Wednesday 1 July 2015

The Dying Earth - 06/30/2015

Thawing Permafrost -- Changing Planet



Because of a warming atmosphere, permafrost -- the frozen ground that covers the top of the world -- has been thawing rapidly over the last three decades. But there is cause for concern beyond the far north, because the carbon released from thawing permafrost could raise global temperatures even higher. 


The Changing Planet series explores the impact that climate change is having on our planet, and is provided by the National Science Foundation (http://science360.gov/series/Changing...) & NBC Learn (http://www.nbclearn.com/changingplanet

This is mainstream media - NBC!

A temperature rise that could cause irreversible and potentially catastrophic 
damage to human civilization is practically inevitable, according to rising chatter 
among experts in the lead up to a year of key negotiations on a new climate change global accord.

World leaders have voluntarily committed to limit warming by the end of the century
 to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level, a 
threshold beyond which, scientists argue, severe drought, rising seas and 
supercharged storms as well as food and water security become routine challenges.

Given the world's historic emissions combined with a continued reliance on fossil
 fuels to power humanity for the foreseeable future, limiting the increase to 
2 degrees Celsius is all but impossible, according to David Victor, a professor of 
international relations and an expert on climate change policy at the University of 
California, San Diego.

"There is no scenario by which any accord that's realistic on this planet is going to 
get us to 2 degrees because the trajectory on emissions right now is way above 
2 degrees," he told NBC News.

In recent months, this sentiment has been echoed and reinforced by scientists and 
policy analysts throughout the climate and environmental communities. And there's
 debate over whether the 2-degree target should be ditched altogether in favor of a 
strategy that focuses on attainable, albeit lofty goals built from the ground up.

"The 2-degree target is a great idea," Granger Morgan, a professor of engineering 
and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told NBC News. "But 
we have been so slow in doing anything much about controlling emissions that the 
accumulative effects are building up on us and … I just do not see the political will 
to limit emissions to the degree that will be needed to stay below 2 degrees."

Nevertheless, he added, the world urgently needs to get serious about tackling 
climate change "because otherwise it is going to be much worse."







Major Midwest flood risk underestimated by as much as five feet, study find



High-water marks inching higher as global warming makes megafloods more common

As floodwaters surge along major rivers in the midwestern United States, a new study from Washington University in St. Louis suggests federal agencies are underestimating historic 100-year flood levels on these rivers by as much as five feet, a miscalculation that has serious implications for future flood risks, flood insurance and business development in an expanding floodplain.

Wildfires are already raging — and it's about to get a whole lot worse




Summer just started but wildfires are already ravaging the dried-out West coast.

Since the beginning of June, nearly 300 fires have burned in Alaska, with a total of 1.1 million acres already destroyed just one month into the fire season. Right now, a fire in the Galena Zone area of Alaska has burned through 100,000 acres.

Alaska isn't alone.

Active wildfires are consuming approximately 31,559 acres in the San Bernardino National Forest in California, 17,787 acres in Nevada, and another 15,401 acres in New Mexico, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group.

That's a total of 100 square miles of wildfires currently burning, and that's just three examples.



Saskatchewan wildfires have forced thousands from their homes and spread smoke you can see from space







Emergency shelters already full in Prince Albert, Saskatoon

About sixteen hundred evacuees were taking shelter in Regina late Tuesday, after wildfires in northern Saskatchewan forced them from their homes.

Across the province, 4,000 were expected to be registered with Red Cross by Tuesday night.

Image: Unusually large number of fires across Alaska

Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team



The fire situation in Alaska is very dynamic at this time. As of June 29, 2015, there are 314 active fires in the State. Many fires in remote areas are unstaffed. The fire summary for Alaska is as follows: 2 new fires with 11 acres burned, 42 staffed fires with 516,089 acres burned, and 271 monitored fires with 1,263,297 acres burned.

For a list of all the different Alaska fires visit: inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/4314/
This year has seen an unusually high number of wildfires burning simultaneously across the tundra and forests of Alaska, and an exceptionally large number of homes and buildings have been damaged or threatened by the flames so far this year. Wildfires are a common occurrence in the state, but this year's fires started earlier than normal and have escalated quickly. A light winter snowpack and little rain in the spring left dry ground particularly vulnerable to fires that break out when lightning strikes.


This natural-color satellite image was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on June 25, 2015. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red.






