Rare Indian lotus 'disappearing'

Parameswaran Sivaramakrishnan, BBC News 23 Sep 09;

A rare species of lotus is on the verge of disappearing from India, according to scientists.

An expert told BBC News that efforts to save Nymphaea tetragona, found only in a small private pond in India, have not been effective.

Despite a variety of methods of propagation, the plants have failed to grow in sufficiently large numbers.

Leading botanist Pramod Tandon said that it is now as important to save the existing examples as to propagate them.

N. tetragona , technically a water lily, is globally rare.

In India the only surviving examples live on a small piece of private land in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya.

'Global problem'

The private nature of the habitat is making conservation efforts even more difficult, said Professor Tandon, vice chancellor of the North Eastern Hill University in Meghalaya's capital Shillong.

He said that the issues the plants raise stretch beyond the tiny pond where they cling to existence: "The conservation of rare and endangered plants is a global problem and requires a global answer." he said.



Conservation experts have tried to cultivate more of the plants by numerous means, including making cuttings, growing them from seeds and high-tech methods such as micro-propagation from tiny bits of sterile plant matter in a dish.

"Lotus is the national flower of India," said Professor Tandon. "In spite of that, scientists are unable to effectively make this variety survive as micro-propagation and vegetative means have not yielded the desired result."

Culturing the plants from seeds saw a few plants propagate, he explained but: "We were not able to really get these plants in large numbers to be reintroduced into their natural habitats."

Ecosystem balance

Without an immediate and concerted effort, Professor Tandon said he feared this species could disappear from India forever.

As only 20 to 30 plants are left, it is the conservation efforts to protect the area where they are that are of paramount importance.

"Protection of the existing plants is even more important than multiplying them," said Professor Tandon.

If that could be done successfully, then they could be propagated in their natural habitat in the Smit area of Meghalaya.

Seeds that are available when the plant flowers could aid future micro-propagation efforts.

Professor Tandon disagrees with the view that the government of India has not paid the necessary attention needed to save this critically endangered plant.

He said that a global effort was needed to save many critically endangered plants from extinction as their survival was important not only for preserving natural heritage for future generations but also to maintain continuity in the ecosystem.

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Going Green: What Cities Can Teach The Country

Heller McAlpin, NPR 23 Sep 09;

The future of our planet may be uncertain, but one thing is clear: David Owen is going to generate significant heat with Green Metropolis, his provocative manifesto that inverts many of our sacred assumptions about environmentalism. Building on the stunning article he wrote for The New Yorker in 2004 about how, contrary to being the ecological nightmare most people think it is, New York City is actually the greenest, most environmentally responsible community in America, his book mounts a passionate, fact-studded case for "the environmental advantages of Manhattan-style urban density."

"Calculated by the square foot," Owen admits, "New York City generates more greenhouse gases, uses more energy, and produces more solid waste than any other American region of comparable size." But — and here's the key factor — individually, per capita, New Yorkers pollute, drive, consume and throw away far less than other Americans — while walking and using public transit far more.

Owen's Environmental Enemy No. 1 is the automobile, which not only burns damaging fossil fuels but encourages us to spread out and, paradoxically, destroy open space. The best way to deter people from using cars — along with grouping residences and businesses more closely — is by making driving as unpleasant and expensive as possible: by charging exorbitant taxes on gas and parking rather than easing traffic congestion or producing smaller, cheaper automobiles.

Green Metropolis is fascinating and thought-provoking even when not entirely convincing — as when Owen criticizes Central Park as a "barrier to the overall human flow" of New York City, ignoring its importance as a recreational oasis. His objections to the small measures we take to be more environmentally responsible, such as switching to hybrid cars, recycling and creating HOV and bicycle lanes, are sure to raise some hackles. Single-family homeowners who waste money on "inappropriate technology" such as solar panels while failing to beef up roof insulation, drive less, downsize or purchase more efficient HVAC systems also come in for heavy criticism.

Owen traces the anti-urban bias of American environmentalists back to Thomas Jefferson and Thoreau, demonstrating how it has led to ecologically disastrous sprawl. He disdains low-set buildings surrounded by countryside, including the highly touted and supposedly green design of the inconveniently remote Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colo. Unfortunately, as with his attitude toward Central Park, his focus on carbon footprints causes him to discount the aesthetic or psychological solace of open space.

Or maybe not. A New Yorker staff writer and self-confessed golf addict whose 14 books include several about his favorite pastime, Owen admits that he's no ecological angel. Not only does he live in ecologically unsustainable, bucolic, small-town Connecticut, but he drives to his local golf course, three miles away. As Kermit the Frog notes, it's not easy being green. But for starters, Green Metropolis offers high-test fuel for discussion.

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Earth needs users' guide to protect it from people

Alister Doyle, Reuters 23 Sep 09:

OSLO (Reuters) - A new users' guide is needed to help protect the Earth from dangerous changes such as global warming and extinctions of animals and plants caused by humans, scientists said.

A group of 28 experts suggested nine key areas, such as freshwater use, chemical pollutants or changes in land use, where governments could define limits to ensure a "safe operating space for humanity."

"Today we are clearly driving development in the world blindfolded," Johan Rockstrom, leader of the study and director of the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University, told Reuters of a lack of international guidelines.

"We are not considering the risks that there are deep holes we can drive into," he told Reuters. The call, for setting "planetary boundaries," was published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

Rockstrom said there were signs human activities had already pushed the world into the danger zone because of global warming, a high rate of extinctions of animals and plants and pollution caused by nitrogen, mainly used in fertilizers.

Among limits, they suggested capping the percentage of global land area converted to cropland at 15 percent. At the moment, the percentage is 11.7 percent, they said.

They added that concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, should be limited to 350 parts per million of the atmosphere -- below current levels of 387 ppm. Human freshwater use should be capped at 4,000 square km (1,545 sq mile) a year -- against 2,600 sq km now.

CREDITABLE ATTEMPT

Nature said in an editorial the proposed indicators were a "creditable attempt" to quantify limits on human use of the planet. However, it noted, for instance, that fertilizers caused pollution yet helped feed millions of people.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a co-author of the study, said there were growing risks of abrupt and possibly irreversible changes.

"Observations of an incipient climate transition include the rapid retreat of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, melting of almost all mountain glaciers around the world, and an increased rate of sea-level rise in the past 10-15 years," he said.

The scientists said the current relatively stable temperatures of the Holocene era since the end of the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago was under threat from human -- or anthropogenic -- activities.

"Since the Industrial Revolution, a new era has arisen, the Anthropocene, in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change," they wrote.

Grappling with the Anthropocene: Scientists Identify Safe Limits for Human Impacts on Planet
Scientists propose a list of planetary boundaries for human impacts ranging from biodiversity loss to the global nitrogen cycle
David Biello, Scientific American 23 Sep 09;

The scale of mankind's impact on the globe is becoming more and more apparent: We have achieved a species extinction rate to rival great extinction events of all geologic time as well as a rapidly acidifying ocean, dwindling ice caps, and even sinking river deltas, a new study from scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder reveals. No wonder then that some geologists and other scientists have dubbed the modern epoch the Anthropocene. And now an international group of 28 scientists has taken a preliminary stab at setting some concrete environmental thresholds for the planet.

Johan Rockström of Stockholm University and his colleagues are proposing nine "planetary boundaries" in this week's Nature. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.) Ranging from climate change to chemical pollution, the boundaries are meant to set thresholds, or safe limits, for natural systems with respect to human impact.

