Explaining Extreme Events of 2013

A report released today investigates the causes of a wide variety of extreme weather and climate events from around the world in 2013. Published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, "Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective (link is external)" addresses the causes of 16 individual extreme events that occurred on four continents in 2013. NOAA scientists served as three of the four lead editors on the report.

Of the five heat waves studied in the report, human-caused climate change was found to have clearly increased the severity and likelihood of those events. On the other hand, for other events examined like droughts, heavy rain events, and storms, fingerprinting the influence of human activity was more challenging. Human influence on these kinds of events—primarily through the burning of fossil fuels—was sometimes evident, but often less clear, suggesting natural factors played a far more dominant role.

"This annual report contributes to a growing field of science which helps communities, businesses and nations alike understand the impacts of natural and human-caused climate change," said Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D., director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. "The science remains challenging, but the environmental intelligence it yields to decision makers is invaluable and the demand is ever-growing."

Confidence in the role of climate change about any one event is increased when multiple groups using independent methods come to similar conclusions. For example, in this report, five independent research teams looked at specific factors related to the record heat in Australia in 2013. Each consistently found that human-caused climate change increased the likelihood and severity of that event. However, for the California drought, which was investigated by three teams from the United States, human factors were found not to have influenced the lack of rainfall. One team found evidence that atmospheric pressure patterns increased due to human causes, but the influence on the California drought remains uncertain.

When human influence for an event cannot be conclusively identified with the scientific tools available today, this means that if there is a human contribution, it cannot be distinguished from natural climate variability.

"There is great scientific value in having multiple studies analyze the same extreme event to determine the underlying factors that may have influenced it," said Stephanie C. Herring, PhD, lead editor for the report at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. "Results from this report not only add to our body of knowledge about what drives extreme events, but what the odds are of these events happening again—and to what severity."

The report was edited by Herring, along with Martin P. Hoerling, NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory; Thomas Peterson, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, and Peter A. Stott, UK Met Office Hadley Centre and written by 92 scientists from 14 countries. View the full report online (link is external).

Also, view the slides for the media briefing on the "Explaining Extreme Events of 2013 from a Climate Perspective" report. More

 

© 2014

Karachi thirsts for a water supply

KARACHI: On the outskirts of the slums of Pakistan’s biggest city, protesters burning tires and throwing stones have what sounds like a simple demand: They want water at least once a week.

In Karachi people go days without getting water from city trucks, sometimes forcing them to use groundwater contaminated with salt. A recent drought has only made the problem worse. And as the city of roughly 18 million people rapidly grows, the water shortages are only expected to get worse.

“During the last three months they haven’t supplied a single drop of water in my neighbourhood,” protester Yasmeen Islam said. “It doesn’t make us happy to come on the roads to protest but we have no choice anymore.”

Karachi gets most of its water from the Indus River — about 550 million gallons per day — and another 100 million gallons from the Hub Dam that is supplied by water from neighbouring Balochistan province. But in recent years, drought has hurt the city’s supply.

Misbah Fareed, a senior official with the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board that runs the city’s water supplies, said that only meets about half the city’s needs — 1.2 billion gallons a day.

Karachi’s water distribution network has exacerbated the problem by forcing much of the city to get its water through tankers instead of directly from pipes. The Karachi Water and Sewerage Board operates 12 water hydrants around the city where tankers fill up and then distribute. Even people in the richest areas of the city get their water through tankers that come a few times a week to fill up underground cisterns.

But criminals have illegally tapped into the city’s water pipes and set up their own distribution points where they siphon off water and sell it.

“I personally know some people previously associated with drug mafias who now switched to the water tanker business,” Fareed said. “Just imagine how lucrative the business is.”

Other areas of Pakistan pump massive amounts of groundwater. But in the coastal city of Karachi, the underground water is too salty to drink. Many people have pumps but they use the water for things such as showering or washing clothes.

The water shortage is exacerbated by Karachi’s massive population. Pakistani military operations and American drone strikes in the northern tribal regions, as well as natural disasters such as flooding and earthquakes, have pushed people toward a city long seen as the economic heart of Pakistan.

The city is trying to increase the amount of water it gets from the Indus River by building another canal — dubbed the K4 project. But even if they were to get political approval from the capital to take more water from the river, it would take a minimum of four years to build.

But analysts say supply isn’t the only problem. Farhan Anwar, who runs an organisation called Sustainable Initiatives in Karachi, said the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board is horribly overstaffed and many of those are political appointees. The cost for water is also very low and the agency doesn’t collect all that it’s due, Anwar said. That’s made it difficult to upgrade the ageing pipes the system does have, meaning contamination and leakages are common.

