Emitted by diesel engines, brick kilns and wood-fired cookstoves, black carbon is second only to carbon dioxide as the most powerful climate pollutant, according to the study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

But because black carbon only lasts in the atmosphere a matter of days, compared to carbon dioxide’s atmospheric endurance of centuries, addressing it could be a prime target for curbing global warming, the report said.

“This new research provides further compelling evidence to act on short-lived climate pollutants, including black carbon,” said Achim Steiner, chief of the United Nations environment program.

The report found black carbon’s effect on climate is nearly twice what was previously thought.

The new assessment found black carbon emissions caused significantly higher warming over the Arctic and other regions, could affect rainfall patterns, including those of the Asian monsoon system, and have led to rapid warming in the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe and northern Asia.

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A draft of the U.S. National Climate Assessment, released Jan. 11, said observable change to the climate in the past half-century “is due primarily to human activities, predominantly the burning of fossil fuel,” and that no areas of the United States were immune to change.

“Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington state, and maple syrup producers in Vermont have observed changes in their local climate that are outside of their experience,” the report said.

Months after Superstorm Sandy hurtled into the U.S. East Coast, causing billions of dollars in damage, the report concluded that severe weather was the new normal.

“Certain types of weather events have become more frequent and/or intense, including heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts,” the report said, days after scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared 2012 the hottest year ever in the United States.

Some environmentalists looked for the report to energize climate efforts by the White House or Congress, although many Republican lawmakers are wary of declaring a definitive link between human activity and evidence of a changing climate.

The U.S. Congress has been mostly silent on climate change since efforts to pass “cap-and-trade” legislation collapsed in the Senate in mid-2010.

A three-month period for public comment will now ensue, as well as a review by the National Academies of Sciences, before the final version is produced.

“A warning to all of us”

The report noted that of an increase in average U.S. temperatures of about 1.5 F (.83 C) since 1895, when reliable national record-keeping began, more than 80 per cent had occurred in the past three decades.

With heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere, temperatures could rise by a further 2 F to 4 F (1.1 C to 2.2 C) in most parts of the country over the next few decades, the report said.

Certain positive consequences of rising temperatures, such as a longer growing season, were said to be offset by more disruptive impacts, including:

• Threats to human health from increased extreme weather events, wildfires and air pollution, as well as diseases spread by insects and through food and water;
• Less-reliable water supply, and the potential for water rights to become a hot-button legal issue;
• More vulnerable infrastructure due to sea-level rise, bigger storm surges, heavy downpours and extreme heat;
• Warmer and more acidic oceans.

“This draft report sends a warning to all of us: We must act in a comprehensive fashion to reduce carbon pollution or expose our people and communities to continuing devastation from extreme weather events and their aftermath,” Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who heads the Senate environment committee, said in a statement.

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“The large majority of that drought we expect to persist,” Halpert said. “We even see drought expanding westward… into Montana, Idaho and part of Oregon and Washington.”

Drier-than-usual winter weather is expected in much of the Pacific Northwest, with higher-than-normal precipitation predicted for the Gulf Coast, according to NOAA forecasts.

For much of the country, a three-month (December-February) winter forecast is hard to pin down. The vast majority of states have what the experts said was an equal chance of below-normal, normal or above-normal precipitation.

Less certain upper Midwest

The densely populated East Coast, along with the southern tier of states from Texas to Florida and the upper Midwest also have an equal chance of colder, normal or warmer weather this winter, according to the forecasters.

Still, there is enough data to predict a warm winter overall, said Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. The first nine months of 2012 were the warmest of any year on record in the contiguous United States, and this has been the third-hottest summer since record-keeping began.

“The main issues facing the U.S. going into this (winter) outlook period stem from persistent heat and drought,” Arndt said at a telephone briefing. “It is likely that 2012 will be the warmest of the 118-year record for the contiguous United States.”

An El Niño pattern — a recurring patch of warmer-than-usual water in the equatorial Pacific that can have a potent effect on U.S. weather — gave hints of developing in September but then subsided, the first time this has happened in approximately 60 years of record-keeping on this phenomenon, Halpert said.

“This is one of the most challenging outlooks we’ve produced in recent years because El Niño decided not to show up as expected,” he said.

A record-warm winter would be in line with NOAA’s latest report on global temperatures, which found September 2012 tied for the hottest September in world records going back to 1880.

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"The large majority of that drought we expect to persist," Halpert said. "We even see drought expanding westward… into Montana, Idaho and part of Oregon and Washington."

