Sistema para aprovechar el agua de la ducha diseñado en Colombia

Un sistema diseñado por el colombiano Alberto Vasquez que puede recoger todas las aguas grises que se usan durante una ducha. Puede utilizar esta agua gris recogida para tirar de la cisterna de WC, limpiar la casa y para ciertas actividades de lavado.

De esta manera puedes ahorrar al menos 72 litros de agua / persona / día en un hogar medio que significa al menos 1.5 mil millones litros de agua por día de ahorro en un país de 50 millones de habitante, como por ejemplo Colombia.

Generalmente en una ducha utilizamos un promedio de 20-30 litros de agua. La forma cóncava de este sistema recoge el 90% de esta agua. También cuenta con una superficie granular antideslizante para evitar caídas por deslizamiento.

Se divide en 4 partes entrelazadas. Después de una ducha se puede levantar fácilmente ya que se divide en 4 partes, para hacerlo mas manejable.

Más información igendesign.co

ORIGINAL: Ecoinventos

19 MARZO, 2015

Ingeniero de petróleos explica sequía en Casanare

El profesor de hidrocarburos de la Universidad Industrial de Santander mostró con videos la responsabilidad de las empresas petroleras en la tragedia ecológica del norte de Casanare.

El ingeniero de petróleos con máster en hidrocarburos, Óscar Vanegas aseguro que la mortandad de más de 20 mil chigüiros y otras especies por la sequía en Paz de Ariporo, Casanare, no es un problema solo del cambio climático o del a siembra de la palma.

Según él, la responsabilidad la tienen las petroleras cuando sacan el crudo del suelo. Vanegas, asegura que en la sísmica la forma para detectar petróleo, se utilizan hasta 10 kilos de explosivos SISMIGEL, que al explotar dentro del a tierra, su onda dice donde hay crudo.

Explicó el profesor de la Universidad Industrial de Santander –UIS- que cuando se saca el petróleo, de paso se está extrayendo miles de litros agua que están por debajo de la tierra, provocando daños colaterales.

Vanegas, dijo que en el 2012, campesinos y ambientalistas registraron como era como era Paz de Ariporo antes de la extracción de crudo.

El profesor aseguró que muchas veces los operarios de las petroleras no tapan donde se produjo la explosión, creando una tierra movediza, convirtiéndose en trampa para los animales.

Óscar Venegas, dijo que es urgente una legislación sobre la política de petróleos o en 50 años no solamente Paz de Ariporo será un desierto.

ORIGINAL: Noticias UNO

NoticiasUno

Marzo 30, 2014

Casanare: sequía mata a miles de animales

Para la gobernación, la deforestación que hay en Boyacá reduce el agua disponible, pero esa no sería toda la verdad.

La sequía ha matado a peces, ganado, venados, entre otros animales. La mayor mortandad ha sido de chigüiros. Foto: SEMANA

La fuerte ola de sequía que atraviesa Casanare ha causado desde hace cuatro meses la muerte por deshidratación de aproximadamente 20.000 animales, principalmente chigüiros, venados, zorros, peces, tortugas, reptiles y ganado vacuno.

El impacto ha sido tan fuerte que la Gobernación de ese departamento está estudiando este viernes si declara emergencia ambiental, especialmente en el municipio de Paz de Ariporo, el tercero más importante de Casanare. Pero para ello necesitan argumentos jurídicos que están recopilando.

De hacerlo, significaría que se harían obras de mediano plazo como perforación de pozos profundos con equipos de bombeo para abastecer de agua.

Pero el problema no es de falta de pozos sino de una reserva forestal suficiente, como lo explicó para Semana.com Adriana Soto, ex viceministra de Ambiente y experta en adaptación al cambio climático.

“Habrá más sequías y más lluvias extremas. Las regiones que tengan en mejor estado sus coberturas naturales (como bosques, selvas, entre otros) podrán resistir mejor estos impactos porque ayudan a regular el agua y los suelos”, indicó.

Soto especificó que si no hay árboles y una zona forestal bien mantenida, el agua lluvia no se acumula en los pozos y se generan sequías cada vez más fuertes.

“Estamos apostándole mal a la cosa porque la ganadería extensiva y las actividades agrícolas piensan en un terreno limpio de árboles como lo productivo pero este país se tiene que dar cuenta que la deforestación va contra su misma productividad”, aseguró.

En la Gobernación de Casanare están de acuerdo con este planteamiento pero le tiran la pelota a su vecino, Boyacá. “En Casanare hay poco pie de monte. La deforestación está en municipios boyacenses como Paya, Isba o Aquitania y nuestro departamento se debe a Boyacá por turismo, por vías y por aguas. Cuatro ríos que vierten a Casanare nacen en la Laguna de Tota”, aseguró Luis Eduardo Castro, secretario de planeación de Casanare.

Los animales tienen que caminar kilómetros con su manada para conseguir un pozo de agua.

En sus largos trayectos, los animales mueren atrapados por el lodo o de sed.

El tiempo de intensas temperaturas, que van entre 40° y 45° centígrados, comenzó desde diciembre del 2013 y no ha cesado. Muchas voces indignadas en las redes sociales han manifestado que la Gobernación y el Estado no han hecho nada durante estos cuatro meses y pretenden arreglar la situación en un día.

