A NASA study published in the journal Science found a glacier in Greenland broke apart. “The consequences will be felt for decades to come.”
“North Greenland glaciers are changing rapidly,” said lead author Jeremie Mouginot, an assistant researcher in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. “The shape and dynamics of Zachariae Isstrom have changed dramatically over the last few years. The glacier is now breaking up and calving high volumes of icebergs into the ocean, which will result in rising sea levels for decades to come.”
The scientists determined the bottom of Zachariae Isstrom is being rapidly eroded by warmer ocean water mixed with growing amounts of meltwater from the ice sheet surface. “Ocean warming has likely played a major role in triggering [the glacier’s] retreat,” Mouginot said, “but we need more oceanographic observations in this critical sector of Greenland to determine its future.”
“Zachariae Isstrom is being hit from above and below,” said the study’s senior author Eric Rignot, Chancellor’s Professor of Earth system science at UCI, and Joint Faculty Appointee at JPL. “The top of the glacier is melting away as a result of decades of steadily increasing air temperatures, while its underside is compromised by currents carrying warmer ocean water, and the glacier is now breaking away into bits and pieces and retreating into deeper ground.”
“Not long ago, we wondered about the effect on sea levels if Earth’s major glaciers in the polar regions were to start retreating,” Rignot noted. “We no longer need to wonder; for a couple of decades now, we’ve been able to directly observe the results of climate warming on polar glaciers. The changes are staggering and are now affecting the four corners of Greenland.”
High in the Earth’s atmosphere, naturally occurring ozone is essential to protecting life on Earth from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun. However, here on Earth’s surface, ground-level ozone is a harmful pollutant.
Source of Ozone: Ground-level ozone is formed when two major classes of air pollutants — nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — combine with oxygen in the presence of sunlight. VOCs are emitted naturally by plant life, and also by human industrial activity: from coal combustion in power plants, from chemical plants, gasoline, oil-based paints, and auto body and print shops. Nitrogen oxides result primarily from fossil fuel combustion in power plants, industrial furnaces and boilers, and motor vehicles.
Ozone and Climate Change: Scientists have found that higher temperatures accelerate the reaction between nitrogen oxides and VOCs, creating more ozone. By 2050, climate change alone is projected to increase summertime ozone concentrations by 2 to 8 parts per billion from today’s concentrations.
Health Impacts: Ground-level ozone is associated with many respiratory and cardiovascular ailments and is harmful even to healthy people. Breathing in high ozone levels causes an effect that has been likened to “sunburn of the lungs.” It can create difficulty breathing, aggravation of asthma, development of new cases of asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and pneumonia.
Ozone can also affect the heart, leading to cardiac arrhythmia and heart attacks. It can also increase the number of low birth-weight babies in mothers exposed to high levels during pregnancy.
Health-related costs of climate change effects on ozone air pollution have been estimated at $6.5 billion annually, nationwide.
Ozone can also impact human health by inhibiting photosynthesis and plant growth, thus reducing yields from food crops.
Health Advice for Bad Air Days: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses an air quality index to rank the day’s ozone levels from good to very unhealthy. Levels are highest on hot, sunny days and are exacerbated by traffic and nearby industry. People with lung disease, including asthma, children, and the elderly are advised to limit outdoor activity when levels reach a ranking over 100.
THE MARSHALL ISLANDS — If your home is going underwater, you have no doubt about human induced climate change. This is the case for Bikini islanders. In the 1940’s, Bikini island was used for atomic bomb tests. The United States conducted at least 23 nuclear tests including the Bravo hydrogen bomb (the largest weapon of mass destruction at that time.) In 1946, the US relocated residents of Bikini island to another of the Marshall Islands and set up a trust fund. However, by 2011 floods, high tides and encroaching salt water began threatening their existence.
“The people of Bikini came back to us and asked us to take this proposal to the US, to request the resettlement trust fund be used to settle people in the US not just the Marshall Islands,” said Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands. “We have not seen the final text of the legislation but the request that went in was on the basis of Kili being uninhabitable because of climate change.”
