Danielle Meitiv's Barefoot Blog

Writing and life… without shoes

Tag Archives: glacial melt


by 3 Comments

Clearing the Air: Managing Air Quality to Benefit Health and Climate in India (WEBCAST 3/30/11)

I’ve just learned that the event that I’ve been planning for March 30th, on air quality and climate change in India, is going to be webcast (!) thanks to the our wonderful co-sponsor, the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. We’re also going to be audio- and videotaped for posterity. (Yes, “we” – I’m speaking as well).

http://www.sais-jhu.edu/pressroom/live.html

Wednesday March 30, 10:30am – noon
1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036
Room 500

Black carbon and dust cover Himalayan snow, causing faster melting.

Indian cities have some of the most polluted air in the world, and highest rates of air pollution disease and death. Mounting evidence suggests that black carbon from these same pollution sources are altering the monsoon and melting glaciers. But there is good news: reductions in “black carbon” emissions from the region’s diesel engines, factories, and cookstoves could limit near-term damage while protecting human health and promoting development.

Please join us to hear three leading science and policy experts discuss these breakthroughs in our understanding of air quality and climate change and efforts to address them.

DR. SARATH GUTTIKUNDA is a TED fellow and an affiliate assistant professor at Desert Research Institute, Reno, USA, and the founder of UrbanEmissions.Info in New Delhi, India. He developed the SIM-air (Simple Interactive Models for Better Air Quality) family of tools for sharing information on air pollution and climate change among cities in the developing world. Previously, he worked for 5 years with the World Bank on air quality and climate change issues. Dr. Guttikunda will describe what we know about pollutant emissions, what more needs to be done to better understand their impacts, and the stakes for Indian air quality and climate policy.

DR. WILLIAM K. M. LAU is the Chief of the Laboratory for Atmospheres at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA), Goddard Space Flight Center. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Maryland, Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a senior science advisor of the Hong Kong Observatory. His research interests include the impacts of aerosols on the Indian monsoon and accelerated melting of Himalayan cryosphere, and he is currently the lead scientist for the Joint Aerosol-Monsoon Experiment (JAMEX).

MS. DANIELLE MEITIV is a Climate Specialist with the Clean Air Task Force. Ms. Meitiv works with scientists to promote research on the connections between air quality and climate in South Asia. She and her partners in the region are working to bring this science to the attention of policymakers in the U.S. and India.


by 4 Comments

Speeding Up Natural CO2 Reduction and Saving the Oceans at the Same Time

The planet is warming. The release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities, is causing global temperatures and sea levels to rise, glaciers to melt, and climate patterns to change all over the world. It’s also affecting the oceans.

Since the Industrial Revolution, 30% of the CO2 that has been emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels has been taken up by the oceans. But it comes with a cost: ocean acidification, the “other” carbon problem. I’ve written about this before here. But now there may be some good news, a new way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere AND acid in the oceans. Read on!

The chemistry of seawater is what allows the oceans to take up so much CO2. For you chemistry buffs, here’s how it works:

* CO2 (from the atmosphere) + H2O (seawater) ⇌ H2CO3 (carbonic acid)
* H2CO3 (carbonic acid) ⇌ H+ (acid) + HCO3− (bicarbonate ion) ⇌ 2H+ (more acid) + CO3−− (carbonate ion)

The more CO2 we introduce on the left, the more the equations are driven to the right: the more acidic (H+) the oceans get. Over long time scales – and I mean really long, like millions of years – the problem is solved through carbonate weathering of rocks. Instead of the above, where H2CO3 ends up creating more acid (H+), you get this:

* CO2 (from the atmosphere) + H2O (rainwater) ⇌ H2CO3 (carbonic acid)
* H2CO3 + H2O + silicate minerals -> HCO3− (bicarbonate ion) + cations (Ca++, Fe++, Na+, etc.) + clays (which ultimately end up in the sea).

