WC Archive

Professor Julia Slingo, director of the NCAS Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling, said: "These results are very exciting.

"They show that, for the first time, our climate models can be run at resolutions capable of capturing severe weather events such as intense depressions, hurricanes and major rainstorms.

"This means that we potentially have the capability to predict whether storms like Hurricane Isabel will be on the increase in future.

"Importantly for the UK, we will be able to predict with more confidence increases in damaging storms and extremes of temperature, and what their regional impacts will be.

[...]

"They will help us to prioritise our investment in devising strategies to adapt to climate change, for example the specification of railway lines to deal with the extreme heat experienced this summer, or storm drains to cope with extreme rainfall such as we experienced in the autumn of 2000."

If you want to get a sense of what's going on inside of your body, you can -- if you have the money or an extremely generous insurance provider -- get a full body scan, using various devices to get detailed cross-sections of your body, a process known as "tomography." But what if you want to get a sense of what's going on inside the Earth? Well, guess what.

A group of Princeton geoscientists just announced that they have used a technique known as "Finite Frequency Tomography" to take an incredibly detailed peek at the inner workings of our home planet. In particular, they have managed to take the first direct measurements of so-called "mantle plumes," massive spouts of hot material rising from the mantle, a 2,000 mile-thick layer just below the Earth's crust. 32 plumes were identified, including one under Iceland (see image).

This gives us a new tool in understanding how our planet functions.

One novel aspect of this planetary body scan was that it used not positron emission or gravity waves or some other extremely high-tech process, but old-fashioned seismographic measurements. The vibrations from earthquakes serve as the equivalent of sound waves, as used in ultrasound scans. Details of the study can be found at Science Express, although you have to be a subscriber (or AAAS member) to download the article. A PDF of the scan images, however, is currently freely available.

Hey, USians -- do you know just how many pollutants, toxic wastes, and environmental hazards are in your neighborhood? You do now. The eco-organization Environmental Defense has set up a handy map site called "Scorecard," illustrating and detailing the latest EPA Toxic Release Inventory. National maps show concentrations of air pollutants, animal wastes from factory farms, clean water act status, and more, while community data breaks down by county just what sorts of hazards you may have around you.

Information about wastes and pollutants can be hard to find and parse, sometimes deliberately so; Scorecard makes digging up information about local environmental conditions if not exactly fun, then at least friendly. (Via MetaFilter)

Geobacter sulfurreducens -- get used to seeing that name. It may well be the key to cleaning up some of the most dangerous radioactive wastes sites around. Best of all, it's completely natural.

G. sulfurreducens is a microbe that is able to turn the soluble form of uranium contaminating groundwater around nuclear weapons production sites (such as Rifle Mill in Colorado) into an easily-collected precipitate. Researchers with the Department of Energy have managed to use the bacteria to reduce uranium in the groundwater around Rifle Mill by 90%. The microbe occurs naturally in the ground; its growth is stimulated by adding vinegar to the soil.

But now, biologists at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland, have sequenced the microbe's DNA, figuring out how it manages to detect and "eat" uranium, producing minute amounts of electricity. Their report is in today's edition of Science; the illustration at right is from their online supporting material. TIGR and University of Massachusetts in Amherst researchers believe that they will be able to manipulate the microbe's genome to make its uranium-electricity conversion faster and more efficient.

(It's worth noting that G. sulfurreducens doesn't make the uranium go away; it makes it no longer soluble in water. This is an ideal type of bacterial bioremediation -- the contaminant becomes easy to clean up, but there's no risk of the microbe "running wild" and devouring otherwise safe material.)

Like it or not, the Kyoto treaty on climate change is pretty much dead. The U.S. has flatly rejected it; Russia is playing games with it; and even the E.U. quietly admits that most member nations will not hit their targets. And, frankly, many environmentalists weren't too thrilled with the Kyoto treaty to begin with -- it didn't do enough, was too complex, and left many issues unaddressed.

So what's Plan B?

According to an article in this week's New Scientist, Plan B is something called "Contraction and Convergence," or "C&C." Supported by the U.K.'s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the United Nations Environment Program, the European Parliament and the German Advisory Council on Global Change, C&C has numerous advantages over Kyoto. It's more straightforward than the earlier treaty, it addresses the American government's concerns about developing world participation, and it ultimately would be more aggressive about actually dealing with atmospheric carbon build-up than was Kyoto. The C&C concept has been around for about a decade, but is receiving new attention as the death of the Kyoto treaty has become clear.