This could be the first wave of climate change refugees. It is possible that coastal cities worldwide will need to relocate during this century.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a free trade agreement being negotiated by twelve countries:
Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, United States, Vietnam, Chile, Brunei, Singapore, and New Zealand. The TPP will eliminate over 18,000 taxes, tariffs and other trade barriers.
One of the largest benefits of the TPP will be protecting the environment. Participating countries will need to adopt tougher pollution standards similar to the USA. “TPP includes the most robust enforceable environment commitments of any trade agreement in history,” according the United States. “TPP requires countries to play by fair environmental rules if they want to send their goods to the United States, and upgrades NAFTA by putting fully enforceable environment obligations at the core of the agreement.” In addition, TPP helps improve conditions on the ground in TPP countries by requiring them to:
* Fulfill their obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) to protect and conserve iconic species, such as rhinos and elephants.
* For the first time in any trade agreement, prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies, including those that contribute to overfishing, and work to restrain new subsidy programs or enhancements to existing subsidy programs.
* Combat illegal fishing, promote sustainable fisheries management practices, and protect wetlands and important natural areas.
* Promote the long-term conservation of whales, dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, and other marine species at risk.
* Combat wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and illegal fishing through enhanced national and regional actions.
* Protect the marine environment from ship pollution, including by implementing their obligations under MARPOL (an international agreement to prevent marine pollution).
Another benefit of the TPP will be the recognition of Intellectual Property (IP) Rights. Countries would be required to adopt standards inline with the USA. TPP copyrights are proposed to be “for the author’s life plus 70 years.”
The Agreement covers more than 40 percent of global GDP. Of the international economists questioned, the only complaint about TPP is — it doesn’t include the entire world.
NOAA — Hurricane Patricia is the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center’s area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins. The minimum central pressure estimated from the aircraft data, 880 mb, is the lowest ever for our AOR. Maximum sustained winds remain near 200 mph (325 km/h) with higher gusts. Patricia is a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Some fluctuations in intensity are possible today, but Patricia is expected to remain an extremely dangerous category 5 hurricane through landfall.
A Hurricane Warning continues from San Blas to Punta San Telmo, and a Hurricane Watch and Tropical Storm Warning from east of Punta San Telmo to Lazaro Cardenas. Preparations to protect life and property should now be completed now.
Patricia is centered as of 7 a.m. CDT about 145 miles (235 km) southwest of Manzanillo, moving toward the north-northwest near 12 mph (19 km/h). A turn toward the north is expected later this morning, followed by a turn toward the north-northeast this afternoon. On the forecast track, the core of Patricia will make landfall in the hurricane warning area this afternoon or evening.
Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to
completion. Tropical storm conditions are now beginning to spread across portions of the warning area. Hurricane conditions are expected to first reach the hurricane warning area this afternoon.
We are not saying that the Earth’s temperature is just going to rise. In general, as energy is added to a system, the fluctuations in the system increase. So, we expect more storms, more droughts, more wildfires, more floods, more fluctuations of all kinds. What we are saying is that weather conditions will become more volatile due to the impact of humans. (Extreme Weather Events)
— S. Mukherjee & D. Brouse (2004)
So many “1-in-1,000 year” rainfalls is unprecedented, said meteorologist Steve Bowen of Aon Benfield, a global reinsurance firm. “We have certainly had our fair share in the United States in recent years, and any increasing trend in these type of rainfall events is highly concerning,” Bowen said.
A “1-in-1,000 year event” means that there’s a 1 in 1,000 (or 0.1% chance) of it happening in any given year in a given location, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
“Rising water from flooding can carry viruses, bacteria, chemicals and other submerged objects picked up as it moves through stormwater systems, across industrial sites, yards, roads and parking lots,” the South Carolina Emergency Response Team said.
Low level ozone (Tropospheric Ozone) is deadly to plants and animals. The huge increase in human respiratory problems and asthma is largely attributed to ozone.
NASA has released a new study on ozone pollution:
Levels of “background ozone” — ozone pollution present in a region but not originating from local, human-produced sources — are high enough in Northern California and Nevada that they leave little room for local ozone production under proposed stricter U.S. ground-level ozone standards, finds a new NASA-led study.
