Nepal Treeline, Dendrochronology, and Climate Change

Treeline Response to Global Warming: What Meta Analysis Say?

2011-08-14T08:28:00.000+06:00

Today, I am going to talk about the famous article: Are treelines advancing? A global meta-analysis of treeline response to climate warming; authored by Melanie A. Harsch, Philip E. Hulme, Matt S. McGlone and Richard P. Duncan, published in Ecology Letter, Volume 12 Issue 10, in 2009. According to the Wiley Online Library (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01355.x/citedby), this article has been cited 43 times so far.

Temperature is considered as a primary factor controlling treeline position, and there is a high probability that treeline will advance upward with global warming. To see how the treeline of the world is responding to global warming, authors of the above mentioned paper have analyzed global data set of 166 sites for which treeline dynamics had been recorded since 1900 AD. Most of these sites are from North America and Europe, and comprising of 126 alpine and 40 latitudinal sites. Among these, 43 sites used long term monitoring of permanent plots methods, 27 sites used remote sensing (mostly aerial photographs) method, and 96 sites used treeline/stand history reconstruction using dendroecological method for treeline dynamics study. Moreover, authors also analyzed the temperature data of nearby climate stations of these 166 sites to see the long term temperature trend. Furthermore, they collected information like treeline form, elevation, latitude, distance from the ocean, aspect, treeline type, study duration, study start date, study scale, disturbance, and taxonomic family of treeline species for Meta analysis and logistic regression models analysis.

Spatial structure of treeline is referred as treeline form, and paper have mentioned about three forms of treeline: diffuse, abrupt, and krummholz form. Out of 166 sites, 10 were abrupt, 82 were diffuse, and 69 were krummholz form. Pinaceae and Betulacea family formed treeline at 136 sites (82%). This study has found that 87 sites (52%) out of 166 showed advance, 77 sites remained stable and two sites showed treeline recede as well as disturbance. Temperature analysis indicated that treelines were more likely to advance at sites that had warmed during the winter months. Moreover, diffuse treelines were more likely to have advanced than abrupt and krummholz treelines. This is due to strong growth limited diffuse treelines, and abrupt and krummholz treeline form are strongly limited by winter temperature, and other constraints like wind, snow or winter desiccation.

Full article can be accessed at:

http://www.planta.cn/forum/files_planta/fulltext_570.pdf

-Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Fir Treeline in South Eastern Tibetan Plateau: Little Change in 200 years of Warming

2011-08-10T07:23:00.000+06:00

Today, I am discussing about the paper published in May 2011 issue of New Phytologist entitled: Little change in the fir tree-line position on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau after 200 years of warming, by Eryuan Liang, Yafeng Wang, Dieter Eckstein and Tianxiang Luo.

The authors have started the paper with the definition of treeline given by Korner and Paulsen (2004), personally this is most favored definition of treeline by me also. Treeline elevation, tree regeneration, and growth are controlled by temperature, thus treeline communities quickly response to climate change by showing changes in structure and position. Authors have cited various papers, which have reported treeline shift around the world. Most significant one is by Harsch et al. (2009), which indicated that treeline has shifted in 55% of 166 study site all around the world. In the study site of this paper Sygera Mountain, Tibetan Plateau, and very few study has been carried out related to treeline ecotone in this area. Abies georgei (Smith fir) is the treeline species, and treeline varies from 4250 m in south-facing slope to 4400 m north facing slope. It is a natural treeline, and form is diffuse type. This site is away from human disturbances. Three 30 m x 150 m rectangular plots were laid down from forest line to species line. Treeline was defined as uppermost tree with a minimum height of 2 m, and upward shift of treeline is defined as the change in elevation at which the highest tree is found. Dendroecological methods were used to analyze the recruitment pattern and treeline shift.

The age structure in all the plots showed reverse J shaped structure and most of the individuals were established after 1950s, and recruitment rate increase abruptly after 1970s, which indicate global warming impact on recruitment pattern. However, treeline has not shifted significantly in all these plots, and possible reasons are lack of seed dispersal and disturbance. Lastly, authors have suggested for comprehensive treeline studies across the Sygera Mountain for more concrete understanding of treeline dynamics and climate change.

May issue of New Phytologist can be accessed at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.2011.190.issue-3/issuetoc

-Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Climate Growth Response of High Altitude Trees from Eastern Nepal Himalaya

2011-08-03T16:30:00.002+06:00

-Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Today,I got chance to read a paper entitled `Growth climate response at highelevation: comparing Alps and Himalayas`by Tenca, A. and M. Carrer, which was published in proceeding of TRACE 2009.

Authorshave collected tree ring samples of Abies spectabilis (Himalayan fir)and Betula utilis (Himalayan birch) from Khumbu valley near Mount Everest at elevation range from 3800 m – 4100 m. This is the firsttime anyone has tried to study the climate response of trees from treeline areaof Nepal. Ihave already discussed many times in my previous blog posts that Abies is themost studied species from Nepal,and Betula is the one of the list one. I have also collected sample of Betulafrom treeline area of Langtang region in 2008 but still have to work on thesesamples. Currently, I am working on Abies samples of treeline of Barun valley, Makaluregion collected in 2010. This valley is located about 30 km eastward of Khumbuvalley. So, I am very interest to know how the tree rings of Khumbu areresponding to climate.

Authorshave tried to compare the chronology of Abies and Betula from Himalayawith the Larch and Pine chronology of Alps. So far, veryfew studies have compared Nepaltree ring chronologies with other similar climatic condition areas. This paperhas mentioned that in Birch is more sensitive to climate and suitable forcomparison study than the Fir. However, lack of long term climate data from theregion is constrained in comparison. I would like to compare Abies chronologyof Barun Valleywith Abies chronology of Khumbu Valleyto see the similarity in upcoming post.

This paper can be found online at: ftp://ftp.wsl.ch/pub/gaertner/Trace_Volumes/Vol_8_PDF/Tenca_Carrer_TraceVol_8.pdf

Proceeding is available online at:

http://ebooks.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/faces/viewItemFullPage.jsp?itemId=escidoc:16018

Tea House Trekking in Barun Valley, Eastern Nepal

2011-06-01T10:11:00.000+06:00

Tea House Trekking in Barun Valley, Eastern Nepal

-Parveen Kumar Chhetri

(This article was originally published in 13th issue of the Hokudai Bisauni, which can be download from http://circle.cc.hokudai.ac.jp/nepal/bisauni/archive/issue13/bisauni13.htm)

Last October,I got chance to trek up to Yangle Kharka of Barun Valley with two of my friends and a local guide. Barunvalley is situated in the north eastern part of the Makalu Barun National Park, Sankhuwasabha district, eastern Nepal. This was my first trek to eastern part of the Nepal, so I was very excited and curious. Thanks tonewly introduced teahouse trekking system in the region, which made this trippossible. Teahouse trekking is a relatively cheap way of trekking, and thenights are spent in the Teahouse (Mountain Hut) run by friendly local people,where meals and accommodation are provided. It is a good way to know the localculture and tradition. Generally, Kathmandu based trekking agency organized trekking trip toBarun valley and charged lump sum of money, also known as commercial tourism.There were no lodging and fooding facilities in the upper part of this trekkingroute two year ago for low budget trekkers like me but now we can find teahouses in various places.

Fig. 1: Makalu Barun National Park and Barun valley trekking route (red dottedline). Map source: DNPWC

Trekking to Barun valleystart from the nearby airstrip Tumlingtar, and Jeeps are available up toMude. Tasigaon is the last village ofthe route and there is a very good facility of lodging and fooding up to here.However, recently local people had build tea houses at Kongma, Dobato, YangleKharka, Nangmale and Makalu Base camp. Now we have a tea house at Khongma, Dobato,three tea houses at Yangle Kharka, two in Nagmale and two in Makalu base camp. After the constructionof these tea houses, small groups of trekkers can trek without the help of thecommercial trekking company. Just they have to reduce the backpack size andhire a local guide cum porter from Khandbari. This will reduce the trekkingcost tremendously and even accessible to low budget foreign and domestictourists.

The main Attractionsof Barun valley trek

Remote and uninhabitedBarun valley carries the religious and cultural significance for local peoplesince centuries. Moreover, Barun valley also becomes the main touristattraction since the establishment of Makalu Barun National Park in 1992. Barunvalley trek has following famous attractions:

Sano Pokhari

Fig. 2: Sano Pokhari

Sano Pokhari (small lake)is situated at 4000 m elevation and provide sooth to tiresome hours long ascendfrom Khongma (3500 m). Moreover, short relapse in Sano Pokhari is helpful topass the soon approaching highest pass (Shipton pass) of the trail comfortably.

Thulo Pokhari

Thulo Pokhari (Big Lake) is situated at about 4050 m elevation along thetrail to Barun valley. We need to pass the Shipton pass (4200 m) beforereaching the beautiful Thulo Pokhari, accompanied by newly constructed temples.If you have some coins please do not forget to put in the rock for a good willand happy journey here.

Fig. 3: Thulo Pokhari

Shiva and ParbatiDhara

Every year hundreds ofpeople climb precipitous and dangerous cliff to worship God Shiva and GoddessParbati, and take a holy bath beneath the waterfall falling from two caves.This secret religious site is situated in Nhe kharka.

Ama Buchung

From centuries localpeople are visiting Ama Buchung (Mountain of the pregnant mother) for prayingfor prosperity and to request the gift of Children. I think a visitor will notbe amused why local people pray Ama Buchung mountain for blessing of child,when they see the pregnant women womb like bulging mountain.

Fig. 4: Ama Buchung

Makalu base camp

Situated at about 5000mand attract hundreds of foreign tourists every season. Many splendors mountainslike mount Makalu, Everest and Lhotse, etc. can be seen from the Makalu base camp.

Pros and Cons of teahouse trekking

If we take the example ofLangtang, Annapurna circuit, Everest trekking route most of theincome of trekking goes to local people because most of the trekkers stay inlocal people lodge and consume traditionally prepared food items. In the caseof Barun valley trekking, most of the income goes to Kathmandu based trekking agencies. In Barun valley, most ofthe trekkers are from trekking agencies, and they brought most of the fooditems from Kathmandu. It contributes hardly anything to the localeconomy. In the case of the tea house trekking most of the income is retainedlocally.

However, environmentallytea house trekking is less environmental friendly than the commerciallyarranged expedition. Trekking company use kerosene and LPG gas for cookingpurposes but the tea house harvest fuel wood from nearby forest. Heavydestruction of forest near Yangle Kharka for newly constructed tea houses wasobserved during the visit. However, there is much more benefit of the tea housetrekking over commercial trekking if we provide basic training to local peopleabout importance of environmental friendly trekking.

Fig.　5: Newlyconstructed tea house at Yangle Kharka

Nepal Tourism Year 2011 and Barun Valley

Nepal government has declared year 2011 as a Nepal Tourism Year to boast thetourism in the country but tourism are centered in some location only. Forexample, 95 percent of the 120,000 trekkers visiting Nepal annually do not go beyond the Annapurna, Langtang or Everest regions. Only around 6,200trekkers visit others trekking areas of the Nepal. The reason is lack of good facilities in theseareas but newly introduced tea house trekking facility in area like Barunvalley is ready to attract more tourists. Local people of Sankhuwasabha havejust launched the tea house trekking agency (http://www.makaluaruntreks.com/)based in Khandbari for facilitating the visitors in Nepal Tourism Year 2011.

Treeline shifting up in mountains | Top Stories | ekantipur.com

2011-03-09T07:20:00.000+06:00

Treeline shifting up in mountains | Top Stories | ekantipur.com

Asian Dendrochronological Conference

2010-12-14T08:54:00.003+06:00

The 2nd International Asian Dendrochronological Conference

Climate change, Opportunities and Challenges

August 20-23, 2011 Xi'an, China

The theme of the 2nd ADA conference is Climate change, Opportunities and Challenges, and the main goal of the conference is to assemble researchers and to strengthen communication and cooperation among dendrochronologists all over the Asia/world.

For more information about the conference please visit the official website of ADA 2011:

http://www.ada2011.org

Treeline/Timberline/Forestline in Nepal

2010-10-03T09:47:00.005+06:00

-Parveen Kumar Chhetri

In my last blog, I discussed about treeline shift in Himalayas. Today I would like to share available information about treeline of Nepal. Soon I am visiting Makalu Barun National Park for treeline dynamics related study. So I will talk specifically about treeline of Makalu Barun National Park in next blog.

Abies spectabilis (Langtang region, Everest region), Pinus wallichina (Manang valley), Betula utalis (Manang Valley, Langtang Valley), Juniperus indica, Rhododendron campanulatum are the treeline species of Nepal Himalayas. Himalayas of Nepal is humid in compare to other mountains of the world, so duration of solar radiation exposure play dominant role in determining the patter of forest. Juniper stands (Juniperus recurva, J. communis, J. wallichiana) are restricted to dry south facing slopes, while subalpine forest of Betula utilis and Rhododendron companulatum are common at moist north facing slopes sites (Schmidt-Vogt, 1990a, b in Holtimer, 2009).

In Himalayas natural treelines are higher at south facing slopes compared to north facing slopes (Schickhoff, 2005) because south facing slopes is warmer than north facing slopes due to higher solar insolation which favor growth (Dubey et al. 2003). Sometimes, the difference in altitudinal position is up to several hundred meters (Schickhoff, 2005), for example Chhetri (2010) recorded treeline at south and north facing slope of Barun valley of Makalu Barun National Park, eastern Himalaya, Nepal at 4100m and 3900m respectively.

But in some parts of the country the depression of upper timber line in south facing slope may amount to more than 500m, largely depending on the local/regional utilization potential of alpine pasture area. The region more exposure to solar radiation result in a much higher utilization pressure at sunny slopes, in particular with regard to pastoral use. Therefore, south facing slopes have long been subjected to massive human impacts throughout the mountain so that natural conditions are hard to reconstruct (Schickhoff, 2005). These cases are especially present in treeline of Langtang region, Manang region where most of the human activities are concentrating on treeline ecotone.

The elevation of timberline varies across Nepal according to the pattern of monsoon rains. According to Swan and Leviton (1962) and Bhatta (1977) in Manadhar, 2002, timberline in eastern Nepal reaches a maximum elevation of 4110m. In the central Himalayan, however, it varies 3048-3962m. In western Himalaya the upper limit of timberline is about 3048m.

According to Chaudhary (1998) treeline is estimated to be approx. 4000m in eastern Nepal, while it goes down decreasing to approx. 3800m and 3650m in central and western Nepal but georeferenced exact position and species composition of treeline ecotone is lacking.

The Betula utilis forest forms treeline vegetation between 3500m and 4200m on northern slopes of the inner Himalayas (Stainton, 1972).

According to Byers (1996) tree line at Barun valley of MBNP is at about altitude of 4085m, but reportedly ascends to 4200m under favorable condition. Tree line species is Abies. Carpenter and Zomer (1996) mentioned tree line of Barun valley is 3,900m-4,000m and dense Juniperus recurva replace fir above this elevation.

Shrestha et al. (2007) mentioned birch (Betula utilis) forests up to the treeline (4200 m) in north facing slope of Marsayngdai valley, Manang. While authors observed tree line of Pinus wallichina at 4000m at south facing slope of same valley.

Korner and Paulsen (2004) have mentioned that treeline of Betula utilis in Kijangjing Gompa, Langtang valley is 4010m.

Reference

Byers, A.C. 1996. Historical and Contemporary Human Disturbance in the Upper Barun Valley, Makalu-Barun National Park and Conservation area, East Nepal. Mountain Research and Development. 16:3, 235-247.

Carpenter, C and Zomer, R 1996. Forest Ecology of the Makalu Barun National Park and Conservation Area, Nepal. Mountain Research and Development, 16:2,135-148.

Chaudhary, R.P. 1998. Biodiversity in Nepal. Tecpress books 487142 SoiWattanasilp, ratunam, Bangkok, 10400, Thailand.

Chhetri, P.K. 2010. Treeline in Makalu Barun National Park, Nepal. (Unpublished)

Dubey, B., Yadav, Y.R., Sing, J., Chaturvedi, R., 2003. Upward shift of Himalayan pine in Western Himalaya, India. Current Science 85:5, 1135-1136.

Holtmeier, F.K., 2009. Mountain timberlines. Ecology, patchiness, and dynamics. Advances in Global Change Research. Springer

Korner, C., Paulsen, J., 2004. A world-wide study of high altitude treeline temperatures. Journal of Biogeography 31, 713-732.

Manandhar, N. 2002. Plants and People of Nepal. Timber Press. Inc. USA.

Schickhoff, U., 2005. The upper timberline in the Himalayas, Hindu Kush and Karakorum: A review of geographical and ecological aspects. In Broll, G. and B. Keplin. editors. Mountain Ecosystems. Studies in Treeline Ecology. Berlin Springer. pp. 275–354.

Shrestha, B.B., Ghimire, B., Lekhak, H.D and Jha, P.K. 2007. Regeneration of Treeline Birch (Betula utilis D. Don) Forest in a Trans-Himalayan Dry Valley in Central Nepal. Mountain Research and Development, 27: 3, 259–267.

Stainton, J.D.A.1972. Forests of Nepal .London: John Murray.

Treeline shift in Himalayas

2010-09-16T13:15:00.003+06:00

Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Himalaya region is very sensitive to global climate change and effect of climate change is already felt in the form of water availability (amounts, seasonality), biodiversity (endemic species, predator–prey relations), ecosystem boundary shifts (tree-line movements, high-elevation ecosystem changes), and global feedbacks (monsoonal shifts, loss of soil carbon) (Xu et al., 2009). My research interest is treeline movement with response to global change particularly global warming. Upward movement of the treeline and encroachment of woody vegetation on alpine meadows are reported widely but there are few studies have been carried out in Himalaya and research on timberline ecological conditions in Himalaya is still in its infancy (Schickhoff, 2005; Holtimer, 2009; Chhetri and Shrestha, 2010). Here I am presenting excerpt of those few studies.

Dubey et al. (2003) recorded an upward shift of treeline species of 19m and 14m over 10 years period on south and north slopes, respectively in the western Himalayas of India.

Baker and Moseley (2007) repeat photographic study indicate that the current timberline has moved 67 m in elevation and a distance of 270 m upslope from its 1923 location in the Baima Snow Mountain, Hengduan Mountain Range of the eastern Himalayas, northwestern Yunnan Province, China. Likewise, the position of the last visible tree, as seen in the 1923 photograph and observed in the field, has moved 45 min elevation and a distance of 675 m upslope from the 1923 location.

Panigrahy et al (2010) studied Timberline change detection using topographic map and satellite imagery of Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in Central Himalaya. They recorded an apparent shift of around 300 m in timberline since 1960.

These are the few examples known to me and ofcourse there are many published and unpublished records reporting treeline shift in Himalayas.

In upcoming posts I will talk about treeline in Nepal and my research trip to one of the remote area of the Nepal Himalayas for treeline dynamics related research.

References

Baker, B.B and Moseley, R.K. 2007. Advancing Treeline and Retreating Glaciers: Implications for Conservation in Yunnan, P.R. China. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research. 39: 2, 200–209.

Chhetri, P.K., Shrestha, K.B., 2009. Dendrochronology and Climate Change Study in Nepal: A Preview. Banko Jankari - A Journal of Forestry Information for Nepal 19:2, 42-43.

Dubey, B., Yadav, Y.R., Sing, J., Chaturvedi, R., 2003. Upward shift of Himalayan pine in Western Himalaya, India. Current Science 85:5, 1135-1136.

Holtmeier, F.K., 2009. Mountain timberlines. Ecology, patchiness, and dynamics. Advances in Global Change Research. Springer

Panigrahy, S., Anitha, D., Kimothi, M. M and Singh, S. P. 2010. Timberline change detection using topographic map and satellite imagery. Tropical Ecology 51:1, 87-91.

Xu, J., Grumbine, R.E., Shrestha, A., Eriksson, M.,Yang, X., Wang, Y., Wilkes, A., 2009. The Melting Himalayas: Cascading Effects of Climate Change on Water, Biodiversity, and Livelihoods. Conservation Biology 23:3, 520-530.

Future textbook of dendrochronology

2010-05-25T07:27:00.002+06:00

A book review

FUNDAMENTALS OF TREE-RING RESEARCH
by James H. Speer
368 pp. / 7.0 x 10.0 / 2010
978-0-8165-2684-0
The University of Arizona Press

-Parveen Kumar Chhetri

I am learning dendrochronology since last 4 years and still a beginner in this filed. There is no basic dendrochronology course in my university so learning by Books is the only way. `FUNDAMENTALS OF TREE-RING RESEARCH` will prove to be the mentor for students like me because this book contains basic to advance level information about dendrochronology. This book has separate chapters about history of dendrochronology, principle and concept, field and lab method, computer and statistical methods, detail information about subfield of dendrochronology etc. Author has used many relevant pictures and figures to explain the text which is very beneficial and language in easy to understand. Extra information about list of species that have been used by dendrochronologist, age of oldest trees per species, field note and web resources are also very beneficial for readers.

At last the book `FUNDAMENTALS OF TREE-RING RESEARCH by James H. Speer is very useful to gain basic as well advance knowledge of dendrochronology. I believe that this book is going to be the must follow textbook for students taking dendrochronology course in their undergraduate and graduate degree in near future. So, must buy for undergraduate and graduate students.

