Signs From Earth

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. 

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

Groundwater Disappearing in Northern India

Map showing depletion of groundwater in northern India. The water table in northern regions, in red, is dropping rapidly due to irrigation, according to new research.. Groundwater supplies are increasing in the blue areas due to above-average rainfall. Image: Velicogna/UC Irvine

New research published in the journals Nature and Geophysical Research Letters based on satellite studies indicate that groundwater in northern India is being severely depleted by heavy pumping for agriculture. Like loss of fish in the sea from overfishing, groundwater loss also is a hidden crisis, a tragedy of the commons. 

Groundwater serves as a primary source of freshwater in many parts of the world, and some regions are becoming heavily dependent on it. As a result, groundwater supplies are being depleted as we pump water out faster than aquifers replenish. This begins to create social unrest.

Water Cycle Atlas: Crystal Ball for Water's Future

Researchers from Australian National University have released a new atlas of the world's water cycle. 

An Atlas of the Global Water Cycle is freely available as an 11MB downloadable PDF file, as single chapters, or as a print-on-demand order.

The atlas is based on models of future precipitation patterns prepared for the 2007 IPCC AR4 report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. By using the projections from the IPCC, the atlas visualizes on maps and tables the current and expected measures of rainfall, evaporation, and runoff across the earth.

Publisher's book description: "What do climate models predict for the rainfall where you live? What about evaporation or runoff? Should your local community consider constructing new dams or do the existing water storages appear adequate? What about the availability of water for irrigation farming? Do the predictions differ between different climate models or do all the models basically predict the same changes in water availability where you live?

Climate Change vs. National Security

 A coal fired power plant in Germany. Action against causes of climate change is tied to significant reduction in world use of fossil fuels. Photo: davipt/flickr

Slowly the idea seeps into major media mindset that climate change presents challenges far beyond polar bears and melting ice, that political stability and security of nations also are at risk. As has been discussed here and elsewhere, carbon emissions affect how the atmosphere works, and this in turn impacts stability and security of food and water supplies, and eventually survivability of societies.

The question remains whether these concerns linking continued use of fossil fuels and their impact on global climate will make a meaningful difference in the views and actions of policymakers and the public. 

John Broder reports in an August 9 New York Times article, "Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security,"  that climate change impacts in other nations, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia, could demand an American humanitarian or military response.

“The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Good Magazine Water Issue

 Good Magazine's issue 16 is devoted to water: HALF FULL.

From the introduction: “Before the dawn of civilization, there were 326 million trillion gallons of water on Earth. Today, after millennia of population growth, industry, and agriculture, there are still 326 million trillion gallons. Unlike other natural resources, we cannot run out of water.

“But it doesn’t mean that we always will have enough of it when and where we need it or that we can’t make it too dirty to drink. We have altered the water cycle—from ocean to cloud to ground and back to ocean—by putting 6 billion people in the middle of it. Now, the Earth isn’t generating clean, drinkable water as we’ve come to expect.

“But if we start paying attention and change our behavior, there is no need to worry about water. We can use less, limit our effect on the water cycle, and clean and protect our rivers and oceans. We have plenty, as long as we drink responsibly...”

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The online version includes a picture show The Absence of Water by Gigi Cifali.

Severe Drought Across African Sahel

The green line at lower right shows the level of rainfall measured this year at Masinga Dam in in Kenya, which is less than half of the long term average. Kenya has closed down hydropower generation at the dam for lack of water. Source: NASA Earth Observatory

With drought comes famine and in the Sahel region of Africa the lack of rainfall has been particularly severe this year. NASA Earth Observatory has posted charts and maps showing how scant Sahel rains this year are affecting vegetation growth (below). Those who depend on rain for growing crops are vulnerable to famine as crops fail from lack of rainfall.

The BBC has reported that Masinga Dam in Kenya has stopped generating electric power because too little water is available to turn the dam's generating turbines, and some power blackouts are resulting. The Daily Nation reports that Kenya's cities are running short of water.

Arctic Melt Season "In High Gear"

The blue line shows Arctic Ocean sea ice extent on July 5. Graphic from NSIDC.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center on July 6 released updated information on the melting trends of Arctic Ocean sea ice for the summer of 2009. The area of sea ice is tracking below the 1979-2000 average, is not as severe as for the record year of 2007, but is in league with that melt year. 

Further details are available at the NSIDC website. NSIDC said in its July 6 Twitter feed, "In midst of melt season, atmospheric patterns look like 2007, but so far we don't see the same rapid melt."

