tagged w/ Black carbon
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India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were part of the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas held in Bhutan's capital Thimphu on Saturday. They agreed to cooperate on energy, water, food and biodiversity issues.
"The success of our initiative will not only have direct and immediate benefits for our own people, but we could be setting a worthy precedent for other countries that share similar conditions," Bhutan's Prime Minister Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y. Thinley said according to a press statement released late Saturday.
Pakistan, China and Afghanistan were absent from the summit but organizers downplayed that, saying that the summit was focused on securing ecosystems, endangered species,and food and water sources for only the Himalayas' eastern part.
The summit called for action amid the international community's inability to agree on limiting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global climate change. The next round of U.N. climate talks begin in Durban, South Africa Nov. 28, but the expectations of any breakthrough there are limited.
As part of the declaration the four nations agreed to work together to increase access to "affordable and reliable" clean energy resources and technology through a regional knowledge sharing mechanism, a press statement from the World Wildlife Fund said.
The draft of the declaration was not immediately available Sunday.
The most contentious part of the talks dealt with water security, according to the WWF release, but the four nations did agree to work together on ecosystem and disaster management, sharing their knowledge in water use efficiency.
Regional tensions have long prevented Himalayan cooperation, including basic research in the world's largest block of glaciers outside the polar regions, and accounting for 40 percent of the world's fresh water.
There was also consensus on food security and securing livelihoods and the deal covers way to adapt and improve food production and help vulnerable communities get better access to nutritious food.
"These kinds of regional initiatives are really needed," said Liisa Rohweder, CEO of WWF Finland, adding the summit was a good lead to follow for the Durban meeting.India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan were part of the Climate Summit for a Living... more
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Think of solar arrays and you'll probably picture panels under blistering desert heat – but we may be able to get more energy from solar panels on snow-capped mountains.
Kotaro Kawajiri at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mapped solar irradiance across the globe in collaboration with colleagues in Japan. They found that some of the highest levels of sunlight can be found in the Himalayas and the Andes: at altitude, less light is lost to the atmosphere.
There's another reason why high-altitude solar power makes sense. At temperatures of around 40 °C, 13 per cent of the energy solar panels would normally produce is lost to heat. The cold air at high-altitude keeps the panels cool and efficient, says Kawajiri.
Keith Barnham, a photovoltaics researcher at Imperial College London, says cold climates may be the new frontier in solar. "There are a lot of underdeveloped regions and communities living high up in the foothills of the Himalayas that could benefit from solar energy," he says.
More at the linkThink of solar arrays and you'll probably picture panels under blistering desert... more
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While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted wrongly that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035, photographic and scientific evidence shows that the melting third pole is still devastating the region.
In January, when the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged that it was wrong in predicting that the glaciers of the Himalayas could be gone by 2035, skeptics of global warming used the error to assert that much of climate science was a fraud.
Next month, though, the Asia Society Museum opens a month long exhibition in New York of alpine photographs by David Breashears that are the strongest visual proof ever compiled that climate scientists may have been aggressive in predicting the rate of glacial melting at the top of the world, but not by much.
Breashears’ work, collected by the museum in “Rivers of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalayas,” documents the rapid retreat of one of the world’s thickest and most important sheets of ice. A mountaineer, Breashears has scaled the world’s tallest mountains to take photographs of dozens of glaciers from the same perches that great photographers of the early and mid-20th century used to shoot the highest, and some of the longest glaciers in the world.
In “Rivers of Ice,” the Asia Society Museum presents Breashears’ 21st century pictures alongside those archival photographs. The message, say the museum’s curators, is unmistakable: “The comparison starkly reveals the catastrophic glacier loss sustained during the intervening years.”
“[M]ore than one-sixth of the world’s population live in glacier-or snowmelt-fed river basins and will be affected by the seasonal shifts in stream flow.”The Breashears exhibition coincides with a new scientific reckoning of the pace of Himalayan melting, and the consequences to watersheds, rivers, communities and nearly 3 billion people that rely on what some scientists have come to call “the water towers of Asia.” Two years ago, Circle of Blue documented the risks to Asia’s ten major rivers--the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Indus, Amu Darya and Tarim–as well as to hundreds of lesser streams that rely for water on snow, and glacial melt from the Tibetan Plateau and its young, heaven-scraping Himalayan range.
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More recent studies conclude that without sharp changes in global policy to curtail carbon emissions the Himalayan glaciers–and there are more than 40,000 of them spread across the peaks and valleys of the Tibetan Plateau–could be mostly gone by 2070. The underlying and inescapable fact reached by scientists who study ice and the Himalayas is that atmospheric conditions are changing fast and dramatically.
