Bob Herbert: An Unnatural Disaster

An Unnatural Disaster

by BOB HERBERT, The New York Times, May 28, 2010

“Where I was wrong,” said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, “was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.”

Bob Herbert

With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow “had their act together” with regard to worst-case scenarios?


These are not Little Lord Fauntleroys who can be trusted to abide by some fanciful honor system. These are greedy merchant armies drilling blindly at depths a mile and more beneath the seas while at the same time doing all they can to stifle the government oversight that is necessary to protect human lives and preserve the integrity of the environment.

President Obama knows that. He knows — or should know — that the biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP’s profits are counted in the billions annually. They are like stacks and stacks of gold glittering beneath a brilliant sun. You don’t want to know what people will do for that kind of money.

There is nothing new to us about this. Haven’t we just seen how the giant financial firms almost destroyed the American economy? Wasn’t it just a few weeks before this hideous Deepwater Horizon disaster that a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia — at a mine run by a company with its own hideous safety record — killed 29 coal miners and ripped the heart out of yet another hard-working local community?

The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is beyond absurd. Even after the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon site, BP officials were telling us (as their noses grew longer and longer) that about only 1,000 barrels of oil a day were escaping into the Gulf of Mexico. Nearly a month into the disaster, BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, was publicly offering the comforting assessment that the environmental damage resulting from the spill would likely be “very, very modest.”

They were somewhat wide of the mark (as reputable scientists were telling us day after day after day). We now know, of course, that this is the worst spill in U.S. history, that instead of 1,000 barrels a day, something in the range of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day have likely been spewing into the gulf. And the environmental impact can fairly be described as catastrophic.

The oil companies and other giant corporations have a stranglehold on American policies and behavior, and are choking off the prospects of a viable social and economic future for working people and their families.

President Obama spoke critically a couple of weeks ago about the “cozy relationship” between the oil companies and the federal government. It’s not just a cozy relationship. It’s an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself.

Forget BP for a moment. When is the United States going to get its act together? Will we learn anything from this disaster or will we simply express our collective dismay, ignore the inevitable commission reports (no one pays attention to study commissions), and bury our heads back in the oily sand?

President Obama said on Thursday that his administration was “moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.” Well, he can’t ensure anything of the kind. And, in fact, his corporate-friendly policy of opening up new regions for offshore drilling (that policy is only temporarily halted) will all but guarantee future disastrous spills.

The U.S. will never get its act together until we develop the courage and the will to crack down hard on these giant corporations. They need to be tamed, closely monitored and regulated, and constrained in ways that no longer allow them to trample the best interests of the American people.

Mr. Hayward of BP was on television on Friday referring to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent fouling of the Gulf of Mexico as a “natural disaster.” He was wrong, as usual. Like the unholy alliance of government and big business, this tragedy set in motion by Mr. Hayward’s corporation is a grotesquely harmful and wholly unnatural disaster.

Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/opinion/29herbert.html

Stunning NOAA map of Tennessee’s 1000-year deluge: 15 sites had rainfall exceeding maximum associated with Hurricane Katrina landfall

Stunning NOAA map of Tennessee’s 1000-year deluge

15 sites had rainfall exceeding maximum associated with Hurricane Katrina landfall

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, May 26, 2010

What is a 100 year flood? A 100 year flood is an event that statistically has a 1% chance of occurring in any given year. A 500 year flood has a 0.2% chance of occurring and a 1000 year flood has a 0.1% chance of occurring. The map below relates [the] amount of rainfall that fell to the chances of that amount of rain actually occurring.

Climate Progress has been documenting the woefully underreported Tennessee deluge of 2010 aka Nashville’s ‘Katrina’. It was an off-the-charts extreme weather event that human-caused global warming set the table for and almost certainly made more intense, as a leading climate scientist explained to me (interview to be posted next week).

But I didn’t understand just how unprecedented this superstorm was until I saw the above map from the Office of Hydrological Development at NOAA/NWS.  I have never seen a map like this before, but then that may be because there simply aren’t many events to rival this one.  Look at the red streak, which is the area hit by a greater than 1000-year deluge.  And look at how much of western Tennessee was slammed with a greater than 500 year downpour.  This is the “high water” of Hell and High Water.

The NWS has more maps that put the deluge in perspective, including how it compared to Hurricane Katrina’s rainfall:



 Here are some amazing factoids:

• Fifteen (15) observation sites had rainfall measurements exceeding the maximum observed rainfall associated with Hurricane Katrina landfall.
• The two day rainfall of 13.57 inches at Nashville International Airport shattered the monthly rainfall record for May which was 11.04 inches.
• The rainiest month in Nashville is 13.92 inches in January 1950.
• Nashville International Airport experienced its 1st and 3rd rainiest days on back to back days.
• The heaviest rainfall occurred in a swath across Davidson, Williamson, Dickson, Hickman, Benton, Perry, and Humphreys Counties.  An average of 14 to 15 inches of rain fell equivalent to 420 billion gallons of water in just two days.

And here is what Katrina did:


So yes, this superstorm deserve to be called Nashville’s Katrina.  It is all the more stunning for having generated so much rain without actually being associated with a hurricane, similar to the Georgia superstorm from September (see Weather Channel expert Stu Ostro’s discussion of Georgia’s record-smashing global-warming-type deluge).

I suppose people can stick their head in the sand water if they want, but CP readers understand that this is the shape of things to come for many of the world’s great cities if we stay anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions path.  More on the way.

Related posts:

• Must re-read statement from UK’s Royal Society and Met Office on the connection between global warming and extreme weathern
• Global warming means local (super) storming
• Northeast hit by record global-warming-type deluge
• Australian Scientists: Contrary to media reports, “our paper does not discount climate change as playing a role in this most recent drought, the ‘Big Dry’. In fact, there are indications that climate change has worsened this recent drought.”
• Preparing For Frankenstorms: “The most powerful low pressure system in 140 years of record keeping” slams the Southwest.
• In other UK news: “Rain like this happens once every 1,000 years”
• Global boiling: Freak storms on every continent
• Why the “never seen before” Fargo flooding is just what you’d expect from global warming, as Obama warns
• Massive moisture-driven extreme precipitation during warmest winter in the satellite record — and the deniers say it disproves (!) climate science
• MSNBC’s Ratigan: “These ‘snowpocalypses’ that have been going through DC and other extreme weather events are precisely what climate scientists have been predicting, fearing and anticipating because of global warming.”

Link: http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/26/nashville-katrina-tennessee-superstorm-1000-year-flood/

John Abraham of St. Thomas Univ., Minn., produces must hear debunking of the Potty Peer Monckton -- an employee of the Climate Denial Machine

MN professor eviscerates Monckton in must-see video

TVMOB's talk proves "how easy it is to fabricate data."

Climate Progress, May 27, 2010

HERE IS THE LINK TO JOHN ABRAHAM'S THOROUGH DEBUNKING OF MONCKTON'S JUNK SCIENCE AND NON-SCIENCE NONSENSE:

http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/ 

“The number of errors Chris Monckton makes is so enormous it would take a thesis to go through every single one of them.”