 

Earth's Rainfall Creeps North

Map shows band of heaviest rainfall across the Pacific Ocean, which research indicates is moving north about a mile per year. Credit: University of Washington

Eurekalert reports on research: Earth's most prominent rainfall feature creeping northward

University of Washington research published in Nature Geoscience indicates rainfall is moving north away from the equator, and has been doing so for centuries, probably because of rising temperatures most likely driven by increased solar irradiance since the Little Ice Age of the last millennium.

"The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years. If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator may be starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner."

The broader concern expressed by researchers is that future northward movement of the rain band in the tropics could potentially be driven by rising levels of greenhouse gases with resulting "profound implications for the societies and economies that depend on it."

Nature Geoscience: Southward Movement of Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone AD 1400-1850

Mapping 44 Hazardous Coal Ash Waste Ponds

 

A ruptured coal ash storage pond near Kingston, Tennessee in late 2008. The EPA has released a list of vulnerable coal ash storage ponds around the U.S. Most are in Appalachian states. EPA Photo.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finally released a list of 44 vulnerable "coal ash" ponds in the United States. Two weeks ago the agency tried to keep the list secret, claiming these hazardous toxic waste ponds could be terrorist targets. 

Bill Kovarik of Radford University has mapped the locations of these 44 hazardous sites, most of them in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina and Arizona.

These sludge ponds store the toxic waste remaining after coal is burned to produce electricity. Coal produces about 50 percent of the electricity in the United States, and also creates large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) when it is burned. Rising levels of CO2 are widely seen by scientists as the leading reason earth's temperatures are rising. 

If you live near one of these 44 toxic waste ponds, the EPA has said they have "high hazard potential." EPA verbiage accompanying the list says this means a failure of a dam holding back these coal ash wastes "will probably cause loss of human life."

Public interest has been high in these hazardous toxic waste ponds ever since one of them ruptured last December (picture above) at the TVA Kingston coal-fired power plant in Tennessee. That toxic sludge is still being cleaned up, and a recent report in the Knoxville News-Sentinel said the Tennessee Valley Authority expects cleanup costs will be about $1 billion. 

A TVA-commissioned study of the causes of that disaster said an "unstable" layer of ash in the failed pond caused the dam to break. The 1,400-page study released in late June, called "Root Cause Analysis," is a compendium of obscure and virtually inscrutable technical language. What is called the "Executive Summary" can be found here.

Suffice to say the price of coal for producing electricity keeps rising. When we turn on a light we subsidize the creation of devastated and polluted landscapes, whether they be mountaintop removal coal mines, or the toxic waste sites created by these hazardous coal ash ponds. And as we burn ever more coal (and oil) to power our modern 24/7/365 society, we keep heating up the planet.

Resources:

Dust on Colorado Snow Looms Over Mountainfilm

 

Dust-laden snow May 19 on Rocky Mountain peaks south of Montrose, Colorado. Photo: Dennis DImick (click to enlarge.)

I've been in Colorado the past few days, participating in a symposium on food at Mountainfilm Telluride. Last year we discussed water, and energy was our focus in in 2007. Among speakers this year were writer Bill McKibben, soil scientist Jerry Glover of the Land Institute, plant geneticist Pam Ronald of UC-Davis, and Roz Naylor, who heads the food security and environment program at Stanford. A report on the forum from the Telluride Daily Planet is here: The Future of Food: Daunting but Doable.

The film Food,Inc., shown at the festival and scheduled for nationwide release in June, will get some attention here soon. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns also premiered his elegant new 12-hour film on the National Parks at Mountainfilm. The series will air on PBS this fall.

One scene repeatedly mentioned indoors was on colorful display outdoors in the mountains above this southwest Colorado town. The snowpack, or what remains of it, looks pink. The color comes from repeated dust storms this past winter and spring. 

Red-colored dust arrived as clouds from repeated blow-ups in the red rock areas of Utah and Arizona. The dust darkens snow and increases its melt rate. Early snowmelt and runoff from the mountains reduces the amount of water available in streams later in summer for irrigation and other uses.

The impact of dust on snow has gotten some attention in the scientific community. A study two years ago by the National Snow and Ice Data Center indicated that rising temperatures across the West are increasing the likelihood that dust storms will become more frequent, shorten the snowpack season, and affect timing of runoff in rivers and soil moisture in the mountains. The water will come off the mountains earier in the spring, and mountains soils will dry up sooner in the summer.

April 3, 2009 dust storm in northeast Arizona. From NASA Earth Observatory.

References:

Water Shortages Threaten Food Supply

This map shows changes in river streamflow worldwide between 1948 and 2004. Bluish colors show more runoff, reddish colors show less. (Graphic courtesy of Journal of Climate, modified by UCAR.)

Several articles published recently discuss the potential impact of declining water supplies on food production as temperatures rise and rainfall declines. Agriculture uses far more freshwater than any other human endeavor, typically from 70 to 90 percent of freshwater supply. 