Castro dijo que en la sabana siempre hay mortalidad de animales por el clima pero esta situación se agudizó con la prolongación del verano, que no esperaban. “Es un fenómeno natural que se nos sale de las manos”, precisó.

Según él, no es el primer acto de la Gobernación para afrontar la sequía. El intento de Casanare es trabajar en el manejo de cuencas de la mano con Boyacá y que esto sea aprobado como política pública nacional.

Castro argumenta que la Autoridad Nacional de Licencias Ambientales (ANLA) otorga permisos a las grandes empresas sin estudiar demasiado si afecta o no el territorio y la Gobernación no puede interferir en ello. “La ANLA expide la licencia pero no hace seguimiento, no hace un balance de la compensación del daño y no revisa constantemente si las empresas cumplen o no con la conservación de microcuencas”, detalló.

Si bien de Boyacá provienen importantes recursos hídricos para Casanare, no se puede obviar una responsabilidad de este departamento en los impactos del medio ambiente. Así piensa Manuel Rodríguez, el primer ministro de Medio Ambiente que tuvo el país, quien dice que “Casanare no puede olvidar que ha tratado a los humedales de una manera absolutamente irresponsable y eso es local”. Según Rodríguez, en ese departamento se han drenado humedales para otorgarle mayor terreno a la agricultura.

Algunas voces culpan a las petroleras por secar los pozos hídricos. El secretario de planeación dice que no tiene el dato técnico de si esas empresas interfieren o no en esta última temporada de sequía. Rodríguez opina que la afectación de las aguas en la explotación petrolera es evidente pero que de fondo el tema no es cómo regularla sino si se acaba o no la extracción de dicho mineral.

Adriana Soto, por su parte, considera que hay que mirar la situación específica de Casanare con lupa para asegurar eso y analizar la sequía con más ciencia y menos política. Su posición es clara: la única solución para las largas y fuertes sequías o las inundaciones que aquejan al país es la reforestación y el cuidado de bosques y selvas.

De otra manera, por más pozos que se construyan, será una tarea casi imposible afrontar el drástico cambio del clima pues no habrá reservas hídricas suficientes en tiempos de calor ni coberturas naturales que guarden el agua durante tiempos de lluvia. Así, seguirán muriendo 20.000 animales silvestres y miles más.

Peces muertos por deshidratación.

Alrededor de 250.000 hectáreas estarían afectadas.

ORIGINAL: Semana

21 marzo 2014

Could Solar-powered Desalination Solve California's Water Supply Problem?

California is suffering through its worst drought in decades, and it has gotten so bad that officials announced that 17 communities across the state are in danger of running out of water within 60 to 120 days. But what if the solution to California’s water crisis is as simple as sunlight – a resource the state has in abundance? That’s exactly what California-based startup WaterFX is proposing with its solar-powered desalination system. Renewable desalination could solve water scarcity issues not just in California but in other drought-stricken and desertified areas across the world.

WaterFX‘s system cleans water with a Concentrated Solar Still (CSS), which collects the sun’s thermal energy and transfers it through pipes filled with heat transfer fluid to a heat pump. The heat is then used for the distillation process, which evaporates freshwater out of the saltwater source. The condensate is then recovered as pure, fresh H2O. A thermal storage system holds excess heat for the times when the sun isn’t shining.

“If we roll out the technology … we could produce 8% of all the water used in California, with just the land that was fallowed during the last drought,” WaterFX Founder and Chairman Aaron Mandell recently told Forbes Magazine. “That’s enough water for over 7M acres of irrigated farmland. You would begin to change the economics and change the course of how water is used. The whole idea is to wean the State off of the Central Aqueduct and become water independent. The current system is unsustainable and unreliable.”

However solar desalination systems are not without their challenges – it takes a lot of energy to suck up large quantities of ocean water, and the process can capture local marine life as well. There’s also the issue of solar desalination’s byproduct – a salty sludge that can harm ecosystems if it’s pumped back into the ocean.

Other parts of the world working on renewable desalination include
South Australia, where Sundrop Farms has installed a desalination plant near Port Augusta;
Qatar, where the Sahara Forest Project is experimenting with a pilot system; and
Saudi Arabia, where there are plans to build a solar-powered plant in Al-Khafji. Saudi Arabia currently uses the equivalent of around 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day for its desalination plants, so switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could have a huge positive impact on climate change and sustainability.

“What we are trying to do is to develop a model that can be replicated. The problems in California are identical to those in many parts of the world. China is depending on delicate river systems to provide water for all types of economic growth that will not be sustainable. We could also do this in Saudi Arabia – they use an enormous amount of oil for water consumption, to evaporate or move water around the country,” said Mandell.

+ WaterFX

Via The Guardian

Images via WaterFX

ORIGINAL: Inhabitat

by Josh Marks, 

02/27/14

Sistema de generación de energía eléctrica a partir del uso del viento de baja velocidad

Patente de la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana y Ecopetrol. El aerogenerador consiste en un doble sistema de ala impulsora que integra el funcionamiento para alta y baja velocidad.(del viento)

ORIGINAL: ComunicacionesUPB

Rice Gene Digs Deep To Triple Yields In Drought

ORIGINAL: Asian Scientist
By Science and Development Network | Featured Research
August 6, 2013

Japanese researchers have identified a gene that triples the yield of rice during droughts by giving rice plants deeper roots.

