Earth Hour

Held each year at 8:30pm on the last Saturday in March, Earth Hour is a WWF initiative which symbolises the collective power of individuals, businesses and governments to reduce our environmental impact on this one and only planet we call home.

From it's beginnings in one city in one country - Sydney - Earth Hour has grown to millions of people in over 5000 cities across 135 countries, a truly global community committed to creating a more sustainable planet.



Want to get involved?

The first step is signing up to show your support.

Next step, planning something fun for the evening! In 2012 we're encouraging communities around Australia to throw a local "Earth Hour Unplugged" event, a great way to celebrate the night and help raise funds for WWF. Click here to find out more.

Finally, don't forget to check out this year's WWF Earth Hour Awards - celebrating grassroots community action by the people for the planet.

At the end of the day, Earth Hour is not about saving an hour’s electricity, it’s about uniting people to protect the planet.  And the best thing? Each one of us can be a part of it.

Source:  http://www.wwf.org.au/earthhour/

Drought improves in Texas, worsens in western U.S.

Drought improves in Texas, worsens in western U.S.

Thu Feb 23, 2012 1:55pm EST

* Western U.S. sees drought spread as Texas improves
* Northern Plains eyed with concern, moisture needed
By Carey Gillam
Feb 23(Reuters) - Drought kept a tight grip on large sections of the United States, but recent rains put some of the most hard-hit areas on the road to recovery, a report from climate experts said Thursday.
Recent rains and snowfall boosted soil moisture and started to replenish ground water supplies in key areas of the U.S. South that suffered historic drought in 2011.
"It's been pretty darn wet, the last 90 days ... we've seen improvements," said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the University of Nebraska's Drought Mitigation Center. "It's been very unexpected but very welcomed."
Moisture has been especially critical for Texas, and the state's level of drought saw notable improvement over the last week, according to the Drought Monitor, a weekly report on drought throughout the country compiled by U.S. climate experts.
In Texas, the levels of exceptional drought - the highest measurement - fell to 13.93 percent of the state from 20.41 percent in the latest reporting week, ended Feb. 21. Severe or worse drought levels dropped to 67.48 percent from 76.46 percent.
Texas is trying to emerge from a year that saw records shattered for both high heat and lack of moisture. The one-year period between Nov. 1, 2010, and Oct. 31, 2011, was the driest in the state's history, and the three-month period of June to August in Texas was the hottest ever reported by any state in U.S. history, according to state and federal climate experts.
Conditions grew more dire in the west, however. California saw moderate or worse drought rise to 67.76 percent of the state, up from 59.06 percent in the latest reporting week.
Nevada had 81.80 percent of the state rated in moderate or worse drought, up from 81.59 percent the prior week. Arizona saw moderate drought rise to 86.92 percent of the state from 80.56 percent. And New Mexico also saw drought spread.
Another area of concern is the upper Midwest and Northern Plains, where spring planting of corn, soybeans and wheat is set to start soon. Soil moisture levels need boosting to ensure good production potential for the key U.S. crops.
Iowa, the largest U.S. corn and soybean producting state has about 20 percent of the state currently suffering moderate drought.
As temperatures continue to warm with the end of winter, precipitation will be needed.
"Spring is right on the doorstop, and the temperatures are going to ramp back up," said Svoboda. (Reporting by Carey Gillam)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/23/us-drought-idUSL2E8DNAN820120223

2012 minimum global sea ice area

We have a pretty accurate 2D view of the Arctic sea ice, and some clues with regards to its third dimension: thickness. It's the thickness of the ice that determines the influence of atmospheric conditions on the ice pack, and is thus a crucial factor in the amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean during any given time, especially towards the end of the melting season. But also during the freezing season sea ice thickness plays an important role as an intermediary between sea surface and atmosphere. The thinner the ice is, the more heat and moisture can be transferred from one to the other, which in turn influences atmospheric patterns.

image on the top right, courtesy of NSIDC

The importance of accurate sea ice thickness measurements is not lost on the scientific community. We've had ICESat, we eagerly await the end of the calibration phase of the CryoSat-2 mission, and in the meantime another handy tool for measuring ice thickness has been devised by scientists from the University of Hamburg, using a passive microwave sensor aboard the ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite.

images retrieved from the SMOSIce wiki (with permission of L. Kaleschke)

The news was announced two months ago in an ESA press release, but has now been followed up by a research paper that has just been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters: Kaleschke, L., X. Tian-Kunze, N. Maaß, M. Mäkynen, and M. Drusch (2012), Sea ice thickness retrieval from SMOS brightness temperatures during the Arctic freeze-up period.
From the abstract:

Read More: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/

El Niño / La Niña to become more dominant in New Zealand with climate change

7 February 2012

El Niño and La Niña weather patterns will become even more dominant in New Zealand with climate change, according to research from The University of Auckland published in Nature Climate Change.

“As the world continues to warm New Zealand is likely to experience the impacts of El Niño and La Niño events with comparable intensity and frequency to what we have seen over the last three decades, and possibly more so,” says lead researcher Dr Anthony Fowler from the School of Environment. “This means that we should anticipate more extreme events, such as flooding and droughts, in the regions affected by these weather patterns.”