Residents in the community of Wenatchee, Washington returned to their burned out homes Tuesday after a wildfire sent them fleeing from their neighborhood last 



From just across the Wenatchee River, Dominick Bonny watched a whole neighborhood in his central Washington town burn as a wildfire destroyed two dozen homes and forced hundreds to flee.

"With the wind blowing away from us, it was like we were watching a natural disaster within arm's reach," he said.


The wildfires hit parts of central and eastern Washington over the weekend as the state is struggling with a severe drought. Mountain snowpack is at extremely low levels, and about one-fifth of the state's rivers and streams are at record low levels.

Record highs set in the U.S West in June 2015. These locations tied or broke their all-time June record highs. Graphic: The Weather Channel
A torrid heat wave is easing a bit, but will kick into high gear yet again later this week into the July 4th holiday weekend, and possibly beyond.

June record highs have been broken in at least 31 cities in the Northwest, five of which appear to have tied or broken their all-time record highs. The extreme heat is likely to last into next week and may end up breaking records for longevity as well.

An unofficial weather station located in Hell's Canyon along the Oregon/Idaho border (Pittsburg Landing) recorded an incredible 116 degrees for a high Sunday.

The culprit in this hot setup is a dome of high pressure aloft, surging northwestward to encompass a large area of the western states. The center of this high will shift around through the week ahead, but overall it will remain a dominant feature.

This will allow the sizzling late-June and early-July sun to send temperatures soaring not simply in the typically hot Desert Southwest, but also locations well to the north including the Pacific Northwest, interior Northwest, and northern Rockies.

Highs well into the 90s and triple digits are expected in many lower-elevation locations west of the Continental Divide and inland from the Pacific Coast.

This includes much of Nevada, California's Central Valley, the Salt Lake Valley, Idaho's Snake River Plain, much of Oregon's lower elevations east of the immediate coast, and areas to the east of the Cascades in Washington State.

In particular, parts of the Columbia Basin and lower Snake River Valley will see particularly extreme and persistent heat. This includes cities such as Yakima, Kennewick and Walla Walla in Washington as well as Lewiston, Idaho, as noted in the records below. Temperatures will get knocked down a bit into the 90s or low 100s to start the new workweek, but will then surge towards the middle or upper 100s again late in the week.

The extreme heat has even surged north into Canada. Cranbrook, in far southeast British Columbia at an elevation of about 3,000 feet, set a new all-time record high of 98 degrees (36.8 degrees Celsius) Sunday, according to The Weather Network.

Even Revelstoke, British Columbia – 130 miles north of the U.S. border, about 1,500 feet above sea level and better known for skiing – reached an amazing 103 degrees (39.5 degrees Celsius) Sunday.



Cawildfirejune30

The West is baking under a heat dome that has sent temperatures soaring to historically high levels, further drying out soils and priming the region for fast-spreading wildfires. The heat wave is noteworthy for its severity, extent and duration.

During the past seven days alone, 465 warm temperature records have been set or tied across the country, mainly in the West, with 49 monthly warm temperature records set or tied, according to the National Center for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina.


These numbers are rising by the hour as the blistering heat wave continues from interior areas of southern California, across the barren Nevada and Utah deserts, northward into western Montana, and west from there toward Washington and Oregon.


Strong winds left thousands across Arizona without power on Saturday June 27th. Triple-digit heat with no air conditioning left many in danger.

Radar update: Outflow boundary moving North bringing blowing dust, reduced visibiities

AZ Dust Storm



Spain and Portugal both issued weather alerts Monday, advising residents to take extra care as temperatures soared above 40 C (104 F) in some southern areas.

The Iberian Peninsula was sweltering in a heat wave brought on by a mass of hot air flowing north from Africa to Europe in recent days, though recorded temperatures fell shy of the day's forecast of a maximum 44 C (111.2 F).
With the temperature in Cordoba hitting 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 Fahrenheit), Spanish authorities placed the southern city on alert due to "extreme risks" from the heat. People across the southern half of Spain flocked to beaches, swimming pools and fountains.

In Portugal, a high of 37 C (98.6 F) was recorded in the eastern city of Beja, while the capital, Lisbon, sweltered in 35 C (95 F) heat. Portugal's General Directorate for Health recommended staying out of the sun between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.



Why is the UK having a heatwave and how long will it last?






