Global Warming keeps children awake at night

[waltky]

China facing severe water shortage...

China Says Global Warming Will Strain Water Limits
December 17, 2007 - China will have exploited all available water supplies to the limit by 2030, the government has warned, ordering officials to prepare for worse to come as global warming and economic expansion drain lakes and rivers.

As well, a state newspaper warned on Friday that drought next year could hit crops and stoke already heady inflation. China's surface and underground water supplies are under strain from feverish economic growth and a population passing 1.3 billion. And scarcity will worsen with global warming, the central government warned in a directive.

"In recent years economic and social development has led to increasing water demand, and with the impact of global warming, drought and water scarcity are increasingly grave", said a directive issued by the office of the State Council, or cabinet, late on Thursday. "Taking into full account water-saving, by 2030 our country's water use will reach or approach the total volume of exploitable water resources, and the drought-fighting situation will be increasingly serious."

The document on the government Web site urges officials to make emergency plans for coping with drought and promises more spending on water-saving technology and artificial rain-making. Local governments must also develop policies to aid and compensate drought-hit farmers. China has about 7 percent of the planet's water resources to nourish a fifth of the global population, the government has estimated. Scientists have said that by 2030, China's potential grain output could fall by 10 percent, unless crop varieties and practices adapt to climate change.

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Atlanta gets relief from drought...

Rain Saves Atlanta From Drought Record
Dec 31, 2007 : 4 Days of Rain Save Atlanta Area From Driest-Year-On-Record Title; More Light Rain Possible

This year was almost one for the record books, but then it rained. A lot. After a fourth consecutive day of rain Sunday, 2007 barely missed becoming Atlanta's driest year on record. That dubious honor goes to 1954, when only 31.80 inches of rain fell. Atlanta is at the center of a historic drought that has engulfed more than one-third of the Southeast. The affected region includes most of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North and South Carolina, as well as parts of Kentucky and Virginia.

Even four days of rain couldn't touch the epic dry spell, but normal rainfall levels over the next few months could help return disappearing lakes, rivers and streams to their former glory, Lynn said. Sunday's showers pushed the city up to 31.85 inches for the year, where it is expected to stay as forecasters say Monday the final day of 2007 will be mostly dry. Light rain was possible for counties in north Georgia early Monday morning as a system moved through the region, said Brian Lynn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service station in Peachtree City.

A parade of rainstorms that began the week before Christmas helped Atlanta escape its driest year on record. Rain fell in the city on 10 of the last 12 days. But the moisture had only a small effect on Lake Lanier, the metropolitan area's main source of drinking water. The reservoir rose only about a foot from the rain after hitting an all-time low earlier last week. "What's falling now won't show up until tomorrow or the next day," said Rob Holland, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the reservoir. "Anything that stops the level from falling is a good thing," he added. "But we'd like to get a whole lot more."

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But not Florida...

Florida drought not expected to let up
Dec. 31, 2007 -- Meteorologists say the drought in Florida is approaching the worst in state history following two of the driest seasons in more than 100 years.

Weather experts said a La Nina weather system is partly to blame for keeping rain out of the state -- and it is likely to continue doing so, the Orlando Sentinel reported Monday. "There's a really robust La Nina going on now," said Bart Hagemeyer, head meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Fla. "We're probably not going to see much rain between now and May."

The Apalachicola River and Peace River are currently at critically low levels as a result of the drought, and Central Florida's large lakes are also feeling the effects. Ed Harris, an aquatic biologist with the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Orlando-area lakes hurt by the rain shortage are "too many to count."

Utilities are also feeling the strain from the drought, with the Toho Water Authority in north Osceola County warning rules limiting lawn watering to twice a week will soon be enforced. "It's going to be a soft approach with warnings at first before they get rougher with fines," said authority customer-service advocate Barbara Arrant.

Source

[waltky]

I heard Nashville got hit hard...

Tornadoes Kill 52 in the US South
Wednesday, Feb. 06, 2008 - Residents in five Southern states tried to salvage what they could Wednesday from homes reduced to piles of debris, a day after the deadliest cluster of tornadoes in nearly a decade tore through the region, snapping trees and crumpling homes. At least 52 people were dead.

Rescue crews, some with the help of the National Guard, went door-to-door looking for more victims. Dozens of twisters were reported as the storms swept through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama. Seavia Dixon, whose Atkins, Ark., home was shattered, stood Wednesday morning in her yard, holding muddy baby pictures of her son, who is now a 20-year-old soldier in Iraq. Only a concrete slab was left from the home.

The family's brand new white pickup truck was upside-down, about 150 yards from where it was parked before the storm. Another pickup truck the family owned sat crumpled about 50 feet from the slab. "You know, it's just material things," Dixon said, her voice breaking. "We can replace them. We were just lucky to survive."