Tree Ring Reconstruction of Millinium Scale Asian Drought

2010-04-28T14:50:00.003+06:00

Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Latest issue of Science journal published on 23 April 2010 has an article about Asian Monsoon written by renown dendrochronologiest Edward Cook and his colleagues of tree ring laboratory of Columbia University, USA. The title of the article is `Asian Monsoon Failure and Megadrought During the Last Millennium` and authors are Edward R. Cook, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Brendan M. Buckley, Rosanne D. D’Arrigo, Gordon C. Jacoby, and William E. Wright.
The article start with the mentioning of importance of Asian monsoon for people leaving in Asia and necessity of long term data set for understanding its variability. Authors have collected tree ring samples from 300 sites of monsoon Asian region and reconstructed the seasonalized Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) for the summer (June-July-August) monsoon season. Tree ring collected site include Nepal (1000 year Hemlock samples), India, Bhutan, China, Japan, Pakistan, Thailand etc. They have identified the regional footprints and severity of four well-documented historical droughts: the Ming Dynasty drought (1638 to 1641), the Strange Parallels drought (1756 to 1768), the East India drought (1790 to 1796) and the late Victorian Great Drought (1876 to 1878).

More detail about the article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5977/486

Dendrochronology and Climate Change Study in Nepal: A Preview

2010-04-21T14:36:00.001+06:00

Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Here it the abstract of article entitled ` Dendrochronology and Climate Change Study in

Nepal

: A Preview`recently published in Banko Jankari - A Journal of Forestry Information for

Nepal

. Full article is available online at Nepal Journal Online (http://nepjol.info/index.php/BANKO/issue/view/215).

Abstract

Dendrochronology and Climate Change Study in Nepal: A Preview

P. K. Chhetri, K. B. Shrestha

Dendrochronology is the study of tree rings and tells about the past climatic variability and current climate change. Not much work has been done in this field so far in

Nepal

. Most significant studies are from Bhattacharya et al., (1992), Cook et al., (2003) and Sano et al., (2005) with the exception of other published and unpublished work. Above studies indicate that dendrochronological work is a potential field in

Nepal

New book in Dendrochronology

2010-03-25T07:47:00.003+06:00

Dear All,
It is my great pleasure to inform you that Arizona University Press has newly published book on dendrochronology entitled “Fundamentals of Tree-Ring Research”. The author of the book is well known dendrochronologist James H. Speer. James H. Speer is an associate professor of geography and geology at Indiana State University and is the organizer of the Annual North American Dendroecological Fieldweek. He is the current president of the Tree-Ring Society and his scholarly articles appear in leading journals including Publications in Ecology, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, Journal of Biogeography, and Climate Research.

More information about the book is available at: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid2216.htm

I have already got chance to read this book and it is written in very elucidate manner. So that even beginner can understand and it is also useful for expert also.

Enjoy reading.

Parveen Kumar Chhetri

Rapid increases in tree growth found in US

2010-03-24T07:12:00.000+06:00

Rapid increases in tree growth found in US

'2010 to be the world's warmest year'

2009-12-11T14:16:00.001+06:00

PTI 11 December 2009, 12:57pm IST

Source: The Times of India
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/2010-to-be-the-worlds-warmest-year/articleshow/5326240.cms

LONDON: 2010 is likely to be the world's warmest year on record, the British Met Office has

predicted.

According to the Met Office, man-made climate change will be a factor and natural weather patterns would contribute less to 2010's temperature than they did in 1998, the current warmest year in the 160-year record.

El Niño effect, the cyclical heating of the Pacific Ocean, is much weaker than it was in 1998, but the Met Office expects the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions to more than make up the difference, 'The Times' reported.

It predicts that the global average temperature next year to be almost 0.6 C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, and forecasts an annual average of 14.58 C.

The Met Office has also said that it expects half the years between 2010 and 2019 to be warmer than 1998. It sounded a note of caution, saying that a record year in 2010 was not a certainty, especially if the current El Niño began to decline earlier than normal or there was a large volcanic eruption.

However, experts are divided on the prediction. Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "If 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record, it might go some way towards exploding the myth, spread by the climate conspiracy theorists that we're experiencing global cooling. In reality the world is getting possibly a lot hotter, and humans are causing it."

But, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has accused the Met Office of making a "political intervention" in the international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen.

"Suggestions by the Met Office that a warming trend will resume in the next year or two should be treated with reserve in light of the recognised difficulties in making such confident predictions," it said.

2009 one of world's hottest years since 1850

2009-12-11T14:14:00.000+06:00

IANS 8 December 2009, 06:49pm IST
Source: The Times of India
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/2009-one-of-worlds-hottest-years-since-1850-/articleshow/5315049.cms

COPENHAGEN: This year is likely to rank as one of the "10 warmest" since 1850, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said Tuesday in a

report providing further evidence that the world is heating up.

The report by the Geneva-based organisation also found that the current decade was already warmer than the 1990s, which were in turn warmer than the 1980s.

"Large parts of southern Asia and central Africa are likely to have the warmest year on record," the report said.

And while a few weeks remain of 2009, data collected by the WMO between January and October suggests that average global temperatures were already 0.44 degrees Centigrade above the annual average for the 1961-1990 reference period.

"Warming is not uniform - there will still be cold winters and summers, but what we are talking about is a trend," WMO Secretary General Michel Jarraud said at the launch of the WMO report at the UN climate change conference underway in Copenhagen.

"Cold waves will become less frequent, and heat waves more frequent," he added.

While above-normal temperatures were recorded in most parts of the continents, the US and Canada experienced conditions that were cooler than average, the UN agency said.

China had its "third-warmest year in the last 50 years," Jarraud said, also mentioning "heatwaves in much of central and southern Europe" over the summer.

Australia also had its third-warmest year while in Africa, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Namibia were hit by floods affecting nearly one million people. El Salvador was also hit by intense storms, while severe flooding plighted India after a weak monsoon season.

The report also found that the extent of the Arctic sea ice in the summer was the third-lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979, trailing only 2007 and 2008, the lowest and second-lowest on record.

India suffered an "extreme heatwave" in May that caused 150 deaths, while a month later, northern China was hit by daily maximum temperatures above 40 degrees Centigrade and endured its "worst drought in five decades".

Food shortages were also experienced in East Africa, where Kenya has seen a 40 percent drop in its maize harvest.

The preliminary WMO information for 2009 was based on data from land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites.

A full report is due in March, the agency said.

Isro images show Gangotri glacier receded 1.5km in 30 yrs

2009-12-05T04:56:00.002+06:00

Isro images show Gangotri glacier receded 1.5km in 30 yrs

Jayashree Nandi, TNN 5 December 2009, 12:56am IST

BANGLORE: As big global players play the game of negotiations, and as the opposition wakes up to the implications of India's green plan as

announced on Thursday, the Indian Space Research Organisation has come up with an alarming figure - the Gangotri glacier has receded by 1.5km in the past 30 years.

The fact that the glacier has been receding isn't new. In fact, in the last decade, it has receded by 15-20 metres (although the pace has slowed down in recent years), Isro's latest figure dramatically brings out the extent of glacial melt, caused possibly by global warming.

Isro's director of Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, Dr R R Navalgund told TOI that satellite imagery documents a 1.5-km retreat of the Gangotri glacier in the past 30 years. The satellite imagery has also captured that Alpine vegetation has now started growing at a higher altitude than it used to a few decades ago.

While the retreat of glaciers was a very controversial issue recently, after environment minister Jairam Ramesh released his discussion paper on glaciers that also alleged that glaciers were not melting because of climate change. Navalgund echoed the sentiments of MoEF on the issue.

"We have looked at snowy glaciers, some of them in the past 20 years, specially the ones at lower latitudes and altitudes, have retreated. It is difficult to say whether it is due to global climate change. It could be a part of the inter-glacial period and other related phenomena," he said.

The documentation of coral reefs have also shown bleaching across the coastline. UNEP had also recently declared that coral reefs, which support the majority of marine life, will be the first casualty of climate change. Isro data reiterates that the reefs around the Indian sub-continent are facing maximum impact - not so much in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but in other parts.

Navalgund said there was no quantitative analysis yet on the impact on agriculture. "Agricultural simulations are too less to make any quantitative analysis," he said.

Asked about the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations, Navalgund said he has given all the data that Isro has gathered from its satellite images to the environment minister a month ago. "To understand the impact of climate change for India, baseline data is very important. India did not have a scientific, accurate database of baseline data. Now we need to put those down so that later, we have a valid document to fall back on," he said.

Very soon, other countries can also access data on carbon sink from Isro. The Oceansat, that continuously monitors the ocean colour, helps in analyzing productivity in the oceans. This is useful in measuring the carbon sink in the oceans. Many countries have given their letter of intent to use this satellite.

Source: The Times of India.

2009-12-02T09:33:00.002+06:00

Sundarbans water warming eight times faster than global average

IANS 1 December 2009, 10:20am IST

NEW DELHI: In the Sundarbans, surface water temperature has been rising at the rate of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade over the past three decades,

eight times the rate of global warming, says a new study.

That makes the Sundarbans one of the worst climate change hotspots on the globe.

The study, carried out over 27 years from 1980 by scientists from India and the US, found a change of 1.5 degrees Celsius, a clear challenge to the survival of flora and fauna in the world's largest mangrove forest.

A Unesco World Heritage site, the Sundarbans covers 9,630 sq km in India and Bangladesh. It is home to a number of endangered species.

"Surface water temperature in the deltaic complex of the Indian Sundarbans experienced a gradual increase of 0.5 degree Celsius per decade in last three decades. This rate is much higher than the global warming rate of 0.06 degree Celsius per decade and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-documented rate of 0.2 degree Celsius per decade in the Indian Ocean during 1970-99," Abhijit Mitra, professor in the Department of Marine Sciences, Calcutta University, told IANS.

The study published in the latest issue of scientific journal Current Science found that faster melting of Himalayan glaciers have decreased the salinity at the western end of the Indian Sundarbans while salinity has increased on the eastern end due to clogging of connections of the estuaries with fresh water on account of heavy siltation and solid waste disposal from Kolkata.

The scientists also studied variations in dissolved oxygen, pH level (a measure of acidity), transparency and water quality to know the impact of global warming on the ecosystem.

"The surface water pH over the past 30 years has reduced in the region, thus increasing acidification. The variations in salinity and increased temperature could be reasons for observed variation in pH and dissolved oxygen," said Mitra.

The concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the western sector of the Sundarbans showed an increasing trend in contrast to the eastern part where it is decreasing significantly.

"Depletion in dissolved oxygen can cause major shifts in the ecological habitation in the region. Rising temperature could also be one of the reasons for decreasing dissolved oxygen in the Sundarbans," he said.

Global warming accelerates the process of erosion in coastal and estuarine zones either through increased summer flow from the glaciers or by increased tidal amplitude due to sea level rise.

Erosion and sedimentation processes, along with subsequent churning action, increase the saturation of suspended solids, thus decreasing the transparency.

"The reduced transparency affects the growth and survival of phytoplankton, the small microscopic plants in the oceans that produce three-fourths of the earth's oxygen supply. Damage to this community may adversely affect the food chain in this mangrove-dominated deltaic complex, which is the nursery and breeding ground of 150-250 species of fish and other organisms," said Mitra.

The study concluded that although the observed changes could result from a combination of climate change and human interventions and related phenomena, the changes are real and their impact will be felt in the ecosystem in the coming years.

Source: TheTimes of India

Kashmir's main glacier "melting at alarming speed"

2009-10-14T03:25:00.001+06:00

Source: Reuters
Url: http://www.reuters.com/article/asiaCrisis/idUSDEL264554

SRINAGAR, India, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Indian Kashmir's biggest glacier, which feeds the region's main river, is melting faster than other Himalayas glaciers, threatening the water supply of tens of thousands of people, a new report warned on Monday.

Experts say rising temperatures are rapidly shrinking Himalayan glaciers, underscoring the effects of climate change that has caused temperatures in the mountainous region to rise by about 1.1 degrees Celsius in the past 100 years.

The biggest glacier in Indian Kashmir, the Kolahoi glacier spread over just a little above 11 sq km (4.25 sq mile), has shrunk 2.63 sq km in the past three decades, a new study said.

"Kolahoi glacier is shrinking 0.08 square kilometres a year, which is an alarming speed," said the study, presented at a workshop on "Climate Change, Glacial Retreat and Livelihoods," in Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's summer capital.

The three year-long study was led by glaciologist Shakil Ramsoo, assistant professor in the department of geology at the University of Kashmir.

The Kolahoi glacier is the main source of water for Kashmir's biggest river, the Jhelum, and its many streams and lakes.

According to a United Nations Environment Programme and World Glacier Monitoring Service study, the average melting rate of mountain glaciers has doubled since the turn of the millennium, with record losses seen in 2006 at several sites.

But India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said in August there was a need for more scientific studies to conclusively establish the link between climate change and shrinking glaciers.

He said while "a couple of" Himalayan glaciers were receding, some others such as the Siachen glacier were advancing, while others like the Gangotri glacier were receding at a decreasing rate compared with the last two decades.

But Ramsoo said: "Other small Kashmir glaciers are also shrinking and the main reason is that the winter temperature in Kashmir is rising."

Experts say the melting of Kashmir glaciers could have serious fallout as most Kashmiris rely on glaciers for water. (Reporting by Sheikh Mushtaq; Editing by Krittivas Mukherjee))

18th Century Ships' Logs Predict Future Weather Forecast

2009-10-08T11:06:00.002+06:00

18th Century Ships' Logs Predict Future Weather Forecast

ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2009) — One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species revolutionised how we view the natural world. Now his voyages on HMS Beagle are influencing modern research on the evolution of our climate.

A ground-breaking partnership between JISC, the University of Sunderland, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Atmospheric Data Centre sees historical naval logbooks being used for the first time in research into climate change. The logbooks include famous voyages such as the Beagle, Cook’s HMS Discovery and Parry’s polar expedition in HMS Hecla.

The UK Colonial Registers and Royal Navy Logbooks (CORRAL) project has digitised nearly 300 ships’ logbooks dating back to the 1760s. The accurate weather information they contain is being used to reconstruct past climate change – hitherto untapped scientific data.

Research team leader Dr Dennis Wheeler of the University of Sunderland comments: “The observations from the logbooks on wind force and weather are astonishingly good and often better than modern logbooks. Of course the sailors had to be conscientious – the thought that you could hit a reef was a great incentive to get your observations absolutely right!

“What happens in the oceans controls what happens in the atmosphere – so we absolutely need to comprehend the oceans to understand future weather patterns,” he added.

Ships’ logbooks were the main resource used to monitor the weather in the oceans. Officers on these ships kept careful records of the daily, and sometimes hourly, climate conditions. What that means today is modern researchers are able to find out what the weather was like anywhere in the world on a particular day, right through the Little Ice Age and back to 1750.

Ben Showers, JISC digitisation programme manager, said: “There is a lack of high-quality digital material for those studying historic weather data. By making these logbooks and lighthouse records available online, from the National Archives and the Met Office respectively, JISC aims to help researchers address the challenges of climate change and open up this historic resource to everyone via the website.

“The Royal Navy logbooks online are an exciting part of JISC’s £1.8 million investment in enriching digital resources, a set of 25 projects which enhances online content for better teaching, learning and research.”

Oliver Morley, Director, Customer and Business Development at The National Archives agrees: “The logbooks have long been of interest to historians and naval enthusiasts and the fact that they are now being used for scientific research is a great example of how archival information created for one purpose can be reused for something entirely different”.

The logbooks include great explorers such as, Bligh, Cook and Flinders, and give unique accounts of life on board ship with plenty of footnotes and personal observations about life on board and the places and people they encountered on their voyages of exploration. A fully searchable version of the logbooks will be available on The National Archives’ website in 2010.

The researchers are now transcribing the officers’ observations so they can begin work with the Met Office on analysing the data to feed into research on climate change.

Source: University of Sunderland (2009, October 6). 18th Century Ships' Logs Predict Future Weather Forecast. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 8, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/10/091006104627.htm

Trees advance in a warming world

2009-09-12T06:21:00.000+06:00

Trees advance in a warming world

Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
BBC
URL: http://www.blogger.com/post create.g?blogID=1884709366532359863

Smaller trees at the vanguard at Lee Ridge, in the Glacier National Park of Montana may be more than 50 years old.

Trees around the world are colonising new territories in response to higher temperatures.

From the US west coast to northern Siberia and south-east Asia, trees are growing at higher elevations, and at higher latitudes as the climate warms.

Of 166 sites studied, trees are advancing at more than half, while they are receding at just two sites.

The shift is revealed by the first global analysis of treelines published in the journal Ecology Letters.

However, the trees aren't responding quite how scientists expected.

Instead of advancing as summer temperatures rise, the trees' ability to colonise new areas appears to be more dependent on whether winter temperatures warm.

Hospitable territory

Treelines tend to form wherever conditions for growth become too harsh.

For example, at high altitudes and latitudes, the climate often becomes too cold for trees to survive. At this boundary, a treeline occurs, with forest on one side and shorter, hardier plants such as shrubs and plants on the other.

A diffuse treeline at Yosemite, California, US

However, around the world, average air temperatures have risen during the past century.

This warming has been most pronounced at high altitudes and latitudes, the exact places where treelines form.

So in theory, trees should take advantage of these warmer, more hospitable climates, allowing treelines to advance higher and closer towards the poles.

In reality though, the picture has been more complicated. In some places, trees have advanced higher up mountains or further north, but in others they appear not to have moved.

To better understand what is going on, Melanie Harsch of the Bio-Protection Research Centre at Lincoln University in New Zealand and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of a global dataset of 166 sites around the world at which treeline dynamics have been recorded since 1900 AD.

Map showing treeline advances around the world

When they analysed this data, the researchers found that air temperatures had increased at 111 of 166 sites, at an average rate of 0.013 degrees Celsius per year.

Summer warming occurred at 117 of the sites at a mean of 0.0189 degrees Celsius per year, more often than winter warming which occurred at 77 sites at an average of 0.0199 degrees Celsius per year.

Most important, they found that treelines had advanced into previously inhospitable habitat at 87 sites.

The treelines remained stable at 77 sites, while trees had retreated at just two locations.

An abrupt treeline at Maori Saddle, New Zealand

Crucially, the trees do not seem to be responding to warmer summer temperatures.

"We expected growing season warming to be the dominant driver," says Harsch.

"But we found that it was not, winter temperature was."

That could be because trees that have advanced during warm summers can more easily survive the odd cooler summer. Whereas those that advanced during warmer winters may not survive a particularly cold winter, making winter temperatures the limiting factor.

Also, the researchers found that diffuse treelines, where the number of trees growing gradually peters out, are much more likely to advance than abrupt treelines, which form when trees suddenly stop growing at a certain altitude or latitude.

That could be because other stress factors, such as wind abrasion, snow and ice damage limit the spread of species which create abrupt treelines.

India may lose south-west monsoon in another 150 yrs: Study

2009-09-06T13:24:00.001+06:00

Source: The Times of India
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/environment/the-good-earth/India-may-lose-south-west-monsoon-in-another-150-yrs-Study/articleshow/4977732.cms
Posted date: 6 Sep 2009

PTI 6 September 2009, 10:18am IST
NEW DELHI: India may lose one of its crucial lifelines - the south west monsoon, which brings rains across the country during the summers, in the

next 150 years, warns a new study by Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
The phenomenon is the result of global warming which has led to increase in the rate of temperature rise over Arabian Sea, researchers say.

This rise is reducing temperature difference between land and sea, known as Temperature Gradient (TG), responsible for attracting rain causing winds from Arabian Sea towards Indian mainland.

"For climatology, 30 years variations are considered. The decreasing trend (of TG) is highly significant and in another 150 years or so, it may tend to zero," lead author S M Bawiskar, a scientist at the Pune-based institute, said.

Once the gradient becomes zero, Bawiskar warns, the monsoon winds will be replaced by dry easterly winds thus disturbing the flow of south-west monsoon.

He found that average temperature over Arabian Sea was 18.77 degrees Celsius during 1948-77 but it has increased by 0.87 degrees to touch 19.64 degrees during 1979-2008.

The results published in the Journal of Earth System Science show that rate of temperature increase over sea is higher than land which has narrowed the Gradient by 1.11 degrees during the said period.

Himalayas hotspot of climate change

2009-09-04T11:44:00.001+06:00

Nandita Sengupta, TNN 4 September 2009, 03:21am IST
Source: The Times of India
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/environment/global-warming/Himalayas-hotspot-of-climate-change/articleshow/4969827.cms
Posted date: 4 Sep 2009

NEW DELHI: It's 4,000 miles of mountains, seas and valleys from Kathmandu to Copenhagen. With changing climate, it could well become 4,000 miles
of sudden storms, flood and climate migrations. Recognising that nations need to pool resources and expertise to face climate change impacts, South Asian countries came together for the first time earlier this week for a climate mini-summit in Kathmandu ahead of the Copenhagen meet in December.

Himalayan ecosystems are 'the hotspots'. That's the message from the two-day South Asian Regional Climate Change Conference. The region's nations have "come to a bit of understanding" of the climate change challenges that transcend political boundaries, say environmentalists and policy makers. "It's a big first step with a positive outcome," M S Mani, environmental economist at the World Bank, told TOI on phone.