Notice that while you still have HCO3−, there’s no free H+ running around to make the water acid.  Instead that HCO3− is used by creatures like corals and foraminifera to make calcium carbonate (CaCO3) shells, and ultimately buried deep beneath the seafloor when those critters die.

Voila!  Less CO2 in the air AND less acid in the oceans!  Too bad it takes millions of years…

Or does it?  Greg Rau of the University of California Santa Cruz conducted a series of experiments in his lab to see if he could make this process happen faster. He made a scrubber that mimicked the natural weathering process, using limestone and seawater. His process removed up to 97% of the CO2 from a simulated exhaust stream (the kind released from power plants). He had the gas flow over crushed limestone (weathering), then dissolved the resulting ions in seawater to make it more alkaline (less acidic).

When it’s scaled up, this process could be used to keep carbon dioxide from power plants out of the atmosphere by putting it into the sea as bicarbonate (HCO3−). Since many of these plants are located on coasts, and use massive amounts of seawater for cooling anyway, the scrubbers could be installed at existing facilities. A win for the atmosphere a win for the oceans – some good news for a change!

References:

Rau, G. (2010). CO2 Mitigation via Capture and Chemical Conversion in Seawater, Environ. Sci. Technol., Article ASAP. DOI: 10.1021/es102671x. Publication Date (Web): December 28, 2010


by 5 Comments

Top Ten Extreme Weather and Climate Events (and Related Catastrophes) of 2010

[Updated 12:18PM Eastern]

Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asks experts to vote on the top ten weather and climate events for that year. The “voters consider factors such as the scope and unusualness of the event, its immediate human and economic impact, and whether it is emblematic of climate trends or variability.”

Extreme weather

The list is below. However, as @chr1stianh pointed out on Twitter, this list conflates climate with weather (and tosses some resulting hazards into the mix, too). But the two are NOT the same. As Mark Twain said, “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” Put another way, climate is the average of meteorological elements, such as temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. over a long period. Weather is what’s going on outside your window right now, (34 and sunny here in the DC area), or over a short period of time (i.e. the ten-day forecast). And while climate change experts predictions include more extreme weather events, it’s not possible to point to any one event, and say THAT is the result of global warming. We can say that flooding, hurricanes, or drought in specific regions are consistent with what scientists predict, and we can expect to see a lot more of them.

With that critique, let’s look at the list of extreme weather and catastrophic events that these experts voted into the Top Ten for 2010. It’s a doozy and consistent with what we’re in for with accelerating climate change. Not all the news is bad – I find it hard to mourn a lower-than-usual hurricane season in the NE Pacific (#7), given the damage those storms can cause. And not all of it was confined to 2010: a severe drought in Brazil (#6), which has impacted the Amazon, is ongoing.

  1. Russian – European – Asian Heat Waves, Summer 2010. A severe summer spawned drought, wildfires and crop failures across western Russia, where more than 15,000 people died. All-time high temperatures occurred in many cities and nations in the region. China faced locust swarms during July.
  2. 2010 as warmest year on record. The globally-averaged temperature for 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest on record. Three months in 2010 were the warmest on record for that month.
  3. Pakistani Flooding, Late July to August. An unusual westward shift of monsoon rainfall dumped more than a foot of rain across a large area of the Upper Indus Valley. Subsequent flooding of the Indus River killed 1,600 people and displaced millions. (The civil government’s late and inadequate response created openings for the military and Islamic militants to increase their influence in the already unstable country).
  4. El Niño to La Niña Transition, Mid-to-Late Spring. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the most prominent and far-reaching patterns of climate variability, saw a huge swing in mid-2010. Only 1973, 1983 and 1998 have seen larger within-year swings. (More on ENSO and climate change in a future blog post).
  5. Negative Arctic Oscillation (AO), December–February. The AO Index (another future blog post), which is strongly correlated with wintertime cold air outbreaks, was more negative in February 2010 than it had been since records began in 1950. Major cold air outbreaks resulted throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
  6. Brazilian Drought, ongoing. A severe drought parching northern Brazil shrunk the Rio Negro, one of the Amazon River’s most important tributaries, to its lowest level since records began in 1902 at its confluence with the Amazon. The Amazon’s depth there fell more than 12 feet below average. The drought, which is linked to the El Niño, has left 60,000 people hungry as fish die and transportation routes dry up. Millions of dead fish have clogged waterways, making freshwater scarce.
  7. Surprisingly inactive NE Pacific hurricane season. The 2010 NE Pacific Hurricane Season was one of the least active on record, produced the fewest named storms and hurricanes of the modern era, and had the earliest end date (Sep 23) on record.
  8. (Tied for 7th place) Historic N. Hemispheric Snow Retreat, January – June. The melt season for all that 2009-2010 snow was ferocious, contributing to spring floods in the Northern U.S. and Canada. Following the early and pronounced snow melt, the North American, Eurasian and Hemispheric snow cover was the smallest on record for May and June 2010.
  9. Minimum Sea Ice Extent, mid-September. 2010′s sea ice minimum of 4.9 million sq km was the third smallest on record. The last four years (2007-2010) are the four smallest on record. The Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route were simultaneously ice-free in September, a first in modern history.
  10. China Drought, first half of 2010. A persistent drought centered in the Yunan Province was touted as perhaps the worst in this region in more than 100 years. Major crop losses and lack of drinking water created severe problems for local residents.