Contraction and Convergence simultaneously moves towards a reduced overall carbon emissions total and a universal per-person carbon emissions allowance. The convergence aspect, according to this plan, would be settled by 2050; by then, all nations would have the same emissions-per-person target. The plan includes some emissions trading, but all nations would be included, and the restrictions would eventually be more stringent than in the Kyoto treaty. The article has a useful graph illustrating how the Contraction and Convergence process would work over time.

Urban areas are growing. But by how much? Satellite imaging can help us monitor urban growth by allowing precise measurements of urbanization patterns over time. NASA researchers used Landsat pictures of 30 randomly-selected mid-size cities around the world from 1990 and 2000 to study city size changes. This will allow for better estimates of urbanization and land use around the world, which in turn is critical for better climate modeling.

These three images show the city of Chengdu in 1990, in 2000, and a combined map, with yellow representing urban areas in 1990 and orange showing the areas of new growth.

Mid-size cities, with populations ranging between 1 and 5 million, were chosen over mega-cities because the somewhat smaller urban areas are growing faster, and may have a greater overall impact on the global climate.

When the cities were compared, three common spatial patterns became clear. First, land developments have formed in clusters outside the city. While fairly common in the U.S., Schneider noticed this trend in large cities of China and India as well. Second, there are a number of cities where growth has occurred along roads leading out of the city. This trend poses challenges both to city managers and governments who must provide water, sewage, adequate housing, schools and health care services to dispersed people, and to the citizens, who face increasingly difficult commutes. Finally, Schneider found scattered, patchy development around cities, with less structure than the first two trends. This is the first time actual data have been used to confirm theories made by urban researchers during the last century.

The pictures are fascinating (even while being a bit alarming).

As a bonus, the page gives a link to NASA's Earth Observatory picture archive. I could fill my hard drive with these images...

This is not so much a resource as a mystery. Why has the amount of sunlight reaching the ground declined by about .25% per year since 1958? Not the amount of light emitted by the Sun, but the amount actually getting to the lower parts of Earth's atmosphere. Is it pollution, or a complex feedback effect associated with climate change?

Global Dimming may be one of the biggest bits of climate news to show up in quite awhile, and up until quite recently, it's been largely ignored. The notion that the average amount of light hitting the ground has been falling -- and by such a great amount, more than 10% in about three decades -- seemed so odd and unexpected that many climatologists simply couldn't accept it. But in the past year, experiments have proven it -- the skies are getting darker.

The discovery of Global Dimming will help to make climate change models more accurate, as well as solve some mysteries:

But Farquhar had realised that the idea of global dimming could explain one of the most puzzling mysteries of climate science. As the Earth warms, you would expect the rate at which water evaporates to increase. But in fact, study after study using metal pans filled with water has shown that the rate of evaporation has gone down in recent years. When Farquhar compared evaporation data with the global dimming records he got a perfect match. The reduced evaporation was down to less sunlight shining on the water surface.

The causes of the reduction in light remain uncertain. Most researchers think that it's a result of atmospheric pollutants triggering more persistent cloud formation. Others argue that Global Warming-caused evaporation could be leading to more clouds; in that scenario, a continued rise in global temperatures would lead to greater average reductions in light. This is a critical question -- if the Global Dimming has been caused by pollution, efforts to clean up the atmosphere may actually speed up Global Warming.

Right now, there are far more questions than answers about Global Dimming. It will almost certainly be a key area of study in the coming years... as well as a welcome reminder not to discount the unexpected.

Got a spare $5,000 and a serious masochistic streak? Then you, too, can undergo biomonitoring to find out just how many biotoxins have taken up residence in your body. If you're anything like the 9 people in a new study by Commonweal and the Environmental Working Group, you're in for a nasty surprise.

The 9 subjects -- including journalist Bill Moyer -- were found to have an average of 91 different industrial compounds, pollutants, and other potentially unpleasant chemicals in their blood, urine, and (where appropriate) milk. Such chemicals have been linked to a wide variety of cancers, neuromuscular disorders, reproductive system problems, and worse. The presence in the body is due to environmental exposure -- i.e., having breathed it in, absorbed it into the skin, or consumed it in some way.

The danger posed by low doses of industrial chemicals remains subject to debate. Chemical companies point to studies showing no risks (although they often refuse to release information about the chemicals to allow for independent detection), while environmental activists point to alternative studies showing harm. Even if the corporate studies are mostly correct, the sheer variety of industrial chemicals present in the environment (and, thus, in one's body) gives pause.

Even while approaching the study with a skeptical eye, the Environmental Working Group report website is worth visiting. It's an extraordinarily good piece of web storytelling, presenting the results of the biomonitoring in manner that is simultaneously clear and damning. Besides, didn't you always wonder just how many PCBs and hexafloran derivatives were in Bill Moyer's bloodstream?