A year ago Ravinder Kumar Chaujar, a scientist with India’s Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, published an important paper in Current Science on the increasing temperatures, diminishing accumulation of snow, and rapid retreat of the Chorabari glacier in northern India’s Himalayan territory. Surface temperatures around the glacier since 1980, said Chaujar, have increased 0.8 degrees Centigrade (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit). Average snow accumulation, Chaujar reported, has dropped from more than 2,000 kilograms per square meter in the decades of the 20th century to just over 1,500 kilograms per meter in 2006, the lowest snowfall in the 50 years of record-keeping.
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The blue glacial ice of such famed fields as Tibet’s Main Rongbuk Glacier below Mount Everest today are thin, black with soot, and shrinking. Climate scientists and geologists from China and India warn that the range of ice on the Tibet plateau and in the mountains could shrink by 43 percent by 2070. Between 1950 and 1980, about half of the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau were in recession, according to a number of studies. By the first decade of the 21st century, 95 percent were retreating.
Ya Tandong, a Chinese glaciologist, recently described in a UN report the condition of Himalayan glaciers this way: “Studies indicate that by 2030 another 30 percent will disappear. By 2050, 40 percent. By the end of the century 70 percent. The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe.”While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted wrongly that the... more
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The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to take action to reduce black-carbon pollution under the federal Clean Water Act. The petition is the first to explicitly seek protection of water in its solid form; it asks EPA to set water-quality criteria for concentrations of black carbon on sea ice and glaciers under the Clean Water Act – the first step toward reducing black-carbon emissions from diesel engines and other sources due to their role in accelerating the loss of sea ice and glaciers.
“Black carbon, or soot, is not only dangerous to breathe but also a potent global warming pollutant that is greatly accelerating the melt of Arctic sea ice and glaciers around the world,” said Matt Vespa, a senior attorney with the Center. “The Clean Water Act provides important tools to reduce this dangerous pollutant, which will slow global warming and protect public health.”
Generated from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels, and biomass, black carbon is a solid particle that warms the atmosphere in two ways. In the atmosphere, its dark color absorbs heat and raises the temperature of the air. When it lands on ice and snow, it darkens these surfaces, thereby absorbing heat and increasing melting. Over the course of the Arctic spring, black-carbon-contaminated snow and ice can melt weeks earlier than clean snow and ice. Due to its warming effects in the air and on ice and snow, black carbon is considered one of the largest contributors to global warming after carbon dioxide pollution. In addition to its strong warming effect, black carbon also has profound impacts on public health, contributing to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year.
If current trends continue, many of the glaciers in the continental United States, including all of the glaciers in Glacier National Park, will disappear within the next 25 to 30 years. Scientists believe the Arctic could be ice free in the summer by 2030. Summer sea ice has already decreased by nearly 40 percent, or one million square miles, from what was present in the 1970s.
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A copy of the petition and other information on black carbon can be found at
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/climate_law_institute/global_warming_what_how_why/black_carbon/pdfs/EPA_CWA_Black_Carbon_Petition_2-22-10.pdf.The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to... more
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Video extract from the film, 'Meltdown' about an expedition to highlight climate change in the Himalayas and the threat of glacial lake outburst floods. These are the effects of a warming world in concert with human behavior. People's lives are not just at stake
due to the effects of rapid melting glaciers, but the floods caused by glacial lakes whose force can wipe whole villages away.
Reality. All you have to do is look for yourself.Video extract from the film, 'Meltdown' about an expedition to highlight... more
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Ice core samples from Mount Everest that represent 800 years of atmospheric history contain much higher levels of certain metals in the last three decades than in the previous seven centuries. The metals are linked to the rising use of fossil fuels in Asia during that same time period.
Economic growth and more burning of fossil fuels by industries and cars in central Asia since the 1970s has resulted in higher levels of metals deposited in recent layers of ice collected from Mount Everest.
Data from a recent study that examined the cores from the Himalayan Mountains are the first to show that levels of arsenic, molybdenum, tin and antimony in the ice samples have sharply increased during the last 30 years when compared to the previous 700 years. During those centuries, the metal levels varied but were fairly stable.
Researchers use core samples of lake sediments, glaciers and ice caps to show that even remote locations – like the Arctic – contain evidence of human activities, such as the use of pesticides, metals and industrial chemicals. Slices of the cores are like pages in a history book; they record when and how much pollution a region has received during past decades, centuries or even milleniums.