A firefighter attempts to extinguish a forest fire near the village of Dolginino, some 180 km (111 mi) southeast of Moscow. August 2010 (AP Photo/File)

These are only the ones that made the top ten list. There are fourteen other “honorable mentions” (a dubious honor, for sure), including episodes of coral bleaching, flooding in China, a record dry monsoon in Bangladesh, hurricanes, and cyclones. This ranking was done during the first week of December, so the Australian flooding that started on December 25, was not included in the voting. There’s little doubt that event would have made the list.

Here’s a map showing all the 2010 Global Significant Weather and Climate Events: cyclones, flooding, heat waves. Oh my.

So, if you are faced with a fool climate change denier who claims that our current cold snap proves that climate change is a hoax, you can punch them in the mouth show them this list. And have them tell that to the thousands of families displaced and/or grieving in Pakistan, Russia and Australia, because of these events, and many more that may have been made much worse by human-caused global warming.

Reference:

NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for December 2010, published online January 2011, retrieved on January 13, 2011 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2010/13.

Thanks to @thahall for pointing me towards this report. I get some of my best blog ideas from Twitter!

Want more Brave Blue Words? You can connect to me and this blog on Facebook and Twitter.


by 5 Comments

An ocean of ups, downs, and much uncertainty: sea-level rise in the 21st century

One of the oft-cited results of global warming is sea-level rise. But how does it work? Human-induced climate change contributes to sea-level rise in two ways. Almost two-thirds of the predicted rise will be caused by thermal expansion. The ocean is warming, causing the water in it to expand. There’s only one way for this ‘larger’ water to go, and that’s up, leading to rising sea levels. The remaining third is due to the input of fresh water locked up in glaciers, ice caps, and the icesheets on land at the two poles: Greenland and Antarctica. (The melting sea ice in the Arctic is a serious problem for entirely different, but it will not contribute to sea level rise, just as an ice cube melting in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow).

These icesheets are the greatest sources of uncertainty, the reason why scientists always give a range when they talk about sea-level rise, and hedge their predictions with caveats. (Aside from the fact that it’s in their natures to do so ;-) ). It is difficult to predict how they will behave as temperatures continue to increase. How fast will they melt? A recent study predicts that with a temperature rise of 4C, which we are almost guaranteed given the lack of a serious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, sea-level can be expected to rise between 0.5 and 2.0 meters.

Almost 600 million people live within 10 miles of the coasts worldwide. Many could see their homes submerged by century’s end, leading to massive migrations away from flooded areas. Areas that are not submerged will face increased salinization of aquifers and growing lands, greater threat from flood surges, and increased shoreline erosion.

