Signs From Earth

Map: McDonald's Golden Glow in the United States

Stephen Von Worley has produced a golden glowing map (no arches visible) of McDonald's restaurants in the lower 48 United States. He has called this "The Contiguous United States, Visualized by Distance to the Nearest McDonald's," and writes about his inspiration at his blog Weather Sealed, under the heading "Where the Buffalo Roamed." 

"To gauge the creep of cookie-cutter commercialism, there’s no better barometer than McDonald’s – ubiquitous fast food chain and inaugural megacorporate colonizer of small towns nationwide," he writes.

Based on numbers from aggdata, Von Worley says more than 13,000 McDonald's are spread across the land, and 107 miles is the greatest distance or "McFarthest Spot" to a McD's. (I guess that means somewhere in the west a pair of McDonald's is 214 miles apart?) If you live in central Nevada, southeast Oregon, Idaho's Salmon River Wilderness, or northwestern South Dakota it will be a long ride for that burger fix.

For a reality check, see the film Food, Inc. If it hasn't played your town yet, already has, or (likely) never will, this important film will be out on DVD Nov. 3. See it to understand how the American food and farm landscape has been transformed by more than the ubiquitous presence of hamburger shops. Show Food Inc. to your friends. You may want to find that spot 107 miles away and stay there.

Lasers Show Thinning at Edges of Big Ice Sheets

The British Antarctic Survey has been using laser beams to determine the thickness of ice in the big sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. The scientists have found that the ice is thinning quickly along the coasts. This can be seen in red in the map above.

This report was published in the journal Nature, more info and links to the paper, pictures, maps, and PR releases are here: Space Lasers Show Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets Aren't What They Used to Be.

Potential implications of melting from ice sheets are explored in a New York Times article on the loss of large sections of Vietnam's Mekong Delta from sea-level rise, and another in the Financial Times Sept. 23 on similar threats to Bangladesh, a low-lying delta region at the end of the Ganges River. A study in Nature Geoscience has explored the vulnerability of river deltas worldwide to sinking and sea rise.

Pictures Before and During: Red Sky Over Sydney

Residents of Sydney, Australia awoke today Sept. 23 to orange skies filled with dust. This image pair from jujuly25 at flickr also shows a clear-sky view from the same angle on a Sydney balcony a day ago. What a dusty difference a day makes.

The BBC reported that the dust storm is the result of years of drought in eastern parts of Australia. National Geographic published an in-depth story and pictures in April on the region's Murray-Darling basin and the long term drying from climate change in parts of Australia. These changes are increasingly seen as part of a larger pattern of shifts in rainfall in several regions.

At Earth Observatory, NASA has also posted a satellite image of the big dust storm, link here. 

Irrawaddy and Other River Deltas Are Sinking

The Delta of the Irrawaddy River in Burma is among those slowly sinking, according to new research published in the journal  Nature Geoscience. This satellite image from NASA Earth Observatory shows the low-lying land in southeast Asia created and built up by silt carried and deposited by the river. 

The research indicates that a variety of upstream activities, such as damming and upstream water diversions are starving the deltas of the silt they need to survive. These low-lying deltas are also vulnerable to storms such as Cyclone Nargis which hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008, and saltwater intrusion from sea level rise caused by melting of glaciers and icecaps as the atmosphere keeps warming.

2009 Arctic Ice Melt Compared to Earlier Years

The chart above from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows extent of ice melt in 2009 (light blue line) compared to earlier years. The greatest melt occurred in 2007 (dotted green line), and this year's melt is third most significant behind 2008 (dark blue line,) which was second. The 2005 melt is shown in solid light green. The Arctic ice appears to be in a new phase, with more significant melt in the past three years than the average for the period 1979-2000, which is show in gray in the upper part of the chart.

As reported by NSIDC, the minimum extent in 2009 is 24 percent below the 1979-2000 average minimum and 20 percent below the 1979-2008 average minimum. Extent is not the only measure, as younger, thinner ice dominates now, and it is more vulnerable to melting.

2009 Global Temperature Trends: January – August

 

The National Climatic Data Center has (finally) released global temperature trends data for the first eight months of 2009, and the red dots on the map show that most of the world keeps running a fever. According to records of combined land and sea temperature observations the period from January through August 2009 is the fifth warmest on record.

Specifically for August, NCDC reports that ocean temperatures worldwide for August are the warmest ever measured since record keeping began.

Those in the middle of the blue dot area on the map in North America or in the far southern ocean near Antarctica might be forgiven if they thought their local world was cooling, but one must keep the long term trend in mind and remember that the map clearly shows a lot more big red dots than big blue dots. 