Europe Heat Wave Upper-Air Pattern

Heat records are already being toppled in parts of Spain.

Madrid (central Madrid) set a new June record high for the second day in a row Monday, reaching 39.7 degrees Celsius -- 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit -- edging out their previous June record of 39.1 degrees Celsius set Sunday.

Monday afternoon, Madrid's Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport pushed up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 F), a first for June in records dating to 1945. According to AEMet, four other locations in Spain with records dating to at least the 1950s tied or set new June heat records Monday.

Cordoba, in southern Spain, reached a sizzling 43.7 degrees Celsius Sunday (110.7ºF).

Highs in parts of southern France topped out in the 100s on Tuesday. Cazaux, France, hit 104 degrees on Tuesday 
As Arctic Warms, Shrinking Ice Brings Unwelcome Surprises for Drillers,Shippers

David Barber is a fascinating speaker and great personality in the arctic ice world.




His TED talk here dovetails nicely with the Stanford Research on Extreme weather profiled today, and yesterday’s piece on the risks of new Arctic Drilling.

If you are pressed for time, start at 9:14 for a paradoxical surprise – decrease in sea ice coincides with increase in hazards, due to new kinds of very unpredictable ice dynamics. Ironic and very significant for those interested in exploiting the melting Arctic, no?

At 11:05 there is a discussion of arctic effects on global jet stream circulation and weather patterns.




A sea star dying of wasting syndrome, May 2015. Photo: Molly Matalon and Damien Maloney

As the Wasting has persisted, stars have disappeared almost completely in many locations. In others, stars survived a brush with the epidemic and seemed to recover, as if having developed immunity—only to be wiped out months later. Raimondi estimates that between 1 and 10 million stars have died so far. In the intertidal region alone, the mortality rate averages about 75 percent. But smaller sea stars have been observed at a number of sites in which the larger ones have vanished.



The Newport-Inglewood fault was responsible for the 4.9 magnitude Inglewood earthquake in 1920 and the 6.4 magnitude Long Beach earthquake in 1933. (Photo credit: ucsb.edu / Sonia Fernandez)

An American geologist has discovered high levels of the explosive helium-3 leaking from the Southern California’s earthquake fault zone which appeared deeper and more significant than previously thought , a new study shows.

UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles has found that high levels of helium-3 (3He) have been leaking across a 30-mile stretch of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. He presented his findings in the a new study recently published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (G-Cubed), a journal of the American Geophysical Union and the Geochemical Society





The boss of Nestlé Waters has said the company wants to increase the amount of water it bottles in California despite a devastating drought across the state that has triggered demonstrations at the corporation’s bottling plant. Tim Brown, chief executive of Nestlé Waters North America, said the company would “absolutely not” stop bottling in California and would actually like to “increase” the amount of ground source water it uses. “The fact is, if I stop bottling water tomorrow, people would buy another brand of bottled water,” Brown said in a discussion with a Nasa hydrologist on 89.3 KPCC radio. “People need to hydrate. As the second largest bottler in the state, we’re filling a role many others are filling. It’s driven by consumer demand, it’s driven by an on-the-go society that needs to hydrate. Frankly, we’re very happy they are doing it in a healthier way.”





Tropical Cyclone Raquel has formed in the south-west Pacific near the Solomon Islands, triggering the earliest cyclone warning on record issued for the Queensland zone.

"Certainly it's a unique scenario," Jess Carey, a spokesman from the bureau's Queensland office, said. "Since we've been tracking cyclones with satellite-based technology, we haven't seen one in July."

The storm became a category 1 cyclone early on Wednesday morning and had a central pressure of 999 hPa about 410 km north of  the Solomon Islands' capital of Honiara as of just before 5am, AEST, the Bureau of Meteorology said. It is forecast to strengthen to a category 2 system on Thursday.



Here is Qld's most recent drought declaration map issued on June 23rd 2015. No change over last month.







When Typhoon Ketsana struck Manila in 2009, causing $1.09bn in damage and 747 deaths, it captured headlines and a flurry of emergency aid. But extreme flooding now appears to be the new normal in the Philippines, which was battered by so many storms last year that they exceeded the letters in the alphabet. Climate change and environmental degradation have increased the frequency of flooding along the Marikina and Nagka rivers, with evacuations disrupting daily life in the capital for months of what's become an annual flood season. 