Sometimes, the sites we find for WorldChanging just make us sit back with a big grin and say, "wow."

CLIWOC (a program sponsored by the European Union) is creating a database of the world's ocean climate -- temperature, wind, precipitation -- from 1750-1850. A team at the UK's University of Sunderland is working with universities in Spain, the Netherlands and Argentina to compile the daily (sometimes hourly) log entries from thousands of ships over thousands of voyages into a massive database. The first official release just came out, and contains over 180,000 records. The database is freely available in both ASCII and Microsoft Access format.

There's something ineffably cool about using the detailed ship logs from Dutch, Spanish, and English sailing vessels in order to track ocean climatic conditions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Translating two-century-old sailing jargon, deciphering the personal scripts of sailors, figuring out where the ship really was (which may or may not match where the sailors thought it was), is all, in its own way, quietly heroic. This research could prove critical for understanding climate change, as the data gives a baseline for what the world's climate was like before industrialization.

The Fishbase is a web-accessible database of fish information. This may sound somewhat... dull... until you actually start playing with it. With over 28,000 fish listed (including my favorite, the Coelacanth), the Fishbase lets you explore by environmental information, location, biological data (including genetic records), class, even how dangerous a given fish may be and whether it appears on a stamp somewhere in the world. The volume of material on fish species is an object lesson in biodiversity.

The site contains more than the database. There's an online course in icthyology, links to other resources such as LarvalBase (a database of fish larvae identification), even a discussion forum for all of your pressing fish-related queries. And if you need access to the Fishbase while away from the Internet, you can purchase the entire database for a nominal fee. This is just the kind of site that makes the web great.

Swiss climate scientist Martin Beniston, using the cutting-edge regional climate model HIRHAM, argues that the record-breaking European heat wave of 2003 is an early warning of how European weather will be changing over the century, according to PhysicsWeb. With current trends, summer temperatures in Europe will increase by over 4°C on average, with Switzerland ending up with summertime weather closer to that found in the South of France at present. Continent-wide, climate zones will shift:

Beniston observed a general increase of about 4°C in a band stretching across central Europe to the Black Sea, with greater increases over the Iberian Peninsula and the south west of France. Moreover, he found that the number of hot days would increase - particularly in the Mediterranean region and in Eastern Europe - with an additional 40 to 60 days or more above 30°C [...]. In comparison, the period 1961 to 1990 saw an average of around 10 days.

That climate change is triggering hotter, more deadly summers is not news, but the increasingly sophisticated climate models, and the increasingly graphic predictions of how climate change will affect us all, are worth paying attention to.

We've refrained from linking to the hubbub surrounding the recent Guardian article about the Pentagon-sponsored abrupt climate change scenario -- not because we didn't find the scenario worth considering, but because (a) we'd already posted about the report a few weeks ago, and (b) the Guardian got a lot of the particulars wrong. But Bruce Sterling's Viridian Note #401 (from Friday) does a great job of deconstructing the article, pointing out where it errs and where it actually understates the worry, and is well-worth reading. The scenario itself (which was never secret, contrary to the Guardian's assertion) can be downloaded from here (PDF).

Scenarios aren't simply scary predictions or amusing stories; they're tools for planning. So what do we do if abrupt climate change became a very real likelihood? Are we simply doomed?

Or, more broadly: if we have good reason to believe that the dangers associated with climate change (abrupt or otherwise) are imminent and dramatic, what can we do about it in a short enough time to make a difference? Read on for an exploration of this dilemma.

In looking for details about figuring the cost/value of the San Francisco Moscone Center solar panels (see previous post), I came across a nice set of links to various calculators allowing you to estimate your ecological "footprint" -- that is, how much of the planet do your various activities consume. Some of the calculators are based on national averages, so the results are pretty broad, while others go into great detail.

Redefining Progress, which developed the "MyFootprint" calculator used by numerous groups around the web, has an Excel spreadsheet (XLS) letting you calculate your household footprint, if you want more detail than the web quizzes provide. They also have explanations of the Ecological Footprint concept and methodology.

I also found the CO2 Calculator at ClimateCare.org to be interesting, in part because it helps you figure out how much your carbon emissions cost, then gives you a way to donate that amount to various environmental groups directly. Clever.

Is density a key metric for determining how livable a city is? It's a possibility. The Kennedy School's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston and the Boston Society of Architects recently held a forum at Harvard (called "The 'D' Word") to discuss density in urban planning, and the ways in which a denser city is a more efficient, safer, and ultimately more lively city. The Harvard Gazette has a run-down of the forum.