The researchers, led by Min Huang of George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, used a novel technique that combined data acquired from two instruments on NASA’s Aura spacecraft in the summer of 2008. The technique more accurately determines levels of background ozone and their relative contribution to total surface ozone levels. Integrating Aura satellite data into the study increased the estimates of background ozone by an average of 2.4 parts per billion (ppb) over previous estimates, an amount that varied by 4 to 11 ppb over the two states. Huang conducted the study while a postdoctoral scholar at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The new method of integrating satellite data may help provide states with a scientific basis to request exemptions to the federal air quality standards for ground-level ozone proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA proposed lowering the standard from the current 75 ppb set in 2008 to between 65 and 70 ppb, following a review of public data on the negative health effects of ozone pollution. EPA is required to announce a final decision by Oct. 1.
Background ozone can be produced from natural local sources such as wildfires, and transported via winds from distant sources, such as the stratosphere or another region or country.
Monthly-mean maximum daily 8-hour average background ozone concentration in parts per billion in California and Nevada, estimated by integrating data from NASA’s Aura spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/George Mason University
The NASA study found that, on average, background ozone sources generated about 48.3 ppb, or 77 percent, of the total ozone in the study region of California and Nevada. The findings are particularly important in Northern California and Nevada, where wildfires and ozone transported to the region from abroad can cause background ozone to exceed 60 ppb. The lowest background ozone levels were seen in Southern California, where topography helps trap local emissions.
“Our study shows background ozone plays a significant role in Western U.S. ozone levels under high-ozone conditions, and varies considerably by region, with higher values in many rural regions,” said Kevin Bowman, study co-author and principal investigator of Aura’s Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) instrument at JPL. “Some regions in the West have high background ozone levels that leave less than 10 parts per billion for local ozone production under the EPA’s most aggressive proposed ground-level ozone standards.”
To more accurately determine which sources are contributing the ozone, the team developed a multi-scale pollution assimilation system that ingests global ozone data from Aura’s TES instrument with nitrogen dioxide data from Aura’s Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). Data from independent aircraft, ozonesondes (balloon-borne instruments that measure the concentration of ozone at various altitudes) and surface monitoring sites tested the system’s predictions. The team estimated the contribution of local and background ozone at surface monitoring sites when ozone levels exceeded EPA thresholds.
Ninety percent of ozone is found in Earth’s stratosphere, where it protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. The rest is found in Earth’s lower atmosphere, the troposphere, where it acts as a greenhouse gas. At ground level, however, ozone is a key component of smog, produced when nitrogen oxides photochemically react with sunlight in the presence of volatile organic compounds. Ground-level ozone also affects human and ecosystem health. Nitrogen dioxide, the most important ingredient in the production of ozone, comes primarily from cars and industrial emissions, as well as natural sources, such as wildfires.
Critics of EPA’s proposed new standard argue it would throw many areas out of compliance, resulting in economic burdens, and that much of the ozone in their regions comes from non-local pollution. When a county or area is found to be out of compliance, it must act to reduce its ozone emissions. Proponents of the new standard argue the reductions are essential to protect public health. EPA is not allowed to consider economic costs in its decision.
Contributions of background ozone (green bars) and local, human-produced emissions to ozone levels greater than 65 parts per billion (horizontal red dash line) at surface sites in various regions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/George Mason University
The Clean Air Act allows states to request an exemption to the ozone standard if they can show that the cause of an air-quality violation is due to ozone from outside the country or from natural causes. To date, only Wyoming has been granted an exceptional event clearance by EPA due to high background ozone levels.
“By assimilating NASA satellite data on ozone and nitrogen dioxide, our study improves calculations of total and background ozone levels from both non-local ozone and wildfires, data that may prove useful to policymakers,” said Huang. “Our method can potentially be applied broadly to predict air quality in other time periods and locations. We plan to conduct follow-up studies over longer time periods, especially during higher wildfire periods.”