It is known that chemicals originating in warmer regions of the world can be carried by air currents and deposited in soil and ice at the colder, higher latitudes and altitudes. Fossil fuels burned in cars or coal-fired generating stations release metals into the atmosphere that also can be moved long distances and deposited in remote ecosystems. Several prior studies from North America, Europe and Greenland confirm the higher levels of metals found in recent layers of sediment, glacier and ice cap cores are related to heavier reliance on fossil fuels during the last century.
More recently, the number of coal-burning generating stations and industries and vehicles that rely on fossil fuels has increased along with economic growth in central Asia. As a result, Asia now releases more metals into the atmosphere than any other region of the world. Despite these rapid increases, it was not known if the metals were being deposited at higher levels now than before Asia's recent industrial growth.
This recent study was done to find out. Researchers collected ice cores high up on the northern slope of Mount Everest. The cores represented what has been deposited in this region for more than 800 years, spanning from 1205 to 2002 AD. In the cores the researchers measured the levels of several metals – arsenic, molybdenum, tin and antimony – that are primarily released during fossil fuel combustion.
The results clearly show the effects of the booming economy in central Asia. In layers of the core representing the 1970s and more recent times, levels of these metals are up to 3 times higher than what was measured in older layers.
The findings show that the increased industrialization of central Asia has led to higher metals levels in remote areas of the Himalayas and that environmental contamination in this region is mirroring what has been seen in North America.
Synopsis by Karen Kidd
Hong, S, K Lee, S Hou, SD Hur, J Ren, L Burn, KJR Rosman, C Barbante and CF Boutron. 2009. An 800-year record of atmospheric As, Mo, Sn, and Sb in Central Asia in high-altitude ice cores from Mt. Qomolangma (Everest), Himalayas. Environmental Science and Technology.Ice core samples from Mount Everest that represent 800 years of atmospheric history... more
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Using improved cookstoves in India would not only save lives, but also alleviate carbon emissions that lead to climate change. As this article points out, the connection between climate change and health is one we must concentrate on. It is a point that can have an impact on people understanding the urgency of reducing emissions through more healthy practices.Using improved cookstoves in India would not only save lives, but also alleviate... more
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Swift action on other greenhouse agents could solve the “fast half” of the climate problem, researchers say.
AbstractFull Text HTMLHi-Res PDF[2037 KB]PDF w/ Links[86 KB]Noreen Parks
Environ. Sci. Technol., Article ASAP
Publication Date (Web): November 18, 2009
Copyright © 2009 American Chemical Society
Aggressively reducing emissions of non-CO2 climate drivers could forestall abrupt climate change for up to 40 years, according to a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2009, DOI 10.1073/pnas.0902568106). Without such efforts, even drastic cuts to CO2 emissions will fail to put the brakes on planetary warming soon enough to avoid climate tipping points, the authors warn.
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), black carbon (soot), ground-level ozone, and methane together represent an estimated 40−50% of the warming caused by human activities. “We’re on track for a 2 °C warming that will put us in the danger zone, and current research shows it’s coming faster than anticipated,” says study coauthor Durwood Zaelke of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “Restricting CO2 emissions is absolutely critical, but it won’t be enough. So the question is how quickly we can deliver cooling on the non-CO2 side.”
Implementing “fast-action” mitigation strategies based on available technologies would jump-start this effort, the researchers say. One key step would be to phase down the production and use of HFCs, which are now known to act as long-lasting greenhouse gases. Use of HFCs has been growing because of the rising demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration in developing countries. Current projections indicate that by mid-century the impact of HFCs on the climate could be approximately 20% of that from CO2 emissions, if the current trends continue unabated. “The Montreal Protocol (MP) has already delayed climate change by 7−12 years,” lead author Mario Molina of the University of California San Diego noted in a prepared statement. “We have to take advantage of the proven ability of this legally binding treaty to quickly phase down HFCs.” North American leaders recently submitted a proposal to start this process for consideration at the MP annual meeting in November.
Soot now ranks as the second or third biggest contributor to climate change. However, soot’s short life span offers opportunities for comparatively quick fixes—such as particulate filters for vehicles and clean-burning or solar-powered stoves—that could yield significant climate savings, the authors say. Likewise, the means for slashing levels of ozone precursors such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides are within reach. Research shows that rigorous enforcement of air-pollution technologies and regulations could cut these emissions by more than half, dramatically decreasing tropospheric ozone. “We know how to curb air pollution; we just need to do it better and faster, and get the solutions applied in developing countries. We can borrow from and utilize working international agreements to do this,” Zaelke emphasizes.