Meanwhile, Karachi residents have to spend more money or walk further and further to get water. One elderly resident Aisha Saleem said in recent months even the little water they get from the water board is salty.

“Women and kids have to go miles by foot and carry drinking water every day,” she said More

 

© 2014

Challenge in Sao Paulo: Overcoming Water Scarcity in South America’s Largest City

Last March, one of Brazil’s most important newspapers, O Estado de S. Paulo, published a version of the article below, which summarizes the Conservancy’s efforts to help secure Sao Paulo’s water supply. It is translated and reprinted here with permission.

By João Campari and Samuel Barrêto, The Nature Conservancy

The inhabitants of Sao Paulo have been dealing with discouraging images of cracked riverbeds where they used to see flowing water, making this temperate part of Brazil look more like the country’s semi-arid region. Unfortunately, these stark images show the worsening struggles of the Cantareira system, one of the greatest water supply systems in the world.

Right now, the Cantareira’s reservoirs — responsible for providing water for more than 12 million inhabitants of the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region (RMSP) and Campinas — are operating at less than 15% capacity*, the lowest level recorded since the Cantareira’s creation in the early 1970s.

The images, the symbol of the current crisis, show that water doesn’t really come from the taps in our houses. It comes from nature, and in Sao Paulo much of that nature is the Atlantic Forest. While water rationing gets peoples’ attention and is one of the necessary responses to water scarcity, rationing alone is not enough to solve the long-term problem of securing lasting access to fresh water.

We must look beyond the tap and work to take care of our water supplies at their sources. We need a systemic response for the management of watersheds to restore the sources of our water that have been degraded, polluted and deforested. Forests are very important for healthy fresh water supplies. Unfortunately, the Cantareira system alone has lost 70% of its original forest cover, aggravating the sedimentation of rivers and dams, and decreasing their ability to supply water.The degradation of native vegetation also worsens the effects of erosion and drought.

The interaction of all these factors — deforestation, sedimentation, erosion and drought — leads to a situation of extreme risk and represents an environmental, social and economic threat not just to Sao Paulo, but to the entire country of Brazil. The Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region and Campinas together are responsible for more then 22% of the country’s GDP. Therefore, it is a priority to create a strong and strategic response to the increasing and urgent problems of water quantity, quality, access and supply for urban centers.

Protecting Water Supplies at their Sources

We must go beyond conventional interventions, such as engineering works — more dams or aqueducts are not the answer. Wider, systemic responses are necessary, and the responsibility to act is not limited to the government. We all need water and it is the shared responsibility of businesses, communities and civil society as a whole to search for solutions together. The government’s role is to foster and implement multiple solutions that reach multiple stakeholders at once.

The Conservancy’s work shows that one of the highest priorities for securing Sao Paulo’s water supplies is strengthening the Cantareira system’s “green infrastructure” by restoring the degraded forests of the Atlantic Forest, as well as conserving existing forest remnants. Such initiatives ensure the health of a watershed. This type of solution, when well managed, minimizes the risk of extreme events and reduces the vulnerability of populations to floods and prolonged droughts. Healthy forests also store water and reduce erosion and provide environmental services of water regulation and security to the population.

New York City illustrates this equation quite clearly. Decades ago, the city’s administration compared the costs of both natural and built infrastructure for protecting and providing water. Preserving the forests that were source of the city’s drinking water cost US $1 to 1.5 billion over 10 years. That amount was seven times lessthan the estimated US $6 to 8 billion needed to build a traditional, engineered water treatment and distribution network. (That amount doesn’t include the additional and ongoing operational and maintenance costs of $300 to $500 million a year that would have been necessary.) Obviously, nature was the better buy for the people of New York.

It is something for Sao Paulo to consider. A recent study by the Conservancy showed that restoring about 35,000 acres of deforested areas and preventing erosion on 5000 acres within the basins of the Piracicaba, Capivari, Jundiaí and Alto Tietê rivers would decrease the level of sediments that clog the rivers by 50%. Reducing erosion would increase the capacity of water reservoirs and simultaneously decrease the cost of treatment for the removal of sediments.

What the Conservancy is doing in Sao Paulo

To help accomplish restoration goals in the lands around Sao Paulo’s Cantareira system, the Conservancy-led Water Producers Project provides payments to farmers and ranchers who conserve forests on properties that are part of the watershed that feeds the Cantareira reservoirs. This payment-for-environmental-services program recognizes and compensates landowners for the water-producing value their lands provide.

The Conservancy also leads the Water for Sao Paulo Movement. This initiative fosters conversation and working relationships between different stakeholders and focuses on the importance of both water conservation and nature-based solutions for securing the water supply of the region. Because healthy forests are so important for healthy rivers and water supplies, Water for Sao Paulo seeks to restore degraded forests near the urban area.