Asian Scientist (Aug. 6, 2013) - A gene that gives rice plants deeper roots can triple yields during droughts, according to Japanese researchers writing in Nature Genetics this week (4 August).

Rice is a staple food for nearly half of the world’s population, but is also particularly susceptible to drought owing to its shallow roots, researchers say.

The new study shows that by pointing roots down instead of sideways, the Deeper Rooting 1 (DRO1) gene results in roots that are nearly twice as deep as those of standard rice varieties.


“If rice adapts to or avoids drought conditions using deeper roots, it can get water and nutrients from the deep soil layers,” says the study’s lead author Yusaku Uga, a researcher with Japan’s National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences.

Uga and his team found that in moderate drought conditions, the yield of rice with DRO1 was double that of the shallow-rooted rice variety. Under severe drought conditions, this increased to 3.6 times greater.

“The most important point is that we had rice grains produced under drought conditions,” says Uga.

“When rice crops just tolerate drought, they cannot get water and nutrients, resulting in a kind of survival mode.”

The DRO1 gene occurs naturally in more than 60 rice varieties. For the study, the research team crossbred a rice variety carrying DRO1 with a shallow-rooted variety and then bred the offspring together to produce a rice crop in which DRO1 was uniformly present.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) estimates that an additional 8-10 million tonnes of rice will be needed each year to keep rice prices affordable at around US$300 per tonne. Finding a drought-resistant variety of rice may be key to attaining this goal, according to researchers.

“Drought is the most widespread and damaging of all environmental stresses,” says Sophie Clayton, head of communications at IRRI.

“In some states in India, severe drought can cause as much as 40 per cent yield loss [in rice crops]. Moreover, with the onset of climate change, droughts may become more frequent and more severe.”

The article can be found at: Uga et al. (2013) Control Of Root System Architecture By DEEPER ROOTING 1 Increases Rice Yield Under Drought Conditions.

——

Source: Science and Development Network; Photo: IRRI.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Thirsty Middle East Is Exhausting Its Water Supply

ORIGINAL: Live Science

Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer

Date: 12 February 2013 Time: 01:37 PM ET

Water reserves in the Middle East are being depleted at an alarming rate, and groundwater pumping is the main culprit. CREDIT: Rostislav Glinsky | Shutterstock.com

The Middle East has depleted its water reserves at a frightening pace over the last several years, according to a new study.

From 2002 to 2009, the region lost enough water from groundwater, soil, snowmelt and reservoirs to fill the entire Dead Sea — about 117 million acre-feet (144 cubic kilometers). The majority of that water loss comes from aggressive pumping of groundwater.

The findings were published online Jan. 10 in the journal Water Resources Research.

Sky scale

The team was using satellite data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) project, which measures the change in mass on the Earth below it. The project's primary goal was to track changes in ice sheets.

"GRACE is like a giant scale in the sky, it responds to gravity changes, the satellites are perturbed and they move around in their orbits due to changes in mass," said study co-author James Famiglietti, a hydrologist at the University of California, Irvine.

The twin satellites take advantage of the fact that gravity's tug on a spot is proportional to its mass. And water is by far the heaviest thing that changes on Earth, so gravity changes can reveal how much water has been lost. [6 Weird Facts About Gravity]

Dramatic losses

Famiglietti and his colleagues found that the Tigris Euphrates Basin, which spans parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, lost an average of 16 million acre-feet (20 cubic kilometers) a year during the period of the study. By analyzing other data that tracked other water levels, such as the amount of snowmelt and reservoir levels in the region, the team concluded that most of the depletion came from pumping groundwater.

A drought during that time period may have depleted reservoirs and snowmelt, causing people to more aggressively pump groundwater, Famiglietti told LiveScience.

The findings are even more worrisome, because climate change is projected to reduce rainfall in the region, causing even more water troubles, he said.

Improve efficiency

The vast depletion of groundwater could spell trouble in a region that already has many conflicts over water. To prevent depletion, the region needs to improve how efficiently they harness water.

Because 80 percent of the world's water usage is for agriculture, employing water-sparing techniques like precision drip irrigation, which aims water under the soil straight to a plant's roots, could avert catastrophe, he said.

Tracking groundwater use is also essential, Famiglietti said.

"Groundwater use has historically not been monitored," he said. "If we think of it as our money in the bank, we better keep track of the account balance."

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook & Google+. 

Alerta roja por bajo nivel de ríos Magdalena y Cauca. Colombia

ORIGINAL: NoticiasCaracol TV 
POR: NOTICIASCARACOL.COM
12 Enero de 2013

Las aguas han disminuido hasta un metro. El caudal del  San Jorge también se ha visto afectado por las altas temperaturas.