In many places, the storms struck as Super Tuesday primaries were ending. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims. Twenty-four people were killed in Tennessee, 13 killed in Arkansas, seven killed in Kentucky and four killed in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among the victims were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old daughter in Atkins, a community of about 3,000 approximately 60 miles northwest of Little Rock.

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America picks up the pieces of tornado disaster
Thursday 7th February, 2008 - In the nation's deadliest onslaught of tornadoes in almost 23 years, almost 60 people were killed and hundreds injured on Tuesday and Wednesday by dozens of tornadoes that plowed across five U.S states.

While tornado warnings had been sounding for hours, many people were caught by having nowhere to run to. Forecasters had warned for days that severe weather was possible. The National Weather Service issued more than 1,000 tornado warnings in the 11-state area where the weather was heading.

But the storms proved too unpredictable for many neighbourhoods, which have been destroyed by the howling winds. The tornadoes flattened entire blocks, smashed store and sent trucks flying. Houses were reduced to kindling.

The U.S National Weather Service said at least six tornadoes touched the ground in a one hundred mile belt between Oxford, Mississippi and Jackson, Tennessee. Tornadoes, wind damage and hail were also reported in the states of Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri.

More America picks up the pieces of tornado disaster

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FEMA gonna fix `em up with housing...

Twister victims to receive trailers
Tues., Feb. 12, 2008 - 7,200 bought for hurricane victims, but never used, have sat idle

Some of the thousands of trailers purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2005 after hurricanes tore through the Gulf Coast may finally be put to use to help victims of last week's tornadoes, officials said Tuesday. The 7,200 trailers stored at the Hope airport will "definitely" be used in Arkansas and Tennessee, where the twisters left many homeless, officials said.

The decision comes after requests by state officials and Arkansas' congressional delegation, which has criticized the trailers in the past as a sign of federal ineptitude after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said David Maxwell, head of the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management. Maxwell said his office told FEMA immediately after the storms that victims would need some of the trailers. FEMA administrator R. David Paulison said Friday on a tour of the damage that the agency would prefer putting storm victims in rental property, although he acknowledged that could be difficult in rural communities.

"Knowing rural Arkansas and the areas that were hit, there's not a lot of rental property," Maxwell said. "Then you're stuck with mobile homes." Maxwell said the number of trailers released would depend on the number of people that called FEMA and requested help, as opposed to simply releasing a blanket number. He said FEMA already hired a contractor to prepare and possibly transport the trailers to those in need.

More Twister victims to receive trailers - Life - MSNBC.com

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Lake Mead may go dry by 2021
February 12, 2008 - There is a 50 percent chance that Lake Mead, which was created by the Hoover Dam and the Colorado River, will go dry by 2021 because of escalating human demand and climate change, according to a study by Tim Barnett and David Pierce of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego.

Lake Mead straddles the Arizona-Nevada border, and Lake Powell is on the Arizona-Utah border. Aqueducts carry water from the system to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, and other communities in the Southwest. By 2017, there is a 50 percent chance that the reservoir could drop so low that Hoover Dam could no longer produce hydroelectric power. Water conservation and mitigation technologies and policies thus need to be implemented now, the study stated.

The disappearance of the manmade lake would create a tidal wave of ill effects for the southwestern U.S. The lake provides water for large cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas, as well as for several agricultural interests. The power also keeps on the lights in that region of the country. Imagine Los Angeles on a summer day with sporadic air conditioning and only a trickle of water coming out of the faucet. Then imagine that goes for a week. "We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us," Barnett said in a statement. "Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest."

"Today, we are at or beyond the sustainable limit of the Colorado system," he added. The level of the lake has been dropping for years. In the photo below, the white band marks the difference between the old high water level and the current one. It was taken two weeks ago. Barnett and Pierce estimated that there is a 10 percent chance that the lake could go dry as early as 2014. The full report will be published in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

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Arkansas under flood alert...

Water Surge in Ark., Rivers Keep Rising
Mar 25, 2008 - Volunteers Hold Back Levee 'Sand Boils' From Flooding River in Arkansas

Volunteers armed with sandbags held back water springing up from under a rural levee Tuesday as the White River continued its highest surge in a quarter-century through eastern Arkansas. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning during the morning for rural Prairie County north of Interstate 40 after spotters noticed the levee had "sand boils" — water passing under the earthen barrier and appearing on the side like a muddy spring. By the afternoon, 100 volunteers held back the flow by building sandbag barriers for the water to be held in, creating pressure to stem the tide.

Thomas "Babe" Vincent, a levee district board member, praised the spirit of the volunteers. "We've had people here today from the other side of the river who aren't in danger," Vincent said. After heavy rains last week, major rivers overflowed, inundating north and central Arkansas and driving people from their homes and businesses. Almost half the state — 35 counties — was declared a disaster area. The waters continued to rise Tuesday even as the sun was shining. The Army Corps of Engineers did not expect the White River to crest downriver at Clarendon until Friday at 33.5 feet.