The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) is a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see links below).

Nonetheless, you rarely sees such a thorough debunking of an anti-science disinformer as this astonishing point-by-point evisceration put together by John Abraham, an engineering professor at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN.

One of the two reasons you rarely see this is because few people are willing to put in the time and effort that Prof. Abraham has — not merely looking up just about every reference TVMOB uses but actually e-mailing the authors of those scientific papers and asking them if TVMOB has accurately represented their work.

The second reason you rarely see this kind of thorough dismantlement is that few people make stuff up with the relentlessness of TVMOB or push the kind of hate speech that make people want to debunk them entirely:

• Lord Monckton meltdown: “I’m not going to shake the hands of Hitler youth.”
• TVMOB hate speech shocker: Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists.
• TVMOB shocker: Activists decried as “Hitler Youth” for crashing Americans For Prosperity’s global warming event in Copenhagen
• How to diss-a-peer: Real Climate Scientists take on TVMOB
• Deltoid at ScienceBlogs: Monckton’s triple counting and here.
• Irony-gate 2: Modern day Tea Partiers outsource denial to Lord Monckton — a British peer!
• Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton aka TVMOB
• Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton, Part 2

Kudo to Abraham for this masterful debunking.

Arctic team reports unusual conditions near Pole

(Reuters Life!) -- A group of British explorers just back from a 60-day trip to the North Pole said Monday they had encountered unusual conditions, including ice sheets that drifted far faster than they had expected.

The three-member team walked across the frozen Arctic Ocean to study the impact of increased carbon dioxide absorption by the sea, which could make the water more acidic and put crucial food chains under pressure.

Expedition leader Ann Daniels said the ice drifted so much that they eventually covered 500 nautical miles (576 miles) rather than the 268 nautical miles initially envisaged.

One possible reason for the rapid drift was a lack of ice, she suggested. Satellite imagery reveals rapidly melting ice sheets in the Arctic, a region which is heating up three times more quickly than the rest of the Earth.

The first day the team was dropped off the ice moved so quickly to the south that it took the trio 10 days to make it back to their starting point.

"None of us had ever experienced that amount of southerly drift on our previous expeditions, and it continued for such a long period of time. We kept expecting it to stop, we began to pray it would stop," Daniels said.

"At the end of the expedition we were losing three nautical miles a night ... it was quite a major factor," she told a news conference in Ottawa.

Many scientists link the higher Arctic temperatures to the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

Martin Hartley, a member of the team, said the condition of the ice was unpleasantly bad.

"We spent a couple of days walking on ice that was three or four inches thick with no other thicker ice around, which was a big surprise to us," he told the news conference.

"On more than one occasion we came across enormous areas of very thin ice, which is quite stressful to travel on. We came across open water which we had to swim across."

At one point an ice floe the team's tent was moored on broke apart, although no one was injured.
Last month explorers at the team's ice base some 680 miles further south reported a three-minute rain shower, which they described as a freak event.

The team is due to release preliminary results this September. The C$3 million ($2.9 million) expedition is sponsored by British insurer Catlin.

Link:  http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64G5S020100517

Shifting rivers threaten India's top tea region

India (Reuters) -- Shifting rivers in India's largest tea producing state and abnormally high rainfall this year is destroying hundreds of acres of tea gardens and could cut output in the world's second-largest tea grower.

More than a tenth of the 18,000 hectares of plantations, or tea gardens, in India's northeast state of Assam could be washed away as the mighty Himalaya-born Brahmaputra and other smaller rivers flood the region where century-old operations grow over half of India's tea.

"Some tea gardens have already fallen into rivers and some of them are on the verge of disappearing," said Dipanjol Deka, secretary general of Tea Association of India (TAI) in Guwahati, the main city in the region.
"In the long run there is a possibility of production loss and overall loss to the industry."

India consumes the bulk of its tea production. Last year, it exported a fifth of its 979 million kilograms (kg) of tea output, earning about $570 million.

Tea has been commercially grown in Assam since the early 19th century, after the East India Company which governed British possessions in the subcontinent lost its monopoly on tea-trade with China.

Assam's 850 gardens employ over 800,000 people and export the strong tea to over 80 countries including Russia and Britain. In 2009 the state produced nearly 500 million kg of tea.

But annual summer floods in the state which receives heavy monsoon rains has led to rivers breaking banks and wearing away slopes of gardens where tea is grown. This year, the region has received more rain than usual, weather officials say.

The shrinking of these gardens is the most recent of a string of problems facing the industry, including falling productivity and extortions by rebel groups fighting for independence in the restive region. The state's economy is hugely reliant on tea, apart from production of timber, oil and natural gas.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is elected to the federal parliament from the state, but despite visits by him and by water resource experts, little has changed, industry officials said, prompting residents to block highways in protest.

(Editing by C.J. Kuncheria)
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64I2DG20100519

Polar Science Center: Arctic Sea Ice Volume Anomaly for May 24, 2010

Arctic Sea Ice Volume Anomaly, May 24, 2010

Here's the graph we really did not want to see:

Continuously updated Arctic Sea Ice Volume Anomaly from PIOMAS. Daily Sea Ice volume anomalies for each day are computed relative to the 1979 to 2009 average for that day. The trend for the 1979- present period is shown in blue. Shaded areas show one and two standard deviations from the trend. Click on image for a larger version of the figure Link:  http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php