Sea-level rise will not be even around the world, however. Although it seems odd – the water in a glass has a uniform surface, as do most lakes and ponds – the ocean doesn’t quite behave that way. Because of the enormous area it covers, the immense volume of water it holds, and all the bits and bumps in the way (you know, those continents and big islands, like Australia), the water doesn’t even out. Winds can sometimes blow in such a way to ‘pile up’ water against a shoreline, like during El Nino events and in upwelling zones.  The earth’s rotation also has an effect on the movement of the ocean and sea-levels around the world.

All these factors mean that the water will rise more in some areas, and may actually fall in others. (Just to make things more interesting, along the coast of some northern areas like Scandinavia, sea level is rising, but the land is rising, too! Since the end of the last ice age, when the massive weight of all that ice pushed the land down, these regions have been experiencing uplift).

Under any sea-level rise scenario, coastal wetlands worldwide are vulnerable.  A study released today predicts that under a slow rise scenario (the one put forth in the Fourth IPCC Assessment report in 2007), many wetlands along the US East Coast would completely disappear by the century’s end.  Under the rapid rise scenario, which is close to the one quoted above, most coastal wetlands worldwide will disappear. It’s a sobering thought.

Kirwan, M. L., G. R. Guntenspergen, A. D’Alpaos, J. T. Morris, S. M. Mudd, and S. Temmerman (2010), Limits on the adaptability of coastal marshes to rising sea level, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L23401, doi:10.1029/2010GL045489.

Nicholls, R. J., N. Marinova, J. A. Lowe, S. Brown, P. Vellinga, D. de Gusmão, J. Hinkel, and R. S. J. Tol (2010), Sea-level rise and its possible impacts given a ‘beyond 4°C world’ in the twenty-first century, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2011 369, 161-181
doi: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0291


by Leave a comment

Personal Lessons in Climate Change from India

Over the past 9 months or so, I have written a number of posts on climate change in South Asia, particularly at the ‘Third Pole,’ the ice-covered region that includes the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. I have endeavored to learn as much as possible about the science and policy of this issue from the researchers who are working on it, both in the United states and worldwide. However, there is only so much one can learn from papers and journals. Therefore, I have taken steps to learn in a more direct fashion from the people living and researching these issues.

First, I’ve recently registered for an e-course called “Global Warming in an Unequal World,” taught by India’s Center for Science and Environment. “The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) is a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi. CSE researches into, lobbies for and communicates the urgency of development that is both sustainable and equitable.” Lest this seem like an easy A, the course includes quizzes, 500-750 word essay assignments and online debates, as well as critiques by and for fellow students. Conveniently enough, 500-750 words is just the right length for a blog post, so I will post my essay responses here, as well as critiques and feedback from the instructors.

The course must be completed within three months; however, since I leave for India on  June 26th, I plan to finish way before then. My second direct learning experience will take place in India from June 26 – July 9, 2010. Yes, I have chosen one of the hottest and wettest times to visit India.* (Hey, if I’m gonig to write about the monsoon, I should experience it for myself, right?)

I plan to spend sometmie in Delhi, then travel to Hyderabad to attend the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS) Conference (July 5-9, 2010). This five-day conference takes place every year in different countries in the region.  It is my very good fortune that this year’s conference will be in India, allowing me to learn from, and meet many of India’s best climate scientists, all in one place! Of course, the conference will also include scientists from elsewhere in the region and the world, all working on climate science. (There will be many other non-climate subjects covered as well, but I’ll have to discipline myself to stick to one subject area, or I’ll be comlpetely overwhelmed before the first day is over!)  The conference program includes session like: “Asian Aerosols and Climate: The Known and Unknown,” “Asian Snow-Glaciers and Climate Change,” and “Climate Change in Monsoon Asia-Pacific: Progress, Issues and Challenges.” There will also be three sessions on the preliminary results from the five-year, cross-cutting Asian Monsoon Year (AMY) experiments, coordinated by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). These should present excellent opportunities to learn about the latest research on climate change in South Asia. Of course, I plan to get in some tourist time as well!