Finally, Sao Paulo must strengthen the existing Watersheds Committees. Created by the Brazilian Legislature, Watersheds Committees discuss and make decisions about the use of water from specific river basins and are some of the most important collaborations for achieving a balance between water supply and demand.Committees include representatives of local governments, water supply companies and civil society, who are responsible for tasks such as approving water management plans, defining actions for conservation of biodiversity and mediating conflicts about the use of water resources. There are more than 200 of these groups in Brazil.

The current crisis in the Cantareira system is both a challenge and an opportunity to learn from the past and make better decisions for the future. If we have the discernment to act in a systemic way and the political and institutional capacity for change, we will be able to reduce the risks of a permanent cycle of water shortage. In addition to this, we have the opportunity to show how healthy watersheds contribute to water security, which is indispensable for Sao Paulo’s social and economic stability into the future.

To learn more about how the Conservancy is helping to secure Brazil’s water supplies, please visit Where Does Your Water Come From?

*Since this article was published in March, the need for concerted action in Sao Paulo has become even more urgent. The level of water in the Cantareira system has now dropped – to about 8% of its overall capacity. As an emergency stopgap to provide water to the city, the government of Sao Paulo spent US$36 million on emergency constructions to allow access to water stored below the level of the pumps. Known to water managers as “dead volume,” this water was never intended to be part of the water supply, and the reservoirs are now, essentially, operating at a deficit. More

 

© 2014

Food shortages could be most critical world issue by mid-century

The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a top scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Dr. Fred Davies

"For the first time in human history, food production will be limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water and energy," said Dr. Fred Davies, senior science advisor for the agency's bureau of food security. "Food issues could become as politically destabilizing by 2050 as energy issues are today."

Davies, who also is a Texas A&M AgriLife Regents Professor of Horticultural Sciences, addressed the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting in Washington, D.C. on the "monumental challenge of feeding the world."

He said the world population will increase 30 percent to 9 billion people by mid-century. That would call for a 70 percent increase in food to meet demand.

"But resource limitations will constrain global food systems," Davies added. "The increases currently projected for crop production from biotechnology, genetics, agronomics and horticulture will not be sufficient to meet food demand." Davies said the ability to discover ways to keep pace with food demand have been curtailed by cutbacks in spending on research.

"The U.S. agricultural productivity has averaged less than 1.2 percent per year between 1990 and 2007," he said. "More efficient technologies and crops will need to be developed—and equally important, better ways for applying these technologies locally for farmers—to address this challenge." Davies said when new technologies are developed, they often do not reach the small-scale farmer worldwide.

"A greater emphasis is needed in high-value horticultural crops," he said. "Those create jobs and economic opportunities for rural communities and enable more profitable, intense farming." Horticultural crops, Davies noted, are 50 percent of the farm-gate value of all crops produced in the U.S.

He also made the connection between the consumption of fruits and vegetables and chronic disease prevention and pointed to research centers in the U.S. that are making links between farmers, biologists and chemists, grocers, health care practitioners and consumers. That connection, he suggested, also will be vital in the push to grow enough food to feed people in coming years.

"Agricultural productivity, food security, food safety, the environment, health, nutrition and obesity—they are all interconnected," Davies said. One in eight people worldwide, he added, already suffers from chronic undernourishment, and 75 percent of the world's chronically poor are in the mid-income nations such as China, India, Brazil and the Philippines.

"The perfect storm for horticulture and agriculture is also an opportunity," Davies said. "Consumer trends such as views on quality, nutrition, production origin and safety impact what foods we consume. Also, urban agriculture favors horticulture." For example, he said, the fastest growing segment of new farmers in California, are female, non-Anglos who are "intensively growing horticultural crops on small acreages," he said. More

 

© 2014

The Future Is Evaporating: Climate Change Could Dry Out 30 Percent of the Earth

Scientists expect the changing climate to bring on more drought; there's going to be less rainfall in the already arid regions.

That alone would be bad news for denizens of the planet's dry zones—in some places in North Africa, the American Southwest, India, and the Middle East, water shortages could well become an existential threat to societies built there. But new research shows that in addition to less rain, the rate of evaporation is likely to rise, too. Combined, the two forces could dry out up to a third of the planet.

The study, published in the journal Climate Dynamics last month, estimates that climate change will cause reduced rainfall alone to dry out 12 percent of the Earth's land by 2100. But if evaporation is factored in, the study's authors say that it will "increase the percentage of global land area projected to experience at least moderate drying by the end of the 21st century from 12 to 30 percent."