Irrigation water typically comes from rivers and lakes, but dependence on groundwater aquifers is increasing as surface water declines. Water tables in several places -- the Ogallala Aquifer in the U.S.,the Saudi aquifer and the China North Plain -- are all declining as groundwater pumping tries to compensate for loss or overuse of surface water in rivers and lakes.

This tight link between water supply and food supply becomes something to ponder in light of research results showing decline in runoff from several major river systems (graphic above), and a report published in April in PNAS on projected shrinkage of Colorado River water deliveries from decreased precipitation, rising temperatures, and more evaporation.

Lake Mead in March 2008 behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Levels then were down about 100 feet from full pool. Levels are now at 44-year lows. Photo: Neil McIntosh/flickr

Lester Brown discusses implications in the May issue of Scientific American. He describes the potential for food supply collapse caused by falling water tables, disappearing soils, and rising temperatures. Brown says the biggest threat for disruption comes from poor countries with fragile or non-existent infrastructure and governments.

These reports follow on a paper published in Science earlier this year detailing projected declines in food production across large areas of the sub-tropical and tropical regions because of heat waves and drought.

That paper by Battisti and Naylor projected that hot summers and declining crop yields will become common over a broad area where nearly half of the world's population lives. Most of the farmers in this region are subsistence farmers and incomes of less than $2 a day. They largely depend on rainfall for growing crops and do not have the capital, technology, or know-how to store water and irrigate.

References:

Atafu Atoll, Tokelau, Southern Pacific Ocean

From NASA Earth Observatory, an awesome Image of the Day taken by the crew of the International Space Station: 

"At roughly eight kilometers wide, Atafu Atoll is the smallest of three atolls and one island (Nukunonu and Fakaofo Atolls to the southeast and Swains Island to the south are not shown) comprising the Tokelau Islands group located in the southern Pacific Ocean. 

"The political entity of Tokelau is currently a territory of New Zealand. In recent years, public referendums on independence within the islands have been held, but have not received sufficient support to move forward.

"The primary settlement on Atafu is a village located at the northwestern corner of the atoll—indicated by an area of light gray dots in this astronaut photograph. The typical ring shape of the atoll is the result of coral reefs building up around a former volcanic island...."

Young Ice Dominates Arctic Ocean

Credit: From the National Snow and Ice Data Center, courtesy J. Maslanik and C. Fowler, University of Colorado

Data released April 6 from the National Snow and Ice Data Center shows that the age of ice in the Arctic Ocean is declining. Ice less than a year old dominates the Arctic ice cap as the melt season begins. 

The deep red color in the top right map shows the extent of multi-year ice, which has fallen to about 10 percent of the ice total according to NSIDC. The red color in the map at top left shows the average extent of multi-year ice for the period 1981-2000, when multi-year ice made up about 30 percent of the total. 

There has been a small uptick in the volume of ice 1-2 years old (orange color) and it is possible some of this juvenile ice and ice less than a year old could survive the summer melt season, thereby slowly adding to the stock of more hardy multi-year ice. Or it could not survive.

The melting of Arctic Ocean ice has increased in recent years. In the period from 1979 to 2005 about 20 percent of the ice cap melted in summer, but in summer of 2007 another 20 percent disappeared. Ice cap melting in 2008 was not as severe as in 2007, but last summer's melt still left the ocean with the second-lowest sea ice extent on record.

Implications from loss of Arctic Ocean ice in summer revolve around potential changes in wind patterns and ocean circulation. As the white-colored heat reflecting sea ice disappears, more dark heat-absorbing water dominates the ocean, causing even further water temperature increases. 

This unfolding change in Arctic Ocean ice cover could impact wind, weather, and precipitation patterns in northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, where hundreds of millions of people live and depend on reliable supplies and timing of rainfall for drinking and the growing of food crops.

Washington Post: New Data Show Rapid Arctic Ice Decline

Wall Street Journal: Polar Ice Cap Shrinks Further and Thins

Drought Shrivels China's Wheat Region

The New York Times reports on a worsening drought in China's wheat growing region: 

Worst Drought in Half Century Shrivels the Wheat Belt of China

"Northern China is dry in the best of times. But a long rainless stretch has underscored the urgency of water problems in a region that grows three-fifths of China’s crops and houses more than two-fifths of its people — but gets only one-fifth as much rain as the rest of the country.

"The current drought, considered the worst in Northern China in at least half a century, is crippling not only the country’s best wheat farmland, but also the wells that provide clean water to industry and to millions of people..."

Long-term droughts already are underway in Australia and California, both major agricultural producers. Now with China potentially running short of cereal grains, this all bears watching.