Bowman points to a recent NASA study that showed pollution entering the western United States from Asia has offset expected reductions in mid-tropospheric ozone from local sources. “The partitioning between background and local human sources will likely change in the future, as emissions from outside the United States continue to increase, and contributions from drought-related wildfires grow due to climate change. These changes will require additional reductions in local human-produced emissions to meet EPA standards.”
Bowman said the results highlight the importance of a new international constellation of low-Earth orbiting and geostationary satellites that will continuously observe pollution over Asia, Europe and North America, including NASA’s planned Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) mission. “This constellation will be a game changer in quantifying global sources of local pollution,” he said.
Study results were published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Other participating institutions include the University of Iowa, Iowa City; NOAA, College Park, Maryland; University of Colorado, Boulder; and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
There is a lot of misleading information trending in social-media about Nestle and the California drought. The facts of the matter are:
Most of the water in California is used for agriculture. Nearly 50 billion cubic metres (13 trillion gallons) of water is used in California each year. Nestle bottled water plants only use 705 million gallons a year. Almond growers use about as much water each year as the entire city of Los Angeles. What percentage of California’s water is used by agriculture? 80 %.
The real cause of the problem is Human Induced Climate Change. As droughts increase in frequency and intensity, the sea level is rising. So not only are the droughts a problem, but salt water intrusion is also a problem. As these problems worsen, the solution is not to blame bottled water companies. Nor is the solution to build desalination plants. Not only do desalination plants contribute to global warming, they also are devastating to the ocean. “Fish and other marine organisms are killed on the intake screens (impingement); organisms small enough to pass through, such as plankton, fish eggs, and larvae, are killed during processing of the salt water .” [Heather Cooley, Newsha Ajami, Matthew Heberger, The Pacific Institute December 11, 2013]
The solution is for humans to take responsibility for the climate change and take action.
The extreme weather conditions have fueled wildfires in Northern California.
“I’m in shock. I want to cry. I’m looking at my neighbors’ places, and they’re all gone, and I’m still here,” Middletown homeowner Jim Maurer said. “We’re just shaking our heads.”
The AP reports: The fire and another in the Gold Rush country of the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 120 miles to the southeast, are the worst of a dozen burning in the state. Between them, they have destroyed at least 720 homes and hundreds of other structures and displaced 23,000 people, fire officials said.
Citing dry conditions from four years of drought, Mark Ghilarducci, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, called this summer’s fires some of the most volatile he’s seen in 30 years of emergency response work.
Q: What causes the most illness in the United States?
A: Bad air quality
The leading causes of bad air quality are Particulate Matter, Ground Level Ozone, Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) and Nitrogen Oxide (NOx).
Asthma is a chronic lung disease that affects an estimated 16.4 million adults and 7.0 million children in the United States, regardless of age, sex, race, or ethnicity.(1) Although the exact cause of asthma is unknown and it
cannot be cured, bad air quality is believed to be the main cause. In particular, low level ozone is causing an increase in asthma-like symptoms.(2) What many people believe are food allergies are just symptoms of respiratory and immune system damage caused by ozone.
Low level ozone (tropospheric ozone) is highly volatile and is created in large part due to vehicle emissions. “Ground level ozone is a serious problem in cities with lots of traffic, such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston and New York City. In 2013, according to the American Lung Association, nearly four in 10 people in the United States (38 percent) lived in areas with unhealthful levels of ozone.” (3) The use of ethanol in gasoline is causing a dramatic increase in low level ozone.(4)
The EPA monitors ozone levels and issues action alert days. “Action days are usually called when the AQI gets into the unhealthy ranges. Different air pollution control agencies call them at different levels. In some places, action days are called when the AQI is forecast to be Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, or Code Orange. In this case, the groups that are sensitive to the pollutant should reduce exposure by reducing prolonged or heavy exertion outdoors. For ozone this includes: children and adults who are active outdoors, and people with lung disease, such as asthma. For particle pollution this includes: people with heart or lung disease, older adults and children.”(5)
“When ozone levels are very high, everyone should be concerned about ozone exposure.”(6)