“We know from basic physics that warmer temperatures will help to dry things out,” the study’s lead author, Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a statement. “Even if precipitation changes in the future are uncertain, there are good reasons to be concerned about water resources.”

Writing in a 2011 literature review in the science journal Nature, the physicist Joe Romm elaborates on how increased heat and evaporation can lead to a vicious cycle: "Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. What precipitation there is will probably come in extreme deluges, resulting in runoff rather than drought alleviation. Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature."

Disappearing soil moisture is likely to be a greater problem than previously thought, and the occasional downpour won't sate year-round crops. As Columbia University notes, "An increase in evaporative drying means that even regions expected to get more rain, including important wheat, corn, and rice belts in the western United States and southeastern China, will be at risk of drought."

If it becomes too dry to cultivate crops on one-third of the planet's surface, there's little doubt that crisis will follow. For millions of people who depend on food grown in vulnerable regions, the future is literally evaporating. More

 

© 2014

Quenching Kenya: Can New Water Discoveries Save East Africa?

Water scarcity is becoming the defining international crisis of the twenty-first century. Water conflicts rage across the world as communities struggle to secure a clean, reliable supply.

One of the world’s most water-stressed regions is East Africa. Overexploitation of water resources there has been compounded by declining snowpacks on Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, which have shrunk since the late 1980s due to global warming. Meanwhile, Lake Turkana -- the world’s largest perennial desert lake -- has largely disappeared from Ethiopian territory, retreating south into Kenya.

In this light, the discovery of two significant aquifers in mostly arid Kenya by a Japanese-financed UNESCO project has been hailed as a potential game changer. The first, the Lotikipi Basin Aquifer, is situated just west of Lake Turkana. The second, the smaller Lodwar Basin Aquifer, is near Lodwar, the capital of Turkana county. The aquifers were discovered by a French firm, Radar Technologies International (RTI), using a space-based exploration technology called WATEX that was originally designed to reveal mineral deposits. The company blended satellite and radar imagery with geographical surveys and seismic data to detect moisture. Subsequent drilling by UNESCO confirmed the presence of aquifers. Three other suspected aquifers in the region have yet to be verified through drilling.

For parched and economically backward Turkana, more than one-third of whose residents are malnourished, the discovery of major groundwater reserves is a godsend. Not only will the reserves provide lifesaving water, they will also spur the development of agricultural and hydrocarbon sectors and improve the lives of the impoverished residents in this conflict-ridden region, which extends from Kenya into the borderlands of Ethiopia and South Sudan. More [Subscription]

 

© 2014

Water Crisis: 2020 Statement by Mikhail Gorbachev on 20th Anniversary of Green Cross

Water crisis – clear and present danger

We live in urgent times. The sum of the concurrent crises that have been engulfing everything from climate to energy, to the economy, is creating a spiral of need for change. But the water crisis sticks out of this list in terms of being an explicitly clear and present danger with deadly implications.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The mounting water crisis and its geography make it clear that without resolute counteraction, it will overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in massive migration, severe socio-economic stress, destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree.

By 2025, a predicted 1.8 billion people will live in regions suffering from absolute water scarcity. Two-thirds of the world population could be under hydric stress conditions. Demand for water will rise: water withdrawals in developing countries will increase by 50%, and 18% in developed countries by 2025.

Despite these demands, what state is the world’s water in? Despite the fact that we use slightly more than half the world’s (54%) accessible water, more than 50% of the 3.5 billion people living in urban circumstances around the world already do not have access to adequate water and sanitation.

But the really bad news is that the water use is growing even faster than the population: the 20th century water consumption grew twice as fast as the world population. As a result, a third of the world's population lives in water-stressed countries now. By 2025, this is expected to rise to two-thirds.

In addition to unsustainable water use we are polluting our lakes, rivers and streams to death. Most wastewater (about 80%) from residential and industrial sources enters the environment untreated.

The growing human need for water, to sustain life and wellbeing, plus the pressures on the resource itself, from mismanagement, pollution and a general lack of foresight, make for the most telling case for improved global water conservation and consumption.

But too little is being done on these fronts. We have been waiting since 1997 for just 35 countries to sign the UN Watercourses Convention, to promote the management and sharing of the world’s 276 cross-border rivers and connected underground water sources, and we are still a handful short.

The lack of a global framework to manage water sources that cross national borders endangers the world in many ways, not least of all in terms of the risk of conflict between countries over who controls the same river that runs through their respective frontiers.

Then there is the Right to Water and Sanitation, which Green Cross was a loud advocate of before it finally came into being in 2010. While this recognition itself, that access to safe drinking water and sanitation are basic human rights, is a success, what must be happening at breakneck speed now is the realization of this right. This means creation of national legislation enshrining the right (alongside education, health and others) and investing in the infrastructure needed to make safe water and sanitation services available to all.