Gov. Mike Beebe said disaster relief likely would come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Teams of state and federal officials were deployed Tuesday to examine flood-damaged buildings and businesses. Officials first put damages at $2 million but said it would likely rise well above that once the waters recede. "We're hitting areas we can get to because a lot of areas we can't get to," FEMA spokesman Bob Alvey said.

More ABC News: Water Surge in Ark., Rivers Keep Rising

[waltky]

Rev. 16. 8-9...

NASA Climate Scientist Says "We're Toast"
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2008 - Two Decades After His First Warning, Global Warming Expert Says Situation Has Worsened

Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action. James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance." Hansen brought global warming home to the public in June 1988 during a Washington heat wave, telling a Senate hearing that global warming was already here. To mark the anniversary, he testified before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming where he was called a prophet, and addressed a luncheon at the National Press Club where he was called a hero by former Sen. Tim Wirth, D-Colo., who headed the 1988 hearing.

To cut emissions, Hansen said coal-fired power plants that don't capture carbon dioxide emissions shouldn't be used in the United States after 2025, and should be eliminated in the rest of the world by 2030. That carbon capture technology is still being developed and not yet cost efficient for power plants. Burning fossil fuels like coal is the chief cause of man-made greenhouse gases. Hansen said the Earth's atmosphere has got to get back to a level of 350 parts of carbon dioxide per million. Last month, it was 10 percent higher: 386.7 parts per million.

More NASA Climate Scientist Says "We're Toast", Two Decades After His First Warning, Global Warming Expert Says Situation Has Worsened - CBS News

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Effect of global warming...

Midwest floods show signs of global warming
Tue Jul 1, 2008 WASHINGTON - Floods like those that inundated the U.S. Midwest are supposed to occur once every 500 years but this is the second since 1993, suggesting flawed forecasts that do not take global warming into account, conservation experts said on Tuesday.

"Although no single weather event can be attributed to global warming, it's critical to understand that a warming climate is supplying the very conditions that fuel these kinds of weather events," said Amanda Staudt, a climate scientist with the National Wildlife Federation.

Warmer air can carry more water, Staudt said in a telephone briefing, and this means more heavy precipitation in the central United States. Big Midwestern storms that used to be seen every 20 years or so will likely occur every four to six years by century's end, she said.

The idea that certain places along the Mississippi River and its tributaries will only flood once every 500 years may be based on mistaken assumptions that flood patterns do not change over time, said Nicholas Pinter of Southern Illinois University.

Pinter said these assumptions are contained in an analysis on Mississippi River flooding in the upper Midwest, led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which among other things builds and maintains river levees. In the last 35 years, there have been four floods in the Mississippi River basin that qualified as 100-year floods or higher according to the Army Corps' analysis, Pinter said.

BIGGER, MORE FREQUENT FLOODS

[waltky]

This'll make a big ol' iceberg...

Greenland Glacier Has Huge Crack
Friday, Aug. 22, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — A growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a prominent glacier in northern Greenland.

In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday. And that's led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year. If it does worsen and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea level rise, already increasing because of melt in sourthern Greenland. The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500 square mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier.

"The pictures speak for themselves," said Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University who spotted the changes while studying new satellite images. "This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It's just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off.... It is imminent." The chunk that came off the glacier between July 10 and July 24 is about half the size of Manhattan and doesn't worry Box as much as the cracks. The Petermann glacier had a larger breakaway ice chunk in 2000. But the overall picture worries some scientists. "As we see this phenomenon occurring further and further north — and Petermann is as far north as you can get — it certainly adds to the concern," said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado.

The question that now faces scientists is: Are the fractures part of normal glacier stress or are they the beginning of the effects of global warming? "It certainly is a major event," said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally in a telephone interview from a conference on glaciers in Ireland. "It's a signal but we don't know what it means." It is too early to say it is clearly global warming, Zwally said. Scientists don't like to attribute single events to global warming, but often say such events fit a pattern. University of Colorado professor Konrad Steffen, who returned from Greenland Wednesday and has studied the Petermann glacier in the past, said that what Box saw is not too different from what he saw in the 1990s: "The crack is not alarming... I would say it is normal."

However, scientists note that it fits with the trend of melting glacial ice they first saw in the southern part of the massive island and seems to be marching north with time. Big cracks and breakaway pieces are foreboding signs of what's ahead. Further south in Greenland, Box's satellite images show that the Jakobshavn glacier, the fastest retreating glacier in the world, set new records for how far it has moved inland. That concerns Colorado's Abdalati: "It could go back for miles and miles and there's no real mechanism to stop it."

Greenland Glacier Has Huge Crack - TIME