"We have reached the planetary stage of sustainability, where we are fiddling with hard-wired processes at the global Earth-system scale," Rockström says. "What are the Earth-system processes that determine the ability of the [planet] to remain in a stable state?"

The research takes as its desired stable state the Holocene epoch, the 10,000 years since the last ice age during which human civilization has flourished, and attempts to identify the key variables that might push planetary cycles past safe thresholds.

So, for example, the key variable for climate change is atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration as well as its attendant rise in the amount of trapped heat. At present, atmospheric CO2 has reached more than 387 parts per million (ppm), well above the preindustrial figure of 280 ppm. So, the estimated safe threshold identified by the scientists, including NASA climatologist James Hansen, is 350 ppm, or a total increased warming of one watt per meter squared (current warming is roughly 1.5 watts per meter squared).

"We begin to quantify, very roughly, where we think these thresholds might be. All have huge error bars," says ecologist Jonathan Foley director of the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, one of the authors. "We don't know exactly how many parts per million it would take to stop climate change, but we think it starts at about 350 ppm."

Along with the climate change boundary, humanity has already pushed past the safe threshold in two more of the nine identified boundaries—biodiversity loss and available nitrogen (thanks to modern fertilizers). And, unfortunately, many of the processes impact each other, as well. "Crossing one threshold makes the others more vulnerable," Foley adds. For example, "biodiversity [loss] on a really hot planet is accelerated."

In associated commentaries published online this week in Nature Reports Climate Change, several scientists criticize the precise thresholds set, although they laud the effort. Biogeochemist William Schlesinger of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies argues that the limits on phosphorus fertilizer are too lenient and can allow "pernicious, slow and diffuse degradation to persist nearly indefinitely." Allowing human water use, largely for agriculture, to expand from 2,600 cubic kilometers today to 4,000 cubic kilometers in the future will allow further degradation at such environmental disaster sites as the drying Aral Sea in Asia and seven major rivers, including the Colorado in the U.S., that no longer reach the sea, notes David Molden, deputy director general for research at the International Water Management Institute in Sri Lanka.

Even the 350-ppm limit for carbon dioxide is "questionable," says physicist Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford, and focusing instead on keeping cumulative emissions below one trillion metric tons might make more sense, which would mean humanity has already used up more than half of its overall emissions budget.

And such efforts to set thresholds have a mixed track record. For instance, the "limits to growth" argument put forward by the Club of Rome in 1972 failed to materialize, thanks in part to some of the innovations listed here, such as increased nitrogen use in industrial agriculture. "A big part of this is feeding 6.7 billion people," Foley says. "We are heading towards nine billion who are going to want to eat more like people in the developed world, and there's the specter of biofuels. Those boundaries look really fragile."

Most importantly, however, regardless of impacts on the planet, the human condition has likely never been better in terms of material prosperity. The question is: "How do you continue to improve the human condition?" Foley asks. "How can we sustain a world that will reach nine billion people without destroying the planet? At least knowing a bit where the danger zones are is a really important first step."

There are grounds for hope. Humanity has crossed one of these thresholds before—diminishing levels of stratospheric ozone due to emissions of ozone-destroying chemicals (the "ozone hole")—and pulled back through international cooperation and the 1989 Montreal Protocol. "We did manage to move ourselves away from the ozone boundary and have made serious efforts at regional levels to protect biodiversity; reduce agricultural pollution, aerosols and water demand; and slow land conversion," says environmental scientist Diana Liverman of the University of Arizona's Institute for the Environment and Society, one of the new thresholds authors. "This provides some hope that we can manage our planetary impact if we choose."

Human damage 'needs limits'
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Science Alert 24 Sep 09;

Humanity needs to act now to avoid threats to human well-being caused by irreversible damage to the Earth, its climate, species and life-supporting systems.

Scientists say it has become essential to define what levels of such human-caused change are ‘safe’ and which are ‘unsafe’, and to stay within these boundaries.

The call comes from 28 of the world’s most eminent environmental scientists, published September 23 in the world’s leading science journal, Nature.

The researchers propose an upper limit of 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere – a level already exceeded since 1987 - requiring a fast-track reduction in fossil fuels.

“Transgressing the safe boundary of 350ppm will increase the risk of irreversible climate change, such as the loss of major ice sheets, accelerated sea level rise and abrupt shifts in coral reef, forest and agricultural systems,” they caution.

“The increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere and ocean has caused major damage to coral reefs worldwide over the past 25 years. Allowing it to increase to 450 or higher would be irresponsible and hugely detrimental to millions of people who depend on reefs for food and their livelihood” says Australian co-author Professor Terry Hughes of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

The researchers also propose that safe boundaries be set to other major human impacts, such as species loss, the effect of fertilisers, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, freshwater use and chemical pollution.

The scientists, who come from many of the world’s leading research institutions, say human activity is now the main driver of global change and is taking the planet down a path where it may be unable to support humanity’s future development.

Human activities – largely resulting from our rapidly growing reliance on fossil fuels and industrialised forms of agriculture – have now reached a magnitude that may trigger irreversible and in some cases abrupt environmental change by damaging the regulatory capacity of the planet, they say.

In the cases of atmospheric CO2, nitrogen fertiliser use and species loss, the Earth has already exceeded the safety zone beyond which irretrievable changes may occur, the paper says.

And we are rapidly approaching the safe upper limits for freshwater use, land clearing and ocean acidification.

“The idea of identifying safe boundaries is based on the tipping-ponts, or thresholds, we see in nature,” explains Professor Hughes. “These are natural limits which, if you exceed them, trigger a sudden large change – a grassland to a desert, or a coral reef to a degraded weed-infested system.”

“Once you’ve crossed the line it is very hard, if not impossible, to get back again. The system you knew is gone for good.”

The impact of human actions now means that the stable climate and conditions of the last ten thousand years, in which civilization had arisen and flourished, are being replaced by a far more unstable Earth, potentially catastrophic for large parts of humanity, the team warns.

“We felt it was urgent to identify future tipping-points, so we can all start thinking about how to avoid passing the point of no-return,” he says.

“Our objective is to define a safe operating space for humanity, to ensure future human wellbeing.”

“We cannot continue to ignore the reality of what is happening to our planet, or to keep hoping it isn’t happening. The evidence is unambiguous that Earth is changing in profound and serious ways – and that we must take action to change some of the things we do. The time to do this is now.”

The scientists argue that humanity faces a choice – between preserving the kind of climate and conditions that cradled the human race as we know it, and an unstable and dangerous future with dire consequences for millions.

“We are beginning to see evidence that some of the Earth’s subsystems are already moving outside their stable Holocene state. These include the rapid retreat of the summer sea ice in the Arctic ocean, the retreat of mountain glaciers around the world, the loss of mass from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets and accelerating rates of sea level rise during the past 10-to-15 years.”

On extinctions, they say: “The rate of extinction of species today is around 100-to-1000 times more than what could be considered natural.”

They also warn that humanity is pulling 35 million tonnes of nitrogen out of the atmosphere for fertiliser production, which is causing havoc in the environment, especially rivers, lakes and coastal seas.

As a starting point they propose ten boundaries which should not be exceeded to avoid crossing dangerous tipping points. These include atmospheric CO2 levels, the rate of species extinction, the over-use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, use of fresh water, the clearing of land, ozone depletion, aerosol pollution of the atmosphere and chemical contamination. The detailed rationale for each boundary is explained in a more technical paper at http://www.stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries.