In certain ways, the debate between density and its opposite - sprawl - has been going on for the past half-century, said Charles Euchner, the executive director of the Rappaport Institute, who moderated and helped organize the event.

"There's been an ongoing struggle to strengthen the city core, but not always to increase urban density. What's new, I think, is that we're realizing cities are really about people. The more people you bring in, the more vibrant the city will become," Euchner said.

[...]

According to the pro-density argument, urban institutions require a certain threshold population to support them. If not enough people want to shop or eat out, there won't be many good stores or restaurants. If the audience for music, theater, or art is small, these activities will not flourish. If the tax base is scanty, schools and municipal services will be substandard. Even parks need people to use them, and if the parks are deserted, they will not receive the upkeep they need to remain attractive.

Density is also considered good for the environment because it is easier and cheaper to provide heating, electricity, sewerage, and other services to people living in concentrated groups than to those in single-family homes in suburban areas. As a result, the impact of dense populations on the surrounding environment is less harmful.

As the Rappaport Institute site puts it, "[the] argument for density is simple: The more people live in an area, the more that area can offer economic activity, social networks, political engagement, and public service." While this argument is a clear reaction to the preference for suburban sprawl in the United States in the latter half of the 20th century, it also puts a stake in the heart of the "we'll all move out to the wilderness and telecommute" futurist craze of the late 1990s. The question now becomes, how can we make sure that dense urban environments work as well as they should?

(via nicolas nova)

WorldChanging ally Emily J. Gertz writes to us:

Several years ago, my friends Lenny and Laine emigrated from the U.S. to New Zealand. Lenny is a plant geneticist; he and I have had spirited debates about the eco-ethics of biotechnology, me coming from a ex-Greenpeacer/deep ecology/deep distrust perspective. Politically, I'm more of an outside agitator, while he is inclined to be persuasive from within. Needless to say, there's friction there, but at the same time, a lot of love and respect.

My friends discovered that New Zealand is not terribly green. Oh, it's got a lot of greenery, and a huge culture of outdoors sports and adventure tourism. The country strongly identifies with its' magnificent landscape, but in terms of policy and practice, there's a long way to go. This extends to alternative transportation; rather amazing that some Western nations are still debating the virtues of bicycle commuting at the dawn of the 21st century, but then I'm not exactly objective about it.

Lenny, a devoted bicycle commuter longer than I have known him (which means for over 20 years), joined the Cycling Advocates' Network of New Zealand. He recently organized a bicycle commuter challenge in the Auckland area. "The event was a race between amateur cyclists, celebrities on buses, and professional race car drivers, through morning rush hour traffic," he wrote. They started out from four points in the Auckland suburbs for central Aotea Square. On three routes, the cyclists won, and on the fourth, came in at 28:04 to the car commuter's 27:37. The event was well covered in New Zealand and even picked up by the media as far away as China.

Lenny told me, "My biggest achievement of the commuter challenge event was getting Alasdair Thompson to ride a bus. He is the president of the New Zealand Employees and Manufacturers Association, the most powerful and outspoken critic of alternative transport in NZ. He has been fighting for improvements in transport on behalf of big business, and his primary strategy has been to demand that 100% of the transport budget is spent on roads (no buses, trains, cycleways, etc). Within his organisation are about 100 sub-lobby groups, doing the same thing, on behalf of different business groups in different regions. With the way I organised this event and approached him, he agreed to ride the bus in support of alternative transport, and has agreed to become an ally of the Cycle Action Network to help us reach our goal of getting more people out of their cars and into alternative transport (bike, bus, train, etc). Not only have we gained a very powerful ally, but we've just eliminated our most powerful adversary. There are good reasons to work within the system."

The current (March) issue of National Geographic magazine includes a fascinating article ("China's Growing Pains") on the current state of environmental consciousness in the People's Republic of China. The full text of the article isn't online, but an excerpt is; the full article is much longer, and very much worth seeking out and reading.

All this made me wonder whether the Chinese have not so much been creating an economic superpower as committing ecological suicide. China's leaders may be wondering the same thing. "Never has the Chinese government put the environment issue in such an important position," declared Xie Zhenhua, director of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), in a 2002 press report. "It is vital to the stability and the prosperity of our country and people."

Certainly, if you look below the surface, you will find signs that a new consciousness is beginning to seep like rainwater through the layers of Chinese society. Not only are people coming to accept that the country's prosperity is bound up with caring for the environment, but they're now also aware that efforts at environmental protection are in turn bound up with improving systems of law and government. Good laws mean nothing when, as is often still the case, leaders don't have the will or means to enforce them, so some Chinese --those desperate enough -- are testing the limits of political constraints through acts of civil disobedience. Others, meanwhile, are looking to the outside world for expertise and money to help with conservation projects. And still others are pioneering new ways of thinking about how to live more harmoniously with nature. But promising as all this is, it still seems that every environmentally friendly measure is offset by a greater number of abuses. China's shift away from old habits and attitudes has only just begun.