That means the world was warmer than average, and in some places by quite a bit when you look at the many fat red dots over Mexico, Africa, China, India, Australia, and California. It should be noted that several of these regions have also been suffering droughts, and research shows that these continuing warming trends will most likely drive long-term water shortages.

This warming trend is useful to examine in connection with the chart below showing how 2009 compares to earlier years. All years since 1980 have been above the norm (red)  and the last time a year was below the norm (blue) was 1976. It is also useful to keep in mind that we have been seeing significant loss of Arctic sea ice, as the Arctic Ocean loss of ice in 2009 was the third most significant on record behind 2007 and 2008 according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 

After Borlaug: A New Green Revolution?

Wheat near Dalby, Western Australia. Photo by Raeallen/flickr

Norman Borlaug improved wheat harvests and kept starvation at bay. As population keeps rising what will the world do for a second act?

In the early 1970’s when I was studying agriculture at Oregon State, the name of Norman Borlaug was spoken with great reverence, especially in my cereal grains class, where we learned how Borlaug bred short, stocky wheat plants with big heads that could hold more grain than before. His efforts to improve grain production and stave off starvation in places like Latin America and Asia earned Borlaug the Nobel Peace Prize.

Borlaug became known as the father of the “Green Revolution,” a transformation of world grain production that produced better harvests of wheat and rice when irrigation water, nitrogen fertilizers, and weed and insect pesticides were applied to crop fields.

So now Borlaug is gone, but we must continue the hard work of feeding an ever more populous world. World population nears seven billion people, about twice as many as when Borlaug’s Green Revolution began raising grain yields in the 1960s, and it is expected to top nine billion by mid-century.

Rising living standards pressure grain stocks as more people eat meat fed by harvests that otherwise would go to people. We’re also seeing large portions of corn harvests devoted to ethanol as a substitute for gasoline.

In late 2008 we saw severe price spikes for cereal grains and food. Supplies and prices of oil and natural gas have become volatile. Many analysts say we have seen the end of cheap oil. The Green Revolution would not have been green had it not been for cheap oil, and inexpensive natural gas used to produce synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Then there are the droughts, floods, and heat waves from climate change beginning to affect farm productivity in food growing regions worldwide. We’re seeing soil erosion, aquifer depletion, and loss of glaciers that feed farm irrigation. Nearly half of the world’s people live in tropical and sub-tropical subsistence agriculture regions, increasingly vulnerable to crop loss as rainfall and temperature patterns are disrupted.

So Borlaug's work must continue with even higher stakes. Just as when Borlaug worked to feed the earth, whether we achieve food security ahead remains a daunting challenge, as National Geographic reported this June in its article Global Food Crisis: The End of Plenty.

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Human Footprint: Aral Sea Keeps Shrinking

 Central Asia's Aral Sea has been drained of its lifeblood water to slake our thirst. Photo: NASA

Formerly the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea in central Asia has become a dustbowl of its former self after more than 40 years of irrigation that has sucked water from the rivers that feed it. These upstream diversions irrigate cotton and other farms in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan in central Asia, arid countries surrounding the Aral Sea that use more water per person than any other nations on earth. 

The August 2009 image above from NASA Earth Observatory highlights the Aral Sea's former shorelines and the few areas on its western and northern shores where water remains. A 10-year sequence of the lake's deteriorating condition also has been posted.

Shoreline of desiccated Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, Sept. 5, 2009. Photo: kvitlauk/flickr

Climate and Fire: The Blaze Last Time, and Next

Fires over southern California have burned before and will burn again. This wafting smoke over the Pacific Ocean came from 12 large fires burning in late October, 2007.  Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

Recent news reports about fires, whether in Greece or Los Angeles, have not explained their relationship to long-term climatic shifts underway. Why? Maybe the remaining reporters and editors aren't well-versed in the underlying science of climate change, or the science and environment writers have all been laid off to save money.

News stories reporting these disasters as isolated events, or caused by cigarette or lawnmowers, miss the point and do a disservice by failing to put them in context. Temperatures have been increasing in these regions, and rainfall has been declining long-term. Just as a lawnmower may be the flint, these underlying conditions provide the tinder, and explain the likelihood that as these fires have burned before, they will burn again.

These contextual links have been made for some time by scientists, but traditional news outlets apparently haven't been reading. When fires hit Athens a week or so ago, the only outlet that explicitly explained the link between fires and climate change was the new global trends reporting website GlobalPost.