The researchers argue that all of the boundaries are interconnected and it is no use observing one but not the others. “If one boundary is transgressed, then safe levels for other boundaries are also under serious risk. For instance, significant land use changes in the Amazon could influence water resources as far away as Tibet,” they say.

Read more!

Is Australia's dust storm linked to climate change?

Reuters 23 Sep 09;

(Reuters) - A dust storm swept across eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, disrupting transport, placing health authorities on alert for widespread respiratory illness and stripping thousands of tonnes of topsoil off Australia's main farmlands.

Following are answers to questions about the storm.

WHAT CAUSED THE DUST STORM?

During winter in Australia low pressure storms are generated in the Indian and Southern Oceans, whipping up huge seas and creating severe cold fronts which sweep across southern and eastern Australia. A severe thunderstorm with 100 km per hour (60 miles per hour) plus winds formed in South Australia state on Monday and began whipping up dust from drought-hit outback lands. As vegetation gets dried off the topsoil is loosened, and it easily blows away. As the dust storm traveled into the eastern seaboard state of New South Wales, one of the worst hit by drought, it grew in size and by Wednesday morning was affecting most of NSW, the fifth biggest state or territory representing 10 percent of the island continent, and had descended on Sydney like a thick blanket.

IS THE DUST STORM LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

Weather scientists are reluctant to directly link climate change with extreme weather events such as storms and droughts, saying these fluctuate according to atmospheric conditions, but green groups link the two in their calls for action to fight climate change.

Dust storms in Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent with a vast desert-like outback interior, are not uncommon. Central and eastern Australia is a major global source of atmospheric dust, say weather experts. But dust storms are usually restricted to the inland of Australia. Occasionally, during widespread drought they can affect coastal areas. Australia is battling one of its worst droughts and weather officials say an El Nino is slowly developing in the Pacific which will mean drier conditions for Australia's eastern states.

Before the Sydney dust storm, one of the most spectacular storms swept across Melbourne in February 1983, late in the severe El Nino drought of 1982/83. The extended dry period of the 1930s and 1940s generated many severe dust storms, culminating in the summer of 1944/45 when on several occasions dust in Adelaide was so thick that street lighting had to be turned on. Satellite images showed a 2002 dust storm, about 1,500 km (930 miles) long by 400 km (250 miles) wide and 2.5 km (1.5 miles) high, stretching across New South Wales and Queensland states.

WHAT IS THE ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF DUST STORMS?

While dust storms may cause temporary disruptions to towns and cities, by far the worst effect is the stripping of topsoil from Australia's farmlands. In the late 1970s and early 1980s severe drought in Australia saw dust storms strip millions of dollars worth of topsoil, causing massive crop and stock losses, according to the country's Emergency Management Authority. Crop analysts say the current dust storm is unlikely to have an immediate impact on wheat crops which are already struggling with dry conditions. Harvesting starts next month in NSW, the country's second largest grain producing state. Australian Crop Forecasters estimates the NSW wheat crop will be down by about one million tonnes to around 6.5 million tonnes.

WILL THERE BE MORE DUST STORMS?

Australian weather officials are warning of another severe storm to sweep across the southern and eastern parts of the country on Thursday and Friday. Australia's main farmlands are located in the eastern part of the country. The next storm could again whip up a dust storm, cause damage with gale-force winds and send temperatures plummeting and dump snow on Australia's alpine region. If El Nino weather conditions continue in the western Pacific then Australia's dry conditions and then more dust storms can be expected, but whether they remain confined to inland or outback regions or sweep across farmlands and reach more populated centers remains unknown.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Dean Yates)

Dust storm blankets Sydney as drought bites
Michael Perry, Reuters 23 Sep 09;

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A huge outback dust storm swept eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, disrupting transport, forcing people indoors and stripping thousands of tonnes of valuable farmland topsoil.

The dust blacked out the outback town of Broken Hill on Tuesday, forcing a zinc mine to shut down, and swept 1,167 km (725 miles) east to shroud Sydney in a red glow on Wednesday.

By noon on Wednesday the storm, carrying an estimated 5 million tonnes of dust, had spread to the southern part of Australia's tropical state of Queensland.

Dust storms in Australia are not uncommon but are usually restricted to the inland. Occasionally, during widespread drought, dust storms reach coastal areas. Australia is the driest inhabited continent and only Antarctica is drier.

Australia is battling one of its worst droughts and weather officials say an El Nino is slowly developing in the Pacific which will mean drier conditions for eastern states.

The country is one of the most vulnerable nations to climate change, but also the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter per capita as it relies on coal-fired power stations for the bulk of its electricity.

Scientists are reluctant to directly link climate change with extreme weather events such as storms and drought, saying these fluctuate according to atmospheric conditions, but green groups link the two in their calls for action.

International flights were diverted from Sydney, ferries on Sydney Harbor were suspended and motorists warned to take care on roads because of poor visibility. The dust set off smoke alarms in some buildings in Sydney's central business district and halted construction.

Health authorities urged people to stay indoors, warning the storm was likely to continue into Thursday. More than 200 people called emergency services with breathing difficulties. The official air quality index for New South Wales recorded pollutant levels as high as 4,164 in Sydney. A level above 200 is hazardous. (here)

"People at risk are children, elderly, pregnant women, people with heart and lung diseases. Dust particles can increase the risk of people with these conditions becoming unwell," said Wayne Smith from the New South Wales state health department.

"EARTH, WIND AND FIRE"

The Bureau of Meteorology said a big cold front in New South Wales caused severe thunderstorms and gale-force winds, which whipped up the dust from the inland and spread it across Australia's most populous state. Winds of more than 100 km per hour also fanned bushfires in the state.

"This is unprecedented. We are seeing earth, wind and fire together," said Dick Whitaker from The Weather Channel.

New South Wales recently cut the state's 2009/10 wheat crop estimate by a fifth because of dry weather.

Sydney residents told local radio that they woke to scenes from a Hollywood apocalyptic movie, while many contacted emergency services fearing a big bushfire in the city.

Karen from Sydney's inner western suburb of Dulwich Hill said she woke up to find the red dust had covered her floors and birds had been blown out of their nests.

"It did feel like Armageddon because when I was in the kitchen looking out the skylight, there was this red, red glow coming through," Karen told Australian radio.

The blanket of dust affected most of New South Wales, the fifth-biggest state or territory representing 10 percent of the continent, and southern parts of Queensland state.

The dust storms stripped valuable topsoil from primary eastern farmlands. At one stage up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour was blown across Sydney and dumped in the Pacific Ocean, but the exact amount of dust dumped on Sydney was still being calculated.

"We've got a combination of factors which have been building for 10 months already -- floods, droughts and strong winds," said Craig Strong from DustWatch at Griffith University in Queensland.

"Add to these factors the prevailing drought conditions that reduce the vegetation cover and the soil surface is at its most vulnerable to wind erosion."

But crop analysts said the storm is unlikely to have an immediate impact on wheat crops, in the country's second-largest grain producing state, due to be harvested next month.

Further cold fronts are expected later in the week and could again whip up more dust storms, said weather officials. (Editing by Jan Dahinten)

Huge dust storm blankets eastern Australia
Talek Harris Yahoo News 23 Sep 09;

SYDNEY (AFP) – The worst dust storm in decades hit Australia on Wednesday, blanketing Sydney in red dust, and snarling up the transport system as earthquakes, giant hailstones and even a tornado swept the east of the country.

