Signs From Earth

Profile (and Seas) Rise for "Climate Refugees"

 

Tulun Atoll in the low-lying Carteret Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Photo: NASA via Wikipedia.

The drowning Carteret Islands northeast of Papua New Guinea get the attention of The New York Times in an article "Refugees Join List of Climate-Change Issues," which also discusses the emerging awareness that hundreds of millions could lose their homes due to rising seas and other effects of climate change. 

..."There could be 200 million of these climate refugees by 2050, according to a new policy paper by the International Organization for Migration, depending on the degree of climate disturbances. Aside from the South Pacific, low-lying areas likely to be battered first include Bangladesh and nations in the Indian Ocean, where the leader of the Maldives has begun seeking a safe haven for his 300,000 people. Landlocked areas may also be affected; some experts call the Darfur region of Sudan, where nomads battle villagers in a war over shrinking natural resources, the first significant conflict linked to climate change...."

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The phrase "climate refugee" comes into increasing use, yet has no legal definition. Geoff Dabelko wrote in 2007 at The New Security Beat in the postiing, "A Word of Caution on Climate Change and “Refugees” that the word "refugee" is problematic when applied to being driven from one's place because of environmental conditions.

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"In order to achieve refugee status, people must be fleeing persecution or violence and must cross a national border," he said.  Dabelko continues that discussion here in the introduction to a new report from the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, where he is director. 

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A beacon, ECSP and its blog The New Security Beat continually explores the confluence of issues like population, water, ecosystems, resources and migration -- and their impact on security, economy, and society.

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As people increasingly are displaced from the accumulating catalog of climate impacts, perhaps we need to consider expanding the legal definition of refugee, or find new words to describe environment- and climate-driven flight from home. Right now no internationally accepted term exists for people moving because of environmental reasons, and according to the International Organization for Migration, the terms "environmental refugee" and "climate change refugee" have no basis in international refugee law. 

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So if not refugee, what now to call those driven elsewhere by the effects of human-induced climate change?

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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.

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Krugman: Empire of Carbon

Paul Krugman in the New York Times on China's rapid run up in carbon emissions as it builds its economy (and all those things that we buy):

..."It is unfair to expect China to live within constraints that we didn’t have to face when our own economy was on its way up. But that unfairness doesn’t change the fact that letting China match the West’s past profligacy would doom the Earth as we know it...."

New Look for Environmental Journalists Website

If you are interested in the latest news about the planet, you can't do much better than to regularly visit the brand-new website for The Society of Environmental Journalists. The redesigned website offers many improvements and new features over the old model.

Filled with headlines of the latest environmental news, tools, and tips for reporting about the earth, the new SEJ website is a must-stop if you are on the planet beat. 

Better yet, if you are not a member, join the organization. 

It's a non-profit organization whose dedicated members, I am one, envision an informed society through excellence in environmental journalism.

Climate Refugees: Where to Call Home?

The low-lying Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean are vulnerable to rising seas. Photo: danksy/flickr

Polar bears aren't the only ones losing their homes to rising temperatures. Look further along the chain of knock-on effects from rising temperatures, and one sees us in line to reap a harvest of dislocation.

The accumulating inventory of visible impacts from climate change -- melting glaciers and ice sheets, disappearing snowpacks, rising seas, coastal erosion, shifting coastlines, more droughts, more floods, increased frequency and intensity of fires -- are all reshaping the places we inhabit, and in time stand to affect where and how we live.

First in line for disruption -- that is unless you live in drought-and-fire-prone regions of southern California -- are the low-lying islands such as the Maldives, Tuvalu, and the coastal regions of river delta nations like Bangladesh. Significant coastal sections of Alaska along the Beaufort Sea already are melting into the rising sea.

The New York Times reports on Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed's effort to find new lands for his people. With an average elevation of about four feet above sea level, this Indian Ocean island chain will eventually disappear under rising seas. As ice sheets in places like Greenland melt, and the seawater itself warms and expands, places like the Maldives are set to slowly vanish beneath the waves.

Besides seeking a new landing spot for his citizens, Nasheed is also trying to make the Maldives achieve what most of the carbon-spewing first world cannot: carbon neutrality. 

...“What we need to do is nothing short of decarbonizing the entire global economy,” he said, his high voice cracking. “If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to defeat our common carbon enemy.” Nasheed didn’t use notes for his speech; aides say he never does. “And so today,” he continued, “I announce that the Maldives will become the first carbon-neutral country in the world.”...

Hot and Cold Winter in Color

Where was winter cool and warm? NASA Earth Observatory posted this image May 9 showing land surface temperature "anomalies" (variance from normal) across the globe during the winter of 2008-2009. Winter in this case is seen as December through February. Except if you live in the southern hemisphere.

Notable warm spots are shown in red: Greenland, Antarctica, and south central South America. Argentina suffered through a significant summer drought and heatwave (below). The western United States was warmer than normal. Shown in blue: northern and eastern North America and northern Australia were cooler than normal. 

Message From Planet Earth

NASA Earth Observatory has just posted (May 8) a new fly-by picture of Earth taken more than three years ago by the MESSENGER satellite, which has been looping around the solar system in a multi-fly-by journey past Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun. As part of that tour it comes near Earth.

Here above you can see the Yucatan Peninsula and the east coast of the United States near the center of the picture. Makes for a great desktop image! 

More pictures from the MESSENGER can be found here. 

The journal Science published an article in its May 1 edition on the most recent Mercury fly-by of MESSENGER last October.

Yukon River Ice Jam Slams Alaska Village

 

Remains of Eagle Village on the Yukon River in eastern Alaska after rapid ice breakup in early May 2009. Photos by Carl Stapler/National Park Service.

Amazing pictures and reports coming out of Eagle, Alaska, on the Canadian border after temperatures jumped into the 70's this week and caused dramatic and rapid breakup of ice on the Yukon River. (Eagle was prominent in the John McPhee book Coming into the Country.) 

Reports have it that much of the old town, Eagle Village, was destroyed by ice melt, that "house sized chunks of ice lifted houses off their foundations" and sent them down the river. 

The Anchorage Daily News: Find more photos, local blog reports and news stories.

NPR: 'Tsunami' Of Ice Wreaks Havoc On Alaskan Town

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.

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