Despite UN adoption of this vital principle, the deficit of fresh water is becoming increasingly severe and large-scale – whereas, unlike other resources, there is no substitute for water.

While the Millennium Development Goal for access to drinking water and sanitation was announced met in 2012, almost 800 million people still have no access to safe water today, and three times that number lack adequate sanitation. Thousands of children die daily in the developing world due to related waterborne diseases.

The scale and global nature of the water crisis demand stronger statesmanship, vision and international action. To master the water crisis, we must address its effects and causes. The economic, social, water and environmental aspects must be properly coordinated in any response.

A comprehensive “water goal” must be injected into the post-2015 development agenda, linking development and environment in analyses and in governance policies. Such a goal would address the three interdependent dimensions of water: water, sanitation and hygiene; water management; and wastewater management and water quality.

This goal must be based on principles of equity, solidarity, recognition of limits of planet and rights approach, coupled with effective means to check and demand the accountability of all stakeholders.

We live in volatile and transformative times, faced with the awe-inspiring global challenge of climate change, the devastation of civil wars, and the hope-crushing scourge of extreme poverty. But one thing is constant: our need for water. Whole regions are languishing in poverty and conflict, effectively held hostage by their hydrology: we must break this cycle and give people a chance for their future. Benjamin Franklin said that "when the well's dry, we know the worth of water." The alarm clock has been ringing on deaf ears for far too long, it is time to wake-up before it is too late, before the wells of the world have run dry. More

 

© 2014

Assured Mutual Dependence

LONDON – During the Cold War, the certainty of “mutually assured destruction” steered the nuclear arms race away from catastrophe: a would-be attacker would face immediate retaliation, inevitably ending in both sides’ annihilation.

Today, a very different race is taking place – a race for the earth’s vital resources, and it threatens to undermine stability in key regions of the world. The growing dependence of countries on one another’s food, water, and energy requires that the global response to sustainability is taken to the highest political level.

Unlike the nuclear arms race of the twentieth century, the resource-security agenda is not linear. Mutually assured destruction was explicitly acknowledged during the Cold War in statements from both sides. In the race for resources that defines the twenty-first century, no actor is directly or indirectly threatening other players to curtail food or energy exports, but all bear the systemic risks.

Countries have become unavoidably interdependent, and climate change, water stress, and the loss of ecological resilience all increase the volatility of this mutual dependence. In a world of limited and scarce resources, countries and companies will be forced to make decisions that affect one another’s security.

In order to navigate this interdependence, the Earth Security Index 2014, produced by the Earth Security Initiative, shows countries’ combined vulnerabilities that might increase the risk exposure of governments and companies, unless more strategic approaches and sustainable investments are put in place. The ESI identifies four areas of mutual dependence that will likely shape global security in the coming decades:

· Choke points. Countries’ growing demand for energy, water, food, and land cannot be satisfied without incurring tradeoffs among limited available resources. Choke points are reached when the available resources are insufficient to satisfy demand. In China and India, for example, this means that in certain regions there may not be enough water in the short term to run coal-fired thermal power stations and irrigate large fields to grow crops. In China, 60% of planned coal-fired power plants will be built in water-stressed regions.

· Food. The growing dependence of many countries on food, water, and energy imports creates new opportunities for trade and investment, but it also exposes countries to critical vulnerabilities. Australia, for example, is a large coal exporter but imports most of its refined fuels and holds just three days of fuel stockpiles. The challenges of mutual dependence are particularly acute with respect to food. As the ESI shows, some countries – including Egypt, Peru, and the United Arab Emirates – are heavily dependent on cereal imports from a small number of suppliers. Moreover, grain suppliers’ exposure to extreme weather may compromise their ability to sustain supplies, with knock-on effects for import-dependent countries. In 2010, for example, Russia imposed an export ban on wheat, following a severe drought. The resulting food-price increases are believed to have played a role in Egypt’s revolution.

· Teleconnections. Anticipating systemic ecological risks will be increasingly important for sectors such as reinsurance and infrastructure investments. “Teleconnections” refer to weather events that are related to one another over large geographic distances. They are well known to science but not properly discussed by the industries, investors, and governments whose security depends on environmental stability. For example, tropical rainforests play a crucial function in maintaining stable weather and rainfall, acting as a “pump” that helps moisture travel between different regions. Deforestation can thus have a destabilizing effect on weather patterns, amplifying the frequency and severity of extreme events such as floods and droughts. The resulting liabilities to key industries and the financial sector are clear. In Brazil, for example, deforestation in Amazonia has slowed significantly over the last five years, but Brazil has already lost more than 11 million hectares of rainforest; its exposure to extreme weather has also steadily risen, with floods causing $4.7 billion in losses in 2011 alone.