Gale-force winds dumped thousands of tonnes of red desert dust on Australia's biggest city, shrouding it in an eerie orange haze and coating the iconic Sydney Opera House in a fine layer of powder.

The storm, reportedly the most serious since the 1940s, then spread 600 kilometres (375 miles) up the coast to Queensland and could even hit New Zealand, some 4,000 kilometres away, experts said.

Dust covered most of New South Wales, Australia's most populous state, pushing air pollution to record levels and depositing about 75,000 tonnes of powder in the Tasman Sea every hour.

"Dust storms like this occur quite regularly but they rarely travel this far east and come through Sydney," said John Leys, principal research scientist with New South Wales' Department of Climate Change and Water.

Sydney residents wore face masks and covered their mouths with scarves as they travelled to work under hazy skies. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper on major highways.

Air transport was severely disrupted with long delays at Sydney airport and many international flights diverted to Melbourne and Brisbane.

Flag-carrier Qantas urged passengers to cancel any non-urgent travel, while budget offshoot Jetstar offered free flight rescheduling and refunds.

"We encourage any passengers with non-essential travel arrangements to reconsider their travel plans for the day," Qantas said in a statement.

Sydney Ferries suspended harbour services and police warned drivers to take extra care in poor visibility. Ambulance workers reported a sudden spike in respiratory problems.

"We have already seen an increase in calls to people suffering from asthma and other respiratory problems," New South Wales Ambulance Service said in a statement.

Australia, in the grip of a decade-long drought, is emerging from an abnormally hot southern hemisphere winter including the hottest August on record.

Elsewhere in New South Wales, hail stones "the size of cricket balls" smashed windows as thunderstorms and gale-force winds lashed the state late on Tuesday.

"We've had reports of cars with both their front and rear windscreens smashed," an official from the State Emergency Service said.

Further north, Queensland imposed a ban on lighting fires across large parts of the state a day after a dozen bush blazes sprang up following a spell of hot, dry weather.

Tough water restrictions there are to be temporarily set aside to allow people to wash dust off their cars, homes and business premises, the Australian AAP news agency reported.

"This has been an extraordinary event with many parts of the region now caked in dust," Queensland Water Commission acting chief executive Daniel Spiller was quoted by the agency as saying.

Victoria state was on alert for flash floods as heavy rains fell, following a pair of minor earthquakes on Tuesday. The 3.0- and 2.6-magnitude tremors did not cause any damage, officials said.

Police in southwestern New South Wales, bordering Victoria, reported bizarre conditions on Tuesday as dark red skies thick with dust cut visibility to just two to three metres in some areas.

"I've never seen anything like it in all my life -- and I grew up here," a police officer at the town of Broken Hill told AAP.

"It was darker than night-time, and lasted for about half an hour. You couldn't even see the street lights."

Read more!

2050: A third more mouths to feed

Food production will have to increase by 70 percent - FAO convenes high-level expert forum
FAO 23 Sep 09;

23 September 2009, Rome - Producing 70 percent more food for an additional 2.3 billion people by 2050 while at the same time combating poverty and hunger, using scarce natural resources more efficiently and adapting to climate change are the main challenges world agriculture will face in the coming decades, according to an FAO discussion paper published today.

The UN agency will organize a High-Level Expert Forum in Rome on 12-13 October 2009 to discuss strategies on "How to Feed the World in 2050". The Forum will bring together around 300 leading experts from academic, nongovernmental and private sector institutions from developing and developed countries.

The Forum will prepare the ground for the World Summit on Food Security, to take place in Rome 16-18 November 2009.

Cautious Optimism

"FAO is cautiously optimistic about the world's potential to feed itself by 2050," said FAO Assistant Director-General Hafez Ghanem. However, he pointed out that feeding everyone in the world by then will not be automatic and several significant challenges have to be met.

Ghanem said there was a need for a proper socioeconomic framework to address imbalances and inequalities and ensure that everyone in the world has access to the food they need and that food production is carried out in a way that reduces poverty and take account of natural resource constraints.

Global projections show that in addition to projected investments in agriculture, further significant investment will be needed to enhance access to food, otherwise some 370 million people could still be hungry in 2050, almost 5 percent of the global population.

According to the latest UN projections, world population will rise from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion in 2050 - a third more mouths to feed than there are today. Nearly all of the population growth will occur in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa's population is expected to grow the fastest (up 108 percent, 910 million people), and East and South East Asia's the slowest (up 11 percent, 228 million).

Around 70 percent of the world population will live in cities or urban areas by 2050, up from 49 percent today.

Food demand

The demand for food is expected to continue to grow as a result both of population growth and rising incomes. Demand for cereals (for food and animal feed) is projected to reach some 3 billion tonnes by 2050. Annual cereal production will have to grow by almost a billion tonnes (2.1 billion tonnes today), and meat production by over 200 million tonnes to reach a total of 470 million tonnes in 2050, 72 percent of which will be consumed in developing countries, up from the 58 percent today.

The production of biofuels could also increase the demand for agricultural commodities, depending on energy prices and government policies.

Land

Despite the fact that 90 percent of the growth in crop production is projected to come from higher yields and increased cropping intensity, arable land will have to expand by around 120 million hectares in developing countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Arable land in use in developed countries is expected to decline by some 50 million hectares, although this could be changed by the demand for biofuels.

Globally, there are still sufficient land resources available to feed the future world population. FAO cautioned, however, that much of the potential land is suitable for growing only a few crops, not necessarily the crops with highest demand and it is concentrated in a few countries.

Much of the land not yet in use also suffers from chemical and physical constraints, endemic diseases and lack of infrastructure which cannot be easily overcome. Therefore significant investments would need to be undertaken in order to bring it into production. Part of the land is also covered by forests, or subject to expanding urban settlements. A number of countries, particularly in the Near East/North Africa and South Asia have already reached or are about to reach the limits of land available.

Water

Water withdrawals for irrigated agriculture are projected to grow at a slower pace due to reduced demand and improved water use efficiency, but will still increase by almost 11 percent by 2050.

Globally, fresh water resources are sufficient, but they are very unevenly distributed and water scarcity will reach alarming levels in an increasing number of countries or regions within countries, particularly in the Near East/North Africa and South Asia. Using less water and at the same time producing more food will be the key to addressing water scarcity problems. Water scarcity could be made more acute by changing rainfall patters resulting from climate change.

Yield potential

All in all, the potential to raise crop yields to feed a growing world population seems to be considerable, FAO said. "If the appropriate socio-economic incentives are in place, there are still ample ‘bridgeable' gaps in yield (i.e. differences between agro-ecologically attainable and actual yields) that could be exploited. Fears that yields are reaching a plateau do not seem warranted, except in a very few special instances."

Stronger interventions

FAO called for stronger interventions to make faster progress towards reducing and finally eliminating the number of hungry and poor people. Investment in primary agriculture should become a top priority and needs to increase by some 60 percent since agriculture not only produces food but also generates income and supports rural livelihoods.

Poverty reduction also requires investments in rural infrastructure (roads, ports, power, storage and irrigation systems); investments in institutions, research and extension services, land titles and rights, risk management, veterinary and food safety control systems; and non-agricultural investment including food safety nets and cash transfers to the most needy.

Without developing and investing in rural areas in poor countries, deprivation and inequalities will remain widespread, though significantly less than today, FAO said.

By 2050, 25m more children will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis
• Report says food shortages will hit developing world
• Global warming set to bring back malnutrition
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian 30 Sep 09;

Twenty-five million more children will go hungry by the middle of this century as climate change leads to food shortages and soaring prices for staples such as rice, wheat, maize and soya beans, a report says today.