The mighty Himalayas are acutely vulnerable to climate change. "The Himalayas have been warming three times as fast as the world average and their glaciers are shrinking more rapidly than anywhere else and could disappear by 2035. The Ganges and Indus could become seasonal rather than year-round rivers," recently wrote Newsweek's science editor Sharon Begley.

As the source of most of the region's major rivers, changes in Himalayan ecosystems can drastically alter the lives of more than the 700 million who live in the region. Lesser snow and fast-shrinking glaciers mean rivers becoming trickles and effectively India, Nepal and Bangladesh's water sources drying up. At the same time, coastal areas like Maldives, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are threatened by rising seas levels.

While most climate summits gear towards ways to reduce carbon emissions and related negotiations, this one was an attempt to see how local communities must be helped to deal with the impact of climate change. "The Copenhagen summit is a different issue. Here, we looked at a synergistic approach to enhance ability of communities to cope with changing climate," said joint secretary R R Rashmi, of the ministry of environment and forests in the Indian government.

The outcome is a 10-point statement. This spans the range of climate change issues from highlighting the Himalayas as a hotspot to filling knowledge gaps in mountain ecosystems, from pushing for finance of adaptation processes and clean technologies to enhancement of carbon stocks. "The Kathmandu meet recognised the Himalayan ecosystem as a hotspot and aimed to ensure the voice of South Asia gets reflected at Copenhagen," says senior fellow at Tata Energy Research Institute, Prosanto Pal.

Nepal, added Mani, will carry the message to Copenhagen that South Asia "needs immediate action to address climate-change impacts in the Himalayan regions. That help can be in financing, in adaptation and technology transfers," he says.

Mysterious Glaciers That Grew When Asia Heated Up

2009-08-31T18:12:00.000+06:00

ScienceDaily (Aug. 29, 2009) — Ice, when heated, is supposed to melt.

That’s why a collection of glaciers in the Southeast Himalayas stymies those who know what they did 9,000 years ago. While most other Central Asian glaciers retreated under hotter summer temperatures, this group of glaciers advanced from one to six kilometers.

A new study by BYU geologist Summer Rupper pieces together the chain of events surrounding the unexpected glacial growth.

“Stronger monsoons were thought to be responsible,” said Rupper, who reports her findings in the September issue of the journal Quaternary Research. “Our research indicates the extra snowfall from monsoonal effects can only take credit for up to 30 percent of the glacial advance.”

As Central Asia’s summer climate warmed as much as 6 degrees Celsius, shifting weather patterns brought more clouds to the Southeast Himalayas. The additional shade created a pocket of cooler temperatures.

Temperatures also dropped when higher winds spurred more evaporation in this typically humid area, the same process behind household swamp coolers.

The story of these seemingly anomalous glaciers underscores the important distinction between the terms “climate change” and “global warming.”

“Even when average temperatures are clearly rising regionally or globally, what happens in any given location depends on the exact dynamics of that place,” Rupper said.

The findings come from a framework Rupper developed as an alternative to the notion that glaciers form and melt in direct proportion to temperature. Her method is based on the balance of energy between a glacier and a wide range of climate factors, including wind, humidity, precipitation, evaporation and cloudiness.

Gerard Roe and Alan Gillespie of the University of Washington are co-authors of the new study.

Knowing how glaciers responded in past periods of climate change will help Rupper forecast the region’s water supply in the coming decades. She and collaborators are in the process of determining how much of the Indus River comes from the vast network of glaciers far upstream from the agricultural valleys of India and Pakistan.

“Their study can be used to help assess future glaciological and hydrological changes in the most populated part of our planet, which is a region that is now beginning to experience the profound effects of human-induced climate change,” said Lewis Owen, a geologist at the University of Cincinnati who was not affiliated with this study.

Brigham Young University (2009, August 29). Mysterious Glaciers That Grew When Asia Heated Up. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 31, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/08/090827101207.htm

Melting glaciers threaten 'Nepal tsunami'

2009-08-31T07:21:00.002+06:00

AFP 30 August 2009, 02:45pm IST
Source: The Times of India
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/Environment/Global-Warming/Melting-glaciers-threaten-Nepal-tsunami-/articleshow/4951077.cms
Posted date: 30 August 2009

LUKLA: Over two decades, Funuru Sherpa has watched the lake above his native village of Dengboche in Nepal's Himalayas grow, as the glacier that

feeds it melts.

The 29-year-old, who runs a busy Internet cafe for tourists visiting the Everest region, remembers his grandfather telling him that 50 years ago the lake did not exist.

"Before, it was all ice," he said in the eastern Himalayan town of Lukla, in the shadow of Mount Everest. "This is proof that the glaciers in the high Himalayas are melting. And that must be because the temperatures have gone up."

Scientists say the Imja Glacier above Dengboche is retreating by about 70 metres a year, and the melting ice has formed a huge lake that could devastate villages if it bursts.

The trend is not new. Nepal's International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has studied the Himalayas for three decades, says many of the country's glaciers have been retreating for centuries.

But ICIMOD glaciologist Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya said this was now happening at an alarming speed, with temperatures in the Himalayas rising at a much faster rate than the global average.

"Our studies of the past 30 years show that the temperatures (in the Himalayas) are rising up to eight times faster than the global average. Melting is taking place higher and faster," Bajracharya told AFP.

"The melting of glaciers and formation of glacier lakes is a key indicator of the temperature rise. And lately, we have seen massive ice melt."

A numbers game

2009-08-30T20:27:00.001+06:00

KASHISH DAS SHRESTHA

Source: MYREPUBLICA.COM

Posted date: 2009-08-28

On August 31, “Kathmandu to Copenhagen 2009,” a two-day regional conference on climate change on the theme “A vision for address [ing] climate change risks and vulnerabilities in the Himalayas” will begin here. Almost as if to set the stage for this, on August 10, WWF Nepal launched their report, “New Species Discoveries – The Eastern Himalayas: Where Worlds Collide.”

The report is both optimistic and cautious: a total of 353 species of flora and fauna recorded between 1998 and 2008 (an average of 35 new species per year) in a region with an extremely rich biodiversity yet to be fully studied, but increasingly threatened by climate change. Of the total, 94 of those species were found in Nepal.

The bright green, red-footed tree frog (Rhacophorus suffry), a so-called ‘flying frog’ because long webbed feet allow the species to glide when falling, was described in 2007.

Totul Bortamuli (WWF Nepal)

Climate change comes with a few numbers of its own: 390PPM (parts per million), the earth’s current atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas causing global warming. The amount it needs to be ideal? It is 350PPM.

“The slightest change can have a major impact on the habitat, bringing an imbalance to the symbiotic relationship in the ecosystem that leads to extinction of certain species,” Shubash Lohani, Senior Program Officer of the Eastern Himalayas Program at WWF-US, explained about the fragile mountain ecosystem from his Washington DC office.

Indeed, a WWF research conducted with two bio-indicators, Apollo Butterfly, and Pika Hare, in the Langtang region in Nepal has shown some direct implications of climate change in animal habitat. The Apollo Butterflies were found at 3,000 meters above sea level, 500 meters higher than their normal range, while the Pika Hare, too, was found to have adapted to 100 meters above its natural habitat. Both habitat changes occurred in a course of about 15 years.

The Arunachal macaque (Macaca munzala), a primate new to science, in the high altitudes of western Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Anindya Sinha (WWF Nepal)

These kinds of subtle changes in the habitat of one species can imply the increase in vulnerability of the other.

“Habitat Specialist species can exist only in their specific habitats. So even a slight change can increase the chances of losing these species,” says Lohani, and adds, “Especially if the given species is unable to disperse to another suitable area.”

Changes in the Himalayas, however, may not be all that subtle. “The Melting Himalayas: Regional Challenges and Local Impacts of Climate Change on Mountain Ecosystems and Livelihoods” (June 2007) published by International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) cites, “Warming in the Himalayas has been much greater than the global average of 0.74C over the last 100 years… warming in Nepal was 0.6°C per decade between 1977 and 2000. Warming in Nepal and Tibet has been progressively greater with elevation.”

The most colourful snake discovery has been the emerald green pitviper (Trimeresurus gumprechti). Officially discovered in 2002, Gumprecht’s green pitviper is venomous and up to 130cm long.

Gernot Vogel (WWF Nepal)

It is not just the loss or endangerment of biodiversity in the Himalaya that is alarming. Climate change is threatening biodiversity in every region and terrain.

“New analyses suggest that 15–37% of a sample of 1,103 land plants and animals would eventually become extinct as a result of climate changes expected by 2050. For some of these species, there will no longer be anywhere suitable to live. Others will be unable to reach places where the climate is suitable. A rapid shift to technologies that do not produce greenhouse gases, combined with carbon sequestration, could save 15–20% of species from extinction,” the scientific journal Nature wrote in 2004.

This year, at the inauguration of the Regional Climate Change Workshop hosted by IUCN in India, Kinsuk Mitra of Winrock, India, said: “Climate change will increase species extinction… 24% of species will be extinct or threatened with extinction within 50 years.”

Striking, colourful Asian babbler Bugun Liocichla (Liocichla bugunorum) is one of the new birds which was first glimpsed in 1995 near Eagle’s Nest Wildlife Sanctuary in India.

Ramana Athreya (WWF Nepal)

Species extinction today is of course intricately linked to human society and activity. While climate change is increasingly becoming a dominant factor, there are other human activities putting pressure on biodiversity too.

“One thing is very clear to our mind, climate change is going to happen, that will definitely have impact on smaller species and larger organisms, including forests and plants and they may or may not make it. We are building models for 2 degree change and 4 degree change in temperature and the scenario is not very good,” Tariq Aziz, head of the Living Himalayas Initiative, WWF, told Liam Cochrane on Radio Australia, two days after the “New Species Discoveries – The Eastern Himalayas: Where Worlds Collide” was released.

“A lot of these places have been taken over by human beings, agriculture, developmental projects and we might lose our corridors and linkages between these ecosystems for animals to move and that will be a disaster.”

Golden-eyed Smith’s litter frog (Leptobrachium smithi) is certainly one of the the most extraordinary-looking frogs in the world and already declining in number.

Milijove Krvavac(WWF Nepal)

It also applies to other cases. Earlier in the year, in June, a study on the Caribbean coral reef, conducted by researchers from the University of East Anglia and Canada’s Simon Fraser University, also makes a case: “We suggest that the last period of decline [of Caribbean coral reefs] is partly due to climate change, but also due to several other human impacts such as over-fishing and coastal development,” Lorenzo Alvarez of the University of East Anglia, who led the study, said during the report’s release.

Still, “There is growing evidence that climate change will become one of the major drivers of species extinctions in the 21st Century,” an IUCN report notes.

These are human-induced disasters – the various factors eroding our biodiversity, and climate change. And these are disasters that will be the human society’s greatest losses too. They are also problems that we can begin to work solving aggressively, provided there is a political will. The 353 new species recorded in the Eastern Himalaya in 10 years is an amazing feat. But that will mean very little if we miss the 350 mark at COP15.

(The author could be reached at kashish@350nepal.org)

India's monsoon may be the worst since 1972

2009-08-28T22:36:00.002+06:00

Source: The Times of India
URL:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/Indias-monsoon-may-be-the-worst-since-1972-/articleshow/4945782.cms
Posted date: 28 August 2009

NEW DELHI: India's poor monsoon rains will improve slightly in their final month but will still end the June-September season about 20% below normal, a top official said, making this year's rainfall the worst since 1972.

Weak and uneven monsoon rains have ravaged India's rice crop and hit the sugarcane, soybean and groundnut crops as well as disrupting the flow of water into the main reservoirs, which are vital for hydropower generation and winter irrigation.

"We expect at least 4-5% improvement in the seasonal rainfall deficit for the entire season from the current level," Ajit Tyagi, director general of the India Meteorological Department, said on Friday.

India last suffered a monsoon failure in 2002, when rainfall was 19.2% below average through the season, and July rains were 54.2% below normal. India's crop output in 2002/03 fell 18%.

This year, June rainfall was the worst in over 80 years, while July saw a 5% deficit. August began with an exceptionally dry two weeks, followed by near-normal rains in the later part of the month.

From the start of June to Aug. 26, rains were 25% below normal, data showed on Thursday.

"In 2002, the seasonal rainfall deficit was 19%. The only difference is that this year's July rainfall was relatively better than 2002," Tyagi said.

Nepal to host South Asian youth climate meet in September

2009-08-26T20:53:00.001+06:00

Nepal to host South Asian youth climate meet in September

By A Staff Reporter

The Rising Nepal

Kathmandu, Aug. 24

The first ever South Asian Youth Climate Summit on Climate Change (SAYSoCC) -2009 is all set be held from 3 to 6 September in Nepal.

Over 100 South Asian and global youth leaders will converge at the four-day summit. The summit is scheduled to take place at Dhulikhel.

The summit will bring together South Asian youths and will formulate ways to encourage policy makers to make strong commitments and take immediate action on climate change, a pres release issued by Clean Energy Nepal said.

The South Asian youth network on climate change will be launched to connect country-wide movement and a team representing South Asian youth delegates COP-15 Copenhagen will be formed.

A South Asian Youth declaration on climate change will also be produced which will embody the region’s aspirations, goals and vision. The declaration will latter be handed to the UNFCCC and Ministry of Environment of South Asian countries.

Nepalese Youth for Climate Change (NYCA), Clean Energy Nepal (CEN) along with the Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN), Bangladesh Youth Climate Network (BCN), Sri Lankan Climate Youth Network (SCYN), Pakistan Youth Climate Network (PYCN) and 350.org are the organisers of the event. The summit has been officially accredited by Ministry of Environment of Nepal.

Climate Change Could Deepen Poverty In Developing Countries, Study Finds

2009-08-23T08:04:00.002+06:00

Climate Change Could Deepen Poverty In Developing Countries, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2009) — Urban workers could suffer most from climate change as the cost of food drives them into poverty, according to a new study that quantifies the effects of climate on the world's poor populations.

These maps show projected changes in frequency and magnitude of climate extremes. A Purdue team found that the occurrence and magnitude of what are currently the 30-year-maximum values for wet, dry and hot extremes are projected to substantially increase for much of the world. (Credit: Diffenbaugh lab image)

A team led by Purdue University researchers examined the potential economic influence of adverse climate events, such as heat waves, drought and heavy rains, on those in 16 developing countries. Urban workers in Bangladesh, Mexico and Zambia were found to be the most at risk.

"Extreme weather affects agricultural productivity and can raise the price of staple foods, such as grains, that are important to poor households in developing countries," said Noah Diffenbaugh, the associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and interim director of Purdue's Climate Change Research Center who co-led the study. "Studies have shown global warming will likely increase the frequency and intensity of heat waves, drought and floods in many areas. It is important to understand which socioeconomic groups and countries could see changes in poverty rates in order to make informed policy decisions."

The team used data from the late 20th century and projections for the late 21st century to develop a framework that examined extreme climate events, comparable shocks to grain production and the impact on the number of impoverished people in each country.

Thomas Hertel, a distinguished professor of agricultural economics and co-leader of the study, said that although urban workers only contribute modestly to total poverty rates in the sample countries, they are the most vulnerable group to changes in grains production.

"Food is a major expenditure for the poor and, while those who work in agriculture would have some benefit from higher grains prices, the urban poor would only get the negative effects," said Hertel, who also is executive director of Purdue's Center for Global Trade Analysis. "This is an important finding given that the United Nations projects a continuing shift in population concentrations from rural to urban areas in virtually all of these developing countries."

With nearly 1 billion of the world's poor living on less than $1 a day, extreme events can have a devastating impact, he said.

"Bangladesh, Mexico and Zambia showed the greatest percentage of the population entering poverty in the wake of extreme drought, with an additional 1.4 percent, 1.8 percent and 4.6 percent of their populations being impoverished by future climate extremes, respectively," Hertel said. "This translates to an additional 1.8 million people impoverished per country for Bangladesh and Mexico and an additional half million people in Zambia."

A paper detailing the work will be published in Thursday's (Aug. 20) issue of Environmental Research Letters. In addition to Diffenbaugh and Hertel, Syud Amer Ahmed, a recent Purdue graduate and a member of the development research group for The World Bank, co-authored the paper. The World Bank's Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development funded the research.

The team identified the maximum rainfall, drought and heat wave for the 30-year periods of 1971-2000 and 2071-2100 and then compared the maximums for the two time periods.

The global climate model experiments developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, were used for the future projections of extreme events. The team used an IPCC scenario that has greenhouse gas emissions continuing to follow the current trend, Diffenbaugh said.

"The occurrence and magnitude of what are currently the 30-year-maximum values for wet, dry and hot extremes are projected to substantially increase for much of the world," he said. "Heat waves and drought in the Mediterranean showed a potential 2700 percent and 800 percent increase in occurrence, respectively, and extreme rainfall in Southeast Asia was projected to potentially increase by 900 percent."

In addition, Southeast Asia showed a projected 40 percent increase in the magnitude of the worst rainfall; central Africa showed a projected 1000 percent increase in the magnitude of the worst heat wave; and the Mediterranean showed a projected 60 percent increase in the worst drought.

A statistical analysis was used to determine grain productivity shocks that would correspond in magnitude to the climate extremes, and then the economic impact of the supply shock was determined. Future predicted extreme climate events were compared to historical agricultural productivity extremes in order to assess the likely impact on agricultural production, prices and wages. Because the projected changes in extreme rainfall and heat wave events were too large for the current model to accept, only the extreme drought events were incorporated into the economic projections, making the projected poverty impacts a conservative estimate, he said.

To assess the potential economic impact of a given change in wages and grains prices, the team used data from each country's household survey. The estimates of likely wage and price changes following an extreme climate event were obtained from a global trade model, called the Global Trade Analysis Project, or GTAP, which is maintained by Purdue's agricultural economics department.

Purdue's GTAP framework is supported by an international consortium of 27 national and international agencies and is used by a network of 6,500 researchers in 140 countries.

Large reductions in grains productivity due to extreme climate events are supported by historical data. In 1991 grains productivity in Malawi and Zambia declined by about 50 percent when southern Africa experienced a severe drought.

Diffenbaugh said this is an initial quantification of how poverty is tied to climate fluctuations, and the team is working to improve the modeling and analysis system in order to enable more comprehensive assessments of the link between climate volatility and poverty vulnerability.

Source: Purdue University (2009, August 21). Climate Change Could Deepen Poverty In Developing Countries, Study Finds. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 23, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/08/090820082101.htm

WorldDendro 2010 will take place June 13-18, 2010, in Rovaniemi, Finland

2009-08-19T07:39:00.001+06:00

The WorldDendro 2010 conference focuses on dendrochronology and the applications of tree rings as environmental sensors. The specific theme of the conference is climate change, one of the greatest challenges of our time. About 400 researchers from 40 countries will seek for answers to the questions such as:

What can tree rings tell us about forest health?
What kind of requirements does changing climate pose for sustainable forest management?
How large are the recent oscillations of climate compared to long-term variation?
What possibilities do new analytical techniques provide us for detecting past, present and future trends in tree growth?

For more detail information and abstract submission-
http://www.worlddendro2010.fi/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage

Unexpected Relationship Between Climate Warming And Advancing Treelines

2009-08-15T14:34:00.000+06:00

Unexpected Relationship Between Climate Warming And Advancing Treelines

ScienceDaily (Aug. 14, 2009) — A new study reveals that treelines are not responding to climate warming as expected. The research, the first global quantitative assessment of the relationship between climate warming and treeline advance, is published in Ecology Letters and tests the premise that treelines are globally advancing in response to climate warming since 1900.

Treelines are the elevation or latitudinal limits where trees are capable of growth or survival and are considered to be early indicators of climate warming because they are constrained primarily by cold temperatures. Summer temperature is widely considered to be the primary control of treeline formation and maintenance, whereas winter temperatures have previously been considered less critical because of the insulative effects of snow. This study reveals how winter warming has overturned this prevailing view.

"Average temperatures have risen over the last century, with a more pronounced and rapid change at high altitudes and latitudes", said Ms. Melanie Harsch from the Bio-Protection Research Centre in New Zealand. "Within these zones, treelines are thought to be more temperature sensitive and so the rise in summer temperatures should result in an advance of treeline position."

Harsch and her co-authors conducted a multivariate meta-analysis, using a global dataset of 166 treeline sites with temperature data taken from the closest climate station to each site. The team used this data to analyse treeline advance throughout the 20th century and consider the contributing factors to that advance.

The team found that only 87 of the 166 sites (52%) had advanced while simultaneously the mean annual local temperatures had increased at 111 of the 166 sites at an average rate of 0.013˚C a year (or 1˚C in 77 years). Of the remaining sites, 77 (47%) remained stable and only two (1%) had treelines that receded. Both of the receding sites showed evidence of disturbance, indicating that regardless of form, location or degree of temperature change experienced over the last century, treeline positions have either advanced or remained static.

"Surprisingly these results reveal that treelines are not universally responding to climate warming by advancing, as expected," said Harsch, "However they demonstrate the importance of temperature on treeline advance over other factors such as disturbance, latitude, scale, elevation and distance to the ocean; none of which demonstrated strong relationships with the probability of treeline advance."

Another surprising result of this study was the association with winter, rather than summer, warming. These results provide no evidence of the prevailing view that high altitude and latitude treelines are controlled only by summer temperatures. Instead they show that treelines are more likely to advance at sites that had warmed during the winter months. It is known, at least in northern latitudes that climate-associated changes in winter conditions are on average more extreme than changes in summer conditions.