NASA Takes to the Air with New 'Earth Venture' Research Projects

News release: 2010-182                                                                      May 27, 2010 NASA Takes to the Air with New 'Earth Venture' Research Projects The full version of this story with accompanying images is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-182&cid=release_2010-182 PASADENA, Calif. - Hurricanes, air quality and Arctic ecosystems are among the research areas to be investigated during the next five years by new NASA airborne science missions announced today. The five competitively-selected proposals, including one from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are the first investigations in the new Venture-class series of low-to-moderate-cost projects established last year. The Earth Venture missions are part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program. The small, targeted science investigations complement NASA's larger research missions. In 2007, the National Research Council recommended that NASA undertake these types of regularly solicited, quick-turnaround projects. This year's selections are all airborne investigations. Future Venture proposals may include small, dedicated spacecraft and instruments flown on other spacecraft. "I'm thrilled to be able to welcome these new principal investigators into NASA's Earth Venture series," said Edward Weiler, associate administrator of the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "These missions are considered a 'tier 1' priority in the National Research Council's Earth Science decadal survey. With this selection, NASA moves ahead into this exciting type of scientific endeavor." The missions will be funded during the next five years at a total cost of not more than $30 million each. The cost includes initial development and deployment through analysis of data. Approximately $10 million was provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act toward the maximum $150 million funding ceiling for the missions. Six NASA centers, 22 educational institutions, nine U.S. or international government agencies and three industrial partners are involved in these missions. The five missions were selected from 35 proposals. The selected missions are: 1. Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment. Principal Investigator Charles Miller, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The release and absorption of carbon from Arctic ecosystems and its response to climate change are not well known because of a lack of detailed measurements. This investigation will collect an integrated set of data that will provide unprecedented experimental insights into Arctic carbon cycling, especially the release of important greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Instruments will be flown on a Twin Otter aircraft to produce the first simultaneous measurements of surface characteristics that control carbon emissions and key atmospheric gases. 2. Airborne Microwave Observatory of Subcanopy and Subsurface. Principal Investigator Mahta Moghaddam, University of Michigan North American ecosystems are critical components of the global exchange of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and other gases within the atmosphere. To better understand the size of this exchange on a continental scale, this investigation addresses the uncertainties in existing estimates by measuring soil moisture in the root zone of representative regions of major North American ecosystems. Investigators will use NASA's Gulfstream-III aircraft to fly synthetic aperture radar that can penetrate vegetation and soil to depths of several feet. 3. Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment. Principal Investigator Eric Jensen, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Water vapor in the stratosphere has a large impact on Earth's climate, the ozone layer and how much solar energy Earth retains. To improve our understanding of the processes that control the flow of atmospheric gases into this region, investigators will launch four airborne campaigns with NASA's Global Hawk remotely piloted aerial systems. The flights will study chemical and physical processes at different times of year from bases in California, Guam, Hawaii and Australia. 4. Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality. Principal Investigator James Crawford, NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Satellites can measure air quality factors like aerosols and ozone-producing gases in an entire column of atmosphere below the spacecraft, but distinguishing the concentrations at the level where people live is a challenge. This investigation will provide integrated data of airborne, surface and satellite observations, taken at the same time, to study air quality as it evolves throughout the day. NASA's B-200 and P-3B research aircraft will fly together to sample a column of the atmosphere over instrumented ground stations. 5. Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel. Principal Investigator Scott Braun, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The prediction of the intensity of hurricanes is not as reliable as predictions of the location of hurricane landfall, in large part because of our poor understanding of the processes involved in intensity change. This investigation focuses on studying hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean basin using two NASA Global Hawks flying high above the storms for up to 30 hours. The Hawks will deploy from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia during the 2012 to 2014 Atlantic hurricane seasons. "These new investigations, in concert with NASA's Earth-observing satellite capabilities, will provide unique new data sets that identify and characterize important phenomena, detect changes in the Earth system and lead to improvements in computer modeling of the Earth system," said Jack Kaye, associate director for research of NASA's Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate. Langley manages the Earth System Pathfinder program for the Science Mission Directorate. The missions in this program provide an innovative approach to address Earth science research with periodic windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities. For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Alan Buis (818) 354-0474. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov Steve Cole (202) 358-0918. NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC, Stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

World faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said

Oceans’ fish could disappear in 40 years: UN

by Agence France-Presse, May 17, 2010

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.

"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.

The report, which was opened to preview Monday, also assesses how surging global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.

UNEP director Achim Steiner said the world was "drawing down to the very capital" on which it relies.

However, "our institutions, our governments are perfectly capable of changing course, as we have seen with the extraordinary uptake of interest. Around, I think it is almost 30 countries now have engaged with us directly, and there are many others revising the policies on the green economy," he said.

Collapse of fish stocks is not only an environmental matter.

One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main animal protein source, according to the UN.

The Green Economy report estimates there are 35 million people fishing around the world on 20 million boats. About 170 million jobs depend directly or indirectly on the sector, bringing the total web of people financially linked to 520 million.

According to the UN, 30% of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10% of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.

The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish -- with little attempt to allow the fish populations to recover.

Fishing fleet capacity is "50 to 60 percent" higher than it should be, Sukhdev said.

"What is scarce here is fish," he said, calling for an increase in the stock of fish, not the stock of fishing capacity."

Creating marine preservation areas to allow female fish to grow to full size, thereby hugely increasing their fertility, is one vital solution, the report says.

Another is restructuring the fishing fleets to favor smaller boats that -- once fish stocks recover -- would be able to land bigger catches.

"We believe solutions are on hand, but we believe political will and clear economics are required," Sukhdev said.

Link:  http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0517/oceans-fish-disappear-40-years/

Mars Attacks!!! Climate Denial Crock of the Week by Peter Sinclair

Mars Attacks!!! Climate Denial Crock of the Week by Peter Sinclair

Richard Black of the BBC: A financial trick in the familiar biodiversity tale

A financial trick in the familiar biodiversity tale

by Richard Black, environmental correspondent, BBC News Online, 10 May 2010

Often when I've written about biodiversity down the years, I've been assailed by a strong sense of deja vu.
While "we're screwing up life on Earth" still sounds like big news to me, it isn't always to news editors, whose reaction is often along the lines of "but we know that".

And in truth, the deja vu feeling is justified. Although the evidence that prospects for life-forms on Earth (other than humans) are declining in several different ways gets clearer and clearer, the basic message is as it has been since well before 1992 when governments signed the UN biodiversity convention.



Let me pick out a statistoid from the UN's third and latest Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) report, launched at the Zoological Society of London on Monday.

The abundance of vertebrates -- mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish -- decreased by about one-third between 1970 and 2006.

Let's put it another way.

If you'd added up the numbers of mammals, fish, birds etc in the world in 1970, and done so again in 2006, one-third of them would have disappeared in between times.

Is it just me, or is that a truly staggering figure?

A couple of other things caught my eye from GBO-3.

One is that over the same time period -- 1970-2006 -- the Earth's human population almost doubled.

The second concerns the 21 "subsidiary targets" that governments set in 2002, alongside their headline target of significantly curbing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

The main 2010 target has been spectacularly missed, but some of the 21 subsidiary ones have partially been met, in some regions of the world at least. They're indicated in GBO-3 by a bit of green in an otherwise red circle.

But cloaked in complete red, indicating complete failure, are the two that are most fundamental when it comes to preserving the extent to which human lives depend on what nature supplies :

Reducing unsustainable consumption of biological resources, or that impacts upon biodiversity

and

Maintaining the capacity of ecosystems to deliver biological resources that support sustainable livelihoods, local food security and health care

There are, of course, significant problems in trying to track trends precisely across a world in which the capacity to observe rigorously is not uniformly distributed, and where reliable documentation gets swiftly less global and less plentiful as you go back in time.

Nevertheless, there are few signs even in the most expertly documented countries that ecosystems are returning to full health.

The big white hope of the biodiversity world is, as those of you who follow this stuff regularly will know, the idea of quantifying the economic benefits that nature brings, and then persuading people and governments and businesses that these economic benefits make preservation of said ecosystems a wise policy option.



We'll have a lot more detail on this coming later in the year, but in the meantime I wanted to offer you a couple of snapshots that were offered to me at the GBO-3 launch.

First, a feathered tale from Japan. In the 1970s, Oriental storks left the country; modern rice farming methods, including pesticide use, concrete irrigation canals and keeping paddy fields under water for shorter length of time had reduced their chances of finding prey so much that they couldn't survive.

The global population of this spectacular but endangered species, by the way, is less than 3,000.

In 2003, authorities in Toyooka City, in the south of the main island of Honshu, established incentives for farmers to adopt more traditional farming methods with a strong organic component.