If global warming goes unchecked, all regions of the world will be affected, but the most vulnerable – south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa – will be hit hardest by failing crop yields, according to the report, prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) for the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

The children of 2050 will have fewer calories to eat than those in 2000, the report says, and the effect would be to wipe out decades of progress in reducing child malnutrition.

The grim scenario is the first to gauge the effects of climate change on the world's food supply by combining climate and agricultural models.

Spikes in grain prices last year led to rioting and unrest across the developing world, from Haiti to Thailand. Leaders at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh last week committed $2bn (£1.25bn) to food security, and the United Nations is set to hold a summit on food security in November, its second since last year's riots.

But the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is pressing the World Bank and other institutions to do more. He said the industrialised world needs to step up investment in seed research and to offer more affordable crop insurance to the small farmers in developing countries. Though prices have stabilised, the world's food system is still in crisis, he said at the weekend.

"Ever more people are denied food because prices are stubbornly high, because purchasing power has fallen due to the economic crisis, or because rains have failed and reserve stocks of grain have been eaten," he said.

Even without global warming, rising populations meant the world was headed for food shortages and food price rises.

"The food price crisis of last year really was a wake-up call to a lot of people that we are going to have 50% more people on the surface of the Earth by 2050," said Gerald Nelson, the lead author of the report. "Meeting those demands for food coming out of population growth is going to be a huge challenge – even without climate change."

After several years in which development aid has been diverted away from rural areas, the report called for $7bn a year for crop research, and investment in irrigation and rural infrastructure to help farmers adjust to a warming climate. "Continuing the business-as-usual approach will almost certainly guarantee disastrous consequences," said Nelson.

The G20 industrialised nations last week began discussing how to invest some $20bn pledged for food security earlier this year.

Some regions of the world outlined in the report are already showing signs of vulnerability because of changing rainfall patterns and drought linked to climate change. Oxfam yesterday launched a $152m appeal on behalf of 23 million people hit by a severe drought and spiralling food prices in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda. The charity called it the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa for a decade, and said many people in the region were suffering from malnutrition.

But southern Asia, which made great advances in agricultural production during the 20th century, was also singled out in the IFPRI report for being particularly at risk of food shortages. Some countries, such as Canada and Russia, will experience longer growing seasons because of climate change, but other factors – such as poor soil – mean that will not necessarily be translated into higher food production.

The report was prepared for negotiators currently trying to reach a global deal to fight climate change at the latest round of UN talks in Bangkok. It used climate models prepared by the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia to arrive at estimates of how changes in growing seasons and rainfall patterns would affect farming in the developing world and elsewhere.

Without an ambitious injection of funds and new technology, wheat yields could fall by more than 30% in developing countries, setting off a catastrophic rise in prices. Wheat prices, with unmitigated climate change, could rise by 170%-194% by the middle of this century, the report said. Rice prices are projected to rise by 121% – and almost all of the increase will have to be passed on to the consumer, Nelson said.

The report did not take into account all the expected impacts of climate change – such as the loss of farmland due to rising sea levels, a rise in the number of insects and in plant disease, or changes in glacial melt. All these factors could increase the damage of climate change to agriculture.

Others who have examined the effects of climate change on agriculture have warned of the potential for conflict. In a new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilising to Save Civilisation, published today, Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, warns that sharp declines in world harvests due to climate change could threaten the world order.

"I am convinced that food is indeed the weak link," he said.

Brown saw Asia as the epicentre of the crisis, with the latest science warning of a sea level rise of up to six feet by 2100. With even a 3ft rise, Bangladesh could lose half of its rice land to rising seas; Vietnam, the world's second largest producer of rice, could also see much of the Mekong Delta under water.

Wheat and rice production would also fall because of acute water shortages, caused by past over-pumping and the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, which currently store water that supplies the region's main rivers: the Indus, Ganges, and Yangtse.

Brown said: "The potential loss of these mountain glaciers in the Himalayas is the most massive projected threat to food security ever seen" .

Global shortfall

People in both the developing and developed worlds will have less to eat by 2050 if climate change is not seriously addressed, though the shortfall will be relatively slight in richer countries. Prices rises and shortages of food will drive down the average calories available:

• The calories available for each person in industrialised nations will fall from 3,450 in 2000 to about 3,200.

• In developing countries overall, the average will fall from 2,696 to 2,410 calories.

• In sub-Saharan Africa, people will on average have only 1,924 calories a day, compared with 2,316 in 2000.

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India heading for worst drought since 1972: data

Yahoo News 23 Sep 09;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India's monsoon was about 20 percent below strength just over a week before the official end of the rainy reason, putting the country on course for its worst drought since 1972, weather data showed Wednesday.

"Until September 21, for the country as a whole, the rain deficiency was 22 percent," said B.K. Bandopadhyay, a spokesman for the weather office.

"We expect the total rain deficiency will be roughly about 20 percent (at the end of the monsoon season). It depends on the rainfall, but it seems it will be around this number," he added.

Low rainfall early in the monsoon period ravaged India's rice, cane sugar and groundnut crops, and has disrupted the flow of water into the main reservoirs that are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation.

The drought is expected to dampen India's economic growth this year and has sent food prices rocketing, leading to huge hardship for India's poor masses.

Chicken prices, for instance, rose 16 percent in the week to September 5 and fruit and vegetables climbed eight percent from the previous week, official data shows.

In August, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh admitted that the country faced a "severe drought" but he said that ample food grain stock would ensure no one went hungry.

Bandopadhyay said that a rain deficit of 20 percent would be worse than previous droughts in 2002, 1987 and 1979 when the shortfall was about 19 percent.

In 1972, the deficit measured 23.9 percent, he said.

The monsoon period in India runs from June to the end of September, though late rains have been experienced in October.

India's weather service said recent reports showed that more than half the country was affected by the drought and the key farming areas in the north, northeast and some parts of western India were worst affected.

Rains in the northwest were 34 percent less than average, in central regions they were down by 19 percent, and the northeast had a 26-percent shortfall.

Experts said the farming population faced tremendous pressure due to the severe water shortage this year. Much of India's farmland lacks irrigation, meaning farmers are dependent on the monsoon rains.

"This is a crisis for sure," Devender Sharma, a food policy analyst based in New Delhi, told AFP.

Sharma said India had 50 million tonnes of wheat and rice as buffer stock, ample to ensure steady food supplies.

"Food will have to supplied to the worst affected areas efficiently to prevent wastage," said Ravi Jalan, an agriculture scientist.

Jalan said India wasted more than 50 billion dollars of food grains every year, mainly due to the lack of post-harvest infrastructure such as appropriate storage facilities and transportation.

Officials at the weather service said they would collect all the rain distribution data at the end of the monsoon season to assess the drought situation.

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Global warming could worsen Australia, India droughts

Reuters 23 Sep 09;

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Global warming may have spawned a new type of El Nino in the central Pacific and this could worsen the droughts in Australia and India, a new study by researchers in South Korea and the United States has found.

While the conventional El Nino is a warm body of water stretching across the tropical Eastern Pacific, this new El Nino is a horseshoe-shaped region of warm ocean in the central Pacific flanked by unusually cooler waters, they wrote in a paper published in the latest issue of Nature.

"This new type of El Nino appeared in the recent decade and from our analysis, it may be due to global warming," lead researcher Sang-Wook Yeh of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute told Reuters by telephone.