"These results show that treelines are responding to warming, but are not consistent in that only half of the sites showed signs of advance despite most sites experiencing warming. Several studies on plant species' responses to climate warming have shown mixed results and this study provides a possible explanation – both winter and summer conditions control treeline position," concluded Harsch. "Our expectations of response depend upon which factors are limiting the current treeline distribution. Where summer temperature is the primary limiting factor we can expect to continue seeing advance, but at other sites treeline advance is unlikely to occur until other limiting factors are first lessened."

Source: Wiley-Blackwell (2009, August 14). Unexpected Relationship Between Climate Warming And Advancing Treelines. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 15, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/08/090812202047.htm

Spectacular Melting Of The Largest French Glacier

2009-08-11T05:19:00.001+06:00

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2009) — Located over 12 000 kilometers from the Alps, the Kerguelen Islands are home to the largest French glacier, the Cook ice cap (which had an area of around 500 km² in 1963). By combining historical information with recent satellite data, the glaciologists at the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (Université Paul Sabatier / CNRS / CNES / IRD) have observed increasingly rapid shrinkage of the ice.

Over the last 40 years, the Cook ice cap has thinned by around 1.5 meters per year, its area has decreased by 20%, and retreat has been twice as rapid since 1991. Their work has been just published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The Kerguelen Islands are located in the southern Indian Ocean, and numerous glaciers cover the highest areas of the islands. The first studies carried out in this exceptional natural laboratory for French research showed an initially slow retreat of the Ampère glacier (one of the outlet glaciers of the Cook ice cap) between 1800 and 1965, subsequently becoming much faster. Since 1974, in situ monitoring of the Cook ice cap has no longer been carried out. However, observations made from space between 1991 and 2006 have enabled scientists to collect data from this relatively inaccessible area.

Glaciologists from the Laboratory for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS - Université Toulouse 3/CNRS/IRD/CNES) began their work by compiling a complete inventory of the glaciers on the Kerguelen Islands from an Institut Géographique National (IGN) map published in 1967. At that time, these glaciers covered over 700 km², including 500 km² for the Cook ice cap alone.

The scientists then used Spot and Landsat satellite images to update this inventory for the years 1991, 2001 and 2003, and to quantify glacial retreat. By 1991, the Cook ice cap covered a mere 448 km², and by 2003 this had fallen to 403 km2. It has thus lost 20% of its area in 40 years, and it has been retreating twice as fast since 1991. In addition, the researchers estimated the volume loss (or mass balance) of the Cook ice cap over the last 40 years.

This mass balance accurately characterizes the response of the glacier to climatic variation (temperature, precipitation), and can be used to compare glacier response in various areas of the world. For instance, the Cook ice cap has thinned by as much as 300 to 400 meters in glacier tongues at low altitude, whereas variations in thickness appear to be smaller in high regions. On average, for the whole ice cap since 1963, thinning reached 1.5 metres per year, which is a very high value when compared to other glaciers in the world. In the last 40 years, the ice cap has lost about 22% of its volume. This thinning also appears to have been accelerating over the recent period.

The glaciers in the Kerguelen islands were already retreating in the 1960s, and their decline over the past 40 years cannot be attributed only to recent warming partly due to human activities. Part of this retreat can in fact be explained by a delayed response of these glaciers to the natural warming that followed the Little Ice Age (a cold period that ended between 1850 and 1900). However, the recent acceleration of ice wastage is doubtless connected to high temperatures and low precipitation since the beginning of the 1980s.

Source: CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange) (2009, August 10). Spectacular Melting Of The Largest French Glacier. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 11, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/08/090807091435.htm

India, China to cooperate over Himalayan glaciers: Jairam Ramesh

2009-08-04T11:06:00.000+06:00

India, China to cooperate over Himalayan glaciers: Jairam Ramesh

PTI 3 August 2009, 01:19pm IST LONDON: India and China are in talks to monitor the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas, a border region crucial to both countries' water supplies, minister for environment Jairam Ramesh has said.

"We are talking to the Chinese about monitoring the Himalayan glaciers," Ramesh told the Financial Times.

However, he said India would not allow Chinese scientists "to climb all over India's glaciers" but wanted a collaborative research programme.

He said as part of a scientific investigation into the health of what are called the 'Water Towers of Asia', academic research bodies on both sides of the mountain range would share information.

He said New Delhi is open to dialogue on water resources with Beijing, adding the two countries shared the concerns.

Ramesh is visiting China this month to strike a deal with Beijing ahead of the Copenhagen talks on climate change in December.

He said India and China could be a "countervailing power" in resisting legally binding caps on greenhouse emissions that threaten to slow the progress of the two fastest growing economies.

The Himalayan region and the Tibet plateau are strategically sensitive for the two countries.

Seven of the world's greatest rivers, including the Ganges and the Yangtze, are fed by glaciers, and supply water to about 40 per cent of the world's population.

The Financial Times' report said the Indian government has disputed the "doomsday predictions" linking melting of Himalayan glaciers to climate change, saying there is no evidence to support that glaciers will disappear within 40 years.

"It's a highly emotive issue but one has to be a little careful before we write the epitaph of the Himalayan glaciers," Ramesh said.

Indian government has requested that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the department of science and technology undertake extensive glacial surveys across the eastern and western Himalayas to assess their condition.

Source: The Times of India

Villages in west Himalayas bearing the brunt of climate change

2009-08-01T15:52:00.001+06:00

Villages in west Himalayas bearing the brunt of climate change

PTI 30 July 2009, 12:50pm IST

Source: The Times of India

NEW DELHI: With erratic snowfall, melting of small glaciers affecting water flow in the rivers coupled with a rise in temperature inducing

conducive conditions for invasion of insects, villages in the cold desert of Western Himalayas are bearing the brunt of climate change.

The economically backward and deprived local communities have already started feeling the heat as water supply, agriculture-based livelihoods and infrastructures in the region face stress due to the global warming, thanks to the greenhouse gases emissions across the world.

"Even though we cannot establish scientifically the changes in weather we can sense that its gradually becoming more warmer during summer in Lahaul and Spiti with temperature shooting up to even 30 degree Celsius as compared to 14 to 15 degrees Celsius a few years ago," says Rigzin Samphel, Zila Parishad Vice Chairman from a village in Lahaul on the Indo-Tibet border in Himachal Pradesh.

"There is an acute water shortage as small glaciers are melting. The natural ponds have dried up and now we are depending on water sheds which is not sufficient to meet our agricultural needs," Samphel adds.

Aziz Mir, retired senior scientist from Leh echoes similar sentiments. "We are witnessing a lot of environmental changes. There is no heavy rainfall which we used to witness a few years ago, glaciers such as Khurdang have vanished in front of our eyes."

Permafrost melting a growing climate threat -study

2009-07-30T18:07:00.001+06:00

Posted date: Tue Jun 30, 2009 5:00pm
Source: Reuters
URL:http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSSP458218

SINGAPORE, July 1 (Reuters) - The amount of carbon locked away in frozen soils in the far Northern Hemisphere is double previous estimates and rapid melting could accelerate global warming, a study released on Wednesday says.

Large areas of northern Russia, Canada, Nordic countries and the U.S. state of Alaska have deep layers of frozen soil near the surface called permafrost.

Global warming has already triggered rapid melting of the permafrost in some areas, releasing powerful greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.

As the world gets warmer, more of these gases are predicted to be released and could trigger a tipping point in which huge amounts of the gases flood the atmosphere, rapidly driving up temperatures, scientists say.

"Massive amounts of carbon stored in frozen soils at high latitudes are increasingly vulnerable to exposure to the atmosphere," said Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project at Australia's state-funded Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.

"The research shows that the amount of carbon stored in soils surrounding the North Pole has been hugely underestimated."

The study is published in the latest issue of Global Biogeochemical Cycle.

Canadell said a four-year study of the latest research on permafrost, data from new drilling projects as well as the release of previously unpublished data from the Russian Academy of Sciences had led to a rethink of carbon levels.

"Projections show that almost all near-surface permafrost will disappear by the end of this century exposing large carbon stores to decomposition and release of greenhouse gases," he said in a statement.

He said if only 10 per cent of the permafrost melted, this could lead to the release of an additional 80 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. This would equate to about 0.7 degrees Celsius of global warming.

According to the U.N. Climate Panel, average temperatures have already risen by about 0.7 deg C since the late nineteenth century and are forecast to rise another 1.8 to 4 deg C by 2100, Scientists say a rapidly warming planet will trigger more intense storms and droughts, rising seas and melting ice caps.

Canadell said that on a recent trip to northern China, the permafrost at its southern limit had all but disappeared over the past 20 years.

Locals had told him the permafrost was once 20 cm below the surface and now it was several metres down, he told Reuters from Canberra, Australia.

In the statement, he said computer models showed global warming could trigger an irreversible process of thawing.

For example, heat generated from increased microbial activity in the soil could lead to sustained and long-term emissions of carbon dioxide and methane.

In addition, lakes formed as permafrost thaws would draw heat to deeper layers and bring methane trapped in pockets below to the surface.
(Reporting by David Fogarty; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Film fest on climate change

2009-07-28T07:45:00.000+06:00

RABIN GIRI/ The Himalayan Times

27 July 2009

KATHMANDU: British Embassy, British Council Nepal and DFID are jointly organising a five-day UK Nepal Climate Change Short Film Competition in Kathmandu from August 28.

Speaking at a function organised to make the announcement of the competition Andrew Hall, British ambassador to Nepal, on Monday said that the entire mountainous region of Nepal was affected by climate change. 'Though emission of green gases is negligible in Nepal, it cannot be an exception at a time when the world community is heeding climate change as a serious challenge for humanity’, added Hall. Bansanta Thapa, executive director of Himal Association and coordinator of the competition, expressed his gratitude at being a part of the competition. He announced that winners’ films will be screened at Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival which is scheduled to begin from December 10, 2009.

Interested candidates should submit the nomination form no later than August 24 and the film should be no longer than three minutes. The winner would be given Rs. 60, 000 while first runner up and second runner up will be awarded Rs. 40, 000 and Rs. 30, 000 respectively.

Scattering clouds may increase global warming

2009-07-28T07:06:00.002+06:00

ANI 26 July 2009, 04:07pm IST

WASHINGTON: A new study has shown strong evidence that as the oceans warm, clouds appear to scatter, indicating that changes in these clouds may increase global warming.

The role of clouds in climate change has been a major question for decades.

As the earth warms under increasing greenhouse gases, it is not known whether clouds will dissipate, letting in more of the sun's heat energy and making the earth warm even faster, or whether cloud cover will increase, blocking the Sun's rays and actually slowing down global warming.

Now, a new study by researchers Amy Clement and Robert Burgman from the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and Joel Norris from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has begin to unravel this mystery.

Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.

Because of inconsistencies in historical observations, trends in cloudiness have been difficult to identify.

The team broke through this cloud conundrum by removing errors from cloud records and using multiple data sources for the northeast Pacific Ocean, one of the most well-studied areas of low-level stratiform clouds in the world.

The result of their analysis was a surprising degree of agreement between two multi-decade datasets that were not only independent of each other, but that employed fundamentally different measurement methods.

One set consisted of collected visual observations from ships over the last 50 years, and the other was based on data collected from weather satellites.

"The agreement we found between the surface-based observations and the satellite data was almost shocking," said Clement, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami.

The Hadley Centre model from the UK Met Office was able to reproduce the observations.

Together, the observations and the Hadley Centre model results provide evidence that low-level stratiform clouds, which currently shield the earth from the sun's radiation, may dissipate in warming climates, allowing the oceans to further heat up, which would then cause more cloud dissipation.

"This is somewhat of a vicious cycle potentially exacerbating global warming," said Clement.

"But these findings provide a new way of looking at clouds changes. This can help to improve the simulation of clouds in climate models, which will lead to more accurate projections of future climate changes," she added.

Source: The Times of India

NEIndian faces worst-ever rainfall deficit in 30 years

2009-07-23T08:41:00.000+06:00

NE India faces worst-ever rainfall deficit in 30 years

PTI 21 July 2009, 07:22pm IST

SHILLONG: North East India, which boasts of the world's wettest place, has witnessed the highest rainfall deficit in the last 30 years which meteorologists attribute to global warming.

Official records till July 20 say Manipur has been worst affected recording 67% deficient rainfall, followed by Meghalaya (-55), Nagaland (-62), Assam (-34), Mizoram (-31), Tripura (-30) and Arunachal Pradesh (-29).

As a fall-out, summer temperatures have shot up by almost five degrees on an average over the last two decades in North East India, a region nestled in hills and surrounded by rivers.

Describing this year's condition as unusual, Guwahati -based Regional Meteorological Centre director H G Pathak told PTI the region had recorded deficit rainfall throughout the decade, with only 2003 witnessing 4 per cent above normal rainfall.

In the last 30 years, the year 2006 saw a deficit of 37 per cent, while in 1986 the shortfall was 37 per cent in the Assam and Meghalaya region.

Between 1980-1990, only the year 1986 saw deficit rainfall, while in the 1991-2000 decade, only three years saw normal or above normal rainfall in the Assam-Meghalaya region.

Assam capital Guwahati recorded maximum 37.5 degree Celsius and minimum 27.5 degree C yesterday, which was above normal by five degrees C and one degree C respectively. The mean July temperature for the city during 1951-80 had been 31.8 degree C, as per Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) sources.

Similarly, Imphal recorded 32.4 degree C (five degrees above normal) and minimum 23.6 degree C (one degree above normal), with mean temperature for the current month being 28.8 degree C between 1951-80.

Shillong registered the maximum of 27.3 degree C (three degrees above normal) and Agartala maximum 35 degree C (four degrees above normal) and minimum 27 degree C (two degrees above normal). The mean temperatures for Shillong and Agartala for the month of July between 1951-80 had been 24.1 degree C and 31.3 degree C respectively.

Manipur and several districts of Assam have already been declared as affected by drought-like situation.

Pathak said there was a clue to global warming in the phenomenon, with weather systems taking different paths resulting in global circulation anomalies.

Source: The Times of India

Climate change increasing width of tropics

2009-07-08T07:08:00.000+06:00

Climate change increasing width of tropics
7 Jul 2009, 0055 hrs IST, AFP

WASHINGTON: Climate change is rapidly expanding the size of the world’s tropical zone, threatening to bring disease and drought to heavily populated areas, an Australian study has found.

Researchers at James Cook University concluded the tropics had widened by up to 500km in the past 25 years after examining 70 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

They looked at findings from long-term satellite measurements, weather balloon data, climate models and sea temperature studies to determine how global warming was impacting on the tropical zone.

The findings showed it now extended well beyond the traditional definition of the tropics, the equatorial band circling the Earth between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

Steve Turton said that meant the subtropical arid zone which borders the tropics was being pushed into temperate areas, with potentially devastating consequences.

“Such areas include heavily-populated regions of southern Australia, southern Africa, the southern Europe-Mediterranean-Middle East region, the southwestern United States, northern Mexico, and southern South America,” he said. “All of (them) are predicted to experience severe drying.

“If the dry subtropics expand into these regions, the consequences could be devastating for water resources, natural ecosystems and agriculture, with potentially cascading environmental, social and health implications.”
Turton said cyclones and tropical diseases were likely to become more prevalent. “Some models predict the greatest increase in the annual epidemic potential of dengue will be into the subtropical regions, including the southern US, China and northern Africa in the northern hemisphere, and South America, southern Africa, and most of Australia in the southern hemisphere,” he said.

James Cook University vice-chancellor Sandra Harding said the evidence showed climate change was already affecting wildlife and rainfall in Australia, which is in the grip of its worst drought in a century. She said studies showed changes to wind patterns meant rain was now being dumped in the ocean south of the continent, rather than over land. “There is also evidence that many Australian animal and plant species are moving south in an attempt to track their preferred climatic conditions,” she said.

Source: ThetimesofIndia.com

Warming could raise sea level by 5 mts: Scientist

2009-07-03T08:20:00.000+06:00

Warming could raise sea level by 5 mts: Scientist

2 Jul 2009, 1610 hrs IST, IANS

WELLINGTON: New evidence shows that if global warming melts the West Antarctic ice sheet, sea levels around the world could rise by up to fivemetres, a New Zealand scientist said Thursday.

Tim Naish, director of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre in Wellington, said the ice sheet was Antarctica's most vulnerable element and was expected to melt first, along with Greenland.

"Polar ice sheets have grown and collapsed at least 40 times over the past five million years, causing major sea-level fluctuations," he said in a statement issued by the university.

The most recent "interglacial" period between collapses had lasted 10,000 years, during which time global sea-level and atmospheric temperatures remained more or less constant, and human civilization flourished, Naish said.

He said much of his research focused on an international drilling programme in the sedimentary layers of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which analyzed how it behaved at a time when the world was warmer.

"We know that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were slightly above what they are now, and the earth was two to three degrees warmer. When the West Antarctica ice sheet collapsed numerous times, it raised sea levels by up to 10 metres.

"In the past, these climate changes were happening naturally, but now we've accelerated this process, the greenhouse gases are rising and temperatures are rising faster than they ever have in the past," Naish said.

"It's one of the big issues of our time and it will have a profound effect on our future society."

Source: The Times of India

NASA, Japan Release Most Complete Topographic Map Of Earth

2009-07-01T13:03:00.000+06:00

ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) — NASA and Japan has released a new digital topographic map of Earth Monday that covers more of our planet than ever before. The map was produced with detailed measurements from NASA's Terra spacecraft.

The new global digital elevation model of Earth was created from nearly 1.3 million individual stereo-pair images collected by the Japanese Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer, or Aster, instrument aboard Terra. NASA and Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, known as METI, developed the data set. It is available online to users everywhere at no cost.

"This is the most complete, consistent global digital elevation data yet made available to the world," said Woody Turner, Aster program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This unique global set of data will serve users and researchers from a wide array of disciplines that need elevation and terrain information."

According to Mike Abrams, Aster science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the new topographic information will be of value throughout the Earth sciences and has many practical applications. "Aster's accurate topographic data will be used for engineering, energy exploration, conserving natural resources, environmental management, public works design, firefighting, recreation, geology and city planning, to name just a few areas," Abrams said.

Previously, the most complete topographic set of data publicly available was from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. That mission mapped 80 percent of Earth's landmass, between 60 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south. The new Aster data expand coverage to 99 percent, from 83 degrees north latitude and 83 degrees south. Each elevation measurement point in the new data is 30 meters (98 feet) apart.

"The Aster data fill in many of the voids in the shuttle mission's data, such as in very steep terrains and in some deserts," said Michael Kobrick, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission project scientist at JPL. "NASA is working to combine the Aster data with that of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and other sources to produce an even better global topographic map."

NASA and METI are jointly contributing the Aster topographic data to the Group on Earth Observations, an international partnership headquartered at the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, for use in its Global Earth Observation System of Systems. This "system of systems" is a collaborative, international effort to share and integrate Earth observation data from many different instruments and systems to help monitor and forecast global environmental changes.

NASA, METI and the U.S. Geological Survey validated the data, with support from the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and other collaborators. The data will be distributed by NASA's Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center at the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources Observation and Science Data Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., and by METI's Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center in Tokyo.

Aster is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched on Terra in December 1999. Aster acquires images from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, with spatial resolutions ranging from about 15 to 90 meters (50 to 300 feet). A joint science team from the U.S. and Japan validates and calibrates the instrument and data products. The U.S. science team is located at JPL.

For visualizations of the new Aster topographic data, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20090629.html .

Data users can download the Aster global digital elevation model at: https://wist.echo.nasa.gov/~wist/api/imswelcome and http://www.gdem.aster.ersdac.or.jp .

Source:

NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2009, July 1). NASA, Japan Release Most Complete

2009-06-08T07:03:00.001+06:00

One day dendrochronology workshop to undergraduate students to Mark the World Environment Day-2009

In the context of newly established dendrochronology laboratory in Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) to promote dendrochronology in Nepal, and lacking of undergraduate level curriculum in dendrochronology in Nepal, one day introductory dendrochronology workshop was organized to popularize dendrochronology among undergraduate level students of Nepalese university on 7th June, 2009 at Kathmandu, Nepal. The workshop was organized with following objectives-
• To celebrate the world environment day-2009.
• To make dendrochronology familiar to undergraduate students.
• To demonstrate different lab and field techniques of dendrochronology to undergraduate students.
• To promote Dendrochronology related research in Nepal.

All together 25 undergraduate students of 4 different colleges of Kathamndu valley actively participated in the event. This workshop was organized by Tree Ring Society of Nepal at the Golden Gate International College with the support from Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST). On this occasion Dr. Dinesh Buju, Mr. Parveen Kumar Chhetri, Mr. Narayan Gaire, Mr. Raju Bista presented their work on dendrochronology. Latter on students were taken to Pinus rouxburgi forest situated at premises of tribhuvan university, Kirtipur for filed demonstration.

India threatened by changes to the monsoon: Greenpeace

2009-06-06T22:13:00.000+06:00

India threatened by changes to the monsoon: Greenpeace
4 Jun 2009, 1834 hrs IST, IANS
The Times of India

MUMBAI: The Indian monsoon, the country's lifeline, will be significantly affected by climate change, says a report released by the NGO Greenpeace on the eve of World Environment Day.