Food may cause almost a third of greenhouse emissions -study

ORIGINAL: Reuters

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

Oct 30, 2012

• Food output makes up 19-29 pct of man-made greenhouse gas
• Cuts needed, from fertilisers to transport -CGIAR study
• Climate change may force shifts to alternative crops

OSLO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Food production accounts for up to 29 percent of man-made greenhouse gases, twice the amount the United Nations has estimated comes from farming, a study published on Wednesday said.

Existing policies do not sufficiently encourage sustainable approaches to agriculture, or prepare the global agriculture sector for climate change. Photo: N. Palmer (CIAT)

Looking at emissions across the food system - including

• forest clearance, 
• fertiliser production and 
• transport 

- rather than just farming itself - agriculture research organisation CGIAR said much more work was needed to cut climate change emissions from food.

Its report, "Climate Change and Food Systems", estimated food production was responsible for between 19 and 29 percent of mankind's total greenhouse emissions, far above U.N. estimates of 14 percent based on a narrower definition of farming.

"From a food point of view (the U.N. approach) doesn't make sense," said Bruce Campbell, who heads the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security.

Many countries could make big cost savings by cutting emissions, he said. "There are good economic reasons to improve efficiency in agriculture, not just to cut greenhouse gas emissions."

China, for instance, could sharply reduce emissions with more efficient manufacture of fertilisers. Britain could cut emissions by consuming lamb transported from more efficient farms in New Zealand rather than raising its own sheep.

Global changes in diet, shifting towards vegetarianism from meat, would also help. Growing crops to feed to cows, pigs or sheep takes up far more land and emits more greenhouse gases than producing crops for human consumption.

MAIZE, WHEAT, RICE

A separate report by the CGIAR climate programme indicated that climate change is likely to reduce yields of the three biggest crops judged by calorie production - maize, wheat and rice - in developing nations in coming decades.

That could force some farmers to make radical shifts to growing more heat-, flood- or drought-tolerant crops, according to the report, "Recalibrating Food Production in the Developing World".

More resilient crops including yam, barley, cowpea, millet, lentils, cassava and bananas could fill in the gaps caused by declining harvests of more sensitive crops, it said.

"The world's agricultural systems face an uphill struggle in feeding a projected nine to ten billion people by 2050. Climate change introduces a significant hurdle in this struggle," it said. The world population is now just above seven billion.

The study also said that global warming, blamed by a U.N. panel of climate experts mainly on the burning of fossil fuels, meant risks to food production far beyond fields.

"Every step of the food chain - from the seed to the farm to the cooking pot - is at risk," it said. Higher temperatures or floods could make it harder to store and transport food, for instance, meaning more outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. (Reporting By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

La lluvia en el Amazonas disminuirá entre un 12 y un 21 por ciento para 2050

ORIGINAL: ABC.es

EFE ABC_ES / LONDRES

Día 05/09/2012 - 20.21h

Cada año se deforesta la superficie equivalente a Inglaterra pese a que la humedad de estos bosques es clave para la formación de nubes

REUTERS

Así lucía ya la orilla del río a su paso por el estado brasileño de Amazonas en el año 2010

Paralizada la construcción en el Amazonas de una de las mayores presas del mundo

La deforestación a gran escala del Amazonas provocará una disminución de las lluvias de un 12% en la estación húmeda y de un 21% en la seca para el año 2050, según un estudio británico que publica este miércoles la revista «Nature».

«Los bosques incrementan la cantidad de lluvia que origina el viento, y con nuestro trabajo averiguamos que la deforestación del Amazonas puede causar una gran reducción del volumen de lluvia en el sur de Brasil», ha explicado Dominick Spracklen, químico y autor principal del artículo.

Spracklen y su equipo de científicos de la Universidad de Leeds (norte de Inglaterra) estudiaron cómo la densidad de las selvas afecta al volumen de precipitaciones entre los trópicos, a partir de datos obtenidos por satélite.

La vegetación desprende humedad desde la tierra hacia la atmósfera en un proceso conocido como evapotranspiración, que influye en la cantidad de lluvia.

El grupo de Spracklen descubrió ahora que el viento que atraviesa áreas frondosas de la selva produce, días después, el doble de precipitaciones que el aire que circula entre una vegetación menos espesa.

Deforestación y reducción de la humedad

La selva amazónica y los bosques tropicales del Congo son los lugares en los que la vegetación tiene un mayor efecto sobre el régimen de lluvias, detalló Spracklen. Cuando los bosques son sustituidos por pastos o cultivos, la humedad del suelo disminuye, lo que reduce a su vez la humedad atmosférica y las precipitaciones.

Al combinar este hallazgo con el ritmo de deforestación actual del Amazonas, Spracklen predijo que las lluvias se reducirán en la cuenca amazónica un 12 % durante la estación húmeda y un 21 % en la seca para 2050.

La deforestación de algunas partes de la selva del Amazonas reducirá las lluvias tanto allí como en otras regiones aledañas, como la cuenca del Río de la Plata, en donde este investigador calcula que las lluvias disminuirán un 4 %.

Los expertos temen que estos cambios perjudiquen al sector agrícola, que genera 15.000 millones de dólares (12.000 millones de euros) anuales en la Amazonía, así como a la industria hidroeléctrica, que proporciona el 65 % de la electricidad de Brasil.