The results: yields are down, but the rice sells for a higher price. The storks are back, and visitors are flocking to see them.

These two factors combined have increased municipal income by more than 1%.

This win-win outcome is in microcosm what the UN Environment Programme (Unep) hopes to achieve across the world by stimulating awareness of biodiversity's economic value.

But are governments interested -- those same governments that have so signally failed to meet the 2010 target?

According to Nick Nuttall, the Unep spokesman at the GBO-3 launch in London, 30 developing country governments have recently approached Unep asking for advice on how to "green" their economies and live within nature's boundaries.

That sounds like a new twist on the old story to me.

Whether it's enough to prevent a further 30% drop in the abundance of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish and amphibians, with the human population set to increase as much between now and 2050 as it did between 1970 and 2006, is another matter.

Link:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/05/often_when_ive_written_about.html

John Cook, Skeptical Science: Latest GRACE data on Greenland ice mass (from Wahr)

Latest GRACE data on Greenland ice mass

by John Cook, Skeptical Science, May 27, 2010

I don't plan to fall into the trap of breathlessly reporting every twist and turn of short-term climate fluctuations (I went through a bit of a silly period in March and April 2008). But we've been discussing Greenland trends, and as it's been over a year since posting GRACE data on Greenland ice mass, I figure we're due an update. Many thanks to Tenney Naumer of Climate Change: The Next Generation who emailed me the graph. Thanks also to John Wahr at the University of Colorado who analysed the GRACE data and granted permission to reproduce it here. Figure 1 below shows the latest satellite gravity measurements of the Greenland ice mass, through to February 2010.


Figure 1. Greenland ice mass anomaly (black). Orange line is quadratic fit (John Wahr).

This graph includes 12 months more data than Velicogna 2009 and shows the rate of ice mass loss is still increasing. Of course, this is only over an 8-year period. You get a broader picture when you combine GRACE data with other estimates of Greenland mass balance. Figure 2 combines altimetry, net accumulation/loss, and GRACE gravity data. It doesn't include GPS measurements, although this is consistent with other results, also showing acceleration in recent years.


 
Figure 2. Rate of ice loss from Greenland. Vertical lines indicate uncertainty, horizontal lines indicate averaging time. Blue circles are from altimetry, red squares are from net accumulation/loss and green triangles are from GRACE. The black line is a straight-line (constant acceleration) fit through the mass balance data for the period 1996–2008 with a slope of 21 gigatonnes/yr² (Jiang 2010).


What we find is, over a longer time period, Greenland was in approximate mass balance in the early 1990s. Before then, data are sparse, but GrIS may have been slightly increasing in mass during the mid-20th century.

Link:  http://www.skepticalscience.com/Latest-GRACE-data-on-Greenland-ice-mass.html#comments

ERW: AAAS Board of Directors: Virginia Attorney General threatens research with investigation of climate scientist

AAAS Board of Directors: Virginia Attorney General threatens research with investigation of climate scientist

by environmentalresearchweb.org, May 25, 2010

The AAAS Board of Directors has asked Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli to either justify his investigation of climate researcher Michael Mann or end it, calling it “an apparently political action” that could have a chilling effect on scientific research.

The position was underscored in a commentary by Alan I. Leshner, the AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of Science, published 23 May 2010 in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Leshner wrote that Cuccinelli's investigation “goes beyond the bounds of appropriate oversight, and could threaten the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas.”

On 23 April, Cuccinelli requested detailed information from the University of Virginia on five grants for climate change research involving Mann while he was on the school’s faculty from 1999 to 2005. Mann is currently director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

The AAAS Board, while acknowledging the responsibility of state and federal officials to oversee the proper use of grant funds, said Cuccinelli’s request “goes far beyond what is needed to determine financial propriety, including substantive emails with colleagues, computer codes, and the detailed data resulting from Dr. Mann’s work.” The lack of a clear rationale for the inquiry suggests that it “may be aimed at something other than financial malfeasance,” the Board said in its 18 May statement.

The AAAS Board said scientific progress occurs largely through a self-correcting system of peer review, shared results and critical evaluation of new data and ideas. It noted that thousands of studies, including Mann’s work, have “produced a growing mountain of evidence leading to the scientific consensus on human-induced global climate change.” AAAS and other leading scientific organizations have affirmed that consensus.

Cuccinelli, who believes the jury is still out on whether climate change is caused by human activity, has said he is investigating whether Mann defrauded taxpayers when seeking state grant money for his research.

“Mr. Cuccinelli’s investigation, unless based on a much more substantial body of evidence than is apparent, could inappropriately inhibit the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and thus limit the progress of science,” the AAAS Board said.

Scientists and policymakers may disagree with the scientific conclusions of Mann and others, the Board said, but there are well-established means to resolve disagreements over research results within the scientific community. “Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations simply for providing scientific results that may be controversial, particularly on high-profile topics of interest to society,” the Board said.

The American Association of University Professors, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, and scholars from around the nation have criticized Cuccinelli’s demand for documents related to Mann’s research. He has given the University of Virginia until 27 May to respond. The school’s Faculty Senate Executive Council said Cuccinelli’s action “directly threatens academic freedom,” and faculty members have urged the school’s Board of Visitors to challenge the attorney general’s action in court.

Mann has been a target of global warming skeptics, both for his “hockey stick” graph on global temperature trends (work upheld by a U.S. National Research Council panel) and for comments in e-mails stolen from a British climate research group. A Penn State inquiry on the e-mails found no evidence Mann had tried to falsify or suppress data. Even some ardent climate skeptics, such as long-time Mann critic Steve McIntyre, have condemned Cuccinelli’s action.

On 7 May 2010, Science published a letter from 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences decrying attacks on climate research. The letter was drafted before Cuccinelli’s action, but water expert Peter Gleick, one of the authors, told the Washington Post that the attorney general’s demand “is precisely the kind of attack on climate scientists that the letter criticizes.”

Link:   http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/yournews/42696

Jeff Masters' Wunderblog: What would a hurricane do to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

What would a hurricane do to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

by Jeff Masters, Wunderblog, May 26, 2010

 
Hurricane season is upon us next week, and the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still spewing a geyser of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. With this year's hurricane season likely to be a severe one, with much above average numbers of hurricanes and intense hurricanes, we have the unwholesome prospect of a hurricane churning through the largest accidental oil spill in history. A hurricane has never passed over a sizable oil spill before, so there are a lot of unknowns about what might happen. The closest call came in 1979, after the greatest accidental oil spill in history, the massive Ixtoc I blowout. That disaster dumped 3 million barrels (126 million gallons) of oil into the Southern Gulf of Mexico between June 1979 and March 1980. Category 1 Hurricane Henri passed just north of the main portion of the oil spill on September 16 and 17, generating 15 foot seas and southwest winds of 15-25 knots over the spill region on the 16th. Interestingly, the NOAA/AOML report on the spill found that the winds did not blow long enough or strongly enough to control the direction of oil flow, as evidenced by the fact that the wind direction was often 180° to the direction of plume flow. The main impact of the wind was to dilute the oil and weather it, converting it to a thick "mousse."