The report, Monsoon Wager: Climate change and the Indian Monsoon, says climate change could bring about significant change to the intensity, geographic distribution and inter seasonal breaks in the monsoon, which would have enormous social consequences.

"The lives of millions of Indians, farmers, city dwellers, even those trading on the Mumbai Sensex, depend on the monsoon. The unprecedented flooding that Mumbai experienced in 2005 is estimated to have caused a direct loss of about Rs.450 crore," said Vinuta Gopal, climate and energy campaigner of Greenpeace.

"Mumbai and India cannot allow the delicate balance of the monsoon to be thrown awry; we cannot afford to adapt if the monsoons are impacted, we simply have to stop that from happening."

To drive home the point, eight Greenpeace activists hung an 80-foot banner on the Mumbai-Thane bridge Thursday. "Dr Manmohan Singh, Save our Monsoon", it read.

Compiling recent climate science findings, the report pointed out: "The predictions made by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in the 4th Assessment Report suggest that warming is likely to be above the global average for South Asia, with an increase in summer precipitation and an increase in the frequency of intense precipitation in some parts.

"The report states that more extreme rainfall and winds may result from tropical cyclones. Though the rainfall would increase by an overall 20 percent in the summer monsoon, it will not be spread evenly across the country."

Siddharth Pathak, Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace, said: "India has not been a historical contributor to the problem of climate change, but it has a lot to lose from the effects that climate change will have on its land and people.

"Given that the science calls for drastic action to prevent a climate catastrophe, even developing countries such as India cannot afford to ignore the situation and need to move away from a 'business as usual' carbon intensive growth path."

Greenpeace demanded that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put India's climate policy on track and urge other world leaders to do the same. "The climate summit to be held in Copenhagen in December needs to come up with an agreement that will save the planet. The longer the climate negotiators delay the greater the threat to India's one billion inhabitants. With only six months to go, time is running out," added Pathak.

Himalayas warming faster than global average

2009-06-04T23:37:00.000+06:00

Himalayas warming faster than global average

Source: The Times of India
4 Jun 2009, 1843 hrs IST, IANS

NEW DELHI: Northwestern Himalayas has become 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer in the last 100 years, a far higher level of warming than the 0.5-1.1 degrees for the rest of the globe, Indian scientists have found.

Scientists from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Pune University's Department of Geology examined the variation in precipitation (snowfall and rainfall) in the region and found that warming has led to a delay in the onset of winter and a reduction in snowfall.

The study published in the International Journal of Climatology from the Royal Meteorological society, Britain, found that northwestern Himalayas have warmed at the rate of about 1.4 degrees Celsius in the last century compared to the global range of 0.5 to 1.1 degrees Celsius.

"The interesting finding of the study is the unusually high rate of increase in both maximum and minimum temperatures in the last three decades in the northwestern Himalayan region (NWH) whereas in other high altitude mountainous regions of the world such as the Alps and the Rockies, the minimum temperature has increased more rapidly than the maximum," M.R. Bhutiyani, a DRDO scientist who led the study, told IANS.

"The warming on the NWH has been because of both maximum and minimum temperature increasing at a higher rate, with maximum temperature increasing more rapidly," said Bhutiyani, who is also head of the Department of Geology at the College of Military Engineering, Pune.

The data for the NWH region spread over Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh was collected from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), the Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) in Manali and the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.

The study also indicated a significant decreasing trend in monsoon and annual overall precipitation during the period 1866-2006.

"The alarming aspect of it is that the winter precipitation consists now of more rainfall and less snowfall. Effective duration of winter has been curtailed with the late onset of winter and the early onset of spring. This, in turn, has directly influenced the ecology of the area," said Bhutiyani.

The study found that less snowfall followed by early melting of the snow has resulted in a changed water balance in the catchments.

Conforming to the global trends, the study said that the glaciers in the NWH have shrunk considerably in the last three decades, indicating major ice-loss.

"The research points towards the fact that a significant increase in air temperature, coinciding with the industrial revolution and enhanced anthropogenic (human related) activities may have resulted in warming of the region and climate change," Bhutiyani added.

2009-04-30T14:55:00.000+06:00

Interaction Program on

Potential of Dendrochronology in Climate Change

Study in Nepal

Dear All,

NYCA is pleased to invite you on the Climate Talk on 1st May 2009 , Friday.

MR. Praveen Kumar Chhetri, Lecturer, ASCOL will discuss about " Potential of Dendrochronology in Climate Change study in Nepal "

We request You to be the part of the discussion.

Resource Person: Praveen Kumar Chhetri

Date: 1st May, 2009, Friday

Time: 2:00 PM

Venue: ENPHO Hall, Thapagaon, Baneshwor

Please find the abstract of the Research on

Tree Ring and Climate Change Study in Nepal-A Case Study of Langtang National Park.

Climate disaster looms but Nepal oblivious to danger

2009-04-29T12:40:00.002+06:00

KUSHAL REGMI

MYREPUBLICA.COM

KATHMANDU, April 29: In northern Nepal, glaciers are receding. In the middle belt, forest fires are ravaging the hills and a withering drought has decimated farmlands. In the south, we´ve seen flash floods last year, and everything from fires to droughts this year. Have all these calamities been caused by global warming?

“Isn´t it obvious?” exclaims climate change expert Ngamindra Dahal.

“Climate is changing. Let´s learn to accept the fact; now our only role is to be prepared to deal with the changes that are further to come,” says Dahal.

Climate experts call Nepal a “hot spot” because the average temperature rise that our country has seen is six times more than the global average. Reports show that the global temperature rise is 0.01 degrees, while the temperature rise in Nepal is 0.06. The temperature rise in the high Himalayas is still more (0.08).

For the layman, such increments may not seem too alarming, but as the calamities we´ve witnessed and are witnessing now prove, small changes can equal huge effects.

“The main effect of global warming for our region is going to be human displacement, either due to lack of water-as in droughts-or due to too much water-as in floods,” says Dahal.

He shows a newspaper cutting with an exodus story of 300 families from Belghari, Sindhuli, who had to leave their homes forever because their wells dried up in April.
“There are countless other stories such as these from around our country that we don´t know anything about,” Dahal says.

Another event that stands out in his mind is the five-month-long drought of 2006 in Banke and Bardia, in southern Nepal, that eventually ended with heavy floods that swept away many villages.

In the north, things look equally dismal.

Maurice Duchene, a French explorer, says that he recently found many glacial caves in the Annapurna and Khumbu regions filled with water.

“While the glacial caves were empty in my previous visit, they are now filled with water,” said Duchene, speaking at ICIMOD on Tuesday.

According to Duchene, many caves in the glaciers in the Annapurna and Khumbu regions, many of which are more than 50 meters deep, are getting filled by water flowing on the underground rivers under the glaciers. That´s bad news not just for the people living higher up in the mountains but also for the people who live downstream.

“I can´t say for sure; I leave it to the scientists to decide whether this is happening because of climate change; but I can attest to the fact that the rising water in these caves can certainly cause huge ice blocks to detach from the glaciers, causing massive flooding downstream,” he says.

Duchene has photos from his recent expedition to the Kumbu region, all of which show ominous signs. One shows the Imja Lake emptying into cavities, loosening the Imja glacier; and there are other photos of lakes in the region that are today much larger than they were before.

During his presentation at ICIMOD, Duchene showed that various significant changes had occurred in the structure of the Himalayan glaciers, but he said their environmental impact still remained to be gauged.

But just because we can´t definitely conclude how global warming´s effects will play out in Nepal, it doesn´t mean that we can be cavalier about the issue. Citing Nepal´s unpreparedness for the current crisis caused by the nationwide forest fires, Ngamindra Dahal says that apart from signing climate change treaties to fulfill its international obligations, Nepal hasn´t done anything to prepare itself to deal with the effects of climate change.

He is not alone in his assessment. Many experts are of the opinion that the droughts, flash floods and forest fires that have intensified in our country in the last few years are proofs that climate change does have its effects. These catastrophes, bad as they may be, are only the proverbial signs of things to come. The experts claim that these weather patterns will only intensify in the future, creating bigger disasters. To deal with them will require preparedness on a whole another level.

Max temp in Ktm between April 24 and 28 ( 3-yr data)

	2007	2008	2009
April 24	27.7	32.0	35.2
April 25	27.3	NA	33.2
April 26	29.2	32.1	32.9
April 27	27.7	31.3	33.2
April 28	28.6	32.9	32.0

NA = Not Available

Wildfires reach unprecendented scale

2009-04-28T20:58:00.000+06:00

Wildfires reach unprecendented scale

BY PRAGATI SHAHI
ekantipur.com

KATHMANDU, April 28 - The country has witnessed a series of devastating wildfires on an unprecedented scale spreading across the highly fire-prone pine forests in high altitudes. National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) has listed Nepal as a most vulnerable country because of wildfires this year.

The wildfires that started last January have turned vast tracts of forests into barren lands. Worse, meteorologists say there is no possibility of rainfall in the immediate future. Sundar Sharma, coordinator of UNISDR-South Asia Wildland Fire Network, said, “This year, many big crown fires have completely destroyed our pristine Himalayan ecosystems,”.

According to him, about four hundred thousand hectares of land, including in conserved and community forest areas in 43 districts were destroyed and 41 people have also died in the wildfires.

This year, due partly to the long dry spell, the practice of 'slash and burn' agriculture method got out of control. This caused disastrous crown wildfires in the mid-hills and high altitude regions.

Fire had spread to at least four high altitude protected areas, including Annapurna, Kanchanjunga, Langtang and Makalu Barun national parks for an unusually long period, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation stated.

“The rising temperature due to global warming was another factor,” said Prem Kandel, an official at Forest Ministry.

Incidents of wildfire have increased three-fold this year. For instance, by April 26 this year, wildfires were spotted in 422 different places while the number was 155 in the same period in 2007.

Experts stressed on launching massive awareness programmes at the community level for proper management of 'slash and burn' practice used in forest areas.

Likewise, demarcation of fire lines and ban on inflammable substances that kindle fires should be put in place at the earliest.

“There is no institutional mechanism to deal with wildfires in the country. Central and district level coordination should be developed in order to tackle the problem of wildfires,” said Sharma.

Posted on: 2009-04-27 21:50:37 (Server Time)

Forest fires rage across Nepal

2009-04-28T06:58:00.001+06:00

KUSHAL REGMI/BIKRAM GIRI

Source: MYREPUBLICA.COM

KATHMANDU, April 28: Forest fires are raging in 28 districts across Nepal but no effort is being made at the national level to cope with the disaster, according to the Department of Forest.

“We can´t yet calculate the actual area that has caught fire, but we are receiving calls reporting fires from all over the country,” said Nabin Nath Chalise, Assistant Forest Officer at the department.

Forest fires happen every year in the pre-monsoon season but experts say that this year, as a direct effect of global warming, the winter months remained extremely dry thereby drying up the moisture content of vegetation and land and leading to widespread forest fires.

“From a climate change perspective, this dryness is very natural and is an indication of permanent natural damage. The only thing we can do is prepare for adverse droughts and bigger fires in the coming years,” says Ngamindra Dahal, Climate Change Coordinator at the National Trust for Nature Conservation.

While fires in most Tarai areas have remained at ground level, fires in the hills are destroying trees and animals and claiming human life as well. Fire in the eastern hill district of Ramechhap killed 13 soldiers last week and another fire in Gulmi district in the west claimed five lives. At the same time a fire in Rasuwa district in the mountains left 114 yaks dead, according to Chalise.

Not only are fires blazing in community forests but they are also taking a toll on endangered habitats in the national parks.

“An uncontrolled fire has been burning in Syapru area of Langtang National Park since Saturday,” says Laxmi Prasad Manandhar, spokesperson for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.

Manandhar says that no efforts have been made to douse the fire. No initiative has been taken yet, because, as in Langtang, most of the forest fires take place away from human habitats.

Fire has also been raging at Suklaphanta Wildlife Reserve in the far western plains for the past 10 days.

Army personnel deployed there have not made any effort to douse the fire, which is spreading in the wildlife reserve as well as surrounding community forests It is covering Mahendranagar and its vicinity with smog. The smog, which has intensified over the last two days, is bringing various health problems to the locals.

“If the fire isn´t doused soon, the excessive amount of carbon monoxide can cause pneumonia among children and asthma among the elderly,” says Dr Arjun Prasad Shrestha of Mahakali Zonal Hospital.

Birds at risk

“More than 50 percent of globally threatened birds found in Nepal are at Suklaphanta Wildlife Reserve,” says, Bhagwan Raj Dahal, an expert with Bird Conservation Nepal.

The current fire, which has destroyed 55 square kilometers of grassland at Suklaphanta, is proving disastrous for the endangered bird species Swamp Francolin. This is the hatching period for Swamp Francolin, a grassland bird listed as ´vulnerable´ to extinction by Bird Conservation International.

“Most of the newly hatched chicks and nests of this grassland bird have probably been destroyed by the fire,” says Dahal.

Many other endangered birds and animals are facing a similar fate but there has been no effort at a national level to douse the fire because in most areas it isn´t threatening human life. The ecological damage done by the fires, though, remains to be measured.

World Climate Panel to Report on Extreme Events, Disasters

2009-04-26T10:09:00.001+06:00

Source: Environment News Service (ENS)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, will prepare the report on managing the risks of extreme events and disasters to advance climate change adaptation, the scientific group decided today at the conclusion of its meeting in Antalya.

The report will integrate the findings of the climate change scientific community and the disaster risk management community.

Key main topics to be assessed will be the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme events; vulnerability; and disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

"In its Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC had found that climate change was being manifested in the nature of changed frequency, intensity and length of many extreme events, such as floods, droughts, storms and extreme temperatures," said Rajendra Pachauri of India, who chairs the IPCC.

Flood waters wash away a road in Nepal. April 2009. (Photo by James Gambron courtesy World Food Programme)

"This special report will generate knowledge on these extreme events and their characteristics, whereby the global community can prepare more effectively for adapting to future risks posed by the hazards that these occurrences will present," said Dr. Pachauri.

"Communities at the local level and national governments can deal with such extreme events by adopting a range of disaster risk reduction strategies, and prevent some of the worst humanitarian consequences that they are projected to give rise to," he said.

Its regular schedule calls for the IPCC to produce an assessment every seven years. The Fourth Assessment Report was issued in 2007, and preliminary work is underway for the next assessment that will be finalized in 2014.

Today it was decided that the IPCC Working Group II, which deals with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, will prepare the special report on extreme events and disasters for publication in the second half of 2011.

"There has been a consensus among the experts on the opportunity to produce such a report,” explained Vicente Barros, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II. "Extreme events are one of the direct consequences of climate change, with severe economic repercussions."

"There's new and relevant scientific literature subsequent to the AR4 Fourth Assessment Report, in particular on disaster risk management, most of which is grey literature, which we will make the effort to assess," Barros said.

A great number of countries provided inputs to the panel discussion this morning, and there was universal support for the preparation of this special report, considered very timely and needed.

"Comments highlighted the importance of focusing on the practical applications for the decisionmakers who need to manage the risk of extreme events; on the need to integrate the new science and to integrate the work of the different scientific communities involved," said Christopher Field, the other co-chair of Working Group II.

California is plagued by increasingly severe wildfires. These homes in Hidden Hills were destroyed by a wildfire in November 2008. (Photo by Michael Mancino courtesy FEMA)

"The clearest message was that climate change will be the central piece of the report, the integration with disaster management being the infrastructure surrounding it,” said Field.

The special report was proposed last year by the government of Norway with the involvement of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, the UN organization overseeing the development of disaster reduction policy.

A meeting of more than 100 experts from 51 countries was convened in March 2009 to provide advice to the IPCC on whether or not to develop the special report.

It was decided that the report will be a useful tool for governments to learn how to manage disasters and also an important support to the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to help Parties make informed decisions on practical adaptation actions.

Disaster risk reduction strategies and practices are essential for reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience to extreme weather events, yet there has not been a comprehensive assessment of the guides, frameworks, and tools used to build the capacity for reducing vulnerability and risk, experts at the March meeting recognized.

The special report is intended to help governments to develop early warning systems; to strengthen community capacity and social resilience, particularly among the most vulnerable; to improve construction practices; and to establish preparedness to respond to inevitable climate impacts.

The special report will include nine chapters, three of which will be about managing the risk, focusing on the different levels of organization - community based responses, national scale responses and international responses.

Two main case studies will be carried out throughout all chapters, while Chapter 9 will be dedicated to case studies.

A representative of the UN's International Strategy for Disaster Reduction will be part of the Steering Committee.

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization and by the United Nations Environment Programme. The body was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace jointly with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

The IPCC does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters. Its role is to assess on a "comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis" the latest scientific, technical and socio-economic literature produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change, its observed and projected impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation, the organization says on its website, adding that "IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy."

Special reports of the IPCC follow the same comprehensive proceedings as the assessment reports, taking into consideration all the relevant scientific literature produced worldwide, with a multistage review process and geographical balance in the composition of the authors' teams.

Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Under Polluted Hazy Skies

2009-04-24T19:48:00.001+06:00

Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Under Polluted Hazy Skies

ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2009) — Plants absorbed carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than they would have done in a cleaner atmosphere, according to new findings published this week in Nature.

The results of the study have important implications for efforts to combat future climate change which are likely to take place alongside attempts to lower air pollution levels.

The research team included scientists from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, the Met Office Hadley Centre, ETH Zurich and the University of Exeter.

Lead author Dr Lina Mercado, from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said, "Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999. This resulted in a net 10% increase in the amount of carbon stored by the land once other effects were taken into account."

An increase in microscopic particles released into the atmosphere (known as aerosols), by human activities and changes in cloud cover, caused a decline in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface from the 1950s up to the 1980s (a phenomenon known as 'global dimming').

Although reductions in sunlight reduce photosynthesis, clouds and atmospheric particles scatter light so that the surface receives light from multiple directions (diffuse radiation) rather than coming straight from the sun. Plants are then able to convert more of the available sunlight into growth because fewer leaves are in the shade.

Scientists have known for a long time that aerosols cool climate by reflecting sunlight and making clouds brighter, but the new study is the first to use a global model to estimate the net effects on plant carbon uptake resulting from this type of atmospheric pollution.

Co-author Dr Stephen Sitch from the Met Office Hadley Centre (now at the University of Leeds) said, "Although many people believe that well-watered plants grow best on a bright sunny day, the reverse is true. Plants often thrive in hazy conditions such as those that exist during periods of increased atmospheric pollution."

The research team also considered the implications of these findings for efforts to avoid dangerous climate change. Under an environmentally friendly scenario in which sulphate aerosols decline rapidly in the 21st century, they found that by cleaning up the atmosphere even steeper cuts in global carbon dioxide emissions would be required to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations below 450 parts per million by volume.

Co-author Professor Peter Cox of the University of Exeter summed up the consequences of the study, "As we continue to clean up the air in the lower atmosphere, which we must do for the sake of human health, the challenge of avoiding dangerous climate change through reductions in CO₂ emissions will be even harder. Different climate changing pollutants have very different direct effects on plants, and these need to be taken into account if we are to make good decisions about how to deal with climate change."

Reference

Natural Environment Research Council (2009, April 23). Plants Absorb More Carbon Dioxide Under Polluted Hazy Skies. ScienceDaily.

Climate change drying up big rivers, study finds

2009-04-22T20:45:00.002+06:00

Climate change drying up big rivers, study finds

Posted date: Tue Apr 21, 2009 1:52pm EDT
Source: Reuters
URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE53K4MR20090421

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Rivers in some of the world's most populated regions are losing water, many because of climate change, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Affected rivers include the Yellow River in northern China, the Ganges in India, the Niger in West Africa, and the Colorado in the southwestern United States.

When added to the effects from damming, irrigation and other water use, these changes could add up to a threat to future supplies of food and water, the researchers reported in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.

"Reduced runoff is increasing the pressure on freshwater resources in much of the world, especially with more demand for water as population increases," Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who led the study, said in a statement.

"Freshwater being a vital resource, the downward trends are a great concern."

Dai's team looked at records of river flow in 925 big rivers from 1948 to 2004, finding significant changes in about a third of the world's largest rivers.

Rivers with decreased flow outnumbered those with increased flow by 2.5 to 1, they said.

For instance, annual freshwater discharge into the Pacific Ocean fell by about 6 percent, or 526 cubic kilometers -- about the equivalent volume of water that flows out of the Mississippi River each year.

Annual river flow into the Indian Ocean dropped by about 3 percent during the 56-year period, or 140 cubic kilometers.

The Columbia River in the U.S. Northwest lost about 14 percent of its volume from 1948 to 2004, largely because of reduced precipitation and higher water usage in the West, Dai's team said.

But the Mississippi River drains 22 percent more water because of increased precipitation across the U.S. Midwest since 1948, they said.

Annual discharge from melting ice into the Arctic Ocean also rose about 10 percent, or 460 cubic kilometers.

"Also, there is evidence that the rapid warming since the 1970s has caused an earlier onset of spring that induces earlier snowmelt and associated peak streamflow in the western United States and New England and earlier breakup of river-ice in Russian Arctic rivers and many Canadian rivers," the researchers wrote.