I will blog about what I learn there as well – hopefully during my trip, but afterwards as well.  So stay tuned – lots more to come!

Have you discovered online or other ways to learn about climate change in different parts of the worl, from the people in those regions?  If so, please let us know, in the comment section below.

*According to the BBC weather website, in July the average temperatures for Delhi  are 27 – 36C (80 – 97F), and the “discomfort from heat and humidity” is “extreme,” with the additional fun of 180 mm (7″) of rainfall. For Hyderabad: 23C – 31C (73 – 88F), “discomfort is only “high,” with 152mm (6″) of rain).


by 1 Comment

Winds of Change: How Black Carbon Affects the South Asian Monsoon

In the previous post, I wrote about how the glaciers of the ‘Third Pole’ – the greater Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau region – are melting at a dramatic rate (just not as fast as mistakenly stated in the IPCC report). The key determinant of whether glaciers are retreating or advancing appears to be the South Asian summer monsoon (June – September). And the summer monsoon is changing.

The climate of South Asia and India is dominated by monsoons. Monsoons are large-scale wind patterns that predictably change direct with the seasons. Landmasses warm up – and cool down – faster than large bodies of water. In the summer, this means that the Tibetan Plateau warms faster than the Indian Ocean to the south. A large low pressure system builds over the land, drawing warm moist air from the ocean, and making the winds blow south to north. In the winter, the reverse is true: the landmass cools quickly, while the ocean holds onto its heat, causing the winds to reverse, blowing from north to south.

How the winds change: in the summer, the elevated Tibetan Plateau heats more rapidly than the ocean.

Pollutants, particularly black carbon (BC), are affecting this process. BC  – the black stuff in soot – is a byproduct of the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biofuels. In the winter, soot combines with dust blown from the west, creating huge clouds of haze that hug the southern slopes of the Himalayas. The BC in these clouds absorb solar radiation, warming the air even faster than usual. This draws more moisture to the region sooner, causing the early monsoon to intensify. This theory is known as the Elevated Heat Pump (Lau et al., 2006a, b), as the soot acts to pump heat up the Himalayan slopes. Observations show a widespread and sustained warming in the pre-monsoon season over the last three decades. In that same time period, early monsoon rainfall has increased by 20% (Gautam et al., 2009a, b).

Mid-tropospheric temprrature trend for pre-monsoon season (March-May) from 1979 to 2007. Warming along the southern slopes of the Himalayas is noted in red (Gautam et. al., 2009b).

Over the oceans, BC has a different, although equally damaging effect. BC combines with other anthropogenic aerosols, forming Atmospheric Brown Clouds (ABCs), large plumes of particles that can stretch over whole continents or ocean basins. These ABCs absorb solar radiation in the atmosphere, causing dimming below. This reduction of irradiance reduces evaporation and cools the surface, leading to a weakening of the later monsoon (Ramanathan 2005, 2008). The combined impact of these two phenomena, the Elevated Heat Pump and Solar Dimming, increases flooding during the early months of monsoon, and causes drought later on. Some studies suggest that over time the result will be an overall weakening of the monsoon and a reduction of rainfall over the region. Reduction in rainfall of great concern because in South Asia there is a strong positive correlation between the amount of precipitation and food production. The Indian summer monsoon is the biggest source of freshwater to the region: over 70% of the annual precipitation over India occurs during the summer monsoon.

Thankfully, mitigation of black carbon is much easier than CO2. Unlike CO2 and it’s greenhouse gas cousins, BC is a very short-lived pollutant. It only stays in the atmosphere for a week or so and doesn’t travel very far from its source. What that means is that reductions of BC will be felt immediately and locally. Reductions of BC have the added benefit of reducing air pollution, the 4th leading cause of death in the developing world. This is good news for India, the second largest producer of BC in the world after China. (The US is the largest producer of BC per capita).

