Utah alone.
A mild winter and hot, dry
weather since the spring have sped up the maturation
of some grasshopper species and allowed more of the
insects and their eggs to survive the cold. The drought
has also cut into the population of birds and rodents
that prey on grasshoppers, and reduced the fungal diseases
that normally keep the insects' numbers down.
The
result: Larsen and other farmers in parts of Nebraska
have counted 50 to 100 grasshoppers per square yard
in their fields, compared with three or four during
a typical year. Even worse, near Steamboat Springs,
Colo., about 200 grasshoppers per square yard invaded
rangeland in June, reaching about 1 million grasshoppers
per acre.
"We probably have farmers that have
never experienced it before. The ones that have are
probably in their 60s or 70s," said Michael Cooper,
chairman of the National Grasshopper Management Board
and acting administrator for the Idaho Department of
Agriculture.
Nebraska, New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon
and South Dakota are among the states hit hardest. But
outbreaks have been reported in parts of most states
west of the Mississippi River.
A grasshopper can
devour more than half its body weight in vegetation
per day, which can leave crops looking like Swiss cheese
and rob pastures of feed for cattle.
"You walk
across the edge of some fields and it looks like it
is moving," said Ron Seymour, a University of Nebraska
extension educator based in Hastings.
Farmers are
left with two options: They can hold out for a change
in the weather — rain would encourage the spread
of predators and diseases that can kill off grasshoppers
— or they can spray pesticides. But spraying can
be costly.
Hiring an aerial sprayer can cost $6
to more than $11 per acre depending on the type of land
and the chemicals used, said Dahl Jungren, owner of
Flying J Aviation in Broken Bow. Cropland is more expensive
than rangeland.
A total of $3.6 million is available
to farmers this year through the USDA's Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service for surveys and technical
assistance in dealing with the grasshopper infestation.
But that does not pay for spraying or the damage done
by the pests.
Some ranchers will have to decide
whether to try to save their grass or give up and buy
hay to feed their cattle.
And the problem could
get a lot worse. Many of the grasshoppers are still
young and will become more voracious after they have
become winged adults this month.
Also, grasshopper
infestations can contribute to high numbers of other
pests such as blister beetles, which feed on grasshopper
eggs. The beetles, also known as potato bugs, blister
the throats and stomachs of animals that eat them while
feeding on alfalfa.
Dawson and Custer counties in
the center of Nebraska are seeing some of the worst
grasshopper infestations. About 40,000 acres —
62.5 square miles — were sprayed in May alone in
Custer County.
"This is probably the most widespread
infestation I've seen," Jungren said, "and
I've been in the business for 30 years."
___
On the Net:
USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection
Service: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/
University of
Nebraska Cooperative Extension: http://www.ianr.unl.edu/adams/
---------
------------------------------------
July 17, 2002
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
DENVER,
July 16 — Drought conditions have grown so severe
in Denver that for the first time in a quarter-century
water restrictions have been imposed throughout the
metropolitan area.
Successive winters of minimal
snowfall followed by hot summers have forced local officials
to issue new guidelines for washing cars, watering lawns
and even flushing toilets. A cheeky new advertising
campaign to raise awareness of water problems features
signs around town advising residents to "Brush
every other tooth," "Only wash the stinky
parts" and "Shower in groups."
But
Denver has the added problem of maintaining the purity
and volume of its water supply, which is not only at
record lows but is also threatened by the aftermath
of the worst wildfire in Colorado history.
After
burning nearly 140,000 acres of Pike National Forest,
the Hayman fire, as it was known, was finally contained
two weeks ago. But 8,000 acres of the burned forest
was adjacent to the Cheesman Lake reservoir, a major
source of water for the Denver area, leaving hillsides
bare of vegetation that would normally absorb water
from afternoon rainstorms that start this time of year.
Now, with the forest floors covered with ash and sediment,
workers are scrambling to construct barricades of felled
trees and straw to keep runoffs from displacing and
polluting water that is far below the usual level. The
work is expected to continue well into September.
"We've never seen anything like this before,"
said Jane Earle, a spokeswoman for the Denver Water
Department, referring to the Cheesman reservoir's current
level, 32 percent of capacity, and the threat of displacement.
"If that stuff gets into the water supply, we'll
really have problems."
Runoffs are a common
problem after major fires, clogging rivers and streams
and often killing fish. Water sources for metropolitan
areas are affected less often because of the sheer volume
of water, and that would be the case for the Cheesman
supply, about 79,000 acre feet in a normal year. In
general, one acre foot of water can serve a family of
five for a year.