Even if you've already read the print article, the web page is worth visiting, as it includes a variety of links to different environmental groups active in China, as well as a bibliography of books and articles about China's environmental condition.

Despite our ongoing frustration with U.S. environmental policies, the real focus of concern for the 21st century climate has to be China. 75% of China's power still comes from coal, and current trends don't change, China could overtake the U.S. in terms of greenhouse gas output within a few decades. If the Chinese economy continues to grow, demand for cars, consumer goods, bigger homes -- all of the lifestyle accoutrement of a modern nation -- could be environmentally disastrous, if China adopts the same technologies and infrastructure as the West. But if the Chinese economy collapses, they will be unable to afford the changes in technology and infrastructure required to clean up their already massive environmental problems.

This is a situation that screams out for a "leap-frog" solution. Distributed power, alternative energy, smart building materials... China could be a showcase for what an electric green developed nation can look like. But will they take that road?

Disease outbreaks don't just arise out of nowhere. Environmental conditions have to be just right for disease-causing viruses and bacteria to flourish. This suggests a possible strategy for dealing with pathogen outbreaks: watch for signs that the environmental conditions conducive to disease are emerging, then move to protect the threatened populations.

That's just what NASA intends to do, according to Patrick L. Barry, writing for the Science@NASA newsletter, reprinted at RedNova:

Ronald Welch of NASA's Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is one of the scientists working to develop such an early warning system. "I have been to malarious areas in both Guatemala and India," he says. "Usually I am struck by the poverty in these areas, at a level rarely seen in the United States. The people are warm and friendly, and they are appreciative, knowing that we are there to help. It feels very good to know that you are contributing to the relief of sickness and preventing death, especially the children."

The approach employed by Welch and others combines data from high-tech environmental satellites with old-fashioned, "khaki shorts and dusty boots" fieldwork. Scientists actually seek out and visit places with disease outbreaks.

Then they scrutinize satellite images to learn how disease-friendly conditions look from space. The satellites can then watch for those conditions over an entire region, country, or even continent as they silently slide across the sky once a day, every day.

In India, for example, where Welch is doing research, health officials are talking about setting up a satellite-based malaria early warning system for the whole country. In coordination with mathematician Jia Li of the University of Alabama at Huntsville and India's Malaria Research Center, Welch is hoping to do a pilot study in Mewat, a predominantly rural area of India south of New Delhi. The area is home to more than 700,000 people living in 491 villages and 5 towns, yet is only about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island.

[...]

"We expect to be able to give warnings of high disease risk for a given village or area up to a month in advance," Welch says. "These 'red flags' will let health officials focus their vaccination programs, mosquito spraying, and other disease-fighting efforts in the areas that need them most, perhaps preventing an outbreak before it happens."

(Via Smart Mobs)

WorldChanging ally Roel Groeneveld links to and updates our post from a few days ago about China's environmental challenge. Groeneveld adds a few more useful and interesting links for those of us interested in China and the environment. Of particular note is a description/review of a four-part series in the Asia Times called The Ruined Land by Jasper Becker, the author of the National Geographic article in our earlier post:

• The Death of China's Rivers
• Peasants Bear the Brunt of China's Energy Plans
• China in an Energy Quandary
• China Awakens to its Devastated Environment

The articles are long; the review link gives good capsule summaries of each. Obviously, these are not inspiring models of doing the right thing. But WorldChanging readers in the West -- particularly the United States -- may be more accustomed to thinking about how bad things are at home, and may not be aware of the scale of the challenge in China. The key 21st century battle to save the planet may well be fought in the Middle Kingdom.

The T.R.E.E.S. project is a few years old, and therefore hardly the state of the art, but that shouldn't stop you from checking out Tree People's vision for a sustainable L.A., complete with working proposals for the redesign of single- and multi-family homes, industrial and commercial sites, even schools. It's interesting, site-specific innovation.

And disturbingly rare. We suffer from a shortage of realistic, working visions for a sustainable future which take into account both the nature of our problems today and the new tools we have at our disposal. The problem with this, of course, is that we can't build what we can't first imagine and describe.

We're deeply interested in visions of a sustainable future, and of green futurism in general. If you know a new working vision of sustainability of which we may not be aware, by all means clue us in in the comment section below!)