In New Zealand, El Niño events usually bring more cool south-westerly winds. The whole country tends to be relatively cool with associated droughts in sheltered eastern areas of both islands. The winds reverse with La Niñas. Moisture laden air from the sub tropics elevates temperatures, especially in the North Island, and brings higher rainfall to much of the country, sometimes with associated floods.

“The El Niño / La Niña phenomenon has been referred to as the heartbeat of the world,” Dr Fowler says. “After the seasonal cycle and monsoons, it’s the most important source of year-on-year climate variation. Strong events often cause incredible damage and affect hundreds of millions of people around the world. El Niños, in particular, have been responsible for some of the devastating 20th century droughts in Australian, floods in South America, and failure of the monsoons in India.”

“To date the global climate models used to ’predict’ the future have been unable to give us a clear picture of what will happen with El Niño and La Niña as the world warms,” he says. “But understanding the phenomenon is critical to learning what climate change will mean for the world’s population.”

“The premise of our work is that we know that the world has warmed over the last few centuries and we can look back to see what has happened with El Niño / La Niña over that time. By studying how the phenomenon has behaved in the past we can anticipate what might plausibly happen in the future. This should result in more informed scenarios of future regional climate change.”
The scientists studied the climate record in kauri tree rings dating back to AD 1300. “Kauri trees are quite sensitive to these weather patterns,” Dr Fowler explains. “During El Niño events they grow rapidly and have wide tree rings whereas during La Niña events they grow more slowly and have narrow rings.” The rings can be accurately dated, providing a detailed record of when El Niño and La Niña events have occurred.

"Notably wide and narrow kauri tree rings have become more frequent as the world has warmed over the last few centuries. We infer from this that El Niño and La Niña events become more frequent or intense as the world warms, or that New Zealand's climate becomes more strongly influenced by such events. Either possibility suggests that droughts and floods related to El Niños and La Niñas will continue to significantly affect New Zealand, and may well become more intense.”

Dr Fowler says that stitching data together from living trees and logged wood, to create a continuous record of the last 700 years, was a significant achievement for the research team. He notes the irony in one form of environmental damage yielding clues about another. “Kauri logging in the 19th and early 20th century devastated the landscape,” he says. “But a lot of the wood that was cut down can still be found in the weatherboards of our houses and provided important data for our research.”
The next phase of the research, which is almost complete, involves adding data from kauri trees preserved in swamps to extend the record back almost 4,000 years before present. This longer record may help to answer the outstanding question of whether the El Niño / La Niña activity in the 20th century is the most intense ever seen – as suggested by currently available records – or a return to conditions that have occurred in the past.
The current work was funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology and a Marsden grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand.

Source:http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/news/template/news_item.jsp?cid=464089

Chile On Alert As Prison Rats Spread Hantavirus

Chile has declared a public health alert with a hantavirus outbreak killing three people and infecting 10 others.
Health Minister Jaime Manalich blames wildfires in the southern Bio Bio and Araucania regions for driving rats from their normal habitat into places where people live.
The outbreak began in the El Manzano prison, where two inmates died and 10 others are sick. Authorities learned on Sunday that two prison workers have symptoms, and a person camping outside Concepcion died of the virus.
Hantavirus is not contagious; it's spread by exposure to rat droppings and urine. Once it reaches the lungs, the chance of survival is 50 percent. The minister told Radio Cooperativa Monday this may be the start of a much wider problem.

Source: http://news.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=215632

Bombshell Study: High Methane Emissions Measured Over Gas Field “May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas”

Air sampling by NOAA over Colorado Finds 4% Methane Leakage, More Than Double Industry Claims

Natural-gas operations could release far more methane into the atmosphere than previously thought. [Source: Nature]

How much methane leaks during the entire lifecycle of unconventional gas has emerged as a key question in the fracking debate.  Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4).  And methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than (CO2), which is released when any hydrocarbon, like natural gas, is burned.
Even without a high-leakage rate for shale gas, we know that “Absent a Serious Price for Global Warming Pollution, Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere.”
But the leakage rate does matter.  A major 2011 study by Tom Wigley of the Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) concluded:

The most important result, however, in accord with the above authors, is that, unless leakage rates for new methane can be kept below 2%, substituting gas for coal is not an effective means for reducing the magnitude of future climate change.

The industry has tended kept most of the data secret while downplaying the leakage issue.  Yet I know of no independent analysis that finds a rate below 2%, including one by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the DOE’s premier fossil fuel lab.
Now, as the journal Nature reports, we finally have some actual air sampling measurements, and they appear to confirm the higher estimates put forward by Cornell professor Robert Howarth:

When US government scientists began sampling the air from a tower north of Denver, Colorado, they expected urban smog — but not strong whiffs of what looked like natural gas. They eventually linked the mysterious pollution to a nearby natural-gas field, and their investigation has now produced the first hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change.
Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry. And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels.

Methane is 25 times  more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over 100 year — but it is 100 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over two decades.

Source:http://thinkprogress.org/romm/issue/?mobile=nc