Cada año se deforestan 50.000 kilómetros cuadrados de selvas entre los trópicos, aproximadamente la misma superficie que Inglaterra

Más del 40 por ciento de los municipios no están preparados para emergencias ambientales

ORIGINAL: El Colombiano

Colprensa

11 de septiembre de 2012

Archivo |

Frente a los reiterados incendios forestales en Colombia, la Procuraduría General de la Nación, realizó un estudio para detectar la cantidad municipios que en el país no tienen la capacidad para enfrentar esta clase de tragedias ambientales.

El estudio por parte del Ministerio Público advierte que más del 40 por ciento de los municipios en el país se encuentran con una alarmante debilidad para atender emergencia ambientales, como los son los incendios forestales.

Para el procurador delegado para asuntos ambientales y agrarios, Oscar Darío Amaya, se están registrando de manera reiterativa en todo el país incendios forestales, para él “la situación es preocupante en algunas partes de Colombia”.

El estudio también indica, que más de 430 municipios no cuentan con cuerpo de bomberos, otro grupo considerable no tienen Defensa Civil, ni Cruz Roja y finalmente más de 150 municipios no han coordinado sus planes de atención a desastres con las autoridades ambientales. 

Cabe mencionar que el ministerio público, advirtió sobre esta situación en el mes de abril del año en curso, pero hoy 5 meses después no se observa ningún adelanto para prevenir una tragedia ambiental.

Entre tanto, la Procuraduría, recibiendo instrucción Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales de Colombia, Ideam, entidad encargada de medir la capacidad hídrica del país, emitió una circular a todas las entidades ambientales, recordando que este no es momento para reforestar. Los procesos de agricultura, la siembra y la reforestación deben ser aplazados hasta que haya suficiente capacidad de recurso hídrico.

A 12-Year View of the Global Pulse of Fire

ORIGINAL: NYTimes

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

August 30, 2012

Record Temperatures and Wildfires in Eastern Russia. Photo: NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/world/20120828-russia.html

A recent reader comment about this year’s season of heat and wildfire in Siberia prompted me to scan NASA Web pages for relevant data and images. I found this fascinating 12-year animation showing the annual shifts in frequency and distribution of fires — both wild and human-set — around the planet. Here’s some of the space agency’s explainer, with a link to the rest:

The fire maps show the locations of actively burning fires around the world on a monthly basis, based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. The colors are based on a count of the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer area. White pixels show the high end of the count —as many as 100 fires in a 1,000-square-kilometer area per day. Yellow pixels show as many as 10 fires, orange shows as many as 5 fires, and red areas as few as 1 fire per day.

Some of the global patterns that appear in the fire maps over time are the result of natural cycles of rainfall, dryness, and lightning. For example, naturally occurring fires are common in the boreal forests of Canada in the summer. In other parts of the world, the patterns are the result of human activity. For example, the intense burning in the heart of South America from August-October is a result of human-triggered fires, both intentional and accidental…. Read more. 

Fascinating NASA Earth Observatory animation shows the annual pulsing of fires (number, not size!) around the world. The space agency's description:

On Earth, something is always burning. Wildfires are started by lightning or accidentally by people, and people use controlled fires to manage farmland and pasture and clear natural vegetation for farmland. Fires can generate large amounts of smoke pollution, release greenhouse gases, and unintentionally degrade ecosystems. But fires can also clear away dead and dying underbrush, which can help restore an ecosystem to good health. In many ecosystems, including boreal forests and grasslands, plants have co-evolved with fire and require periodic burning to reproduce.

The fire maps show the locations of actively burning fires around the world on a monthly basis, based on observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite. The colors are based on a count of the number (not size) of fires observed within a 1,000-square-kilometer area. White pixels show the high end of the count —as many as 100 fires in a 1,000-square-kilometer area per day. Yellow pixels show as many as 10 fires, orange shows as many as 5 fires, and red areas as few as 1 fire per day.

Some of the global patterns that appear in the fire maps over time are the result of natural cycles of rainfall, dryness, and lightning. For example, naturally occurring fires are common in the boreal forests of Canada in the summer. In other parts of the world, the patterns are the result of human activity. For example, the intense burning in the heart of South America from August-October is a result of human-triggered fires, both intentional and accidental, in the Amazon Rainforest and the Cerrado (a grassland/savanna ecosystem) to the south. Across Africa, a band of widespread agricultural burning sweeps north to south over the continent as the dry season progresses each year. Agricultural burning occurs in late winter and early spring each year across Southeast Asia.

More here: http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html?datasetId=MOD14A1_M_FIRE

Dot Earth posts on fires: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/fire/

Heatwaves blamed on global warming

ORIGINAL: Nature

Jeff Tollefson

07 August 2012

Unusually high frequency points to human influence.

Droughts are becoming more frequent in parts of the United States.

M. MOHADJERIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX/EYEVINE

NASA climatologist James Hansen made headlines during the US heatwave of 1988, declaring in testimony to Congress and during interviews on prime-time television that a build-up of greenhouse gases was increasing the probability of weather extremes. Now, as much of the United States sizzles through another torrid summer and the Midwest endures a historic drought, Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, claims that the future he predicted has arrived.