Yeh and his colleagues applied Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature data from the past 150 years to 11 global warming models developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Eight of them showed global warming conditions will increase the incidence of the new El Nino.

"The results described in this paper indicate that the global impacts of El Nino may significantly change as the climate warms," said Yeh.

"This type of El Nino will bring more drought to India and Australia."

Ben Kirtman, co-author of the study and professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami's Rosentstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said the new El Nino may overshadow the old El Nino, which helped shield the United States and Caribbean from severe hurricanes.

This means the protective shield of the old El Nino may be on the wane.

"Currently, we are in the middle of a developing eastern Pacific El Nino event, which is part of why we're experiencing such a mild hurricane season in the Atlantic," said Kirtman in a statement.

Kirtman expects the current El Nino event to end next spring, which he expects may bode for a more intense Atlantic hurricane season in 2010.

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Jerry Norton)

El Nino shift could boost hurricanes, droughts: study
Yahoo News 24 Sep 09;

PARIS (AFP) – Global warming periodically shifts El Nino thousands of miles to the west, potentially intensifying Asian droughts and weakening its dampening effect on Atlantic hurricanes, reports a study published Thursday.

Up to now, the tropical weather phenomenon, which strikes on average every four or five years, has generally occurred along a wide stretch of the equator in the eastern Pacific.

Such is the case with the current El Nino, which is likely to remain in place well into next year, the World Meteorological Organisation said last month.

El Nino disrupts weather patterns around the world, causing drought in Indonesia, Australia, India and eastern Brazil, and unusually heavy rainfall in the US Gulf Coast and parts of South America.

It also lowers sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean and Atlantic, which helps prevent the formation and intensity of hurricanes in that region.

But climate change has apparently given rise to an alternate form of El Nino that is likely to become more frequent over the coming decades, according to the new research, published in Nature.

"There are two El Ninos," said Ben Kirtman, a professor at the University of Miami and a co-author of the study.

"In addition to the eastern Pacific El Nino ... a second El Nino in the central Pacific is on the increase," he said in a communique. The two do not occur at the same time, he added.

This could be bad news on at least two fronts, the researchers said.

In Asia, it could intensify droughts that have already wreaked havoc in recent decades. And in the Atlantic, it could weaken the positive effect it has had up to now in mitigating the intensity of hurricanes that strike the Caribbean and the US east coast.

Researchers led by Sang-Wook Yeh of the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute in Ansan, Korea matched sea surface temperature data from the last 150 years against future global warming scenarios laid out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

Most of the models showed that global warming will boost the frequency of the central Pacific El Nino.

The findings are bolstered by observation: half of the most recent El Nino occurrences have been in the central rather than the eastern Pacific, compared to only one-out-of-five before that.

During a strong eastern Pacific El Nino, ocean temperatures can average 2.0 to 3.5 degrees Celsius (4.0 to 6.0 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal between the international dateline and the west coast of South America.

The warm water region also coincides with above average tropical rainfall.

Read more!

Climate change may trigger earthquakes and volcanoes

Richard Fisher, New Scientist 23 Sep 09;

FAR from being the benign figure of mythology, Mother Earth is short-tempered and volatile. So sensitive in fact, that even slight changes in weather and climate can rip the planet's crust apart, unleashing the furious might of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.

That's the conclusion of the researchers who got together last week in London at the conference on Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards. It suggests climate change could tip the planet's delicate balance and unleash a host of geological disasters. What's more, even our attempts to stall global warming could trigger a catastrophic event.

Evidence of a link between climate and the rumblings of the crust has been around for years, but only now is it becoming clear just how sensitive rock can be to the air, ice and water above. "You don't need huge changes to trigger responses from the crust," says Bill McGuire of University College London (UCL), who organised the meeting. "The changes can be tiny."

Among the various influences on the Earth's crust, from changes in weather to fluctuations in ice cover, the oceans are emerging as a particularly fine controller. Simon Day of the University of Oxford, McGuire and Serge Guillas, also at UCL, have shown how subtle changes in sea level may affect the seismicity of the East Pacific Rise, one of the fastest-spreading plate boundaries.

The researchers focused on the Easter microplate - the tectonic plate that lies beneath the ocean off the coast of Easter Island - because it is relatively isolated from other faults. This makes it easier to distinguish changes in the plate caused by climate systems from those triggered by regional rumbles. Since 1973, the arrival of El Niño every few years has correlated with a greater frequency of underwater quakes between magnitude 4 and 6.

The team is confident that the two are linked. El Niño raises the local sea level by a few tens of centimetres, and they believe the extra water weight may increase the pressure of fluids in the pores of the rock beneath the seabed. This might be enough to counteract the frictional force that holds the slabs of rock in place, making it easier for faults to slip. "The changes in sea level are tiny," says Day. "A small additional perturbation can have a substantial effect."

Small ocean changes can also influence volcanic eruptions, says David Pyle of the University of Oxford. His study of eruptions over the past 300 years with Ben Mason of the University of Cambridge and colleagues reveals that volcanism varies with the seasons. The team found that there are around 20 per cent more eruptions worldwide during the northern hemisphere's winter than the summer (Journal of Geophysical Research, DOI: 10.1029/2002JB002293). The reason may be that global sea level drops slightly during the northern hemisphere's winter. Because there is more land in the northern hemisphere, more water is locked up as ice and snow on land than during the southern hemisphere's winter.

The vast majority of the world's most active volcanoes are within a few tens of kilometres of the coast (see map). This suggests the seasonal removal of some of the ocean's weight at continental margins as sea level drops could be triggering eruptions around the world, says Pyle.

The suggestion that some volcanoes erupt when sea levels drop does not necessarily mean that sea levels rising under climate change will suppress volcanism. In Alaska, Mount Pavlof erupts more often in the winter months, and previous research by Steve McNutt of the Alaska Volcano Observatory puts this down to a local sea level rise of 30 centimetres every winter due to low air pressure and high storm winds. Pavlof's location means that the extra weight of the adjacent sea could be squeezing magma towards the surface.

In other regions, additional ocean weight at continental margins as sea levels rise could bend the crust, reducing compressional conditions, says McGuire. Magma may then find it easier to reach the surface at adjacent volcanoes.

All these examples may seem contradictory, but the crucial point is that any change in sea level may alter regional stresses at continental margins enough to trigger eruptions in a volcano already primed to erupt, he says.

Small changes in rainfall can also trigger volcanic eruptions. In 2001, a major eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean island of Montserrat was set in motion by particularly heavy rainfall. This destabilised the volcano's dome enough for it to collapse and unleash magma within. Now it seems even typical tropical rain showers could trigger an eruption. And climate models suggest that many regions, including parts of the tropics, are likely to get wetter with climate change.

Adrian Matthews of the University of East Anglia, UK, and colleagues measured the minute-by-minute response of Montserrat's volcano after more than 200 bouts of precipitation over three years. The team found that these events, which Matthews says were typical of tropical weather, were followed by two days of increased volcanic activity.

A rainy day increased the likelihood of dome collapse from 1.5 per cent to 16 per cent. "It wouldn't have to be spectacularly heavy rainfall," says Matthews. "You don't have to have a hurricane." (Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2009.05.010)

Perhaps the greatest geological hazards during climate change will be the result of melting ice sheets. Apart from the risk that loose sediments exposed by melted ice could slip into the sea as tsunami-generating landslides, the removal of heavy ice could also trigger volcanic eruptions. "Even thinning of a few tens of metres could make a difference," says Andrew Russell of the University of Newcastle in the UK.