But the drought has left water
supplies at dangerously low levels.
"If this
happened in the wilderness, it would be a neutral event,"
said John Ortmann, an assistant professor of range science
and a drought expert at Colorado State University.
With a water system that serves 1.1 million customers
in the Denver area, every change in composition is monitored.
Water officials say they fear that strong runoffs could
displace huge amounts of water for years and, perhaps,
prolong the current need for restrictions on use.
It happened as recently as 1996, after runoffs from
the Buffalo Creek fire, which burned 11,000 acres, left
the Strontia Springs reservoir, another in the same
watershed, smaller by about 12 percent, from 8,000 acre
feet to under 7,000. The drop was not enough to prompt
restrictions, but it showed what could happen if a bigger
fire hit.
This year it did, leading to criminal
charges against a Forest Service worker for setting
it.
Mr. Ortmann said afternoon rains this summer
would make runoffs into the Cheesman reservoir "almost
inevitable," reducing the capacity and putting
a greater strain on treatment plants to filter ash and
sediment.
"Then," he said, "it will
mainly be a matter of more processing to make sure the
water us potable."
Fearful that next winter
might produce another minimal snowfall, leading to another
round of restrictions, the water department plans to
spend up to $700,000 next winter for cloud seeding over
the Rockies to add to the snowfall.
Water officials
here say, meanwhile, that they hope the campaign to
reduce water use will minimize the strain on supplies.
With only $75,000 for the advertising campaign, the
message is being displayed on billboards, sandwich boards
and T-shirts.
Mike Sukle, whose agency developed
the campaign, said the idea was to be clever without
projecting a message of "gloom and doom."
In addition to the alterative-hygiene suggestions, other
signs convey ways to save water and the dangers for
those who do not:
"Instead of washing
clothes, don't wear any."
"Real men dry
shave."
"Spray paint your grass green."
"No water. No beer."
"We didn't
want to scare anybody," Mr. Sukle said. "We
just wanted to make people aware of the problem."
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
------------------------------------
By John Ritter
USA TODAY
11th JulySAN FRANCISCO -- Record
temperatures stifled California and much of the West
again Wednesday, but there appeared to be little chance
of blackouts that plagued the state last year.
Even
if the heat wave drags into the weekend as predicted,
officials said enough surplus power is available, particularly
hydroelectric supplies from the Pacific Northwest, to
avert disruptions.
Meanwhile, cool temperatures
brought relief to the mid-Atlantic and New England after
several days of sultry weather. Several cities, including
Albany, N.Y., expected record cold temperatures.
And rains that had flooded much of central Texas last
week, relieving a drought, moved on. Some of the moisture
was forecast for the east-central Arizona region that
suffered the devastating Rodeo-Chediski wildfire. Flash-flood
warnings from runoff were in effect in places where
the blaze had laid mountainsides bare.
As heat waves
go, meteorologists considered this one a doozy, breaking
records that had stood for years. A robust high-pressure
system, which promotes sunny conditions, extended from
the Rockies west. It centered Wednesday over Utah and
Nevada, but went beyond the coast into the Pacific.
Part of the system even knifed into Oklahoma and Kansas.
Weather Channel meteorologist Buzz Bernard said highs
that strong feed on themselves. ''Once the surface begins
to heat up, the heating itself helps to expand the high
pressure aloft. It's a synergistic relationship.''
There were at least 52 record highs set Wednesday, said
meteorologist Betsy Abrams of the Weather Channel.
Even the record high of 134 degrees July 10, 1913, in
Death Valley, Calif., was in jeopardy of falling this
week.
Reno, on the eastern side of the normally
cool Sierra Nevada, set an all-time high of 108 Wednesday.
To the west, the Sierra Nevada town of Truckee, Calif.,
often the coldest spot in the nation at dawn in the
summer, was looking for highs in the upper 90s to persist
through the week. Sacramento set a record of 111.
Triple-digit mercury readings thrust California toward
an edge not seen since the 2000-01 energy crisis. The
state declared a Stage 2 power alert Wednesday, prompting
grid managers to ask some businesses to cut use. Rolling
blackouts wouldn't be ordered unless a Stage 3 alert
was issued. California's last blackouts were May 8,
2001. Up to 6,000 megawatts of hydroelectric power could
be made available to California by the Bonneville Power
Administration and other utilities, Bonneville spokesman
Ed Mosey said.
Electricity use has been higher this
summer in California than on comparable days last year.
''That tells us two things,'' said Stephanie McCorkle
of the Independent System Operator, which manages the
state's power grid. ''One, that conservation has slacked
off . . . and two, that the economy is recovering.''
© Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of
Gannett Co. Inc.
------------------------------------
Thursday, 6 July, 2000, 12:57 GMT 13:57 UK
A
heatwave scorching the Balkan region this week has killed
dozens of people and put the region's emergency services
on full alert.
In Croatia, some 40 people died
of heart attacks caused by the heat in its four major
cities while hundreds more were hospitalised with serious
health problems, a local daily said.
Greece is
facing its hottest day of the year on Thursday, with
temperature expected to hit 44 C (111 F).
The country
also has to cope with power cuts and the threat of a
strike by rubbish collectors.
The National Meteorological
Service said the high temperatures would continue until
early next week.
On Wednesday, two people died
from dehydration while dozens were sent to hospitals,
authorities said.
Four have died in Sofia where
temperatures in the shade hit 40 C
The Bulgarian
capital Sofia reported four deaths on Wednesday as temperatures
in the shade rose to a baking 40 C.
In Yugoslavia,
three people suffered heart attacks in northern Serbia,
the news agency FoNet reported.
One person who
could not bear the high temperatures committed suicide,
the news agency reported.
Macedonia has been sweltering
under a sizzling heat of 45 C in some places, officials
said.
Full alert
Governments across the region
have warned people to stay indoors.
The Greek government
activated its Xenocrates emergency plan on Monday, which
requires state buildings to provide air- conditioned
spaces to the public.
Emergency services are on
full alert in Greece and elsewhere
Public beaches
have also stayed open late into the night.
Hospitals
are on full alert, all leave has been cancelled for
ambulance drivers and the authorities are also watching
for forest fires breaking out.
As Athens suffers
a thick smog that is making breathing difficult, it
is facing the prospect of dealing with rotting rubbish
on its streets.
Rubbish collectors have said they
will go ahead with their strike despite a government
order for civil mobilisation.
Medical services
and firefighters were also on full alert in Turkey,
with special telephone lines set up to respond to heat-related
queries.
Croatia declared its north-eastern region
- where a drought is expected to lower crop yields by
50 to 70% - a disaster zone on Wednesday.
In Bosnia,
the government is also considering declaring a state
of natural disaster members after several forest fires
broke out.
The heatwave has been blamed on masses
of hot air from the Sahara Desert moving north. ----
------------------------------------
June
25, 2002
New York Times
By TIMOTHY EGAN
OLDOTNA,
Alaska — Edward Berg has a pair of doctorates,
one in philosophy and another in botany, but for the
last decade he has been a forensic detective in the
forest, trying to solve a large murder mystery.
The evidence surrounds him on his home in the Kenai
Peninsula: nearly four million acres of white spruce
trees, dead or dying from an infestation of beetles
— the largest kill by insects of any forest in
North America, federal officials say.
Beetles have
been gnawing at spruce trees for thousands of years.
Why, Dr. Berg wondered, has this infestation been so
great? After matching climate records to the rate of
dying trees, Dr. Berg, who works at the Kenai National
Wildlife Refuge, believes he has come up with an answer.
He says a succession of warm years in Alaska has allowed
spruce bark beetles to reproduce at twice their normal
rate. Hungry for the sweet lining beneath the bark,
the beetles have swarmed over the stands of spruce,
overwhelming the trees' normal defense mechanisms.
If Dr. Berg is correct — and he has won many converts
as well as some skeptics — then the dead spruce
forest of Alaska may well be one of the world's most
visible monuments to climate change. On the Kenai, nearly
95 percent of spruce trees have fallen to the beetle.
Now, conditions are ripe for a large fire and could
lead to bigger changes in the ecosystem, affecting moose,
bear, salmon and other creatures that have made the
peninsula, just a few hours' drive from Anchorage, a
tourist mecca.
"The chief reason why the beetle
outbreak has been the largest and the longest is that
we have had an unprecedented run of warm summers,"
said Dr. Berg, a soft-spoken man in suspenders and running
shoes, who is 62.
Temperatures in Alaska have risen
sharply in the last 30 years, causing sea ice to break
up off the northern coastlines, some glaciers to recede
and permafrost to melt. But until Dr. Berg began matching
rising temperatures to the number of trees killed by
beetles, no one had tied the death of a forest nearly
twice the size of Yellowstone National Park to warming
temperatures.
Dr. Berg believes the larger culprit
is global warming, brought on by increased emissions
of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
But that is a bigger debate, one which Dr. Berg is normally
not a part of. The implication of Dr. Berg's findings
for other forests vulnerable to bugs is