· Land productivity bottlenecks: Agriculture systems are reaching resource limits, and persistent governance gaps compromise their ability to ensure food security, dignified livelihoods, and ecological stewardship. Companies, investors, governments, and communities confront a series of critical barriers to increasing the food availability that the world needs: Local populations’ insecure land ownership; receding water tables, owing to unsustainable extraction rates; inefficient use of pollution-causing inputs like fertilizers and pesticides; the loss of vital ecosystems, affecting the resilience of food production; and certain areas’ inability to cope with extreme weather. In some regions of India, for example, these issues are playing out in tandem. Insecure land tenure acts as a disincentive for smallholder farmers to commit to productivity-enhancing investments; water extraction rates are depleting aquifers as a result of permissive policies; and food security remains out of reach for millions of people, despite rapid economic growth in urban areas. Countries and companies will increasingly need to invest in sustainable land in order to hedge their resource risks.

In 2015, global frameworks are due to be agreed to address climate change, coordinate responses to natural disasters, and guide the world’s development agenda. Some of these multilateral processes – in particular, those seeking an ambitious global climate agreement – appear to be moving in slow motion and against the grain of geopolitical interests.

In the past, the case for high-level nuclear governance was urgent and clear, but required processes for creating a common understanding of risks and opportunities across national borders. Successful multilateral responses, like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, continue to be supported by more flexible global platforms, such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative, based on relationships and trust established outside the box of formal multilateralism.

This year, as world leaders discuss the next generation of sustainability, development, and climate frameworks, they will need to put their security and mutual dependence at the heart of the responses. Here, too, the world will need to create informal platforms that supplement traditional multilateralism.

In particular, the outdated divisions between rich and poor countries and their responsibilities must be revised. As new powers like China, Brazil, India, and other G-20 economies bid to reform global governance systems, their vulnerability to resource security must invigorate these processes. Only then will the world be on track to improve the security of all. More

 

Monsoon to get longer in India [sub-continent]: IPCC

NEW DELHI: North India is likely to heat up more than the southern parts of the country while the entire Indian subcontinent may see longer rainy seasons in second half of the century, the UN's climate body has predicted in its latest comprehensive document on climate change.

The conclusion, showing variation in temperature and rainfall in South Asia, is part of the lengthy technical details of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which made its comprehensive report — Climate Change 2013, The Physical Science Basis — public in Stockholm on Monday.

The findings of the report show that the northern part of the continent is likely to witness winter temperatures rise of up to 0.4 to 0.8 degree Celsius during 2016-35 as compared to the 1986-2005 average, 2 to 3 degree Celsius during 2046-65 and up to 3 to 5 degree Celsius by the end of the century (2081-2100), under different scenarios of action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Though the UN body's report on region-wise "impact, adaptation and vulnerability" will come out in March next year, the technical details comprising 14 chapters and Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections in its annexure carry indications of these changes in South Asia.

Krishna Kumar Kanikicharla, climate scientist at Pune's Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology and one of the drafting authors of the IPCC report, told TOI there was "growing evidence" of the impact of the climate change on monsoons in South Asia and the tropical cyclone system in the Bay of Bengal.

Kanikicharla, responsible for drafting the chapter comprising details of monsoon systems, said: "There is strong hint that the duration of the rainy season would increase due to early onset of monsoon. The quantum of rainfall will also increase during the later part of this century."

He said though the Indian summer monsoon circulation will weaken, rainfall will increase due to higher atmospheric moisture resulting from a rise in temperatures.

In its projection for South Asia, the technical summary of the report clearly points at "enhanced summer monsoon precipitation and increased rainfall extremes of landfall cyclones on the coasts of the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea".

What is the confidence level of these predictions? Prashant Goswami, one of the lead authors of the IPCC report, admitted that these conclusions were based on climatic projections that were not as firm as those made at a global level.

"These uncertainties increase as you go to smaller scale (from global to regional or from regional to sub-regional levels). But one has to have an element of faith in these conclusions which are based on well defined scientific methodology," Goswami, chief scientist at Bangalore's CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation, told TOI.

The impact of temperature rise and rainfall variations on the region's agriculture that's highly dependent on monsoon, will be considered in the report on impact, adaptation and vulnerability, to be released next year as part of the IPCC's fifth assessment report (AR5). More

 

Littlest continent had biggest role in sea level drop [and rainfall]

A unique and complex set of circumstances came together over Australia from 2010 to 2011 to cause Earth's smallest continent to be the biggest contributor to the observed drop in global sea level rise during that time, finds a new study co-authored and co-funded by NASA.