Comparing the overall greenhouse contributions of climate drivers reveals only part of their potential for limiting global warming, Michael MacCracken of the Climate Institute noted in a recent paper. Also critical are their atmospheric lifetimes, which range from centuries to millennia for CO2 and HFCs and from days to weeks for black carbon. “Steep, immediate reductions in soot would eliminate its warming influence over the entire 21st century,” he explains. Similarly, swift cutbacks in emissions of methane and ozone-producing pollutants would yield sharp and enduring declines in their warming influence.
Because much of the non-CO2 pollution originates in developing countries, those nations can play a substantial role in combating climate change, MacCracken stresses. “We don’t want climate negotiations to fail because we can’t get agreement on everyone cutting CO2 emissions immediately. Developing nations can do a lot to offset their ongoing CO2 output by going after these other pollutants—at the same time improving public health and energy efficiency. This would allow for their continued development, while cost-effective, climate-friendly energy technologies evolve, and demonstrate the necessary commitment from all nations while recognizing the equity imbalance created by very different per capita emissions.”
The study is intended as a call to action, Zaelke says. “Speed matters. We have to move forward on all fronts now, using existing governance structures, without waiting for a climate treaty to get started. We need optimism and energy to solve this problem, and these fast-action strategies can help provide more confidence that we can do it.”Swift action on other greenhouse agents could solve the “fast half” of the... more
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Remember, it is the rapidity of the melting that indicates other forcings besides just natural processes. Forcings those responsible for want you to discount so they can keep their profits. And while they divert you with emails, distractionary "debates," and fake You Tube "lawsuits," glacier melt continues to threaten over 2 billion people globally. Now what do you really think is more important?Remember, it is the rapidity of the melting that indicates other forcings besides just... more
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The biochar initiative was inspired by the discovery of ‘terra preta’ (black earth) in the Amazon basin [22, 23], at sites of pre-Columbian settlements (between 450BC and 950AD), made by adding charcoal, bone, and manure to the soil over many, many years (see Fig. 1). Besides charcoal, it contains abundant pottery shards, plant residues, animal faeces, fish and animal bones. The soil’s depth can reach 2 metres, and is reported capable of regenerating itself at the rate of about 1 cm a year. Similar sites are found in Benin and Liberia in West Africa, in the South African savannahs, and even in Roman Britain. According to local farmers in the Amazon, productivity on the terra preta is much higher than surrounding soils.
Figure 1. Terra preta left compared with surrounding soil right
Investigations in the laboratory revealed that terra preta soils are rich in nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, zinc, and manganese, and have high levels of microbial activities. Terra preta contains up to 70 times more black carbon (BC) than the surrounding soils. Due to its polycyclic aromatic structure, black carbon is believed to be chemically and microbiologically inert (but see later) and persists in the soil for centuries, if not thousands of years. During this time, oxidation produces carboxylic groups increasing its nutrient-holding capacity. Bruno Glaser and colleagues at the University of Bayreuth concluded that [24] “black carbon can act as a significant carbon sink and is a key factor for sustainable and fertile soils, especially in the humid tropics.”
Similarly, BC derived from terra preta sites in central Amazon differing in age from 600 to 8 700 years were chemically, biologically and spectroscopically indistinguishable, as consistent with their “extremely slow” rate of decomposition [25].
However, BC collected from 11 historical charcoal blast furnace sites from Quebec Canada to Georgia USA, were quite different from BC newly produced using rebuilt historical kilns [26]. The historical BC samples were substantially oxidized after 130 years in soils compared to the new BC, or new BC incubated for one year at 30 C or 70 C. The major alterations were an increase in oxygen from 7.2 percent in new BC to 24.8 percent in historical BC; a decrease in carbon from 90.8 percent to 70.5 percent; formation of oxygen-containing function groups, particularly carboxylic acid and phenolic functional groups; and disappearance of surface positive charge, to be replaced entirely by negative charges. New BC incubated at 30 C or 70 C for 12 months increased in oxygen concentrations to 9.2 and 10.6 percent respectively; and also had complete replacement of surface positive charges by negative charges.
These findings show that BC is a substantial oxygen sink, and could deplete atmospheric O2 fairly rapidly if massive amounts are produced in a hurry!