This is NOT to say that global emissions reduction efforts should shift away from GHGs and the West’s responsibility to clean up its act. Reductions of CO2 and other long-lived GHGS are the ONLY way to stabilize global climate in the long run. BC reduction represents an opportunity for India to do something about climate change locally – stabilizing the monsoon, protecting local agriculture, and clearing the air – benefiting its own people in the near future.

References:

Gautam et al., 2009a. Aerosol and rainfall variability over the Indian monsoon region: distributions, trends and coupling. Annales Geophysicae, 27:3691-3703

Gautam et al., 2009b. Enhanced pre-monsoon warming over the Himalayan-Gangetic region from 1979 to 2007. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 36, L07704, doi: 10.1029/2009GL037641

Lau et al.,2006a. Asian summer monsoon anomalies induced by aerosol direct forcing – the role of the Tibetan Plateau. Climate Dynamics, 26: 855-864.

Lau et al.,2006b. Observational relationships between aerosol and Asian monsoon rainfall, and circulation Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 33, L21810, doi: 10.1029/2006GL027546

Ramanathan et al., 2005. Atmospheric brown clouds: Impacts on South Asian climate and hydrological cycle, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102(15):5326-5333, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0500656102

Ramanathan and Carmichael, 2008. Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon. Nature Geoscience, 1:221-227, doi: 10.1038/ngeo156

….as well as numerous other papers by V. Ramanathan, a genius in this field and a genuinely nice and helpful guy.

Ritesh Gautam of NASA is well on his away to make an impact on this field too, and has been a great help, explaining the intricacies of the South Asian monsoon and the results of all the various models used to study it. Any errors in MY explanation above cannot be faulted to any of the above researchers, but are mine alone.


by 1 Comment

So, What is Happening with the Himalayan Glaciers?



There’s been a lot of news recently about the the IPCC’s erroneous statement about the Himalayan glaciers. Here’s the exact quote from the 4th IPCC Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability, Section 10.6.2 The Himalayan glaciers:

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005).”

There are two problems with this statement. First, the science: I have spoken to a number of glaciologists who are experts in the region and all have confirmed that this is not only unlikely, it is impossible – glaciers just do not work this way. This is just too fast. In fact, none of the scientists would give a date for when – or if – such a thing could happen. There are just too many unknowns.

Second: the IPCC report is supposed to be based on peer-reviewed science ONLY. Yet, the citation given for this statement is a World Wildlife Fund report, which was not subjected to the rigorous scrutiny that marks scientific publications. Following the trail backwards reveals that the WWF claim is based on a New Scientist article from 1999, which quoted a comment by Indian glaciologist Dr. Syed Hasnain. The claim has never been published in a peer-reviewed journal and Hasnain now says the comment was ‘speculative.’

So what is happening?

While the Himalayan glaciers will not disappear before my sixty-sixth birthday (you do the math), the majority are retreating, faster than elsewhere in the world. The overall mass balance is negative – ice is being lost faster than it is being gained. However, glacial behavior is not uniform across the region and there is evidence that some glaciers are advancing, particularly in the Western Himalaya and the Karakoram Ranges.

You see, the glaciers are only part of the story; they’re the sentinels of change, the canaries in the coal mine, if you will. And the changes that are being seen in the glaciers reflects the changes that are occurring to the climate systems in the region.

The key determinant of whether glaciers are retreating or advancing appears to be the summer monsoon. The monsoon, which is the engine of the weather cycle in the region and – of India’s agricultural economy – is shifting. Less precipitation (rain and snow) is falling on the Central and Eastern Himalaya (At a meeting in October 2009, Jairam Ramesh, India’s Minister of the Environment and Forests, noted that 2009 saw the worst (lowest) recorded rainfall in 37 years). As a result, many of the glaciers in that region are retreating. Glaciers in the Western Himalaya, which are fed by winter precipitation from westerlies (winds from the west) are less sensitive to changes in the monsoon and are not retreating as much, some not at all.