"As climate change inevitably continues in coming decades, we are likely to see greater impacts on many rivers and water resources that society has come to rely on," said NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, who worked on the study.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Vicki Allen)

‘Earth Hours’ everyday

2009-04-20T21:55:00.000+06:00

By SHANDIP KC on April 14th, 2009 in Essay
MyRepublica.com

Almost one billion people observed “Earth Hour” by voluntarily turning off the lights for an hour between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM local time on March 28. But Nepal has been observing earth hours almost everyday since the last couple of months. However, Nepalis aren’t turning the lights off voluntarily like the one billion people around the world did last Saturday; they are forced to do so because the source of the electricity - the snow-fed rivers - run low during dry seasons forcing the state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) to cut power almost 16 hours each day.

The frequent power cut is nothing new though. 40 percent of about 29.5 million Nepalis connected to the national grid have been experiencing scheduled load shedding during dry seasons since ages. The number of hours of power outage, which recently touched 20 hours each day, has forced people to seek alternative options of power. Businesses have resorted to generators and others, who can afford, have installed inverters in their homes.

According to NEA’s 2008 Annual Report, almost 87 percent of electricity in Nepal is generated from water and most of this comes from run-of-river type power plants. But unfortunately during dry seasons these snow-fed rivers do not have enough currents in them to operate at their maximum potential. Add to this the rise in demand, which is estimated to be about 11 percent in 2008. This additional demand should have been easily met by a country - labeled as the second-richest country in water resources - whose hydropower potential is estimated to be 83,000 MW over half of which is said to be economically feasible. However, it is difficult for a country where one-third of the population lives below poverty line and about one-quarter of the population earns less than a dollar a day. Considering that Nepal is just starting to recuperate from over a decade-long civil war that killed over 13,000 Nepalis and vandalized most of the country’s infrastructure, including some hydropower plants, things aren’t as easy as they look.

Environmental perspective

The country’s environment paid a hefty toll during the civil war. Swathes of forests were cleared, poaching was rampant including that of flagship species like rhinos and tigers. Air and water quality deteriorated because the-then government had other priorities. But things have changed as the former-rebels are now in the government. People have a lot of expectations from the incumbent government that promised to dramatically transform the country by providing security, equality and prosperity, among other things.

However, environmentalists and environmental experts criticize that the government has already made a wrong move by announcing its plan to install thermal plants that will require fossil fuel. They argue that while the rest of the world is heading towards cleaner/greener alternatives to fight climate change, we are going backwards by using fossil fuel that too to generate electricity when we have plenty of renewable water resources. Fossil fuels generate green house gases and it has been attributed to the current change in the global climate.

It is said that if the current trend continues unabated, then low-lying areas like Maldives and Bangladesh will submerge under water. Being a landlocked country, Nepal is safe from this danger but it’s not immune to global warming. In Nepal, the effect of global warming is already being seen in the form of melting ice caps, retreating glaciers, increased glacial lakes and potential Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). Similar and separate effects are being seen all around the world. Scientists have always known that climate change leads to extinction of many species. Rise in sea level, melting polar ice, abrupt change in weather, and abnormal blossoming/fruiting time of plants are all attributed to climate change. These effects are expected to accelerate if we do not act and reduce our green house gas emissions now. Unfortunately, the amount of green house gases emitted by Nepal is highly insignificant compared to US and other developed countries but it still has to bear the brunt of the ill-effects of global warming.

Global warming and climate change are international problems but their solution is local. Each and every country has to contribute its share to cut down carbon emission. With this thing in mind, some like-minded people in Sydney during 2007 decided to turn their lights off for an hour to urge people to contribute their share for this global problem. These pioneers, instead of bragging about changing the whole world, decided and started to change the little world of their own by switching off their lights for an hour. That event, within three years, gained a lot of momentum and support from people around the world and in its third year almost one billion people voted for Earth Hour and switched their lights off for an hour. Thanks to the internet, various networking sites and bloggers around the world, who helped spread this message to as many people as possible. Some of the landmarks like Eiffel Tower, Great Pyramid of Giza and Golden Gate Bridge, which never goes dark, also had their lights turned off during Earth Hour.

As per the organizer, Earth Hour is not about saving energy. Even when the lights are out, the power plants still generate electricity as the fan/blades of these plants are so big that it is impossible to turn them off for an hour. Earth Hour is more about solidarity among the peoples of this planet to urge their leaders and policy makers to devise appropriate plans and policies and adequately implement them to curb the ill-effects of global warming. The main focus of the organizers is to warn leaders to make wise decision during the UN Conference on Climate Change slated to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December.

kc.shandip@yahoo.com

Climate change takes it toll on yield across terrains

2009-04-18T06:58:00.000+06:00

Climate change takes it toll on yield across terrains

Bishnu Prasad Aryal

Lalitpur

The Himalayan Times
18 April 2009

Scientists and agronomists have point out erratic impacts of climate change in cultivation and have recommended changing crop varieties and shifting crop zone in Nepal.

"Now, there is an urgent need to assess the crop zone shifting standards," said Dr Anand Kumar Gautam, chief scientist at the National Agricultural Research Council (NARC), adding, "Or else, it will result into dire consequences, leading to food crisis if not addressed on time."

A recent study of NARC on crop yielding trends has indicated an alteration in cultivation method. "Either we have to develop and recommend new varieties or choose a way to change plantation period, which will be problematic in terms of irrigation," Gautam added. He also said rise in temperature had caused carbon emission from land and added the lifecycle of insects and bacteria, which is alarmingly harmful to the crops.

Tarai falls under the sub tropical zone and the varieties are recommended as per the climatic nature. "However, there is a need to apply tropical varieties in this region now," said Hari Krishna Upreti, senior scientist, NARC.

Upreti said that early maturing varieties of paddy Harinath-1, Sugandha-1, 2 and 3 and CNTRL85033 tested and recommended for Tarai - have been found cultivated in the Kathmandu valley during the last six years. "A few years ago, the varieties were unproductive here" he said, adding, "Even maturity period of rice has decreased by one to two weeks, whereas the heading period has been adaptable to late period by two weeks in the hilly region."

Annually, mercury is on rise by 0.06 degree Celsius "We have traced both positive and negative impacts of climate change in crop cultivation here. The production of crops in the fertile Tarai region, known as food bank, has been declining, whereas it is increasing in the hilly region," said Gautam. Tarai covers a big majority of cultivable land in Nepal.

The cultivation of wheat crops in western Tarai will be almost infertile in about a decade if this climate change ratio continues, according to the scientists. "Wheat production has drastically come down in Tarai during the last few years, whereas production in hilly region is increasing," said Upreti.

According to Open Top Chamber field experiment, production of paddy and wheat has increased by 1726 and 8-18 percent respectively due to the rise in temperature and carbon dioxide in Kathmandu. "Production of maize has decreased by 21 per cent in the low land as per the DSSAT model experiment based on temperature record of the Department of Hydrology and Metrology," said Gautam, adding "It was found that apples could not head this year in places where it was cultivated earlier."

An extensive research is inevitable to quantify change and tackle the problem. But finance crunch has become a big obstacle. "It is the government's responsibility to think in time," said Gautam.

Warmer troposphere may threaten Himalayan glaciers

2009-04-17T06:54:00.001+06:00

K. S. Jayaraman

13 April 2009

Source: Nature India

Url: http://www.nature.com/nindia/2009/090413/full/nindia.2009.98.html

Spatial distribution of the mid-tropospheric temperature trend over the Indian Monsoon region in May.

Fresh data confirming accelerated warming over western Himalayas just ahead of the onset of the Indian monsoon year after year could have important implications for the monsoon as well as the Himalayan glaciers, experts say.

The temperature of air over western Himalayas had been showing an increasing trend during the last 30 years peaking during the month of May each year, satellite data has revealed. In May 2007, for instance, it was 2.7°C warmer than it was in May 1979.

The warming is most pronounced in the month preceding the onset of monsoon, observes Ritesh Gautam, a research scientist at the University of Maryland in the United States.

His research was funded by US space agency NASA and his team included Christina Hsu, William Lau and Si-Chee Tsay of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and Menas Kafatos from Chapman University, California.

The rising temperature over western Himalayas and its impact was one of the topics of the International Glaciology Conference that concluded April 10 at Manali in Himachal Pradesh, India, where the results of the team's research were presented.

One of the key drivers of the Indian Summer Monsoon is the land-sea thermal gradient from the relatively cooler Indian Ocean to the Himalayas-Tibetan Plateau (HTP) that rises nearly 5 kilometers above sea level. Warm air rising over the landmass — in response to the pre-monsoon heating of the HTP — drives moist air from the ocean towards the continent only to be stopped by the towering Himalayas. This results in heavy rainfall over South Asia that forms the bulk of the annual precipitation during each summer, from June through September.

For their study, the researchers analyzed satellite derived temperatures of the mid layer of the 'troposphere' over the western Himalayan-Gangetic region for the period 1979 to 2007. The troposphere, where the weather is made, is the lowest portion of Earth's atmosphere extending up to 17 kilometers from the surface.

Latitudinal profile of mid-tropospheric temperature trend for the pre-monsoon season (March–April–May) from 1979 to 2007.

They concluded that troposphere in this region had been experiencing "widespread and accelerated" heating particularly in the month of May leading to "strengthening of the land-sea thermal gradient"¹. According to the report the increase in tropospheric temperature is due to dust storms observed during April, May and June in the western part of India and emissions of soot aerosols from coal based thermal power plants in the Gangetic plains. "Aerosol solar heating has amplified the seasonal warming and in turn strengthened the land-sea gradient" in the past three decades. Gautam said that apart from the accelerated warming in May, a large sustained warming trend is also observed annually over the western Himalayas amounting to 1 degree celcius temperature rise in the past three decades

The spatial extent of the warming spans the Himalayas to the western arid regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and the Arabian Peninsula with appreciable warming also found over the Hindu-Kush Mountains, the researchers said. "Overall, it is found that the entire South Asian monsoon region has experienced tropospheric warming during May since 1979," the scientists report. However, warming is the highest over the western Himalayan region.

"Together with the possible alterations to the monsoon dynamics on seasonal-to-interannual time scales, the observed warming at elevated altitudes, if continues, may also have direct implications to the Himalayan glaciers and snow packs and in turn the hydrological cycle over much of South Asia," the scientists conclude.

The Himalayas contain the largest ice covered regions of the Earth's surface outside the poles and their glaciers form a source of major rivers in South Asia, such as the Indus and the Ganges, that serve about 900 million living in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) that encompass parts of northern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Will the heating of the troposphere over western Himalayas and the resulting strengthening of the land-sea thermal gradient increase the monsoon rainfall in the coming years?

"Right now we do not want to comment since this is a subject of an ongoing study and will be reported in a separate paper," Gautam told Nature India. He added however that their ongoing work suggests that the enhanced warming in May could cause an increase of water vapor flux over northern India "with strong positive trends" of all India Rainfall in June.

"All that we can say now is that the observed enhancement of troposphere heating may result in the "advancement" of the monsoon rainfall in early summer," he said. "We may see an increase in the early monsoon rainfall."

References
1. Gautam, R. et al. Enhanced pre-monsoon warming over the Himalayan‐Gangetic region from 1979 to 2007. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L07704 (2009) | Article |

Climate Change To Spur Rapid Shifts In Wildfire Hotspots, Analysis Finds

2009-04-09T07:15:00.001+06:00

ScienceDaily (Apr. 8, 2009) — Climate change will bring about major shifts in worldwide fire patterns, and those changes are coming fast, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with scientists at Texas Tech University.

The findings are reported in the April 8 issue of PLoS ONE, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the Public Library of Science.

Researchers used thermal-infrared sensor data obtained between 1996 and 2006 from European Space Agency satellites in their study of pyrogeography – the distribution and behavior of wildfire – on a global scale. They not only got a global view of where wildfires occur, but they determined the common environmental characteristics associated with the risk of those fires. They then incorporated those variables into projections for how future climate scenarios will impact wildfire occurrence worldwide.

The research was conducted with support from The Nature Conservancy as part of the organization's effort to integrate information about global fire regimes into planning for biodiversity conservation.

"This is the first attempt to quantitatively model why we see fire where we see it across the entire planet," said study author Max Moritz, assistant cooperative extension specialist in wildland fire at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources and co-director of the UC Center for Fire Research & Outreach. "What is startling in these findings is the relatively rapid rate at which we're likely to see very broad-scale changes in fire activity for large parts of the planet."

Moritz said the two essential suites of variables needed for fires describe the presence of sufficient vegetation to burn and the window in time when conditions are hot and dry enough for ignition to occur.

When the researchers used those environmental relationships and future climate projections to look at how these factors might change over time, under both lower and mid-range emissions scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they found that much of the planet will incur changes in fire activity, and this includes increases as well as decreases in the likelihood of fire.

The researchers identified specific areas where wildfire occurrence was rare in the past and projected to experience large increases in fire activity in the period 2010-2039 as ecosystems at risk of fire invasion. Regions where fire was common in the past and projected to experience a large decrease were considered areas at risk of fire retreat.

These preliminary results show hotspots of fire invasion forming in parts of the western United States and the Tibetan plateau, while regions including northeast China and central Africa may become less fire-prone in the coming decades. The study authors noted that reliable predictions for specific regions would require incorporating a broader suite of climate models and accounting for specific regional factors that may influence fire in those locations, but that the overall scope of the shift will likely remain the same.

"Fire patterns are going to change, and we need to start thinking about what that means for ecosystems, and what our response should be," said the paper's lead author, Meg Krawchuk, a UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow sponsored by The Nature Conservancy and by Canada's National Sciences & Engineering Research Council. "Fire will be a major driver of change. A large decrease in fire activity is not necessarily a good thing for an ecosystem that has adapted to periodic wildfires. Some species of trees rely upon fires occurring at specific times to regenerate, for example, so changes in a fire regime have the potential to dramatically alter the landscape over time."

Previous models of fire activity have focused on specific regions, including southern California and Australia. Notably, scientists warned in 2006 that climate change could increase bushfire risk across southeast Australia. Three years later, on top of years of drought, a blistering heat wave sent temperatures soaring up to 20 degrees above average in the region. These conditions, consistent with those expected under future climate change, set the stage for the deadliest fire in the country's history.

"What Australia showed us is that things can happen faster than we think," said study co-author Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and associate professor of geosciences at Texas Tech University. "Although we cannot say whether climate change played a role in the February fires in Australia, we do know that climate change will increase the risk of conditions conducive to such devastating wildfires in the near future."

Hayhoe noted that the global-scale model used in this study can complement studies that focus on more specific regions. "What we did is comparable to a 'whole body' scan to identify hotspots that may need extra attention," she said. "It helps researchers focus in on the areas that are likely to be susceptible to the greatest changes in the near future."

The researchers said this paper is a first step towards creating a comprehensive picture of how climate change will alter fire risk around the world if drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions do not occur. Because rapid and extensive changes in fire regimes will alter many of the ecosystem services humans rely upon – affecting air and water quality, carbon stocks and habitat values – they argue that a wider range of climate models is needed to identify consistent patterns of change.

Reference

University of California - Berkeley (2009, April 8). Climate Change To Spur Rapid Shifts In Wildfire Hotspots, Analysis Finds.

2009-04-06T10:13:00.000+06:00

Climate change 'fans Nepal fires'

By Navin Singh Khadka
BBC Nepali Service
1 April 1009

Smoke trails from scores of fires can be seen in the satellite images

The forest fires that flared unusually viciously in many of Nepal's national parks and conserved areas this dry season have left conservationists worrying if climate change played a role.

At least four protected areas were on fire for an unusually long time until just a few days ago.

Nasa's satellite imagery showed most of the big fires were in and around the national parks along the country's northern areas bordering Tibet.

Active fires were recorded in renowned conservation success stories like the Annapurna, Kanchanjunga, Langtang and Makalu Barun national parks.

The extent of the loss of flora and fauna is not yet known.

Press reports said more than 100 yaks were killed by fire in the surrounding areas of the Kanjanchanga National Park in eastern Nepal.

Trans-Himalayan parks host rare species such as snow leopards, red pandas and several endangered birds.

Carbon source

More than the loss of plants and animals, the carbon dioxide emitted by the fires was a matter of concern, according to Ghanashyam Gurung, a director at WWF's Nepal office.

Some of the national parks in the plains bordering India were also on fire, but those caused less concern among conservationists and forest officials.

"Fires in the protected areas in the plain lands can be controlled easily because we have logistics and manpower ready for that - and that is what we did this time," said Laxmi Manandhar, spokesman for Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.

We have seen winter becoming drier and drier in the last three or four years, but this year has set the record

Nirmal Rajbhandari
Department of Hydrology and Meteorology

"But in the national parks in the Himalayan region, we could hardly do anything because of the difficult geography. Nor do we have facilities of pouring water using planes and helicopters."

Forest fires in Nepal's jungles and protected areas are not uncommon during the dry season between October and January.

Most of the fires come about as a consequence of the "slash and burn" practice that farmers employ for better vegetation and agricultural yields.

But this time the fires remained out of control even in the national parks in the Himalayan region where the slash and burn practice is uncommon.

In some of the protected areas, the fires flared up even after locals and officials tried to put them out for several days.

High and dry

So, why were the fires so different this time?

"The most obvious reason was the unusually long dry spell this year," says Mr Gurung, just back in Kathmandu from Langtang National Park to the north of the capital.

"The dryness has been so severe that pine trees in the Himalayan region are thoroughly dry even on the top, which means even a spark is enough to set them on fire."

For nearly six months, no precipitation has fallen across most of the country - the longest dry spell in recent history, according to meteorologists.

"This winter was exceptionally dry," says Department of Hydrology and Meteorology chief Nirmal Rajbhandari.

Many fires were left to burn due to a lack of resources

"We have seen winter becoming drier and drier in the last three or four years, but this year has set the record."

Rivers are running at their lowest, and because most of Nepal's electricity comes from hydropower, the country has been suffering power cuts up to 20 hours a day.

Experts at the department said the severity of dryness fits in the pattern of increasing extreme weather Nepal has witnessed in recent years.

Had it not been for recent drizzles, conservationists say some of the national parks would still be on fire.

They point to "cloud burst phenomena" - huge rainfall within a short span of time during monsoons, and frequent, sudden downpours in the Himalayan foothills - as more examples of extreme weather events.

"Seeing all these changes happening in recent years, we can contend that this dryness that led to so much fire is one of the effects of climate change," said Mr Rajbhandari.

Anil Manandhar, head of WWF Nepal, had this to ask: Are we waiting for a bigger disaster to admit that it is climate change?

"The weather pattern has changed, and we know that there are certain impacts of climate change."

Gaps in the record

However, climate change expert Arun Bhakta Shrestha of the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) was cautious about drawing conclusions.

"The prolonged dryness this year, like other extreme events in recent years, could be related to climate change but there is no proper basis to confirm that.

"The reason (why there is no confirmation) is lack of studies, observation and data that could have helped to reach into some conclusion regarding the changes."

Indeed, there has been no proper study of the impacts of climate change on the region: not just in Nepal but in the entire Hindu Kush Himalayas.

This is the reason why the region has been dubbed as a "white spot" by experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Limited studies have shown that temperature in the Himalayas has been increasing on average by 0.06 degrees annually, causing glaciers to melt and retreat faster.

The meltdown has been rapidly filling up many glacial lakes that could break their moraines and burst out, sweeping away everything downstream.

In Nepal and neighbouring countries, these "glacial lake outburst floods" and monsoon-related floods resulting from erratic rainfalls are at present the most talked-about disasters in the context of climate change.

If conservationists' and meteorologists' latest fears mean anything, forest fires may also be something that would be seen as one of the climate impacts.

In the wake of the 2007 United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Nepal has been preparing to join an international effort known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).

But if the forest fires it saw this year became a regular phenomenon, the country will instead be emitting increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - a case of climate science's not very aptly-named "positive feedback".

Arctic ice could disappear in 30 years

2009-04-03T15:46:00.000+06:00

3 Apr 2009, 1019 hrs IST, AP

WASHINGTON: Arctic sea ice is melting so fast most of it could be gone in 30 years. A new analysis of changing conditions in the region, using complex computer models of weather and climate, says conditions that had been forecast by the end of the century could occur much sooner.

A change in the amount of ice is important because the white surface reflects sunlight back into space. When ice is replaced by dark ocean water that sunlight can be absorbed, warming the water and increasing the warming of the planet.

The finding adds to concern about climate change caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, a problem that has begun receiving more attention in the Obama administration and is part of the G20 discussions underway in London.

“Due to the recent loss of sea ice, the 2005-2008 autumn central Arctic surface air temperatures were greater than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above'' what would be expected, the new study reports.

That amount of temperature increase had been expected by the year 2070.

The new report by Muyin Wang of the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean and James E. Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, appears in Friday's edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

They expect the area covered by summer sea ice to decline from about 2.8 million square miles (7.25 million sq. kilometres) normally to 620,000 square miles (1.6 million sq. kilometres) within 30 years.

Last year's summer minimum was 1.8 million square miles (4.6 million sq. kilometres) in September, second lowest only to 2007 which had a minimum of 1.65 million square miles, (4.27 million sq. kilometre) according to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

The Centre said Arctic sea ice reached its winter maximum for this year at 5.8 million square miles (15 million sq. kilometres) on February 28. That was 278,000 square miles (720,000 sq. kilometres) below the 1979-2000 average making it the fifth lowest on record. The six lowest maximums since 1979 have all occurred in the last six years.

Overland and Wang combined sea-ice observations with six complex computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to reach their conclusions. Combining several computer models helps avoid uncertainties caused by natural variability.