The main factor accounting for the changes was mean annual temperature, which was highly correlated with degree of oxidation. BC oxidation was increased by 87 nmoles/kg C / degree Celsius increase in mean annual temperature. BC oxidation to carboxylic groups accounts for the high cation exchange capacity of natural BC in the soil that the authors suggest is the basis of the enhancement in soil fertility.
So charcoal is not the same as terra preta that has been created over thousands of years by human intervention and natural geochemistry. The claim that biochar is a “stable carbon pool” in the soil that does not degrade for thousands of years is not borne out by the study, nor by a number of other studies (see below).
end of excerpt.The biochar initiative was inspired by the discovery of ‘terra preta’... more
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The shipping industry is an invisible and nearly unregulated environmental disaster, and if you haven’t heard much about its poor record, you’re not alone. Compared to power plants, cars and even commercial aviation, shipping has drawn little scrutiny ─ it gets few mentions in the media, and activist groups tend to focus their attention elsewhere. Seen as little more than an expensive tourist option or a humdrum conveyor of goods, the modern sea vessel is a mystery to the average person, either a love boat or a floating tractor trailer. If there were no pirates or seasick honeymooners, the shipping industry would barely register in the public consciousness.The shipping industry is an invisible and nearly unregulated environmental disaster,... more
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Want a quick recipe for reducing Arctic ice melt fast? Stop burning northern hemisphere farmlands and pasturelands.
New research finds that large-scale agricultural burning in Russia, Kazakhstan, China, the US, Canada, and the Ukraine is melting Arctic ice.
The big contributor: Spring burning, when farmers torch crop residues and brush to clear new land for crops and livestock. The black carbon soot produced by these fires flows north, warms the surrounding air, and absorbs solar energy when it falls on ice and snow.
How bad is the problem? Springtime burning may account for 30 percent of Arctic warming to date.
The good news is there's an easy fix. Targeting these burns gets us a genuinely fast reduction in temperature over the Arctic. Plus we know how to control these pollutants right now. Just stop burning. Right now. Before the melting ice rewires the oceanic currents delivering us the climate we're used to.
The research is part of POLARCAT, an international effort to track the transport of pollutants into the Arctic from lower latitudes. Researchers were surprised to find 50 smoke plumes that analysis of satellite images revealed came from agricultural fires in Northern Kazakhstan and Southern Russia and from forest fires in Southern Siberia. The emissions from these fires far outweighed those from fossil fuels.
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Although global warming is largely the result of excess accumulation of carbon dioxide, the Arctic is highly sensitive to short-lived pollutants like black carbon. Forest fires, agricultural burning, primitive cookstoves, and diesel fuel are the primary sources of black carbon.Want a quick recipe for reducing Arctic ice melt fast? Stop burning northern... more
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Scientists from major countries including India have come out with a declaration demanding a region-by-region response to increased water scarcity and heightened hazards.
An international group of scientists from the US, India, China and Britain, in a declaration, have said that melting glaciers, weakening monsoon rains, less mountain snowpack and other effects of a warmer climate will lead to significant disruptions in the supply of water to highly populated regions of the world.
The group convened by University of California San Diego and the University of Cambridge added that this will especially be the case near the Himalayas in Asia and the Sierra Nevada Mountains of the western United States.
More than two dozen international water experts participated in the "Ice, Snow, and Water: Impacts of Climate Change on California and Himalayan Asia" workshop held at UC San Diego recently.
Workshop experts represented the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), the UN World Climate Research Programme, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the British Antarctic Survey, and the California Department of Water Resources as well as several American universities.
They noted heavy rains in Indian deserts, a recent drought in what is typically one of the wettest place on earth along the foot of the Himalayas, and other extreme weather events in recent decades.
Major rivers in both regions, like China's Yellow River and the Colorado River in the southwestern United States, routinely fail to reach the ocean now.
These extremes are signs of the climate and societally induced stresses that will be exacerbated in the future under continuing climate changes, threatening massive and progressive disruptions in the availability of drinking water to more than a billion people in the two regions.
"Solutions to immense problems have small beginnings and we began here," said Sustainability Solutions Institute Senior Strategist Charles Kennel. "I continue to be impressed by what a small group of dedicated people can achieve."
Workshop leaders plan to present the declaration at the 2009 Forum on Science and Technology in Society in Kyoto, Japan, taking place in October.
Research conducted at Scripps and at other research centers around the world have indicated that global warming and particulate air pollution, especially in the form of black carbon, are already disrupting natural supplies of water by raising air temperatures and by increasing the light absorption of snow and ice as pollutants darken the frozen surfaces.Scientists from major countries including India have come out with a declaration... more
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