And what’s driving these major changes in the monsoons – climate change, of course. Yes, climate change IS affecting the Himalayas: the glaciers, the rains, the ecology, and eventually the economy and culture of one of the most heavily-populated regions of the world, the Indo-Gangetic Plain of Northern India. THAT is the fact that keeps getting lost in this discussion of the IPCC’s gaffe: climate change is having dramatic impacts on this region, home to more than a billion people.

This is an oversimplified picture of what is happening. For more detail, check out recent research by Michael Bishop, University of Nebraska at Omaha and the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Regional Center (RC) for Southwest Asia, Jeffrey Kargel (University of Arizona Department of Hydrology and Water Resources and GLIMS, and Kenneth Hewitt, Cold Regions Research Centre in Ontario, Canada.

To read the IPCC’s mea culpa, go here: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/presentations/himalaya-statement-20january2010.pdf

Next up: black carbon and the elevated heat pump, or “What Exactly is Happening to the Monsoons?”


by Leave a comment

Update and More About the Melting Himalayas

Whew!  It’s been a busy couple of months in the climate science world, and even crazier for those of us following the IPCC-Himalayan glacier debate! I’ve been so busy working on it in my professional life that I haven’t had a chance to blog about it – but that will change tomorrow!  Check in for a brand-new post which will look at what the heck is really going on in the Himalayas – are the glaciers melting or not!

I’ll give you a hint: there will still be ice there in 2035 – where and how much?  Well, those are the questions, eh? So tune in tomorrow!


by 2 Comments

Project Surya Aims to Clear the Air and Reduce Global Warming

Welcome to Blog Action Day 2009! Starting early this morning in the Far East until late tonight in the Pacific Islands, more than 8,700 bloggers from 148 countries are stimulating a global conversation about many aspects of climate change. For me, the choice was easy – I write about science, so of course I’ll blog about the science of climate change. In the spirit of the “action” part of the day, I’m focusing on a unique project in India, what you might call an action-oriented scientific study of black carbon (BC).* [My regular readers know that I write about BC quite a lot – for you some of this will be a review, but please read on for some exciting new developments].

BC is a result of incomplete combustion of fossil and biomass fuels. Research suggests that BC is second only to CO2 in its contribution to climate change. BC absorbs the solar radiation reflected by the Earth’s surface and clouds. This absorption of sunlight contributes to the characteristic black or brown color of smoke and haze. Because BC only stays in the atmosphere for a week or so, the benefits of emissions BC reductions will be felt almost immediately. Reducing BC emissions by a factor of five – which is precisely what has been done in developed countries – could slow the effects of climate change for a decade or two. This could buy time to allow CO2 and other GHG reductions to take effect.

BC is not only a major climate agent; the indoor air pollution that BC is a part of is the 4th leading cause** of death in developing countries, resulting in 1.5 – 2 million premature deaths a year. Replacing smoky cookstoves and heating fires with more efficient ones, cleaner fuels, or renewable energy can improve the public health of millions, particularly woman and young children.

Woman and children are most affected by the pollution from smoky cookstoves and heating fires.

Woman and children are most affected by the pollution from smoky cookstoves and heating fires.

Project Surya is studying the impacts of BC and other SLPs on the region’s climate as well as the immediate climate and public health benefits of reducing their emissions. Phase One will target three regions in rural India: one in the Himalayas, another in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) and a third in South India. The IGP is one of the major source regions for the BC that is contributing to the melting of Himalayas glaciers. Project Surya will provide sustainable, effective, incentive-based plans to enable 5,000-10,000 households in each region to switch to less-polluting technologies. The project’s ultimate goal is to guide the 3 billion people who depend on solid biofuels to cleaner, renewable energy sources. “Surya” means sun in Sanskrit, referring to the solar energy that the project will promote.

What distinguishes Project Surya from other such efforts is that it will be accompanied by the most comprehensive and rigorous scientific evaluation to date on the impact of emissions reduction on global warming, air pollution and public health. Much of the data will be collected by the participants themselves, enabling them to see the effect of their actions. These data will be collected by instrument towers in each region then combined with advanced data from NASA’s A-Train satellite to measure the regional climate impacts.