In 2011, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of Colorado at Boulder reported that between early 2010 and summer 2011, global sea level fell sharply, by about a quarter of an inch, or half a centimeter. Using data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) spacecraft, they showed that the drop was caused by the very strong La Nina that began in late 2010. That La Nina changed rainfall patterns all over our planet, moving huge amounts of Earth's water from the ocean to the continents. The phenomenon was short-lived, however.

By mid-2012, global mean sea level had resumed its long-term mean annual rise of 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) per year (see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-362).

But analyses of the historical record showed that past La Nina events only rarely accompanied such a pronounced drop in sea level. So what made this particular La Nina unique?

To better understand this phenomenon, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo.; JPL; and the University of Colorado at Boulder combined GRACE data with data from the Argo global array of 3,000 free-drifting floats and satellite altimeters (Jason-1, Jason-2 and Topex/Poseidon).

They found that three atmospheric patterns converged over the Indian and Pacific Oceans in 2010 and 2011 to drive excessive precipitation over Australia. On average, the continent received almost one foot (300 millimeters) of rain more than normal. The result was widespread flooding. The flooding was in large part prevented from running back into the ocean by Australia's dry soils and the mountain-ringed topography of the country's vast interior, called the Outback, leading to the measurable drop in the world's ocean levels.

"No other continent has this combination of atmospheric set-up and topography," said NCAR scientist John Fasullo, lead author of the study. "Only in Australia could the atmosphere carry such heavy tropical rains to such a large area, only to have those rains fail to make their way to the ocean."

Now that the atmospheric patterns have snapped back and more rain is falling over tropical oceans, the seas are rising again. In fact, with Australia in a major drought, they are rising faster than before. Since 2011, when the atmospheric patterns shifted out of their unusual combination, sea levels have been rising at a faster pace of about 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) per year.

The study, co-funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation, will be published next month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

For more information, read the full NCAR news release: http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/10090/global-sea-level-rise-dampened-australia-floods.

 

Heat Wave In China

For the entire month of July and the first half of August, eastern China baked in a record-breaking heat wave. Nineteen provinces endured above-normal temperatures.

Shanghai broke its all-time record high three times in as many weeks. The current record—40.8 degrees Celsius (105.4°F)—was set on August 7, 2013. At least 40 people have died during the heat wave, including ten in Shanghai, according to the Xinhua news service.

During a heat wave, ground temperatures soar, particularly in urban areas where there are fewer plants to cool the ground with shade and evapotranspiration. Paved or metallic surfaces can become warm enough to cook food. These images show land surface temperatures as measured by two different satellites.

The image above shows temperature anomalies across China between August 5 and August 12, 2013, as observed by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Red areas are warmer than the long-term average for the week, while cooler-than-average temperatures are blue. While much of China was warm during this period, the worst of the heat wave was concentrated near the coast and in Tibet. This weather pattern is tied to a subtropical high-pressure system parked over southern China, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

Though miserable everywhere, the heat wave was likely worst in China’s cities, where manmade surfaces absorb heat during the day and cool slowly at night. As a result, cities are warmer during the day and slower to cool at night, making an extended heat wave more uncomfortable, and more deadly, in a city. The image below shows this “urban heat island” effect in Shanghai.

The image was made with measurements taken on August 13, 2013 by the Thermal Infrared Sensor on the Landsat 8 satellite. The warmest surfaces are yellow, while cooler surfaces are pink. The image shows pockets of very warm areas, particularly downtown, surrounded by cooler suburban areas. The dark purple dots are cold clouds.

Chinese officials have declared a weather emergency, warning residents to limit time outdoors. It is the first time the country has issued a weather warning for heat. China’s National Meteorological Center expected the heat to break sometime after August 15.

 

Northeast Pakistan hit by 'surprise' floods, as monsoon rains intensify

SIALKOT, Pakistan (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - “We kept quivering with fear the whole night and could not sleep even a wink,” recalled Salma Zehra, a mother of five teenage children. The family trembled to think that the roof of their mud house could cave in at any time, as the rain lashed down in a huge thunderstorm.

Mehtabpur, District Sialkot, Pakistan

By early morning on July 22, the house in Mehtabpur village in northeast Pakistan’s Sialkot district was waist-deep in water. The torrential downpour had left Zehra’s two buffaloes dead, the 45-year-old said in a shaky voice.

Another bout of heavy rain followed later that night. The Dek tributary of the Chenab River in Sialkot, 192 km (122 miles) from Islamabad, burst its banks, submerging more than 72 villages in the district.

Besides Sialkot, other districts in Punjab province have also suffered massive damage to crops across 1,000 hectares of land, as well as to properties. According to the district disaster management authorities of Sialkot, Gujranwala and Narowal, an estimated 400 villages have been flooded.