Oil and beaches
During the Ixtoc spill, prevailing currents circulating clockwise from the blowout carried a 60 x 70 mile patch of sheen containing a 300 x 500 foot patch of heavy crude 900 miles to the South Texas coast. On August 6, 1979, tarballs from the spill impacted a 17 mile stretch of Texas beach. Mousse patches impacted the shoreline north of Port Mansfield Channel on August 15 and again on August 18. On August 24, mousse impacted shoreline south of Aransas Pass. By August 26, most of North Padre Island was covered with moderate amounts of oil. By September 1, all of the south Texas coast had been impacted by oil. However, Hurricane Henri formed in the Gulf of Mexico's Bay of Campeche on September 17-18. At the same time, a strong non-tropical low-pressure system formed along the Texas coast, bringing gale-force winds and rainfall amounts in excess of ten inches to the coast. The combination of swells from Hurricane Henri and wind-driven waves from the non-tropical low-pressure system scoured the oiled beaches of over 90% of their oil (Gundlach et al., 1981). The oil washed over the barrier islands into the estuaries behind them, and much of it sank to the bottom of the ocean. According to NOAA, impacts to the estuaries were minor. However, Payne and McNabb (1984) noted that selected regions of the coast, most of the beached oil was heavily resistant to transport during storms. Oil/sediment mats were ultimately covered by clean sand, but the oil/sediment mats were re-exposed and washed into the lagoon behind the barrier islands one year later when Category 3 Hurricane Allen battered the coast. No transport of the oil/sediment mats from the lagoon bottom was observed in the 3-year period following Hurricane Allen.

So, the Ixtoc blowout experience shows us that if a sandy beach is already fouled by oil, a hurricane can help clean up the mess. However, the situation is different along shores with marshlands, where the many shoreline plants offer crevices and tangled roots for the oil to accumulate in. A hurricane will help scour some of the oil out of marshlands, but the majority of it will probably remain stuck. This is also true of rocky beaches. Rocky shores fouled by the great Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989 have been pounded by many hurricane-strength storms over the years, but these storms were not able to clean the beaches of oil like Hurricane Henri did for Texas' beaches in 1979.

Transport of oil by hurricanes
Shores that are already fouled by oil will probably benefit from a hurricane, but the oil cleaned off of those shores then becomes someone else's problem. The strong winds and powerful ocean currents that a hurricane's winds drive will bring oil to large stretches of coast that otherwise would not have gotten oil. This is my chief concern regarding a hurricane moving through the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Consider the case of the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989. The ill-fated tanker split open in Prince William Sound on March 24, and oil spill response crews were initially able to contain the spill behind booms and make good progress removing it. However, two days later, a powerful Gulf of Alaska storm with 70 mph winds roared through, overwhelming the containment booms and distributing the oil along a 90-mile stretch of coast. The oil went on to foul over 400 miles of Alaska coast, a far larger disaster than would have occurred than if the storm had not passed by. Similarly, a hurricane moving through the Gulf of Mexico spill will very likely make the disaster much worse, spreading out the oil over a larger region, and bringing the oil to shores that otherwise might not have seen oil. It is true that the oil will be diluted some by being spread out over a larger area, so some shores will not see a substantial oiling. But overall, a hurricane passing through the oil spill is likely to result in much higher damage to the coast.

I expect that during the peak portion of hurricane season (August-October), the clockwise-rotating eddy that is attempting to cut off from the Loop Current this week will be fully separated from the Loop Current. The separation of this eddy will substantially reduce the possibility that significant amounts of oil will reach the Florida Keys and Southeast U.S. coast, since the Loop Current will be much farther south, flowing more due east towards the Keys from the Yucatan Channel. Oil moving southwards from the spill location due to a hurricane's winds will tend to get trapped in the 250-mile-wide eddy, potentially covering most of the surface of the eddy with oil. Thus we might have a 250-mile-wide spinning oil slick in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico for days or weeks after a hurricane. This could potentially have a significant warming effect on the Gulf waters, since the oil is dark and will absorb sunlight, and the oil will prevent evaporation from cooling the waters underneath it. Since Loop Current eddies contain a large amount of very warm water that extend to great depth, they often act as high-octane fuel for hurricanes that pass over. The rapid intensifications of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were both aided by the passage of those storms over Loop Current eddies. Thus the warming of the Loop Current Eddy by oil pulled into it by a passing hurricane or tropical storm could lead to explosive intensification of the next hurricane that passes over the eddy.

The Loop Current Eddy will move slowly westwards toward Texas at about 4 miles per day after it fully cuts off. When it reaches the shallow waters near the Texas coast in early 2011, the eddy will turn northwards and gradually dissipate, By then, I expect that the vast majority of the oil in the eddy will have dispersed, sunk, or evaporated.

Storm surge and oil
One of the more unnerving prospects to consider if a hurricane hits the oil spill is what the hurricane's storm surge might do with the oil/dispersant mixture. The foul mix would ride inland on top of the surge, potentially fouling residential areas and hundreds of square miles of sensitive ecosystems with the toxic stew. The impacts of the oil and dispersant on vegetation may be too low to cause significant damage, since the hurricane would dilute the mixture with a large amount of sea water, and wash much of the toxic brew off the vegetation with heavy rain. We do have some limited experience with oil spills during Hurricane Katrina's storm surge to shed light on the subject. Katrina's storm surge caused over 8 million gallons of oil to spill into the storm surge waters. The largest spill occurred when the storm surge hit the Murphy Oil refinery in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. According to Santella et al. (2010), The refinery was inundated with 12 feet of water, and a partially filled 250,000-barrel above-ground storage tank was dislodged and ruptured, releasing 25,100 barrels (1.05 million gallons) of mixed crude oil. Dikes surrounding the oil tanks at the refinery were flooded and breached, and oil from the spill covered a residential area of approximately one square mile affecting approximately 1,800 homes. Front-end loaders were needed to remove the oily sediments from the area. A class action lawsuit resulted from the spill, ending in a $330 million settlement with a buy-out of properties closest to the spill and graded compensation in a larger zone. Katrina also caused a 139,000-gallon crude oil leak from a 20-inch pipeline at Shell Nairn Pipeline Company in Port Sulphur, Louisiana. Approximately 10,500 gallons of the spill reached the shoreline and coastal marshes, and only 10,700 gallons were recovered. This release resulted in a $5.5 million class action settlement to nearby property owners (http://www.nairnclaims.com). I haven't been able to find any information on how the marshlands fared after getting oiled by this spill.

Katrina's storm surge also destroyed an oil tank at Chevron's Empire facility, releasing oil into a retention pond in a region surrounded by marshland. Three and half weeks later, Hurricane Rita's storm surge hit the oily mess in the retention pond, washing 4,000-8,000 gallons of oil into nearby marshlands, which were heavily or moderately oiled. According to the EPA and Merten et al. (2008), the oiled marshlands were set on fire six weeks after the spill, resulting in 80-90% removal of the oil and contaminated vegetation. The marshland recovered fairly quickly, as seen in aerial photos taken five months after the burn (Figure 1) -- though oil still remained in the roots, affecting burrowing crabs and the wildlife that feed on them. So, oiled marshes can recover somewhat from a storm-surge driven oiling, but it is uncertain if burning could be successfully used to restore a 100+ square mile region of marshland oiled by the storm surge from a major hurricane. Another big unknown is how toxic BP's dispersants might be to the vegetation.