A pair of companies in Arizona are about to build a system to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, attempting to prove that the "wind-scrubber" concept works. The scrubber will employ sodium hydroxide, which reacts with carbon dioxide, to remove CO2 from air drawn through the system. In principle, such systems could help to reduce carbon dioxide levels already in the atmosphere, thereby complementing attempts to reduce the amount of additional carbon being emitted.

There are a few problems with the system under consideration: it may not work; sodium hydroxide is caustic and toxic; and, according to the article, "the stored CO2 could be supplied to the oil industry for use in the process of enhanced oil recovery" -- which seems rather self-defeating, in the long-run.

All that said, the notion of figuring out ways to actively reduce existing carbon levels alongside reducing the amount of new carbon added to the atmosphere is a good idea. If, as some recent reports suggest, we may be already too late to prevent massive problems even if we manage to cut our emissions dramatically, aggressive carbon sequestration may be critical. Let's hope that the proof-of-concept test works -- and that they can then come up with a better technology (and lose the "use the carbon to pump more oil" idea).

Almost lost amidst the (justifiable) outrage and attention regarding the Iraqi prisoner abuses is news that a team at the University of Washington has knocked down the last scientific objection to the notion that global warming is real, and that human activity is a significant causal factor.

As reported in the May 6, 2004, issue of Nature, researchers from UW investigated why, if surface temperature records show clear signs of warming, satellite measurements of the troposphere -- the atmosphere from the ground to about 11 kilometers up -- did not. Opponents of the human-caused global warming model pointed to this contradiction as a sign that climate change wasn't real or was triggered by natural causes. According to Dr. Qiang Fu's team, cooling in the upper atmosphere -- itself a known result of greenhouse gases -- alters the satellite measurements; when that is accounted for, the troposphere data matches precisely with current models of human-caused warming.

While not good news in the "we're all going to be just fine" category, it does mean that we now have a much better understanding of the mechanisms underlying global warming, as well as confirmation that the current models work. It also means that the inevitable continued objections to doing anything about global warming have likely lost any remaining scientific credibility.

The Nature link above is to a short report; the article (linked from that page) is not freely available. Better details on the story can be found in this article from the London Times, and this release from UW, via Eurekalert.

We're now in the seventh year of drought in much of North America, and there are few signs that the situation will be changing any time soon. Across the American West, the snow pack -- the source of water through the summer months -- was only 40-75% of normal. Of course, "normal" may have been a historical aberration...

While the current drought run isn't yet as bad as the "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s, despite our increased demand for water in agriculture and urban centers, the persistence of this condition is making a lot of people wonder what it would take to push us into another disaster. Fortunately, there's some really interesting work being done now in figuring out the climate mechanisms behind persistent droughts. Jennifer at WorldTurning points us to Why So Dry?, a non-specialist-friendly write-up produced by NASA's science news service describing how droughts work, how they connect with larger climate patterns (particularly El Niño/La Niña effects), and what more we need to learn.

One of the links from the NASA writeup is to the National Drought Mitigation Center's weekly Drought Monitor; the image at the top of this page is of the most recent map. The monitor page gives detailed analysis of current conditions and forecasts of upcoming changes, and provides animated maps of the last six weeks, twelve weeks, and year's drought.

As important as it is to understand drought as a geophysical condition, it's also a human event. If we can't change the weather, what can we do to mitigate drought effects? The Rocky Mountain Institute's "soft path" concept is one approach -- decentralize water systems, use green infrastructural systems to reclaim and reuse run-off and gray water, manage water demand more effectively, and distribute the best, most water-efficient technologies available as widely as possible -- but this may also be a time when the developed world can take a hint from the developing, and start looking at some unconventional approaches to using and acquiring water.

Understanding is the first step to action.

When it comes to climate change, better information is critical. We have good models, and our data sets are improving, but the climate is a dynamic non-linear system: we need large amounts of data from key climate tipping points in order to build better predictions. Among these key climate tipping points are the Arctic glaciers. Sea-level changes, shifts in average temperatures, and level of salt in the North Atlantic all have visible manifestations in glacial conditions.

The University of Southampton's GLACSWEB team uses pervasive sensor networks in the Briksdalsbreen glacier in Norway in order to study the effects of climate change on glaciers. The GLACSWEB sensors -- the current model is shown above -- are buried at the base of the glacier, at the sedimentary layer about 60 meters under the surface. The probes have short range radios, but can communicate with each other, eventually hopping to a base station on the surface of the glacier, which directs the data to a home server.

The University's press release has the basic information; the University's Persephone (Queen of the Underworld) site has more details about autonomous probe networks; the GLACSWEB site includes a great deal of technical information, as well as fantastic photographs and videos from the 2003 trip to the glacier.