As the peak of the rainy season approaches, we spoke with Manuel A Abinales, founder and president of aid organization Buklod Tao, who lives and works in this community, helping to respond quickly when river levels rise. For local residents like Tony Iburan, life has become increasingly difficult and dangerous as the water slowly eats away at the community.



Early season flooding has lead to speculation of an excess monsoon, but is that realistic?

In the space of six days, Mumbai received all the rain it might expect for June. To be more precise, one and a half times as much, and it caused deep flooding.

In fact, since the monsoon burst with a vengeance, on June 12, the Indian city has collected over twice the expected June rainfall.

Gujarat flooded just as suddenly from the same aggressive surge of the western arm of the monsoon and the floods in the west are still receding.

After a slow start, the monsoon rain seemed promising. After arriving days late in the south, it then rushed across all of India and crossed into Pakistan, catching up with itself and then going ahead of schedule, by over two weeks.
West Rajasthan was declared in monsoon on June 26, when this westernmost state would normally have to wait until July 15.

All this has prompted speculation that the official forecast of a deficient monsoon season must be wrong.

This, however, is man's short-term perception. Since June 27. there has been a major reduction in general rain.

The official forecast from the Indian Meteorological Department, for the whole season, suggests at best, 92 per cent of average, for the whole country.
As of June 29, only four states were showing as deficient and 13 quoted as in "excess" of the monsoon norm.

The start of July, however, looks generally drier than average, although there will be plenty of thunderstorms around.


If, at the end of the season, the rains have not recovered to at least normal, then the monsoon will be declared as "deficient," as is currently expected




Wildfires in central Washington State have torched about 3,000 acres, or four square miles, around the town of Wenatchee. At least 24 homes and four local businesses have been burned, but no serious injuries have been reported.

Japan on Volcano Alert after Mt. Hakone Eruption




Fresh layers of volcanic ash were confirmed near a newly found vent in the Owakudani valley on Tuesday morning. The Owakudani valley is a part of the range of Mount Hakone.

The Meteorological Agency has raised the eruption-alert level from 2 to 3 on its scale of 5. It is cautioning against a possible eruption that may affect a residential area near Owakudani.



View gallery
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This is the first of several posts I will do on Global Collapse. I am not saying, right here anyway, that civilization as we know it will collapse, but I am asking the question: “Can collapse be avoided?” This post will deal with global warming and the associated climate change.



Screenshot from YouTube video by MNS GOV.UA


A wall of smoke was seen rising over the exclusion zone around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Tuesday as Ukrainian emergency services scrambled helicopters to extinguish a wildfire.

Some 130 hectares of grassland is ablaze, emergency service officials say.



Red and black mangrove are shown in this May 21, 2015 handout photo provided by Miami-Dade County June 29, 2105, among debris from shoreline cleared for land to be used for the 2016 Miami International Boat Show in Miami, Florida.  REUTERS/Miami-Dade County/Handout via Reuters

New revelations that a long strip of protected mangrove trees were illegally razed amid preparations for the 2016 Miami International Boat Show has outraged Florida environmentalists.


The lost trees, critical to the marine ecosystem, were hacked away in mid-May by a Miami city contractor in advance of the five-day show expected to draw about 100,000 attendees and 1,500 boats.



Researchers from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks and the U.S. Geological Survey have published some staggering numbers about Alaska’s inland glaciers: They’re disappearing so fast that their collective meltwater could soak the entire state, one foot deep every seven years. While that thought conjures up powerful images of a soggy tundra, in reality, 75 gigatons—FYI, one gigaton is one billion tons—of ice go into the oceans, where they raise global sea levels by two-tenths of a millimeter every year.


Just 0.008 inches annually may seem like a drop in the bucket, but it’s a major contribution for such a small source. Alaska has 20 times fewer ice-covered areas than Greenland, but the state’s melting made up one-third of global ice sheet loss between 2005 and 2010. 





Investigators Vladimir Romanovsky and Reginald Muskett at the GI Permafrost Laboratory are conducting a Satellite Reconnaissance Survey of the Selawick region. The composite image shows a possible ground-disturbance feature about 11 miles east of the Selawik Airfield. The feature itself is about 33 (inner diameter) to 130 (outer diameter) feet across. Ground truth is needed! Do you have any ground photos of this feature? If so we would be very grateful if you would share them with us. For your assistance we would give you prominent acknowledgement in reports to NASA and in future science publications associated with this project.

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