Related stories

Drought devastates US crops

Wildfires ignite debate on global warming

Atmospheric Science: Arctic heat link to weather extremes

More related stories

“The climate dice are now loaded to a degree that a perceptive person old enough to remember the climate of 1951–1980 should recognize the existence of climate change, especially in summer,” he and his colleagues write in a paper entitled ‘Perceptions of Climate Change’1 published on 6 August. Just days earlier, on 1 August, Republican senators had challenged mainstream climate scientists over the existence of anthropogenic global warming at a hearing in Washington DC, underscoring the stubborn political divide over climate policy. Just as he did 24 years ago, Hansen has plunged into the debate, pre-empting the publication of his study with an opinion article in The Washington Post2.

Hansen’s team used seasonal temperature records for 1951–80, a period of relatively stable climate, as a baseline, then analysed the frequency and scale of subsequent temperature anomalies. On average, the team concludes, the globe has warmed by only about 0.5–0.6 °C since that time, but the shift has had a significant impact on many parts of the world (see ‘What a scorcher’).

Extremely hot summers — classified as about 3.5 °C warmer than average — have affected about 10% of the world’s land since 2006, an order of magnitude higher than during the period from 1951 to 1980.

SOURCE: REF. 1

The study is not the first to show a link between global warming and extreme weather3, but it goes well beyond its predecessors, concluding that greenhouse gases alone are responsible for the hot summers and heatwaves. “The likelihood that these events would have occurred without global warming is minuscule,” Hansen says.

A poll by researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, suggests that most people in the United States accept the link between hot weather and global warming4. But Hansen’s assertion is running into some heavy weather among scientists.

Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, calls Hansen’s paper an “extended Op-Ed piece”, arguing that the broader climate record does not support the link to individual heatwaves. Last year, Hoerling co-authored a paper5suggesting that the 2010 drought in Russia was so far outside the realm of normal weather that the small rise in global temperatures could not account for it. He says that natural variability can explain most extremes, and that global warming merely enhances them.

Hansen notes that his study is purely statistical and does not try to explain how climate change could cause extremely hot summers. Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, says that Hansen’s statistics are illustrative of a trend that should help people to understand global warming and the profound effect humans have had on the climate system. “It is never due to humans alone, nor is it ever, these days, just natural variability.”

In a paper to be published in Geophysical Research Letters6, Trenberth and a team of researchers investigate the physical mechanisms that drove some extreme weather events in 2010. Using a climate model developed at the NCAR, the team investigated links between a pair of El Niño and La Niña events (in which warm or cold surface waters, respectively, built up in the eastern Pacific Ocean) and weather events such as stronger monsoons in Asia and droughts in Russia and the Amazon. Although he thinks that global warming could have a role in such extreme events, Trenberth says that climate models have not yet been able to tease out the details.

“Models have a hard time doing extremes well,” Trenberth says. But because of limited data sets for extreme weather and inadequate climate models, he worries that some people could draw the wrong conclusion: “that there is no human influence”.Nature 488, 143–144 (09 August 2012) doi:10.1038/488143a

References

Hansen, J., Sato, M. & Ruedy, R. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USAhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1205276109 (2012).Show context

Hansen, J. E. The Washington Post (5 August 2012).Show context

Schiermeier, Q. Nature 477, 148–149 (2011).

Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C. & Hmielowski, J. Global Warming’s Six Americas, March 2012 & Nov. 2011 (Yale Univ. & George Mason Univ, 2012).Show context

Dole, R. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 38, L06702 (2011).

ArticleShow context

Trenberth, K. E. & Fasullo, J. Geophys. Rev. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2012JD018020 (in the press).

Viene El Niño y con él la sequía y los incendios

ORIGINAL: El Colombiano

POR CLARA ISABEL VÉLEZ RINCÓN

6 de agosto de 2012

La posibilidad de llegada de El Niño pasó de 65% a 81%, según el Ideam. A fin de año se sentirán los mayores efectos.

Entre 2009 y 2010 se presentó el último fenómeno de El Niño en el país. El Tolima (foto) fue uno de los más afectados. FOTO ARCHIVO

La llegada de El Niño es prácticamente un hecho. Ricardo Lozano, director del Ideam, advirtió que las posibilidades de que se presente el fenómeno aumentaron de 65 por ciento a 81 por ciento.

Con él aumentarán las temperaturas y disminuirán las lluvias en la región Andina, la costa Caribe y el Pacífico, lo que implica no solo un riesgo para la agricultura y la ganadería sino la posibilidad de racionamiento de agua en algunas poblaciones.

De ahí, el llamado del presidente Juan Manuel Santos a iniciar una campaña pedagógica para reducir el consumo de agua. “Que todo el mundo reduzca a la mitad, en lugar de dormirse y seguir soñando en la ducha, entonces ahorra agua. Comiencen a no dejar las llaves abiertas”.

Entre la lluvia y la sequía

Yesid Carvajal, profesor de la Escuela de Ingeniería de la Universidad del Valle y experto en el fenómeno de El Niño, recordó que en 60 años se han presentado en el país 13 fenómenos de El Niño y 17 de La Niña, pero advirtió que, con el paso del tiempo “podrán ser más las temporadas secas (El Niño) que las de lluvia (La Niña).