Drier-than-usual winter weather is expected in much of the Pacific Northwest, with higher-than-normal precipitation predicted for the Gulf Coast, according to NOAA forecasts.

For much of the country, a three-month (December-February) winter forecast is hard to pin down. The vast majority of states have what the experts said was an equal chance of below-normal, normal or above-normal precipitation.

The densely populated East Coast, along with the southern tier of states from Texas to Florida and the upper Midwest also have an equal chance of colder, normal or warmer weather this winter, according to the forecasters.

Still, there is enough data to predict a warm winter overall, said Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. The first nine months of 2012 were the warmest of any year on record in the contiguous United States, and this has been the third-hottest summer since record-keeping began.

"The main issues facing the U.S. going into this (winter) outlook period stem from persistent heat and drought," Arndt said at a telephone briefing. "It is likely that 2012 will be the warmest of the 118-year record for the contiguous United States."

An El Niño pattern — a recurring patch of warmer-than-usual water in the equatorial Pacific that can have a potent effect on U.S. weather — gave hints of developing in September but then subsided, the first time this has happened in approximately 60 years of record-keeping on this phenomenon, Halpert said.

"This is one of the most challenging outlooks we’ve produced in recent years because El Niño decided not to show up as expected," he said.
A record-warm winter would be in line with NOAA’s latest report on global temperatures, which found September 2012 tied for the hottest September in world records going back to 1880.

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Like oil in the 20th century, water could be the essential commodity on which the 21st century will turn.

With seven billion people on the planet as of Oct. 31, water use is exponentially expanding as urbanization and development drive demand like never before more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, said Kirsty Jenkinson of the World Resources Institute.

Water use is predicted to increase by 50 per cent between 2007 and 2025 in developing countries and 18 per cent in developed ones, Jenkinson said.

Factor in the expected impacts of climate change more severe floods, droughts and shifts from past precipitation patterns that are likely to hit the poorest people first and worst and we have a significant challenge on our hands, Jenkinson said.

Will there be enough water for everyone, especially if population continues to rise, as predicted, to nine billion by mid-century?

There s a lot of water on Earth, so we probably won t run out, said Rob Renner, executive director of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation.

The problem is that 97.5 per cent of it is salty and … of the 2.5 per cent that s fresh, two-thirds of that is frozen. So there s not a lot of fresh water to deal with in the world.

Water risk hot spots

Over a billion people lack access to clean drinking water, and more than two billion live without adequate sanitation, leading to the deaths of five million people, mostly children, each year from preventable waterborne disease, Renner said.

Only eight per cent of the planet s fresh water supply goes to domestic use and about 70 per cent is used for irrigation and 22 per cent in industry, Jenkinson said.

Hot spots of water risk, as reported in the World Resources Institute s Aqueduct onl ine at las at http://insights. wri . o rg/ aqueduct/atlas, include:

” Australia s MurrayDarling basin;

” the Colorado River basin in the U.S. Southwest;

” the Orange-Senqu basin, covering parts of South Africa, Botswana and Namibia and all of Lesotho;

” and the Yangtze and Yellow River basins in China.

Experts say integrated water resource management is required.

Water is going to quickly become a limiting factor in our lifetimes, said Ralph Eberts of the international water-engineering firm Black &Veatch.

He said he sees a reprioritization of resources to address the water challenges posed by changing climate and growing urbanization.

Investors take note

Water concerns are already having severe economic impacts. For example, clothing company The Gap cut its profit forecast by 22 per cent after drought reduced the cotton crop in Texas while gas producer Toreador Resources saw its stock price drop 20 per cent after France banned shale-gas fracturing, primarily over concerns about water quality.

Water risk is more than a corporate concern. In East Africa, for example, climate change could shorten the growing season and cut yields of staple crops like maize and beans. A recent study found that major river basins in Africa, Asia and Latin America could double food production in the next few decades if those upstream work with those downstream to efficiently use the water they have.

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This steep drop in stream flow is projected for parts of the U.S. West that have seen marked increases in population and droughts over recent decades, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a telephone briefing.

“These changes will directly affect the West’s water supplies, which are already stretched in meeting demands for drinking, irrigating crops, generating electricity and filling our lakes and aquifers for activities like fishing, boating and to power our economy,” he said.