Much of the remaining ice would be north of Canada and Greenland, with much less between Alaska and Russia in the Pacific Arctic.

“The Arctic is often called the Earth's refrigerator because the sea ice helps cool the planet by reflecting the sun's radiation back into space,'' Wang said in a statement. “With less ice, the sun's warmth is instead absorbed by the open water, contributing to warmer temperatures in the water and the air.''

The study was supported by the NOAA Climate Change Program Office, the Institute for the Study of the Ocean and Atmosphere and the US Department of Energy.

Glacier dust key to past climates

2009-04-01T08:03:00.000+06:00

Ancient dust buried deep in Antarctic ice sheets could hold information about climate change, a study has suggested.

Research by Edinburgh, Stirling and Lille universities indicated that Patagonian glaciers were acting as an "on/off switch" for releasing dust.

Researchers said during the coldest periods of the last ice age, these glaciers were at their biggest and dust from them was blown to Antarctica.

During warmer periods, dust was trapped in meltwater which ran into lakes.

The study concluded that the coldest periods of the past 80,000 years corresponded with the dustiest periods in Antarctica's past.

Dust from the ice cores was analysed and scientists said they were a close match with mud of the same age in the Magellan Straits, suggesting that most of the dust originated in this region.

'Puzzling changes'

Scientists hope the findings will improve understanding of global climate change during the past ice age, and also help predict environmental changes in the future.

Prof David Sugden, of the University of Edinburgh, said: "Ice cores from the Antarctic ice sheet act as a record of global environment.

"However, the dust levels showed some sudden changes which had us puzzled - until we realised that the Patagonian glaciers were acting as an on/off switch for releasing dust into the atmosphere."

The study was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. The findings were published in Nature Geoscience.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7971017.stm

Published: 2009/03/29 17:50:14 GMT

Hills overtake Tarai in winter mercury rise

2009-03-28T20:50:00.003+06:00

KATHMANDU, March 28
Source: MYREPUBLICA.COM
Gone are the days when it used to be shivering cold in the northern Mahabharat range in Dadeldhura district and in the eastern hills of Taplejung in the lap of Mt Kanchenjunga.

Generally, the highest temperature in Dadeldhura in January is 19.3 degrees Celsius. However, Dadeldhura recorded 25.5 degrees Celsius this January. Likewise, Taplejung experienced 22.7 degrees Celsius, up from its January average of 17.8 degrees.

Also worrisome is that maximum temperatures in Dadeldhura and Taplejung rose by a record 10.8 and 4.3 degrees Celsius respectively.

The effect of such climate change has already started surfacing across the country. Meteorologists say that the 1970s´ and 90s´ were the hottest decades in terms of atmospheric temperature.

However, the temperatures recorded in various coldest places in Nepal during last winter are not only surprising in themselves, but are also the highest ever recorded in winter, according to meteorologists.

According to meteorologist Rajendra Shrestha at the Meteorological Forecasting Division, higher temperatures were recorded in the mid and upper hills this winter than in the Tarai. Though temperature in the Tarai were found to be more or less the same on average, the mid and upper hills have witnessed sharp temperature increases in recent years.

The temperature in the Tarai has increased by 3 degrees Celsius, while there was a 3 to 5 degree Celsius rise in temperatures in the mid-hills and an 8 degree rise in the upper hills.

Another meteorologist, Suraj Kumar Baidhya, said the first decade of the century has been found to be the hottest even though environmentalists still believe that the 90s´ was the hottest decade.

Though global warming is usually blamed for the increase in temperatures, Baidhya argues it is wrong to conclude that temperatures are on the rise just because they went up in a particular year. He, however, admits that the temperatures recorded this year were surprising.

Meteorologists themselves are taken aback by the changes seen in the weather and the dry winter spell. Generally, 3 to 5 percent rainfall takes place even during dry season. But this year saw the lowest dry season rainfall recorded in Nepal since 2005/06.

This winter in Nepal remained almost dry due to poor westerly winds. There was no rainfall as the winds coming in from the Mediterranean Sea changed the usual course and went to Tibet via northern Pakistan.

Temperature (in Degree Celsius) recorded in January, 2009

Place	Average Temperature	Maximum Temperature
Dadeldhura	19.3	25.5
Dhangadhi	22.1	28.4
Jumla	18.0	24.0
Pokhara	21.8	24.5
Jomsom	14.2	23.9
Kathmandu	22.6	25.8
Dhankuta	21.5	26.7
Biratnagar	20.1	26.5
Taplejung	17.8	22.7

How to protect forests, improve lives and tackle climate change

2009-03-27T11:39:00.001+06:00

Submitted by Mike on Thu, 2009-03-26 11:35.
Source- International Institute for Environment and Development
Url- http://www.iied.org/natural-resources/media/how-protect-forests-improve-lives-and-tackle-climate-change

The International Institute for Environment and Development has published a two short papers that describe how to protect forests, improve people’s lifes and livelihoods and help to address climate change.

The papers show ways to implement REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), which is one of the tools likely to feature in the new global plan to tackle climate change that governments are negotiating this year.

The author, Virgilio Viana knows first-hand how to do this, having implemented successful projects to reduce deforestation in Brazil ’s Amazon.

By engaging local communities Viana's work led to a 70% reduction in deforestation between 2003 and 2007, a 9% annual increase in the local economy in the same period (three times the national rate), and a range of social and health benefits.

Viana is the former secretary for environment and sustainable development for Amazonas State in Brazil. He believes that REDD is the single best hope for addressing forest loss, poverty and climate change (deforestation accounts for about 17% of the greenhouse gas emissions).

Many people say that REDD will be too hard to implement and fund, but Viana says that pilot projects show that all methodological concerns can be dealt with easily. In terms of funding he calls for a two track system.

One track would be support from wealthy governments to governments of forest nations to improve forest governance and policies that reduce deforestation. The second track would use money from carbon markets to support projects on the ground in return for carbon credits.

Follow these links to download the papers in pdf format

Seeing REDD in the Amazon: a win for people, trees and climate – 2 pages

Financing REDD: how government funds can work with the carbon market – 4 pages

Global warming 37 percent to blame for droughts: scientist

2009-03-26T04:56:00.000+06:00

Wed Mar 25, 2009 9:08am EDT

By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Global warming is more than a third to blame for a major drop in rainfall that includes a decade-long drought in Australia and a lengthy dry spell in the United States, a scientist said on Wednesday.

Peter Baines of Melbourne University in Australia analyzed global rainfall observations, sea surface temperature data as well as a reconstruction of how the atmosphere has behaved over the past 50 years to reveal rainfall winners and losers.

What he found was an underlying trend where rainfall over the past 15 years or so has been steadily decreasing, with global warming 37 percent responsible for the drop.

"The 37 percent is probably going to increase if global warming continues," Baines told Reuters from Perth in Western Australia, where he presented his findings at a major climate change conference.

Baines' analysis revealed four regions where rainfall has been declining. The affected areas were the continental United States, southeastern Australia, a large region of equatorial Africa and the Altiplano in South America.

But there were two areas in the tropics where rainfall has been increasing -- northwestern Australia and the Amazon Basin.

"This is all part of a global pattern where the rainfall is generally increasing in the equatorial tropics and decreasing in the sub-tropics in mid-latitudes," Baines said.

"This is a little bit like the pattern that the (computer) models predict for global warming but this is coming out of the rainfall observations of the past 30 years," added Baines, of Melbourne University's civil and environmental engineering department.

The rainfall trend was also accompanied by a trend in global sea surface temperatures (SST), he said, adding he used temperature data going back to 1910.

Sea surface temperatures have been rising as the atmosphere warms.

"If you take the SST data and analyze that over a long period you can break that up into a variety of components, such a global warming component," he said.

He also looked at the influence on rainfall of major ocean circulation patterns that have a major impact on the world's weather such as the Atlantic conveyor belt that brings warm temperatures to northern Europe.

Two Pacific circulation patterns, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, were also studied for their influence on rainfall.

The key in the analysis was to strip out the influence of the El Nino ocean-climate pattern which causes drought in Southeast Asia and Australia and floods in Chile and Peru.

Baines, who also works for the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol in England, said the Atlantic conveyor belt was 27 percent to blame for the decreased rainfall, while the two Pacific ocean circulation patterns were 30 percent responsible.

(Editing by Dean Yates)

VOTE EARTH

2009-03-24T06:30:00.003+06:00

VOTE EARTH

YOUR LIGHT SWITCH IS YOUR VOTE

This year, Earth Hour has been transformed into the world’s first global election, between Earth and global warming.

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

This meeting will determine official government policies to take action against global warming, which will replace the Kyoto Protocol. It is the chance for the people of the world to make their voice heard.

Earth Hour began in Sydney in 2007, when 2.2 million homes and businesses switched off their lights for one hour. In 2008 the message had grown into a global sustainability movement, with 50 million people switching off their lights. Global landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Rome’s Colosseum, the Sydney Opera House and the Coca Cola billboard in Times Square all stood in darkness.

In 2009, Earth Hour is being taken to the next level, with the goal of 1 billion people switching off their lights as part of a global vote. Unlike any election in history, it is not about what country you’re from, but instead, what planet you’re from. VOTE EARTH is a global call to action for every individual, every business, and every community. A call to stand up and take control over the future of our planet. Over 74 countries and territories have pledged their support to VOTE EARTH during Earth Hour 2009, and this number is growing everyday.

We all have a vote, and every single vote counts. Together we can take control of the future of our planet, for future generations.

VOTE EARTH by simply switching off your lights for one hour, and join the world for Earth Hour.

Saturday, March 28, 8:30-9:30pm.

For more information: http://www.earthhour.org/about/

Temperature rise may trigger West Antarctic thaw

2009-03-21T08:47:00.003+06:00

Wed Mar 18, 2009 2:06pm EDT

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - The West Antarctic ice sheet may start to collapse if sea temperatures rise by 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit), triggering a thaw that would raise world ocean levels by 5 meters (16 ft), U.S. scientists said.

Such a rise in sea levels -- taking thousands of years -- would swamp many coasts and cities and wipe some low-lying Pacific islands off the map.

West Antarctica, the part of the frozen continent most vulnerable to climate change, has thawed several times in the past few million years, most recently 400,000 years ago, according to Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

The study "suggests the Western Antarctic ice sheet will begin to collapse when nearby ocean temperatures warm by roughly 5 C," David Pollard of Pennsylvania State University and Robert DeConto of the University of Massachusetts wrote.

The study helps plug big gaps in understanding Antarctica's likely reaction to modern global warming by improving knowledge of the history of the ice.

Pollard told Reuters the 5 C estimate for triggering a collapse was a rough guide, based on an computer model. The bigger East Antarctic ice sheet had not thawed in past warm periods studied.

The U.N. Climate Panel has projected a best estimate that world atmospheric temperature will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 Celsius by 2100 because of emissions of greenhouse gases that could bring floods, droughts, heatwaves and more powerful storms.

Higher rises were possible unless the world reined in the growth of emissions, it said. Oceans temperatures lag far behind the rise in air temperatures.

"The required ocean warmings, of the order of 5 Celsius, may well take several centuries to develop," wrote Philippe Huybrechts of Vrije University in Brussels in a commentary.

"But such an outcome could result from the accumulation of total greenhouse-gas emissions projected for the twenty-first century, if emissions are not greatly reduced," he wrote.

A related paper in Nature suggested that past collapses of the West Antarctic ice were linked to the earth's rotation.

"The pattern of collapse suggests an influence of 40,000-year cycles in the tilt of Earth's rotational axis," Nature said of the study led by scientists in New Zealand.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Ultraviolet radiation would have singed us by 2065

2009-03-21T08:33:00.000+06:00

20 Mar 2009, 1459 hrs IST, IANS

WASHINGTON: What would happen if the planet's upper atmosphere were to be stripped of two-thirds of its ozone layer by 2065, not just over the poles, but everywhere?

Intense DNA-mutating ultraviolet (UV) radiation, up by 650 percent, falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, would singe your skin in just five minutes, besides damaging plants, animals and aggravating skin cancer rates.

Such is the world we would have if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, Greenbelt, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven.

Led by Goddard scientist Paul Newman, the team simulated "what might have been" if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar chemicals were not banned through the treaty known as the Montreal Protocol.

In the new analysis, Newman and colleagues "set out to predict ozone losses as if nothing had been done to stop them". Their "world avoided" simulation took months of computer time to process.

Ozone is Earth's natural sunscreen, absorbing and blocking most of the incoming UV radiation from the sun and protecting life from DNA-damaging radiation.

The gas is naturally created and replenished by a photochemical reaction in the upper atmosphere where UV rays break oxygen molecules (O2) into individual atoms that then recombine into three-part molecules (O3).

As it is moved around the globe by upper level winds, ozone is slowly depleted by naturally occurring atmospheric gases. It is a system in natural balance.

But chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), invented in 1928 as refrigerants and as inert carriers for chemical sprays, upset that balance.

Researchers discovered in the seventies and the eighties that while CFCs are inert at Earth's surface, they are quite reactive in the stratosphere (10 to 50 km high), where roughly 90 percent of the planet's ozone accumulates.

"Ozone science and monitoring has improved over the past two decades, and we have moved to a phase where we need to be accountable," said Newman, who is co-chair of the United Nations Environment Programme's Scientific Assessment Panel to review the state of the ozone layer and the environmental impact of ozone regulation.

"We are at the point where we have to ask: Were we right about ozone? Did the Montreal Protocol work? What kind of world was avoided by phasing out ozone-depleting substances?"

UV radiation causes CFCs and similar bromine compounds in the stratosphere to break up into elemental chlorine and bromine that readily destroy ozone molecules. Worst of all, such ozone depleting substances can reside for several decades in the stratosphere before breaking down.

In the 1980s, ozone-depleting substances opened a wintertime "hole" over Antarctica and opened the eyes of the world to the effects of human activity on the atmosphere.

By 1987, the World Meteorological Organisation and United Nations Environment Programme had brought together scientists, diplomats, environmental advocates, governments, industry representatives, and non-governmental organisations to forge an agreement to phase out the chemicals.

In January 1989, the Montreal Protocol went into force, the first-ever international agreement on regulation of chemical pollutants, said a Goddard release.

The analysis was published online in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Source: The Times of India

This February ninth warmest since 18

2009-03-19T05:48:00.000+06:00

17 Mar 2009, 0737 hrs IST, IANS
The Times of India

WASHINGTON: The combined land and ocean surface average temperature for February was the ninth warmest since records began in 1880, according to an analysis by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The analysis in NOAA's National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) global reports is based on preliminary data, which are subject to revision. Additional quality control is applied to the data when later reports are received several weeks after the end of the month and as increased scientific methods improve NCDC's processing algorithms.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for February was 12.67 degrees Celsius, 0.5 degrees above the 20th century mean of 12.17 degrees C, ranking as the ninth warmest on record.

Separately, the global land surface temperature was 4.1 degrees C, 0.9 degrees above the 20th century mean of 3.2 degrees C.

The global ocean surface temperature of 16.25 degrees C ranked as eighth warmest on record and was 0.36 degrees above the 20th century mean of 15.89 degrees C.

The Arctic Sea ice coverage during February 2009 was at its fourth lowest February extent since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

Average ice extent during February was 14.8 million square km. The Arctic sea ice pack usually expands during the cold season, reaching a maximum in March, then contracts during the warm season, reaching a minimum in September.

Very hot, dry conditions affected southern Australia during the end of January and beginning of February. An intense heat wave Feb 6-8 resulted in a high temperature of 48.78 degrees C at Hopetoun, Victoria, Feb 7, surpassing the previous record of 47.22 degrees C set in January 1939.

This is a state record and perhaps the highest temperature ever recorded for such a southerly latitude. The hot, dry conditions contributed to the development of Australia's deadliest wildfires in history, said a NOAA release.

China declared its highest level of emergency for eight provinces that were suffering from their worst drought in 50 years.

The drought conditions, which began in November 2008, affected more than four million people and more than 24 million acres of crops.

Freak weather travails for Chirapunji of Nepal

2009-03-18T20:02:00.001+06:00

Freak weather travails for Chirapunji of Nepal
18 March 2009
The Himalayan Times

Lumle - popularly known as Chirapunji of Nepal - is in the grip of a severe drought-like situation for the past few weeks.The hinterland of Pokhara, too, has been hit hard, raising fear of a 70 per cent decline in winter crop production. To make matters worse, large tracts of arable land in Kaski district, especially in the forest areas of Bhalam and Gyarjati VDCs, are grappling with raging wildfires for the past three days. Endemic diseases like diarrhoea are spreading fast, thanks to acute shortage of potable water. The Lake City and surrounding areas have not experienced rainfall since November 14. “Lumle has never faced drought-like situation in the past 51 years. Rains used to be common in March-April,” said Bhakti Ram Devkota, a local teacher. Bal Bahadur Nepali, 60, a farmer, echoed Devkota.“All was well till last year,” he said. But the wrath of the rain god is evident as vegetation and earth in the zone wear a parched look. “Local agricultural produce like wheat, potato, pulse have been blighted due to lack of rainfall. If this condition persists, there would be food shortage in the coming days. It will have a terrible ramification since Nepal is largely an agro-based economy,” said Ram Bahadur KC, a senior agro-scientist, who is associated with Agriculture Research Centre at Malepatan in Pokhara. Water experts, too, are worried over the freak weather condition. “Pokhara hasn’t received any rainfall in the past four months. However, the upper reaches in the far-west have been lucky,” said Bikram Shrestha Juwa, chief, Narayani Basin Office. Local farmers are apprehending further damage to their crops because a sudden hailstorm is often common after a long spell of dry weather. Shrestha also did not rule out such a possibility. “Rainfall may occur if the moisture content in the air is over 90 per cent,” he added. The scarcity of water can be felt in Pokhara bazaar as well. Drinking water is being sold by tanker entrepreneurs for a premium. Tea cultivation at Lahachock in Kaski - a business estimated to be worth over Rs 8 million - has also been hit hard. Officials at District Forest Office, Kaski, attributed the wildfires to locals’ callousness at the height of the dry spell.The freak weather has led to outbreak of various seasonal ailments. “Several people are suffering from diarrhoea, viral fever and dry cough,” said Dr Lumeshwor Acharya of Western Regional Hospital.

The Second ADA Conference 2009: First Announcement

2009-03-17T20:16:00.003+06:00

17 March 2009

We are pleased to announce that the Second ADA conference will be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia during August 25-29, 2009. The conference will be organized by the Tree Ring Laboratory and Department of Forest Sciences at the National University of Mongolia. The goals of the conference are to promote advances in Asian tree-ring research, to examine principal challenges and research questions we currently face and the ways in which our field can address them. The emphasis is on discussion, communication and participation as a scientific community through lectures, poster presentations and special seminars. Please contact Dr. Nachin Baatarbileg （or his group members） to ask for further information about conference and invitation letter for the purpose of Visa application and other paper work.

Important Dates

10th April 2009: First Announcement.
10th May, 2009: Deadline for registration, abstract submission
30th July, 2009: “Final” programme.
25 – 29th August 2009: 2nd ADA Conference

Outline Programme

Tuesday 25th August: Arrival and welcome
Wednesday 26th August: Conference day 1.
Thursday 27th August: Conference day 2 & Excursion.
Friday 28th August: Conference day 3.
Saturday 29th August: Departure

Contact persons

1) Prof. Nachin Baatarbileg, Dr
Head, Department of Forestry
National University of Mongolia
210646 Ulaanbaatar 46A/135
Tel/Fax: +976-5005-5686/+976-11-320159
email: baatarbileg@biology.num.edu.mn
web: http://biology.num.edu.mn/forestry,

2) Oyunsanaa with oyunsanaa@biology.num.edu.mn or

3) Byambagerel with byambagerel@biology.num.edu.mn

4) Nathsuda Pumijumnong: grnpm@mahidol.ac.th, nathsuda@gmail.com

Wind pattern change may intensify warming

2009-03-16T20:40:00.001+06:00

14 Mar 2009, 1726 hrs IST, IANS

WASHINGTON: Carbon dioxide released from the Antartic Ocean due to shifting wind patterns may drastically increase global warming, say scientists.

Many scientists think that the end of the last ice age was triggered by a change in earth's orbit that caused the northern part of the planet to warm.

This partial climate shift was accompanied by rising levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, ice core records show, which could have intensified the warming around the globe.

A team of scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory now offers one explanation for the mysterious rise in carbon dioxide: the orbital shift triggered a displacement in westerly winds, which caused mixing in the Antarctic Ocean, pumping dissolved carbon dioxide from the water into the air.

"The faster the ocean turns over, the more deep water rises to the surface to release carbon dioxide," said lead co-author Robert Anderson, geochemist at Lamont-Doherty.

"It's this rate of overturning that regulates carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

"In the last 40 years, the winds have shifted south much as they did 17,000 years ago," said Anderson.

If they end up venting more carbon dioxide into the air, man-made warming underway now could intensify, said a Columbia release.

"It (the upwelling) could well be large enough to offset some of the mitigation strategies that are being proposed to counteract rising carbon dioxide, so it should not be neglected," he said.

Source:

Warming killing 150,000 more people in poor countries: WHO

2009-03-14T11:59:00.001+06:00

Warming killing 150,000 more people in poor countries: WHO

12 Mar 2009, 2019 hrs IST, IANS

COPENHAGEN: Around 150,000 deaths now occur in low-income countries each year due to climate change that causes crop failure and malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria and flooding, says the World Health Organisation (WHO).