En declaraciones a la agencia de noticias de la Universidad del Valle, Carvajal precisó que en ese departamento ya se están viendo los primeros efectos de El Niño porque hay un calentamiento de las aguas marinas. Las lluvias van a disminuir y la temperatura podría incrementarse en 0.1 grado centígrados.

Lozano aclaró que la llegada de El Niño, no implica que deje de llover, lo que sucederá es que las regiones Caribe, Pacífica y Andina, estas podrían ser menores. Esto contrasta con el incremento de lluvias que se han presentado en el sur del país, como es el caso de Putumayo, donde las crecientes que se presentaron a finales de julio y dejaron más de 20.000 damnificados en Puerto Asís, Puerto Leguízamo, Puerto Guzmán.

En esta región, cerca de 9.000 reses murieron por las crecientes, según el presidente ejecutivo de Fedegan, José Félix Lafourie.

Municipios sin bomberos

El otro efecto, que ya se comienza a ver, es el incremento en los incendios forestales que según Carlos Iván Márquez, director de la Unidad de Gestión de Riesgo de Desastres, quien indicó que entre junio y julio se perdieron 2.985 hectáreas de bosque.

Pero lo más grave, radica en que según el procurador, Alejandro Ordóñez, el país no está preparado para asumir una emergencia por incendios forestales y, peor aún, desde el 13 de abril que se pasó una alerta por las deficiencias en esa materia, las administraciones locales no han tomado las medidas preventivas.

Y es que un estudio de seguimiento preventivo a la gestión y capacidad de reacción de los municipios realizado por la Procuraduría en 527 poblaciones del país, en el 83 por ciento de ellas (437) no hay cuerpos de bomberos. 

Además, el 22 por ciento de esas poblaciones no cuentan con un fondo para atender desastres naturales, el 72 por ciento tienen en su jurisdicción a la Cruz Roja, el 39 por ciento no cuentan con la Defensa Civil y el 73 por ciento no tienen grupo de brigadistas que puedan atender desastres naturales.

EN DEFINITIVA

El Niño se sentirá con mayor fuerza al finalizar el año. Con él llegarán posibles racionamientos de agua, altas temperaturas, incendios forestales y aumento en precios de algunos productos.

NASA: Strange and sudden ice melt in Greenland

ORIGINAL: First Coast News

WASHINGTON -- Nearly all of Greenland's massive ice sheet suddenly started melting a bit this month, a freak event that surprised scientists.

Even Greenland's coldest and highest place, Summit station, showed melting. Ice core records show that last happened in 1889 and occurs about once every 150 years.

Meltwater flooding the Watson River in Greenland. Photo taken on July 12, 2012.
CREDIT: NASA Earth Observatory 

Three satellites show what NASA calls unprecedented melting of the ice sheet that blankets the island, starting on July 8 and lasting four days. Most of the thick ice remains. While some ice usually melts during the summer, what was unusual was that the melting happened in a flash and over a widespread area.

"You literally had this wave of warm air wash over the Greenland ice sheet and melt it," NASA ice scientist Tom Wagner said Tuesday.

The ice melt area went from 40 percent of the ice sheet to 97 percent in four days, according to NASA. Until now, the most extensive melt seen by satellites in the past three decades was about 55 percent.

Wagner said researchers don't know how much of Greenland's ice melted, but it seems to be freezing again.

"When we see melt in places that we haven't seen before, at least in a long period of time, it makes you sit up and ask what's happening?" NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said. It's a big signal, the meaning of which we're going to sort out for years to come."

About the same time, a giant iceberg broke off from the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland. And the National Snow and Ice Data Center on Tuesday announced that the area filled with Arctic sea ice continues near a record low.

Wagner and other scientists said because this Greenland-wide melting has happened before they can't yet determine if this is a natural rare event or one triggered by man-made global warming. But they do know that the edges of Greenland's ice sheets have already been thinning because of climate change.

Summer in Greenland has been freakishly warm so far. That's because of frequent high-pressure systems that have parked over the island, bringing warm, clear weather that melts ice and snow, explained University of Georgia climatologist Thomas Mote.

He and others say it's similar to the high-pressure systems that have parked over the American Midwest bringing record-breaking warmth and drought.

Ohio State University ice scientist Jason Box, who returned Tuesday from a three-week visit, said he ditched his cold weather gear for the cotton pants that he normally dons in Nevada.

"It was sunny and warm and all the locals were talking about how sunny it was," Box said after getting off a plane. "Beyond T-shirt weather."

Associated Press

La sequía más intensa en Colombia estaría apenas por llegar

ORIGINAL: El Tiempo

Por: REDACCIÓN ELTIEMPO.COM

27 de Julio del 2012

Así se ve hoy parte del río Cali. En sitios donde en tiempo normal la altura del caudal supera los dos metros, ahora solo alcanza los 40 centímetros. Foto: Juan Pablo Rueda Bustamante / EL TIEMPO 

Si el fenómeno del Niño se consolida, el país tendría menos lluvias incluso en la época invernal.