For example, Iceland's Vatnajökull ice cap sits over a plate boundary and several volcanoes. That ice is likely to disappear within the next two centuries. "If that happens you'll get rid of an awful lot of weight that will allow an increase in volcanic activity," says Russell. In the wake of the last ice age, volcanism was up to 30 times greater in northern Iceland compared with today (Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, DOI: 10.1002/esp.1811).

Icy eruptions could reverberate round the world. In 1783, the Icelandic volcano Laki sent a sulphurous smog over Europe, plunging it into an extreme winter that killed thousands.

For now, it is unclear just how much climate change will affect the frequency and intensity of quakes and eruptions, says McGuire, because Earth's sensitivity to climate is only now emerging. There is not yet enough data to build predictive climate models linking the two systems. But it's crucial that we consider just how easily our actions could provoke the planet, he argues. "It's serious science, not scaremongering."
Bury the carbon and set off a quake

It all looked so promising - tidy carbon dioxide away underground and forget about it. But even as the US's first large-scale sequestration operation is getting off the ground at the Mountaineer plant in West Virginia, geophysicists are concerned that burying the carbon could trigger earthquakes and tsunamis.

In a carbon sequestration power plant (CCS), CO2 is extracted from the exhaust then pumped into aquifers and old gas fields several kilometres beneath the Earth's surface. So far so good. But the CO2 expands as it rises through the porous rock, increasing pressure inside. "If enough CO2 is injected into an aquifer, it could increase the pressure enough to reactivate a fault and trigger an earthquake," warns Andrew Chadwick of the British Geological Survey.

Chemical reactions between the injected CO2, water and rock could also destabilise the rock, says Ernest Majer, a seismologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California who briefed the Senate on CCS hazards this week. "It's such a new technology that none of these issues have been addressed," says Majer. Even storage sites far from human settlements could have disastrous effects, warns Christian Klose, a geophysicist at the Think Geohazards consulting firm in California. A CCS facility at the Sleipner gas field in the North Sea, may have triggered a magnitude 4 earthquake in 2008. Had it been bigger, says Klose, it might have triggered a tsunami.

Shanta Barley

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Warming ocean melts Greenland glaciers

Karl Ritter, Associated Press Yahoo News 23 Sep 09;

SERMILIK FJORD, Greenland – With whale fins splashing in the distance, Ruth Curry hauls up her catch from the blustery deck of an icebreaker.

An orange tube fixed to a metal frame breaks the surface as the motorized winch stops groaning. Inside: data on the water temperature deep down in this glacial fjord off southeast Greenland.

"If you were to dip your hand in it, it doesn't seem that warm," says Curry, an American climate scientist. "But it is. It's warm enough to melt ice. And that's the important thing here."

Curry and her colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts zigzagged between majestic icebergs in the Sermilik fjord last month in search of proof that waters from warmer latitudes, or subtropical waters, are flushing through this remote and frigid region.

They found it — all the way up to the base of the outlet glaciers that spill into the ocean like tongues of ice from Greenland's massive ice sheet.

Coupled with similar findings off western Greenland, the discovery could help to explain why the glaciers have started flowing quicker in the past decade, a phenomenon that raised alarm because it contributes to rising sea levels.

"The measurements alone are not enough to conclude that the glacial melt is to a high degree driven by subtropical water. But I think the story is (starting) to come together," says research leader Fiamma Straneo.

The team found subtropical water with a temperature of about 39 Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) deep inside the Sermilik fjord.

The findings confirm the outcome of an undersea battle below the dark surface of the North Atlantic: Arctic waters that usually dominate this region have yielded to an influx of subtropical water carried north by westward branches of the current commonly called the Gulf Stream.

Scientists say it's a natural process — in one period the cold waters will have the upper hand, and in the next it's the other way round. But the rapidly increasing temperatures of the subtropical oceans suggest that the balance could be tilted beyond natural variability, Curry says.

"We've actually measured the waters at their source and have seen their temperature going up, up, up in a way that can't be explained without taking into account human influences," she says.

The research underscores the complex interaction between the world's oceans and a warming atmosphere.

Oceans help to contain global warming by absorbing about half of the carbon dioxide released by humans into the atmosphere, but the water also expands as it warms, raising sea levels.

It could also have a big impact on climate through feedback mechanisms, such as the melting of seaside glaciers and changes to ocean currents that warm or cool different parts of the globe.

In the June-August period, the world's ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record since 1880, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The surface temperature was 62.5 F (17 Celsius), 1 degree F (0.6 degrees C) above the 20th century average. Meteorologists say the reason was El Nino weather patterns combined with manmade global warming.

The North Atlantic has seen especially large changes in recent years.

The temperature of the water that flows into the Arctic has increased by as much as 3.5 degrees F (2 degrees C) since the 1990s, says Helge Drange, professor of oceanography at Norway's University of Bergen. "This can only be understood as a combined effect of natural variability and manmade warming," he says.

That has had a big impact on marine ecosystems, with fish traveling north into waters that were previously too cold for them. For example, more than 20 new species of fish have been found off Iceland, including blue sharks and flounders.

Meanwhile, cod has followed the warm water as it flows around Greenland's southern tip and up the giant island's west coast. "If you talk to local people they say it's fantastic because the Atlantic cod is coming," Drange says.

To many scientists, however, the shifts in ocean currents are no cause for celebration. Even if there's natural variability, there's concern that global warming may make the fluctuations more extreme.

And while some species thrive in warmer water, others that live on the edge of the Arctic, such as polar bears and seals, find their habitat melting away.

"We're heading off to a climate extreme and this is just going to snowball," says Curry, reflecting on the state of the global climate on the Greenpeace icebreaker hosting the Woods Hole research team.

"I think that we've done it, really kicked Earth's climate system. And that says a lot," she says. "It's a beast. It's huge. And to have moved it in as short a period of time as a 100 years, basically, to have done that is enormous."

Read more!

NASA data: Greenland, Antarctic ice melt worsening

Seth Borenstein, Associated Press 23 Sep 09;

WASHINGTON – New satellite information shows that ice sheets in Greenland and western Antarctica continue to shrink faster than scientists thought and in some places are already in runaway melt mode.

British scientists for the first time calculated changes in the height of the vulnerable but massive ice sheets and found them especially worse at their edges. That's where warmer water eats away from below. In some parts of Antarctica, ice sheets have been losing 30 feet a year in thickness since 2003, according to a paper published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

Some of those areas are about a mile thick, so they've still got plenty of ice to burn through. But the drop in thickness is speeding up. In parts of Antarctica, the yearly rate of thinning from 2003 to 2007 is 50 percent higher than it was from 1995 to 2003.

These new measurements, based on 50 million laser readings from a NASA satellite, confirm what some of the more pessimistic scientists thought: The melting along the crucial edges of the two major ice sheets is accelerating and is in a self-feeding loop. The more the ice melts, the more water surrounds and eats away at the remaining ice.

"To some extent it's a runaway effect. The question is how far will it run?" said the study's lead author, Hamish Pritchard of the British Antarctic Survey. "It's more widespread than we previously thought."

The study doesn't answer the crucial question of how much this worsening melt will add to projections of sea level rise from man-made global warming. Some scientists have previously estimated that steady melting of the two ice sheets will add about 3 feet, maybe more, to sea levels by the end of the century. But the ice sheets are so big it would probably take hundreds of years for them to completely disappear.

As scientists watch ice shelves retreat or just plain collapse, some thought the problem could slow or be temporary. The latest measurements eliminate "the most optimistic view," said Penn State University professor Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the study.