Figure 1. Upper left: oiled marshlands as seen on October 10, 2005, near Chevron's Empire facility, after the storm surges of Katrina and Rita. Right: The marshlands on March 16, 2006, five months after the controlled burn. The marshlands had largely recovered. Bottom: the controlled burn in progress (October 12, 2005.. Image credit: A.A. Merten, C. Henry, and J. Michel, 2008, Decision-making process to use in-situ burning to restore an oiled intermediate marsh following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 2008 International Oil Spill Conference.

Wind and oil
The winds from a hurricane hurl ocean sea spray miles inland, often causing major defoliation and tree damage far beyond where the storm surge penetrates. For example, Category 2 Hurricane Bob of 1991 blew sea spray inland 4 miles (7 km) inland over Cape Cod. The salt deposited defoliated nearly all the deciduous trees along the coast. Kerr (2000) documented the case of Category 2 Typhoon Gay of November 23, 1992, which hit the 15-km wide island of Guam with 95-100 mph winds. Interaction with another typhoon disrupted Gay's thunderstorm activity, resulting in a nearly rainless typhoon for Guam. As a result, heavy amounts of salt coated the entire island, resulting in nearly complete defoliation. The salt didn't actually kill many plants, and the island re-greened within a year. The Category 3 New England Hurricane of 1938 was able to cause salt damage to trees as far as 45 miles inland, due to wind-blown sea spray. Thus we can anticipate that a hurricane passing over the oil spill will be able to hurl oil and toxic dispersants many miles inland during landfall. In regions where little rain falls, the concentrations of the oil and dispersants may be a problem. Again, we have no experience with this sort of situation, so the potential risks are unknown.

Rain and oil
Hurricanes evaporate huge amounts of water from the ocean and convert it to rain. In general, we do not need to worry about oil dissolving into the rain, since the oil and water don't mix. Furthermore, about 50-70% of the oil that is going to evaporate from the spill does so in the first 12 hours that the oil reaches the surface, so the volatile oil compounds that could potentially get dissolved into rain water won't be around. Hurricanes are known to carry sea salt and microscopic marine plankton hundreds of miles inland, since the strong updrafts of the storm can put these substances high in the troposphere where they can be carried far inland as the hurricane makes landfall. The Eastern Pacific's Hurricane Nora of 1997, whose remnants passed over Southern California, brought traces of sea salt and marine microorganisms to clouds over the central U.S. similarly, we can expect any landfalling hurricanes that pass over the oil spill to pick up traces of Gulf of Mexico crude and transport it hundreds of miles inland. However, I doubt that these traces would be detectable in rainwater except by laboratory analysis and would not cause any harm to plants or animals.

Lightning and oil
Could a lightning strike from a hurricane ignite oil from the spill, and the hurricane's winds hurl the flaming oil inland, creating a fiery maelstrom of water, wind, and flame? This would make a great scene in a typical bad Hollywood disaster movie, but it's not going to happen with the universe's current laws of physics. Lightning could set an oil slick on fire, in regions where the oil is most dense and very fresh. About 50-70% of the evaporation of oil's most flammable volatile compounds occurs in the first 12 hours after release, so fresh oil is the most likely to ignite. However, the winds of a hurricane are so fierce that any surface oil slick of flaming oil would quickly be disrupted and doused by wave action and sea spray. Heavy rain would further dampen any lightning-caused oil slick fires.

Bringing oil at depth to the surface
Hurricanes act like huge blenders that plow through the ocean, thoroughly mixing surface waters to depths as great as 200 meters (650 feet), and pulling waters from depth to the surface. Thus if sub-surface plumes of oil are located within 200 meters of the surface, a hurricane could potentially bring them to the surface. However, the huge sub-surface plumes of oil found by the research vessel Pelican were at depths of 2,300-4,200 feet, and a hurricane will not affect the ocean circulation at those depths.

Comparisons of the Deepwater Horizon blowout with Exxon Valdez
One footnote to consider when comparing the Deepwater Horizon blowout to the disastrous March 24, 1989, Exxon Valdez spill: the amount of oil spilled in that disaster is usually quoted as 11 million gallons (260,000 barrels). However, this is the number given by Exxon Mobil, and independent assessments by the State of Alaska came up with a much higher figure -- 24-36 million gallons, with state investigators stressing that the lower number was very unlikely. I'd be inclined to believe Exxon grossly understated the actual severity of the spill, much like BP is attempting to do with the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Steven Wereley, an associate professor at Purdue University, used a computer analysis (particle image velocimetry) to arrive at a rate of 95,000 barrels (4 million gallons) per day since the April 20 blowout, nearly 20 times greater than the 5,000 barrel a day estimate BP and government scientists have been citing. If he is correct, and the State of Alaska's figures on the Exxon Valdez disaster are correct, the Deepwater Horizon blowout so far has spilled five times the oil Exxon Valdez did.


Link:  http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1492

Tim Dixon, Shimon Wdowinski, Yan Jiang: Greenland’s accelerating uplift is evidence of rapid ice loss

Greenland’s uplift is evidence of rapid ice loss

from Scientific Blogging news, May 18, 2010
 

This is a satellite image of Western Greenland, acquired by NASA's MODIS satellite. The narrow grey band in the center of the image is melting ice, between the rocky coast to the left (west) and thicker, non-melting, higher altitude ice to the right (east). Small lakes form in this region during the summer. Arrow points to darker grey zone of rapidly thinning ice near the outlet of Jacobshavn Glacier, which also loses mass due to iceberg calving.  (Photo Credit: Courtesy of NASA)
 
Greenland’s Uplift: Evidence Of Rapid Ice Loss

Scientists at the University of Miami say Greenland’s ice is melting so quickly that the land underneath is rising at an accelerated pace.

According to the study, some coastal areas are going up by nearly one inch per year and if current trends continue, that number could accelerate to as much as two inches per year by 2025, explains Tim Dixon, professor of geophysics at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) and principal investigator of the study.

“It’s been known for several years that climate change is contributing to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet,” Dixon says. “What’s surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response,” he says. “Even more surprising, the rise seems to be accelerating, implying that melting is accelerating.”

The research was published in Nature Geoscience. The idea behind the study is that if Greenland is losing its ice cover, the resulting loss of weight causes the rocky surface beneath to rise. The same process is affecting the islands of Iceland and Svalbard, which also have ice caps, explains Shimon Wdowinski, research associate professor in the University of Miami RSMAS, and co-author of the study.

“During ice ages and in times of ice accumulation, the ice suppresses the land,” Wdowinski says. “When the ice melts, the land rebounds upwards,” he says. “Our study is consistent with a number of global warming indicators, confirming that ice melt and sea level rise are real and becoming significant.”