The GLACSWEB project is a test for expanded use of these probelet networks for ecosystem study, such as coastal and flood monitoring. The sensors are small and cheap enough for easy distribution, but smart enough to be able to respond to changing conditions (such as probes going offline or being moved). The GLACSWEB program isn't the only environmental sensor project around; we've covered other projects, as well.

(Via Smart Mobs)

The National Campaign Against Dirty Power has an interactive map showing the annual deaths per 100,000 adults attributable to the pollution coming from power plants. The statistics are based on research done for the EPA (PDF). Unsurprisingly, areas which rely heavily on coal power fare the worst.

The interactive map has a couple of key features. You can click on a state for specific information on emissions and health, as well as links to source data and policy recommendations. Some state maps include information for particular urban locations, such as Los Angeles and Houston. You can also see the effects of implementing the various proposed clean air plans, from the administration's "Clear Skies" program (which helps, but not by much) to "faithful implementation of the Clean Air Act" (which helps a bit more) to the "Clean Power Act" proposed by Senators Jeffords, Lieberman, and Collins (which has fairly dramatic results).

A PDF listing the key emissions provisions of each proposal can be found here.

Climatologists have long used ice core samples from Greenland to measure climate changes over the last hundred thousand years or so. But according to the BBC, a group of scientists under the banner of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, or EPICA, managed to pull a three kilometer-long ice core from Antarctica, revealing the pattern of climate change over the past 740,000 years. By studying gases trapped in the ice, these cores can tell us a great deal about changes to the temperature and atmospheric composition for much of the last million years.

The BBC article gives a good summary, but the article in the June 10 issue of Nature is available here (PDF). The article is brief, but informative. One of the interesting take-aways is the conclusion that the current "inter-glacial era" we live in is likely to go on, absent human disruption, for another 15,000 years, due to the position of the Earth's orbit. Most previous inter-glacials lasted no more than 10,000 years (and it's been about 12,000 years since the last ice age). The last time we saw a long-duration inter-glacial era was around 420,000 years ago; that one lasted for 28,000 years.

A more troubling bit of information from the research concerns CO2 levels. There is a very strong correlation of CO2 concentrations and average air temperature. At the peak of the previous similar inter-glacial period, CO2 concentrations increased to around 275-280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), up from a minimum of 200 ppmv in the previous glacial era. Measurements of CO2 concentrations on Mauna Loa from 1958 to 1998 show a growth of CO2 levels from 316 ppmv to 369 ppmv (it's a bit higher now). While we've known for awhile now that current CO2 levels are much higher than in the pre-industrial period, this is the first time we've been able to measure CO2 concentrations for such an extended period of time, and directly compare them to the last long-period inter-glacial era.

What would a positive environmental scenario for China look like? We've talked a bit here about the massive ecological challenges that China faces over the coming years. Population growth, economic growth, and a history of not paying sufficient attention to the environmental results of development result in a nightmarish combination, one not easily reshaped. In short, China is a mess. Nonetheless, Elizabeth Economy, author of The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China's Future, thinks that a more environmentally sustainable is possible.

In a brief essay for The Globalist web journal, Economy presents her take on a positive Chinese environmental scenario. (The article is excerpted from The River Runs Black; I'm definitely going to get my hands on a copy for review here.) The scenario is predicated upon a reasonable mix of solid economic growth, sound environmental policies, and supportive civil society; this seems to me to be the most likely combination leading to a sustainable China.

The article is brief, and the scenario suffers for it. The essay is more descriptive than analytical, providing a somewhat superficial overview of what the more environmentally sustainable China looks like without much discussion of how it got there. As a snapshot of a scenaric future, it's fine -- a plausible, reasonable vision of a functional, ecologically sound nation -- but it doesn't really tell us how to get there. Clearly I need to read the rest of the book to find what I'm looking for.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, funded by the National Science Foundtaion, announced today its new climate change model, CCSM3 (Community Climate System Model version 3), now the most accurate and detailed model of atmospheric systems available. The source code for CCSM3 is available for download, as well as component modules for the atmosphere, ice effects, the oceans, and more.

Although the model is publically available today, NCAR researchers have already been hard at work using it to model the effects of increased carbon dioxide.

CCSM3 shows global temperatures could rise by 2.6 degrees Celsius (4.7 degrees Fahrenheit) in a hypothetical scenario in which atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are suddenly doubled. That is significantly more than the 2 degree Celsius (3.6 degree Fahrenheit) increase that had been indicated by the preceding version of the model.