The research found that 81 of the 111 Greenland glaciers surveyed are thinning at an accelerating, self-feeding pace.

The key problem is not heat in the air, but the water near the ice sheets, Pritchard said. The water is not just warmer but its circulation is also adding to the melt.

"It is alarming," said Jason Box of Ohio State University, who also wasn't part of the study.

Worsening data, including this report, keep proving "that we're underestimating" how sensitive the ice sheets are to changes, he said.

Antarctic coastal ice thinning surprises experts
Alister Doyle, Reuters 23 Sep 09;

OSLO (Reuters) - Scientists are surprised at how extensively coastal ice in Antarctica and Greenland is thinning, according to a study Wednesday that could help predict rising sea levels linked to climate change.

Analysis of millions of NASA satellite laser images showed the biggest loss of ice was caused by glaciers speeding up when they flowed into the sea, according to scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Bristol University.

"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline -- it's widespread and in some cases thinning extends hundreds of kilometers inland," said Hamish Pritchard of BAS who led the study.

"We think that warm ocean currents reaching the coast and melting the glacier front is the most likely cause of faster glacier flow," he said in a statement.

"This kind of ice loss is so poorly understood that it remains the most unpredictable part of future sea level rise," he added. BAS said the study gave the "most comprehensive picture" of the thinning glaciers so far.

Rising seas caused by a thaw of vast stores of ice on Antarctica and Greenland could threaten Pacific islands, coasts from China to the United States and cities from London to Buenos Aires.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said earlier this month global warming, blamed mainly on burning fossil fuels, could raise sea levels by 50 cm to 2 meters (20 inches to 6 ft 6 in) this century -- higher than most experts have predicted.

Among findings, Wednesday's study said 81 of 111 fast-moving glaciers in Greenland were thinning at twice the rate of slow-flowing ice at the same altitude.

"Dynamic thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheet margins is more sensitive, pervasive, enduring and important than previously realized," they wrote. "Dynamic thinning" means loss of ice due to a faster flow.

They said it was too early to determine whether the thinning was a sign that sea level rise would accelerate from a current rate of about 3 mm (0.12 inches) a year.

"Working that out is the next task," David Vaughan, a BAS glaciologist among the authors, told Reuters. Thinning in some areas could be caused by changes in snowfall, for instance, not the slide of ice toward the ocean, he said.

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How do we get from Kyoto to Copenhagen?

Reuters 23 Sep 09;

(Reuters) - Environment Ministers from about 190 nations gather in the Danish capital at the end of the year to try and agree to a broader global pact to fight climate change.

The aim is to build on the existing Kyoto Protocol by ensuring rich nations sign up to deeper emissions cuts while offering greater assistance to developing countries to help them curb greenhouse gas pollution as well.

Following are some questions and answers about the U.N.-led negotiations:

WHAT IS KYOTO?

The Kyoto Protocol is an international environmental treaty aimed at reducing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. More than 180 countries have ratified the treaty.

Only 37 industrialized countries, however, have agreed to targets to reduce emissions by 2008-12, under a principle that richer countries are mostly to blame. The targets range from an 8 percent cut from 1990 levels for the European Union to a 10 percent rise for Iceland.

The United States, long the world's biggest source of emissions, but now surpassed by China, came out against the pact in 2001. While the Obama administration is too late to sign up to Kyoto, it wants to return emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of 14 percent from 2007 levels.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Two more rounds of formal negotiations are scheduled before the December 7-18 talks in Copenhagen: September 28 to October 9 in Bangkok; and Nov 2-6 in Barcelona.

In addition, G20 leaders meet in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday to discuss how rich nations can fund steps by poorer countries to deal with climate change and to curb their greenhouse gas emissions.

The outcome of the G20 meeting will help guide negotiations during the two-week Bangkok talks, where more than 2,000 delegates will be trying to shorten a draft negotiating text that will lay out broader global actions to fight change from 2013.

The text will essentially be the document that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first phase ends in 2012.

WHAT DOES THE TEXT LOOK LIKE?

The text has grown in the past few months despite efforts to trim it to around 30 pages. It still contains many options and some blanks, covering actions or pledges by nations to curb emissions and underscoring divisions over how to share the burden in cutting planet-warming greenhouse gases output.

WHAT'S IN THE TEXT?

There are two main working groups, which are both trying to refine the draft text.

The first group has a clear mandate to negotiate industrialized nations' mid-term targets (to 2020), and how to reach those targets, such as through carbon trading. That document is shorter and less contentious.

The second group, held under the parent U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) pact to allow the United States to fully take part, deals with nations' actions to fight climate change to 2050.

These include funding for climate change adaptation, mitigation, financing and transfer of clean-energy technology to developing nations, along with the issue of targets.

The two draft texts may come together in Copenhagen, with one final document emerging on a new climate pact.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN A COPENHAGEN AGREEMENT?

Expect rich nations to make deeper emissions cuts by 2020 than under the current Kyoto Protocol.

Also, expect improved funding mechanisms to pay for climate change adaptation and mitigation in poorer nations, more effective transfer of affordable clean-energy technology and formal support for a scheme to pay developing nations to preserve rainforests in return for carbon credits or other incentives.

Do not expect developing nations to agree to legally binding emissions cuts. Instead, China, India and others are expected to agree on a range of nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs), that can be supported with finance and technology, such as China's pledge to set a carbon intensity target for 2020.

There are strong expectations that developing nations must pledge to take such steps in any Copenhagen text, thereby making the agreed outcome more effective than the Kyoto Protocol.

WHY DO WE CARE?

Mankind has added enough greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to raise temperatures to a dangerous level and emissions are set to keep rising, particularly from poorer nations for at least the short term.

We're already committed to what scientists believe will be serious impacts from rising temperatures such as more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. The purpose of a post-Kyoto deal is to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Scientists agree that by 2050, the world must have at least halved its emissions to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.

(Source: UNFCCC, The Climate Group)

(Writing by David Fogarty and Alister Doyle; Editing by Jonathon Burch)

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Shipping bodies back cap and trade scheme to cut emissions

Proposal from five countries would cut emissions from the shipping industry, which accounts for nearly 3% of the world's man-made greenhouse gases
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 23 Sep 09;

The global shipping industry should be treated as a separate country and given its own cap and trade scheme to cut carbon emissions - which amount to nearly 3% of the world's man-made greenhouse gases - industry bodies from five countries said today.

The proposal, which could cost the global industry up to €6bn a year at the present carbon price, was one of several ideas put forward by the UK Chamber of Shipping and its sister organisations in Australia, Belgium, Norway and Sweden. It is hoped that it will lead to a global agreement to significantly cut carbon emissions from the world's fleet of 100,000 ships at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen later this year.

But the five countries declined to propose specific targets or timetables and admitted it would be hard to gain consensus among other countries.

"We would welcome a challenging target. But we are looking to the UN's International Maritime Organisation or the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] to set that," said UK Chamber of Shipping president Jesper Kjaedegaard.

This week the international aviation industry pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, and to make the industry's growth carbon-neutral by 2020. However the shipping industry said it could not make more precise commitments at this stage.

"The two cannot be compared. Aviation is smaller and more concentrated. Shipping is much more broadly based. There is not enough data yet," said Kjaedegaard.

"We believe some form of emissions trading system is the way to reduce carbon outputs. But it is vital that any emissions trading regime be implemented without driving goods to other modes of transport, which would increase overall emissions and damage commercial shipping."

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