Officials have declined to give final figures for the losses, but say dozens have died and thousands of people remain stranded in the affected parts of the three districts. Some are starting to return home, but many houses have collapsed and must be rebuilt, they report.

Sialkot District Coordination Officer Iftikhar Ali Sahu told Thomson Reuters Foundation thousands of people had been trapped on the roofs of their houses during the worst of the flooding. “Mortality among cattle is high - the number of dead animals continued to rise as the floodwaters began to recede on July 26,” he added.

The situation in adjoining districts is just as bad. In Narowal alone, around 2,000 people were marooned on their rooftops in some seven villages a week ago.

Less than 30 percent of the floodwater has yet to recede, according to Mujahid Sherdil, director-general of the Punjab Provincial Disaster Management Authority.

Machines have been brought in to help drain water out of the flood-affected areas, and he hopes the task will be accomplished in the next two to three days, he told Thomson Reuters Foundation from Lahore.

Sherdil said the torrential rainfall had caused breaches of irrigation canals, streams and natural dams, and the floods had washed away crops, livestock, roads, bridges, buildings and even entire villages.

Farmers say surviving cattle in flood-hit areas are now at risk.

“Besides paddy, maize and vegetable crops, fodder fields are also underwater. This has created an acute shortage of fodder, and it is barely possible to save our cattle from the looming threat of hunger and disease,” said Zehra’s husband, Ghulam Abbas.

METEOROLOGISTS ‘STARTLED’

The above-normal monsoon rains in Punjab’s northeastern districts have taken weather experts by surprise.

“Last month, we predicted that this year monsoon rains across the country would remain normal with no possibility of flooding. But unexpected heavy rains in the northeastern districts are startling for us,” said Ghulam Rasul, a senior weather scientist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) in Islamabad. “This shows how monsoon rains have become erratic and unpredictable in timing, volume and intensity.”

Sherdil, head of the Punjab disaster management agency, said the heavy rains and flooding had caught them unprepared.

“We were closely following the weekly and monthly forecasts of PMD that never predicted heavy rains of unprecedented significance for July in northeastern parts, which have been nearly 40 percent above normal for the month,” he said.

It has been difficult to get aid into the affected areas due to damaged and flooded roads and bridges, he said. “Nevertheless, we left no stone unturned to get the emergency relief items including food, medicines, to the flood victims on boats – although (they arrived) a bit late,” he added.

MONSOON SHIFTS

In June 2012, scientists argued in the Nature Climate Change journal that global warming would make understanding changes in the South Asian monsoon more difficult.

They said the impacts of short- and long-term monsoon shifts would affect the lives of over a billion people in the region, who rely on rainfall for agriculture, hydropower generation, economic growth and basic human needs.

Understanding how the South Asian monsoon will alter due to climate change is necessary to cope with the effects, reduce the risk of disasters and safeguard people’s livelihoods, they underlined.

“Addressing the uncertainties in projected changes of the monsoon variability in coming years will remain a daunting challenge for climate scientists,” said Arshad Abbasi, a water and energy expert at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad.

Arshad Khan, the executive director of the Global Change Impact Study Centre (GCISC), the research arm of Pakistan’s Federal Climate Change Division, said the country is in the grip of unpredictable weather patterns.

Intense monsoon rains will be a common phenomenon, particularly on the country’s southern plains which lack water reservoirs and are highly vulnerable to floods, he warned.

And a spurt in the speed of glacial melt, due to rising global temperatures and above-normal monsoon rains, is likely to cause rivers to overflow and burst their banks across the country, he added.

GOVERNMENT EFFORTS

Officials at the Climate Change Division, which operates under the oversight of the prime minister, said efforts are underway to tackle the vagaries of climate change across different sectors of the economy, particularly agriculture and water.

“Consultations are being made with national and provincial disaster management authorities, and officials of federal and provincial environment, agriculture, irrigation departments to implement national climate change policy to mitigate the impacts of changing weather patterns and erratic monsoon rains,” said a senior official, who coordinates policy at federal and provincial levels.

The Climate Change Division is developing climate adaptation plans for the agriculture, water and irrigation sectors, which will be implemented in Pakistan’s four provinces in collaboration with international NGOs and provincial government offices.

It is also working on programmes to ensure that climate change is considered in other sectors such as health and education, to make them more climate-resilient.

Abbasi of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute said the best ways to avert the growing threat of floods in Pakistan include efficient watershed management, reforestation in northern mountain areas and the revival of riverine forests.

Saleem Shaikh and Sughra Tunio are Islamabad-based journalists specialising in climate change and development issues. More