Aunque una situación climática extrema por un fenómeno del Niño -que implicaría una reducción de las lluvias entre septiembre y mediados diciembre próximos- está apenas en desarrollo, sus efectos ya se están comenzando a sentir en casi todo el país, con especial intensidad en la región Andina. 

Las probabilidades de que el Niño se presente están consolidadas hoy en el 65 por ciento, aunque van en aumento. Aun sin el fenómeno en pleno, los meteorólogos ya reportan aumentos de temperatura en varias zonas -sobre todo en el Valle y Boyacá-, disminución de las lluvias, alertas por incendios y sitios en crisis por falta de agua. No dudan en advertir que un panorama similar o más intenso podría ser protagonista hasta finales del 2012. La Oficina de Gestión del Riesgo ha llamado a los habitantes a ahorrar agua, entre otras cosas por la disminución del caudal del río Magdalena, que ha descendido 1,2 metros a la altura de Barrancabermeja.

Y aunque en la mayoría del centro del país se reporta normalidad en el abastecimiento y los embalses acumulan agua por encima del 90 por ciento de su capacidad (por lo que una crisis energética está casi descartada), en el departamento del Valle más de 100.000 habitantes de Cali y Yumbo comenzaron a afrontar un racionamiento de agua por los bajos caudales de los ríos Meléndez, Cali y Cauca. 

Una situación similar podría presentarse en Neiva (Huila) e Ibagué (Tolima). 

Alerta roja por incendios

Los incendios ya han dañado más de 1.500 hectáreas de terrenos. 

El Ideam ha sostenido una alerta roja por esta amenaza para la región Andina, la Orinoquia y el Caribe. Y el peligro ha aumentado para Cundinamarca, Huila, Boyacá, Tolima y Santanderes y para 20 de los 42 municipios del Valle, como Palmira, Jamundí, Florida y Yumbo.

Drought in U.S. Worsens, With No Relief in Sight

ORIGINAL: Climate Central

July 19th, 2012

By Andrew Freedman

For U.S. farmers and ranchers facing economic peril due to the blistering heat and drought this summer, the latest drought data released Thursday offered no reasons for optimism. The drought that has already prompted the largest natural disaster declaration in the history of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has grown worse in terms of both extent and intensity during the past week. Not only that, but new climate outlooks for the next three months show above-average chances for a hot and dry remainder of the summer in the Midwest and Central States.

“We don’t have a reason to say that it’s about to improve,” said Kelly Helm Smith of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Nebraska.

According to the July 19 edition of the U.S. Drought Monitor, a whopping 81 percent of the lower 48 states were experiencing “abnormally dry” to “exceptional drought” conditions, and about 64 percent of the contiguous U.S. was experiencing moderate to exceptional drought conditions, a record high for the 12-year history of Drought Monitor data. Data that stretches further back in time shows that the current drought is one of the top 10 most severe droughts in U.S. history in terms of extent and intensity, although it has not lasted as long as other major droughts, including the Dust Bowl droughts of the 1930s.

"We continue to see drought spreading and intensifying," said Brian Fuchs, climatologist and Drought Monitor author at the National Drought Mitigation Center said in a press release. "Even though we've made improvements in places like Texas where they've had rain, drought has expanded in other areas, like eastern Iowa."

The drought prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture to expand its natural disaster declaration on July 18 to direct federal aid to more farmers who are already suffering economic losses from this event. The USDA cut its estimate for the U.S. corn crop by 12 percent, and noted that food prices have already begun to increase.

Last week the drought prompted the USDA to issue the largest natural disaster declaration in the agency’s history, covering more than 1,300 counties in 29 states.

In many parts of the drought region, the parched conditions came on suddenly — a phenomenon known as a “flash drought.” Key factors behind this event include a back-to-back La Niña event in the tropical Pacific Ocean, which has only recently begun to subside in the ocean and the atmosphere. La Niña events, which are characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, are known to favor dry conditions in parts of North America. 

Temperature outlook for August 2012, showing above average chances for warmer than average conditions across much of the country. Credit: NOAA/CPC.

In addition, last winter was milder than average with scant snowfall, which may have helped dry soils faster during the spring and early summer. In addition, there were several record heat waves during March, June and July. The U.S. experienced its warmest January-to-June period on record, and during June more than 170 all-time temperature records were broken, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe as the climate continues to warm in response to man made emissions of greenhouse gases. In fact, large-scale drying trends have already been observed and linked to global warming since the 1970s, but the role warming is playing in this particular drought has not yet been studied. One possibility is that the background warming that has taken place during the past several decades is serving to intensify both the heat extremes and the drought itself.

“I think what we’re seeing is largely a naturally occurring event, but it’s occurring against the background of a warming environment,” said Richard Seager, a professor who specializes in drought at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

During a conference call with reporters on Thursday, NOAA scientists said the extremely dry conditions in the Midwest will favor more heat extremes and less rainfall during August, which will only exacerbate the drought conditions. Such feedbacks between drought and air temperatures can help make a severe drought extremely difficult to break out of. This is the reason behind a common saying among meteorologists: "drought begets drought."