Read more about Project Surya at: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/ProjectSurya.html.

Think this is exciting. You should follow me – here.

* Black carbon, tropospheric ozone (trop. O3) and methane (CH4) are considered short-lived pollutants because they stay in the atmosphere for very short amounts of time. The atmospheric lifetime of BC is about a week, trop. O3 a few weeks, and CH4 twelve years. CO2, N2O and halocarbons have atmospheric lifetimes of hundreds to thousands of years.

** 4th leading cause after unsafe sex, malnutrition and poor sanitation.


by 1 Comment

India is Vulnerable and Acting to Address Climate Change

“India is vulnerable,” said Jairem Ramesh, India’s Minister for Environment and Forests at a breakfast meeting in Washington, DC last week. “We are responding to climate change because it is in our own self-interest.” While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sheds members over its reactionary position on climate change, the US-India Business Council (USIBC), headquartered at the Chambers offices in DC, invited Minister Ramesh and Indian Ambassador Meera Shankar to talk about the challenges and investment opportunities in addressing climate change in the world’s second most populous country.

India’s primary challenge is development, said Ambassador Shankar. The question is how to develop sustainably, to avoid accumulating problems for future generations. India’s National Climate Change Action Plan, released last year, calls for 20,000 megawatts of solar energy by 2020. Currently there is very little, which makes it an area ripe for investment. “We need technology transfer and collaboration similar to the IT revolution,” said Shankar, “in the areas of efficiency and environment.”

Minister Ramesh opened his remarks by noting the impacts that India is already experiencing including retreat of the Himalayan glaciers and the worst monsoon in 37 years. (A Purdue study released earlier this year predicts that global warming could lead to less rain and a delay in the start of South Asian monsoon season by up to 15 days by the end of the 21st century.)

Credit: Purdue

Credit: Purdue

Prime Minister Singh has given him a clear message, Ramesh said. “More than most countries, India must take a leading role. India has not caused the problem but it must be part of the solution.” He drew a distinction between between the developed (Annex I) countries and the developing world. Developed countries must take on international legally-binding commitments to reduce emissions. Developing nations can and should take on nationally-appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs) in addition to adaptation measures.

India, he says, has responsibility to reduce emissions while developing; not necessarily to reduce emissions overall but to reduce growth of emissions. He noted, however, that emissions are an issue of consumption, not population as commonly believed.  As an example he cited China, which experienced negative population growth from 1985 to 2005 but saw its emissions rise by 43% over that same period.

Ramesh reported the “Singh Per Capita Principle,” as formulated by the country’s Prime Minister: India is willing to commit to keeping its per capita carbon emissinos lower than the west.  Currently, Indian emits 1.1-1.3 tons CO2 equivalent (CO2eq) per person. That is expected to grow to 2.5 tons CO2eq by 2020 and 3.0 by 2030. Even then, he said, India would still be 50th or 60th among nations.

On COP15, the climate change negotiations that will take place in Copenhagen in December, Ramesh said that India should not be painted as a “deal-buster” in Copenhagen. Instead, Copenhagen should be sen as the fist in a series of discussions. “Think of it as Copenhagen 1.0. We will not get the mega-treaty that everyone wants. Rather we should go for the low-hanging fruit.”

When asked about the significance of black carbon (BC) and possible measures to address it (by yours truly), Ramesh pointed out that he was involved in efforts to replace polluting cookstoves in the 1980′s “We learned the limits of central intervention,” he recalled. Black carbon is important in terms of ecology and public health, he added, but he would not like the climate negotiations to be “hijacked” by BC. The international agreement focus on the six greenhouse gases. “BC should not be included internationally.”

You should follow Brave Blue Words on Twitter here.

[Note: Next week Brave Blue Words will be updated with a brand-new climate related blog on Thursday, October 15th - instead of Tuesday - as part of Blog Action Day. Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day. The aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Check it out at: http://www.blogactionday.org].

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 39 other followers