William Collins, an NCAR scientist who oversaw the development of CCSM3, says researchers have yet to pin down exactly what is making the model more sensitive to an increased level of carbon dioxide. But he says the model overall is significantly more accurate than its predecessor.

"This model makes substantial improvements in simulating atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial processes," Collins says. "It has done remarkably well in reproducing the climate of the last century, and we're now ready to begin using it to study the climate of the next century."

One of the standard global warming denial attempts is the claim that the problems are artifacts of poor models. As the above shows, the opposite is true. The better we understand the systems at work, the more we see the trouble we're in.

When one thinks of the city of Los Angeles, "environmentalism" doesn't immediately come to mind. LA is infamous for its suburban sprawl, automobile culture, and seemingly-constant layer of smog. But this doesn't mean that LA isn't trying to change. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest municipal utility in the nation, has an aggressive mix of rebate and efficiency programs for consumers (above and beyond those offered by the state of California), as well as programs for businesses.

But LAVoice.org points us to a recent announcement by LADWP requesting proposals for the provision of renewable energy to the utility. According to Solar Access News, LADWP is "seeking to acquire up to 1,320,000 MW-hours per year of renewable energy by the end of 2010," or 13 percent of its energy supply. This is a step towards the larger goal of 20 percent by 2017.

This LADWP announcement, while itself quite laudible, is actually part of a larger program already underway to shift Los Angeles towards much cleaner energy production and much more efficient energy use:

Since adopting the IRP [Integrated Resource Plan], LADWP has moved forward with a number of projects that will produce renewable energy, reduce emissions, and increase energy efficiency.

These include the 120-megawatt Pine Tree Wind project and an agreement to purchase 40 megawatts of power annually from a proposed BioConverter green waste digestion facility. In addition, LADWP has increased energy efficiency and decreased emissions in Los Angeles by "repowering" its aging, in-basin natural gas powered generating units with combined cycle generators and state-of-the-art emissions technology, resulting in over 75% emissions reductions.

Moreover, LADWP is administering a $150 million program to install rooftop solar photovoltaic systems throughout Los Angeles. The Department is also modernizing its hydroelectric facility in San Francisquito Canyon, and installed 50 microturbines at Lopez Canyon Landfill that convert methane gas into energy.

The geography of Los Angeles may never lend itself to totally clean air and high-density, high-efficiency communities. But programs like these are a welcome step towards making one of the largest (and historically one of the most environmentally unsound) urban areas in the country a much cleaner and greener place to live.

(Thanks, Mack Reed)

Aura, the third and final satellite in NASA's Earth Observing System series, will take off Monday or Tuesday, its launch delayed by at least 24 hours due to a problem with the rocket. The EOS satellites -- Terra, Aqua, and now Aura -- study the complex interaction between geophysical systems.

Aura is designed to help answer important questions about atmospheric change, with a particular focus on the ozone layer:

One question that researchers have asked is: Is the stratospheric ozone layer is recovering? International agreements, like the Montreal Protocol, have banned ozone destroying chemicals like Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), but scientists are unclear about the effectiveness of these treaties. Aura will accurately detect global levels of CFCs, and their byproducts, chlorine and bromine, which destroy the ozone layer.

Another question that researchers need more information to: What are the processes controlling air quality? Aura will help greatly to unravel some of these mysteries by tracking the sources and processes controlling global and regional air quality. When ozone exists in the lower atmosphere, the troposphere, it acts as an air pollutant. Gasoline and diesel engines give off gases in the summer that create ozone and smog. Aura will help scientists follow the sources of ozone and its precursors.

Finally, Aura will offer insights into the question: How is the Earth's climate changing? As the composition of Earth's atmosphere changes, so does its ability to absorb, reflect and retain solar energy. Greenhouse gases, including water vapor, trap heat in the atmosphere. Airborne aerosols from human and natural sources absorb or reflect solar energy based on color, shape, size, and substance. The impact of aerosols, tropospheric ozone and upper tropospheric water vapor on Earth's climate remains largely un-quantified, but now Aura will have the unique ability to monitor these agents.

One way that Aura will help us better understand ozone and air pollution is with the resolution of its Ozone Monitoring Instrument. Previous satellites used to monitor ozone could only resolve a regional scale of about 50x200 miles. Aura's OMI will resolve down to 8x8 miles, sufficient to monitor a single urban center. This will greatly increase the sophistication of our understanding of how local air pollution develops, propagates, and changes.

The three EOS satellites will soon form the core of the "A-Train" set of environmental orbiters, which will work together to study the planet. The next in the series is a Cloud-Aerosol satellite intended specifically to better understand the role of cloud formation in climate change.