Using specialized global positioning system (GPS) receivers stationed on the rocky shores of Greenland, the scientists looked at data from 1995 onward. The raw GPS data were analyzed for high accuracy position information, as well as the vertical velocity and acceleration of each GPS site.

The measurements are restricted to places where rock is exposed, limiting the study to coastal areas. However, previous data indicate that ice in Greenland’s interior is in approximate balance: yearly losses from ice melting and flowing toward the coast are balanced by new snow accumulation, which gradually turns to ice. Most ice loss occurs at the warmer coast, by melting and iceberg calving and where the GPS data are most sensitive to changes. In western Greenland, the uplift seems to have started in the late 1990s.

Melting of Greenland’s ice contributes to global sea level rise. If the acceleration of uplift and the implied acceleration of melting continue, Greenland could soon become the largest contributor to global sea level rise, explains Yan Jiang, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Miami RSMAS and co-author of the study.

 “Greenland’s ice melt is very important because it has a big impact on global sea level rise,” Jiang says. “We hope that our work reaches the general public and that this information is considered by policy makers.”


Link:  http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_articles/greenlands_uplift_evidence_rapid_ice_loss

NOAA predicts an active to extremely active Atlantic hurricane season for 2010

NOAA Expects Busy Atlantic Hurricane Season

May 27, 2010

Hurricane Ike, 2008. High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

An “active to extremely active” hurricane season is expected for the Atlantic Basin this year according to the seasonal outlook issued today by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center – a division of the National Weather Service. As with every hurricane season, this outlook underscores the importance of having a hurricane preparedness plan in place.

Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the six-month season, which begins June 1, NOAA is projecting a 70% probability of the following ranges:

• 14 to 23 Named Storms (top winds of 39 mph or higher), including:
• 8 to 14 Hurricanes (top winds of 74 mph or higher), of which:
• 3 to 7 could be Major Hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of at least 111 mph)

“If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared.”

The outlook ranges exceed the seasonal average of 11 named storms, 6 hurricanes and 2 major hurricanes.

Expected factors supporting this outlook are:

• Upper atmospheric winds conducive for storms. Wind shear, which can tear apart storms, will be weaker since El Niño in the eastern Pacific has dissipated. Strong wind shear helped suppress storm development during the 2009 hurricane season.
• Warm Atlantic Ocean water. Sea surface temperatures are expected to remain above average where storms often develop and move across the Atlantic. Record warm temperatures – up to 4 °F above average – are now present in this region.
• High activity era continues. Since 1995, the tropical multi-decadal signal has brought favorable ocean and atmospheric conditions in sync, leading to more active hurricane seasons. Eight of the last 15 seasons rank in the top 10 for the most named storms, with 2005 in first place with 28 named storms.

Hurricane Noel, 2007. High resolution (Credit: NOAA)

“The main uncertainty in this outlook is how much above normal the season will be. Whether or not we approach the high end of the predicted ranges depends partly on whether or not La Niña develops this summer,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “At present we are in a neutral state, but conditions are becoming increasingly favorable for La Niña to develop.”

"FEMA is working across the administration and with our state and local partners to ensure we're prepared for hurricane season," said FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate. "But we can only be as prepared as the public, so it's important that families and businesses in coastal communities take steps now to be ready. These include developing a communications plan, putting together a kit, and staying informed of the latest forecasts and local emergency plans. You can't control when a hurricane or other emergency may happen, but you can make sure you're ready."

The president recently designated May 23-29, 2010, as National Hurricane Preparedness Week. NOAA and FEMA encourage those living in hurricane-prone states to use this time to review their overall preparedness. More information on individual and family preparedness can be found at www.Ready.gov and www.hurricanes.gov/prepare.

NOAA scientists will continue to monitor evolving conditions in the tropics and will issue an updated hurricane outlook in early August, just prior to what is historically the peak period for hurricane activity.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Visit us on Facebook.

Link:  http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100527_hurricaneoutlook.html

John Cook, Skeptical Science: Why Greenland's ice loss matters

Why Greenland's ice loss matters

by John Cook, Skeptical Science, May 27, 2010

There are various stages of denial along the skeptic spectrum. The first stage is "It's not happening." In the case of the Greenland ice sheet, an early argument was that "Greenland can't be losing ice because it's gaining ice in the interior." However, a number of independent lines of evidence have all shown that overall, the Greenland ice sheet is losing ice. In fact, the rate of ice loss is accelerating. In light of this unequivocal evidence, many have moved onto the second stage, "okay, it's happening but it's not so bad. Greenland is losing 286 gigatonnes of ice per year? Big deal! There's around 3 million gigatonnes still remaining in the huge ice sheet. Take a chill pill, alarmist!"

This view is articulated by Willis Eschenbach in On Being the Wrong Size (well, he didn't say to take a "chill pill," that was creative license on my part). Eschenback argues that Greenland is losing about 0.007% of its total mass every year. At that rate, it will take 15,000 years to dissipate. Personally, I love a good visual so kudos must go to one of our regulars, Berényi Péter, who posted this picture in an earlier Skeptical Science comment, comparing 2009 ice loss to the total ice sheet:



The important point to remember here is that ice loss is accelerating. In 2002, the ice loss was 137 gigatonnes per year (Velicogna 2009). At that rate, the ice sheet would take nearly 22,000 years to dissipate.

By 2009, this rate had more than doubled to 286 gigatonnes per year, reducing the ice sheet "lifetime" to 10,500 years. As the rate of ice loss increases, the ice sheet's lifetime is also diminishing.

So the crucial question is how will the Greenland ice sheet behave in the future? Extrapolating an accelerating curve into the future is always problematic. However, there are several different ways to approach the problem.

One method is to study the physics of glacier movements. One paper calculates glacier dynamics factoring Greenland's topography, the cross-sectional area of its glaciers and whether the bedrock is based below sea level (Pfeffer 2008). Including contributions from Greenland and Antarctica, the study estimates global sea level rise between 80 cm to 2 m by 2100.

A semi-empirical technique looks at how sea level and global temperature have changed in the past (Vermeer 2009). Sea level change can then be expressed as a function of temperature change and future projections of global temperature can be used to simulate future sea levels. This method predicts global sea level rise of 75-180 cm by 2100.

Climate modelling of the Greenland ice sheet predicts eventual collapse of the Greenland ice sheet if CO2 levels go over 400 parts per million (ppm). We're currently at 392 ppm. At 400 ppm, they predict that over the next 400 years, the ice sheet will lose between 20 and 41% of its volume (Stone 2010). This is equivalent to roughly 1.4-2.8 m of sea level rise just from Greenland.

Lastly, we learn much about how the Greenland ice sheet behaves by looking at sea level change in the past. The more optimistic IPCC emission scenarios predict warming of 1-2 °C. The last time temperatures were this warm was 125,000 years ago. At this time, sea levels were over 6 m higher than current levels (Kopp 2009). This tells us the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are highly sensitive to sustained, warmer temperatures and are likely to contribute sea level rise measured in metres in future centuries.