"Almost 85 percent of these excess deaths are among young children," WHO spokesperson Sari Setiogi said Thursday.

Health hazards from climate change are diverse, global and difficult to reverse over human time scales, WHO experts said at the Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions conference here, according to Setiogi.

"They range from increased risks of extreme weather events, to effects on infectious disease dynamics and sea level rise leading to salinisation of land and water sources."

The experts also pointed out that the health impacts of climate change are felt unequally.

"Whether it's the 70,000 excess deaths from the heat wave in Europe in 2003, or new malarial deaths in the central African highlands, the people at greatest risk for climate-related health disorders and premature deaths are the poor, the geographically vulnerable, the very young, women and the elderly," Setiogi said.

"The populations considered to be at greatest risk are those living in small island developing states, mountainous regions, water-stressed areas, megacities and coastal areas in developing countries, particularly the large urban agglomerations in delta regions in Asia, and also poor people and those lacking access to health services."

On the brighter side, improvements in environmental conditions could reduce the global disease burden by more than 25 percent, the experts said.

A large part of the current burden is linked to energy consumption and transport systems. Changing these systems to reduce climate change would have the added benefit of addressing some major public health issues, Setiogi said.

These include outdoor air pollution (800,000 annual global deaths); traffic accidents (1.2 million annual deaths); physical inactivity (1.9 million deaths); and indoor air pollution (1.5 million annual deaths), she added.

The spokesperson said putting these three health arguments at the centre of discussions at the climate change summit scheduled here this December "would ensure that in the new post-Kyoto agreement we will all share in the health and economic benefits that can accrue from countering climate change".

Growing pollution leads to global dimming

2009-03-14T11:41:00.000+06:00

WASHINGTON: Visibility on clear days has declined in much of the world since the 1970s thanks to a rise in airborne pollutants, scientists said.

They described a "global dimming" in particular over south and east Asia, South America, Australia and Africa, while visibility remained relatively stable over North America and improved over Europe, the researchers said.

Aerosols, tiny particles or liquid droplets belched into the air by the burning of fossil fuels and other sources, are responsible for the dimming, the researchers said.

"Aerosols are going up over a lot of the world, especially Asia," Robert Dickinson of the University of Texas, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

Dickinson and two University of Maryland researchers tracked measurements of visibility -- the distance someone can see on clear days -- taken from 1973 to 2007 at 3,250 meteorological stations worldwide.

Aerosols like soot, dust and sulfur dioxide particles all harmed visibility, they said in the journal Science.

The researchers used recent satellite data to confirm that the visibility measurements from the meteorological stations were a good indicator of aerosol concentrations in the air.

The aerosols from burning coal, industrial processes and the burning of tropical forests can influence the climate and be a detriment to health, the researchers said.

Other pollutants such as carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases are transparent and do not affect visibility.

The data will help researchers understand long-term changes in air pollution and how these are associated with climate change, said Kaicun Wang of the University of Maryland.

"This study provides basic information for future climate studies," Wang said in a telephone interview.

The scientists blamed increased industrial activity in places like China and India for some of the decreased visibility, while they said air quality regulations in Europe helped improve visibility there since the mid-1980s.

The aerosols can have variable cooling and heating effects on surface temperatures, reflecting light back into space and reducing solar radiation at the Earth's surface or absorbing solar radiation and heating the atmosphere, they added.

Warming to weaken monsoon in India

2009-02-28T23:23:00.002+06:00

28 Feb 2009, 1336 hrs IST, ANI

The Times of India

WASHINGTON: A new climate modeling study has indicated that the South Asian summer monsoon, which is critical to agriculture in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, could be weakened and delayed due to rising temperatures by the end of this century.

The study, by a Purdue University research group, found that climate change could influence monsoon dynamics and cause less summer precipitation, a delay in the start of monsoon season and longer breaks between the rainy periods.

According to Noah Diffenbaugh, whose research group led the study, the summer monsoon affects water resources, agriculture, economics, ecosystems and human health throughout South Asia.

"Almost half of the world's population lives in areas affected by these monsoons, and even slight deviations from the normal monsoon pattern can have great impact," said Diffenbaugh.

"Agricultural production, water availability and hydroelectric power generation could be substantially affected by delayed monsoon onset and reduced surface runoff," he added. Alternatively, the model projects increases in precipitation over some areas, including Bangladesh, which could exacerbate seasonal flood risks.

The summer monsoons are responsible for approximately 75 percent of the total annual rainfall in major parts of the region and produce almost 90 percent of India's water supply.

General circulation models have been used for projections of what may happen to monsoon patterns for this region, but the models have disagreed as to whether precipitation will increase or decrease, according to Moetasim Ashfaq, lead author of the study.
The research team used a high-resolution climate model believed to have the greatest detail currently available for this region.

"Our simulations are the most detailed to date for this part of the world, but it doesn't mean we have the answer," Diffenbaugh said.

"It highlights the importance of spatial complexity in the climate response and suggests that understanding the potential impacts of future climate change in this region requires improved understanding of a host of climate processes," he added.

The model projected a delay in the start of monsoon season from five days to 15 days by the end of the 21st century and an overall weakening of the summer monsoon precipitation over South Asia.

According to Ashfaq, increasing temperatures in the future strengthen some aspects of large-scale monsoon circulation, but weaken the fine-scale interactions of the land with the moisture in the atmosphere, which could lead to reduced precipitation over the Indian subcontinent.

The model shows an eastward shift in monsoon circulation, which would mean more rainfall over the Indian Ocean, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and less over India, Nepal and Pakistan.

Climate Change

2009-02-27T20:50:00.003+06:00

The gods are angry
Rolwaling villagers say climate change is a result of divine wrath

KISHOR RIMAL in DOLAKHA

Nepali Times
27 Feb 2009

There is 24-hour load shedding here in the Rolwaling Valley, the farmers don't know who Nepal's prime minister is, there are no chukka jams because there are no roads.

But what they do see in the towering mountains around them are signs of climate change. They don't know why, but the snowline is receding every year, the glaciers are melting and this winter has been the driest anyone can remember.

Gauri Shankhar VDC is named after the 7,181m mountain known locally as Chomo Tseringma. The distinctive twin peaks are visible from Kathmandu, but from up close the lower spurs block the view of its majestic summit. This year, there is no snow on the slopes and Gauri Shankhar is just a massive rocky outcrop.

Locals are superstitious, and say climate change is a result of the gods being angry. They have no idea that it is all a result of fossil-fuel burning by the rest of the world.

The Rolwaling Valley was first linked to global climate change when the Tso Rolpa lake here threatened to burst in the mid-1990s because of accelerated glacial melt. An expensive effort to siphon the water and lower the pressure on the moraine dam was undertaken. Villages downstream were prepared for evacuation and early-warning sirens were installed.

The project was able to reduce the water level by 3m of the targeted 20m, but the cost of lowering the water level further is too prohibitive. "The risk of Tso Rolpa bursting has been temporarily reduced, but there is still a danger," says Om Ratna Bajracharya hydrologist at the Department of Hydrology and Meterology in Kathmandu which has listed 200 glacial lakes in Nepal that could burst.

Tso Rolpa is frozen solid this winter. Global warming seems very far away up here at nearly 5,000m amid the frigid Himalayan winter. But climate variability is something everyone here has noticed. Villagers say that the winter snow has been decreasing through the past decade and the mountains all around are rocky and snowless. Farmers down the valley are afraid there will be snow in spring.

"Like in previous years, we may get six feet of snow in spring and that will destroy our potatos," says Ang Wasang Sherpa of Beding.

This year the mean temperature has been higher than normal across the country. In central Nepal's valleys the minimum temperature in the 2008-9 winter was four degrees above normal. The irony of it all is that farmers here like Ang Wasang don't burn any fossil fuels, and are the least responsible for the climate change that is affecting their lives.

ALL PICS: KISHOR RIMAL

FIRE AND ICE: Global warming melted the ice that made Tso Rolpa so big, but last week it was frozen solid.

Gauri Shankar towers over the Rolwaling Valley its slopes bereft of snow because of this year's dry winter.

The sluice gate of a dam that was built to let out the lake's water to reduce the danger of a catastrophic burst (above).

One-fifth Of Fossil-fuel Emissions Absorbed By Threatened Forests

2009-02-25T07:36:00.002+06:00

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2009)

The researchers show that remaining tropical forests remove a massive 4.8 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere each year. This includes a previously unknown carbon sink in Africa, mopping up 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ each year.

Published today in Nature, the 40 year study of African tropical forests–one third of the world's total tropical forest–shows that for at least the last few decades each hectare of intact African forest has trapped an extra 0.6 tonnes of carbon per year.

The scientists then analysed the new African data together with South American and Asian findings to assess the total sink in tropical forests. Analysis of these 250,000 tree records reveals that, on average, remaining undisturbed forests are trapping carbon, showing that they are a globally significant carbon sink.

"We are receiving a free subsidy from nature," says Dr Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Leeds, and the lead author of the paper. "Tropical forest trees are absorbing about 18% of the CO₂ added to the atmosphere each year from burning fossil fuels, substantially buffering the rate of climate change."

The reason why the trees are getting bigger and mopping up carbon is unclear. A leading suspect is the extra CO₂ in the atmosphere itself, which may be acting like a fertiliser. However, Dr Lewis warns, "Whatever the cause, we cannot rely on this sink forever. Even if we preserve all remaining tropical forest, these trees will not continue getting bigger indefinitely."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that globally human activity emits 32 billion tonnes of CO₂ each year, but only 15 billion tonnes actually stays in the atmosphere adding to climate change. The new research shows exactly where some of the 'missing' 17 billion tonnes per year is going.

"It's well known that about half of the 'missing' carbon is being dissolved in to the oceans, and that the other half is going somewhere on land in vegetation and soils, but we were not sure precisely where. According to our study about half the total carbon 'land sink' is in tropical forest trees," explains Dr Lewis.

The study is released at a time when protecting tropical forests is gaining widespread support, and is likely to be a key theme of the upcoming negotiations to limit carbon emissions in Copenhagen later this year.

Co-author on the study, Dr Lee White, Gabon's Chief Climate Change Scientist said, "To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests, based on realistic prices for a tonne of carbon, should be valued at around £13 billion per year. This is a compelling argument for conserving tropical forests."

"Predominantly rich polluting countries should be transferring substantial resources to countries with tropical forests to reduce deforestation rates and promote alternative development pathways," says Dr Lewis.

There are also broader implications for rainforest biodiversity, as the ecology of tropical forests changes. Further study is needed on how the interactions of the millions of species that live in the tropics are being affected by the increasing size of rainforest trees.

Background Information

Calculating changes in carbon storage over time: To calculate the change in carbon storage in forests over time, scientists took 79 areas of intact forest across ten African countries, from Liberia to Tanzania, and identified, mapped and measured the diameter of all the trees above a threshold size. They periodically returned to re-measure the surviving trees, note tree deaths and record new trees, measuring over 70,000 in total.

Combined with the height of each tree and the density of the wood (according to species) scientists calculated how the amount of carbon stored in each of the 79 areas changed over time. By extrapolating the data from the areas studied to all similar African tropical forests, they discovered a previously unknown carbon sink that is removing 1.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year.

The pan-tropical analysis utilises 156 areas of intact forest from 20 countries (250,000 trees monitored). It shows, on average, that over at least the last few decades, trees in each hectare of tropical forest have trapped an extra 0.5 tonnes of carbon every year. To calculate the amount of carbon forests are absorbing, rather than the amount of CO2 they are removing from the atmosphere, the CO2 figures should be divided by 3.67 (to adjust for the mass of the attached oxygen atoms).

African Tropical Forests and Afritron: Africa is the world's largest tropical continent. It contains approximately 30% of the world's tropical forests, including the Congo Basin, the world's second largest contiguous expanse of tropical forest, after the Amazon. Dense wet tropical forest covers 3.8 million Km2, with a further 2.6 million Km2 of drier tropical forest. The forest is in two major regions: the West African forest area which stretches from Guinea in the far West to Togo in the East, with most forest being in Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire and Ghana. The central Africa block is predominantly spread across six countries, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic. African forests are home to tens of millions of people, including several hundred thousand indigenous hunter-gather peoples in the Congo Basin.

African forests have the highest mammal diversity of any ecosystem, with over 400 species, alongside over 10,000 species of plants and over 1,000 species of birds. According to the FAO deforestation rates are approximately 6 million hectares per year (almost 1% of total forest area per year), although other studies show the rate to be half that (approximately 0.5% of total forest area per year). The African Tropical Rainforest Observation Network, Afritron brings together researchers active in African countries with tropical forest to standardise and pool data to better understand how African tropical forests are changing in a globally changing environment.

Tropical forest and Climate Change: Tropical forests cover 17.8 million km2 worldwide, including 4.2 million km2 of drier tropical forest. Approximately 50% of the world's tropical forests are in South America, 30% in Africa and the rest elsewhere, mostly in SE Asia. The first evidence that intact tropical forests are a carbon sink was published in 1998 showing that trees in Amazonian forests were a sink. The IPCC shows that land-use change, which is mostly tropical deforestation, emits 5.9 billion tonnes CO2 per year (20% of all human CO2 emissions).

University of Leeds (2009, February 19). One-fifth Of Fossil-fuel Emissions Absorbed By Threatened Forests. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 25, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/02/090218135031.htm

Far-western region of Nepal feels the heat?

2009-02-18T13:04:00.001+06:00

Far-western region of Nepal feels the heat?

DR Pant

DADELDHURA, Feb 17 - It should be a time of blizzards and snowfall in the upper parts of Dadeldhura district in the far-western region. But much to the locals’ surprise, instead of thick layers of snow the hills are covered with ripened wild berries though these fruits should normally ripen only by the end of April.

Tej Bahadur Mahara, a local of Samauiji Village Development Committee of the district who was on his way to sell the wild berries said that even in the warmer parts of the district, the berries used to ripen only by mid- April.

“I am witnessing the ripened fruits in my own farm in mid- February for the first time in my lifetime,” he said.

Meanwhile, rhododendron are also in bloom in the month of February, about a month earlier than usual in some hilly parts of the district, said Mahara. According to Rajendra Mishra, chief of Agriculture Development Office, Dadeldhura, the rise in temperatures due to global warming has contributed to the early maturing of the fruits.“This year there was no rain or snowfall in the district. This indicates a significant change in the climate,” he said.

Digambar Mishra, an official from the Meteorological Forecasting Office (MFO), Dadeldhura, said that Api Mountain and Saipal Mountain in the far-western region which used to be covered with snow with in February havenot yet experienced snowfall till date. Likewise, Seti River is drying due to the rise in temperatures this winter. “No one was able to cross the Seti River around this time of the year earlier, but now even children can walk across the river as the water level is so low,” said Mishra.

Data from the MFO of Dadeldhura show that the maximum temperature recorded in mid- December to January this year was above 29 degrees celsius. In the past years, the maximum temperature used to reach up to 29 degrees celsius and above only at the height of summer.

Mishra said, the impact of the global warming is being felt not only in Dadeldhura district but all across the country, though adequate scientific research on the phenomenon is lacking.

Posted on: 2009-02-17 01:48:40 on ekantipur .com

Past climate may give clue to modern change

2009-02-12T20:24:00.000+06:00

9 Feb 2009, 2041 hrs IST, REUTERS

OSLO: Abrupt shifts in the climate such as the end of Ice Ages could provide an early warning system for modern changes such as prolonged droughts, a leading scientist said on Monday.

The sudden desertification of North Africa 5,500 years ago or a warming at the end of the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago were preceded by signs of a less stable climate, according to Marten Scheffer of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

That insight, reported last year, is now being applied to try to detect shifts in the modern climate that might herald ever more droughts and other changes in nature. "It's a whole rich field that's opening," Scheffer said, adding it could have applications for predicting when irreversible shifts, or "tipping points", were approaching.

"We are working on the recent climate now as well," said Scheffer, head of Aquatic Ecology and Water Management group at the University. Scheffer will present the ideas at a meeting in Copenhagen on March 10-12 that that is meant to help more than 190 governments work out a new treaty by December to fight global warming blamed on manmade greenhouse gases.

Under the findings, temperature fluctuations and other climate factors slowed down before tipping points in the ancient climate, such as 34 million years ago when the world shifted from a warm "greenhouse" to a far colder state.

Scheffer likened the slowdowns to a rubber band that loses elasticity before suddenly snapping. "It looks like droughts have some of the characteristics we're looking for," he said of preliminary findings that could help detect subtle changes that can predict droughts that could lead to desertification.

"General conditions may change, ocean temperatures may change, cloudiness may change in gradual ways," he said. "It may push a regional system to a tipping point." "There are massive databases of precipitation, of heatwaves," he said.

"We have begun filtering these data to see if there is some systematic change before the onset of droughts." Farmers could shift to less intensive land uses -- away from grazing cattle, for instance -- if scientists were able to predict that a region was vulnerable to drought.

Other applications could include examining the recovery rates of natural systems -- such as coral reefs or lakes -- to see how resilient they are to change. If they take longer to recover after damage than in the past "the system may be close to a tipping point" he said. Other potential climate "tipping points" in nature include a shrinking of the Arctic ice in summer that could herald the disappearance of the ice cap. Dark ground and water soak up far more heat than reflective snow and ice -- accelerating the warming. Arctic ice reached a record low in September 2007.

Dendrochronology Laboratory Established in Nepal

2009-01-24T13:56:00.000+06:00

Dendrochronology Laboratory Established in Nepal
-Parveen Kumar Chhetri
23 Jan 2009
The dendro laboratory is established in Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Kathmandu, Nepal, with the financial support of Ev-K2-CNR within the framework of HKKH Partnership Project between Ev-K2-CNR, CESVI, ICIMOD and IUCN-ARO on 15 Jan 2009. Currently, this lab has a tree ring width measurement machine, three increment borers etc. This lab is the first of its kind in Nepal in recent time. Eventhough, Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, US help to established dendro lab in late 1990’s but this lab was not in functional stage since long.
On the occasion of lab establishment week long (15 Jan- 21 Jan 2009) training on techniques of Dendrochronology was provided which was jointly organized by NAST, Ev-K2-CNR and University of Padova. Instructor were Dr Marco Carrer, Tree line Ecosystem Research Unit, University of Padova, Italy and Mr. Alexandero Tenca, PhD research student of same institute, and Dr Dinesh Raj Bhuju, NAST was the coordinator of the event. All together 18 participants actively participated in the training and learned sampling techniques and analysis techniques. Nepali dendro researchers Dr Narendra Raj Khanal and Mr. Parveen Kumar Chhetri also shared their experiences of dendro research in Nepal to participants.
Researchers in Nepal are very excited and optimistic about this newly established lab because now they can analyses tree ring in their own country.

2009-01-22T18:42:00.001+06:00

Nepali scientists able to forecast multiple climate effects

By Yogesh Pokhrel

Kathmandu, Jan. 21
Source: The Rising Nepal

Nepalese scientists and researchers have claimed that they also can forecast climate change and multiple climatic effects in the country with the establishment of Dendro-Lab in the capital.

They said that in order to facilitate and further dendrological works in Nepal, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), in cooperation with Ev-K2-CNR Italy, had set up a Dendro Lab at its premises.

Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the method of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree-ring growth patterns. The technique can date wood to exact calendar years. Tree rings are one important source of what are called proxy-climate indicators or paleeoclimate data.

For this, NAST is organising a training workshop for 18 researchers and university students from a trainer Prof. Dr. Marco Carrer from the University of Padova, Italy.

Dr. Dinesh Bhuju, a senior scientist and training coordinator at the Dendro-Lab Focal Point, said that the tree rings respond to multiple climatic effects such as temperature, moisture and cloudiness, so that various aspects of climate can be studied. "From the analysis of the data obtained from them information can also be acquired about natural disturbance such as hurricane, earthquake, flood, drought, conflagration or erosions," Bhuju said.

Dendro lab established

He said that analysing the obtained data they could make forecasts about the upcoming disasters and evaluate the previous disasters too.

As an initiative, Dr. Bhuju and Dr. Carrer have established two permanent plots at the tree-line of Sagarmatha National Park in 2007 and collected some 300 tree cores, mainly from Abies and Juniper.

According to Dr. Bhuju, as the tree ring is safe from any human and other manipulations, the prediction made from this method is hundred per cent correct and reliable.

He informed that pine trees like Abies and Juniper, are best for Dendro research. Dr. Bhuju said that they would start their research from the Himalayan region, where the impact of global warming and climate change had been more pronounced.

He, further, said that after the completion of the trial research in the Himalayan region, they would find out the previous climatic change and prediction in the historical palaces, temples, and archeological areas using the same technique.

He said that they would extend their work to each and every climatic and geographical region of the country in the near future so that the concerned authorities in the area would remain alert and could initiate necessary steps to minimise the potential risks and damage.

He said that any environmental activities, favourable or unfavourable, were printed as annual rings of the trees.

Global warming and climate change are of the global concern at the present time. Nepali researchers are now hopeful to make prediction of changing patterns by reconstructing past climatic history through what they call Dendrochronological technique. "We are happy to institutionalise the knowledge and hope to see many researchers using this technique in environmental and archeological studies as well," Bhuju said.