So Willis Eschenbach and Berényi Péter do us a service in illustrating how much ice is still left in the Greenland ice sheet. This is a vivid reminder of Greenland's potential to contribute significantly to sea level rise in the future. And multiple lines of peer-reviewed evidence, both modelled and empirical, all paint a similar picture. The Greenland ice sheet is highly sensitive to warmer temperatures and is likely to contribute sea level rise in the order of metres over the next few centuries.

Link:  http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-Greenlands-ice-loss-matters.html

John Cook, Skeptical Science: Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements (flaws in Lindzen et al.'s paper)

Working out climate sensitivity from satellite measurements

by John Cook, Skeptical Science, May 26, 2010

Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much our climate responds to an energy imbalance. The most common definition is the change in global temperature if the amount of atmospheric CO2 was doubled. If there were no feedbacks, climate sensitivity would be around 1 °C. But we know there are a number of feedbacks, both positive and negative. So how do we determine the net feedback? An empirical solution is to observe how our climate responds to temperature change. We have satellite measurements of the radiation budget and surface measurements of temperature. Putting the two together should give us an indication of net feedback.

One paper that attempts to do this is "On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data" by Lindzen et al. (2009). It looks at sea surface temperature in the tropics (20° S to 20° N) from 1986 to 2000. Specifically, it looked at periods where the change in temperature was greater than 0.2 °C, marked by red and blue colors (Figure 1).



Figure 1. Monthly sea surface temperature for 20° S to 20° N. Periods of temperature change greater than 0.2 °C marked by red and blue (Lindzen et al. 2009).


Lindzen et al. also analysed satellite measurements of outgoing radiation over these periods. As short-term tropical sea surface temperatures are largely driven by the El Nino–Southern Oscillation, the change in outward radiation offers an insight into how climate responds to changing temperature. Their analysis found that when it gets warmer, there was more outgoing radiation escaping to space. They concluded that net feedback is negative and our planet has a low climate sensitivity of about 0.5 °C.

However, a response ("Relationships between tropical sea surface temperature and top-of-atmosphere radiation" by Trenberth et al. (2010)) to this paper revealed a number of flaws in Lindzen's analysis. It turns out the low climate sensitivity result is heavily dependent on the choice of start and end points in the periods they analyse. Small changes in their choice of dates entirely change the result. Essentially, one could tweak the start and end points to obtain any feedback one wishes.



Figure 2. Warming (red) and cooling (blue) intervals of tropical SST (20° N–20° S) used by Lindzen et al. (2009) (solid circles) and an alternative selection proposed derived from an objective approach (open circles) (Trenberth et al. 2010). 

Another major flaw in Lindzen's analysis is that they attempt to calculate global climate sensitivity from tropical data. The tropics are not a closed system – a great deal of energy is exchanged between the tropics and subtropics. To properly calculate global climate sensitivity, global observations are required.

This is confirmed by another paper published in early May (Murphy 2010). This paper finds that small changes in the heat transport between the tropics and subtropics can swamp the tropical signal. They conclude that climate sensitivity must be calculated from global data.

In addition, a paper published last week reproduced the analysis from Lindzen et al. (2009) and compared it to results using near-global data (Chung et al. 2010). The near-global data find net positive feedback and the authors conclude that the tropical ocean is not an adequate region for determining global climate sensitivity.

A full understanding of climate requires we take into account the full body of evidence. In the case of climate sensitivity and satellite data, it requires a global dataset, not just the tropics. Stepping back to take a broader view, a single paper must also be seen in the context of the full body of peer-reviewed research. A multitude of papers looking at different periods in Earth's history independently and empirically converge on a consistent answer – climate sensitivity is around 3 °C, implying net positive feedback.

Link:   http://www.skepticalscience.com/Working-out-climate-sensitivity-from-satellite-measurements.html

M. D. Mastrandrea et al., Climatic Change (2010), Bridging the gap: linking climate-impacts research with adaptation planning and management

Climatic Change, Vol. 100, No. 1, pp. 87-101; doi: 10.1007/s10584-010-9827-4

Bridging the gap: linking climate-impacts research with adaptation planning and management

Michael D. Mastrandrea*, Nicole E. Heller, Terry L. Root and Stephen H. Schneider

(see author affiliations at link below)

Abstract

A critical challenge in supporting climate change adaptation is improving the linkage between climate-impacts and vulnerability research and public and private planning and management decisions. We highlight the need for bottom-up/top-down vulnerability assessment, bringing together bottom-up knowledge of existing vulnerabilities with top-down climate-impact projections, as a transparent basis for informing decisions intended to reduce vulnerability. This approach can be used to evaluate the likelihood of crossing identified thresholds of exposure, and to evaluate alternative adaptation strategies based on their ability to reduce sensitivity to projected changes in exposure and their robustness across uncertainty in future outcomes. By identifying thresholds for which adaptive capacity is limited in particular systems, adaptation and mitigation become complements where the magnitudes of climate change at which such thresholds cluster can help to define mitigation targets.

*Correspondence e-mail:  mikemas@standford.edu

Link:  http://www.springerlink.com/content/f57517156t3vk467/

Climate change, exponential curves, water resources, and unprecedented threats to humanity

Climatic Change, Vol. 100, No. 1, pp. 125-129 (May 2010); doi: 10.1007/s10584-010-9831-8

Climate change, exponential curves, water resources, and unprecedented threats to humanity

Peter H. Gleick*

Pacific Institute, Oakland, CA, U.S.A.

[Dear Readers, please read the first page of the article at this link:
http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=n5k06kn107686017&size=largest ]

*Correspondence e-mail:  pgleick@pacinst.org

Link:  http://www.springerlink.com/content/n5k06kn107686017/

P. H. Gleick & M. Palaniappan, PNAS (2010), Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and use

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online before print May 24, 2010; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1004812107

Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and use

Peter H. Gleick* and Meena Palaniappan

Pacific Institute, 654 13th Street, Oakland, CA 94612, U.S.A.

Abstract

Freshwater resources are fundamental for maintaining human health, agricultural production, economic activity as well as critical ecosystem functions. As populations and economies grow, new constraints on water resources are appearing, raising questions about limits to water availability. Such resource questions are not new. The specter of “peak oil”—a peaking and then decline in oil production—has long been predicted and debated. We present here a detailed assessment and definition of three concepts of “peak water”: peak renewable water, peak nonrenewable water, and peak ecological water. These concepts can help hydrologists, water managers, policy makers, and the public understand and manage different water systems more effectively and sustainably. Peak renewable water applies where flow constraints limit total water availability over time. Peak nonrenewable water is observable in groundwater systems where production rates substantially exceed natural recharge rates and where overpumping or contamination leads to a peak of production followed by a decline, similar to more traditional peak-oil curves. Peak “ecological” water is defined as the point beyond which the total costs of ecological disruptions and damages exceed the total value provided by human use of that water. Despite uncertainties in quantifying many of these costs and benefits in consistent ways, more and more watersheds appear to have already passed the point of peak water. Applying these concepts can help shift the way freshwater resources are managed toward more productive, equitable, efficient, and sustainable use.

*Correspondence e-mail: pgleick@pipeline.com.

Link:  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/05/20/1004812107.abstract