A new Interior Department report outlines increased risks to water resources in the U.S. West for the 21st century, including:

A temperature increase of 2.77 to 3.88 C;

More precipitation where it’s already wet (northwestern and north-central parts of the American West) and less where it’s already too dry (southwestern and south-central parts);

A decrease in April 1 snow-pack, a standard benchmark measurement used to project river basin run-off;

An eight to 20 per cent decrease in average annual stream flow in several river basins, including the Colorado, the Rio Grande, and the San Joaquin.

“Climate change will add to the challenges we face, which will be felt first in the Western United States,” said Anne Castle, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for science and water. She noted that some of the fastest population growth has occurred in the driest areas, including parts of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Texas.

Water managers in the U.S. West are already emphasizing water conservation and efficiency, Castle said, adding that they are increasingly focusing on “the energy-water nexus.”

“People are paying greater attention to the water demands of energy development and recognizing that conservation of energy can mean conservation of water as well,” she said.

Salazar said “alarm bells” about the West’s water supplies were sounding across the U.S. political spectrum, and that he himself felt the need for an “urgency of planning” to deal with the issue.

The full report and other related documents are available online at http://www.usbr.gov/climate/.

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Increasing drought has long been forecast as a consequence of climate change, but a new study from the U. S. National Center for Atmospheric Research projects serious impact by the 2030s. Impacts by century’s end could go beyond anything in the historical record, the study suggests.

To get an idea of how severe the drought might get, scientists use a measure called the Palmer Drought Severity Index, or PDSI. A positive score is wet, a negative score is dry and a score of zero is neither overly wet nor dry.

As an example, the most severe drought in recent history, in the Sahel region of western Africa in the 1970s, had a PDSI of -3 or -4.

By contrast, the new study indicates some areas with high populations could see drought in the -15 or -20 range by the end of the century.

“Historical PDSI for the last 60 years show a drying trend over southern Europe but nothing like those values at the end of this century,” study author Aiguo Dai said in answer to emailed questions. “Decadal mean values of PDSI have not reached -15 to -20 levels in the past in any records over the world.”

A GENERALLY DRIER WORLD

Areas likely to experience significant drying include: the western two-thirds of the United States, much of Latin America, especially large parts of Mexico and Brazil, regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea, large parts of southwest Asia, southeast Asia, including China and neighbouring countries, and most of Africa and Australia.

While Earth is expected to get drier overall, some areas will see a lowering of the drought risk. These include: much of northern Europe, Russia, Canada, Alaska, and some areas of the Southern Hemisphere.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that agriculture will migrate from the drought areas to these places in the high latitudes, Dai wrote.

“The high-latitude land areas will experience large changes in terms of warmer temperatures and more precipitation, and thus may indeed become more habitable than today,” he wrote. “However, limited sunshine, short growing season, and very cold nighttime temperature will still prevent farming over most of these high-latitude regions.”

The study’s findings are based on computer models and the best current predictions of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. This could change depending on actual greenhouse emissions in the future as well as natural climate cycles such as El Nińo, the centre said in a statement.

More information and graphics on the study can be seen at https:// www2.ucar.edu/news/climate-change-drought-may-threaten-much-globe-within

decades.

Rising threat:Maps display the extent to which drought may increase during this century, according to a new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades, but Canada may be spared, according to the study.

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“Does it make sense to take three to five pounds of perfectly good food and convert it into only one pound of food?”

– Ellen Pikitch, Institute for Ocean Conservation Science

One-third of the world’s ocean fish catch is ground up for animal feed, a potential problem for marine ecosystems and a waste of a resource that could directly nourish humans, scientists said Oct. 29.

The fish being used to feed pigs, chickens and farm-raised fish are often thought of as bait, including anchovies, sardines, menhaden and other small-to medium-size species, researchers wrote in a study to be published this month in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

These so-called forage fish account for 37 per cent, or 31.5 million tonnes, of all fish taken from the world’s oceans each year, the study said. Ninety per cent of that catch is turned into fish meal or fish oil, most of which is used as agricultural and aquacultural feed.

Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, called these numbers “staggering.”

“The reason I find that so alarming is that it’s an enormous percentage of the world fish catch,” Pikitch said. “And fish are fundamentally important to the health of the ocean overall.”

Forage fish are near the base of the marine food web, nourishing larger fish, ocean-dwelling marine mammals and sea birds, especially puffins and gulls, the study said.

Ecological consequences

Unlike such dinner-plate fish as tuna, swordfish and cod, the extraction of forage fish is largely unregulated, Pikitch said. Excessive removal of these small fish from the ocean environment could hurt the species that feed on them.

Aside from the potential ecological consequences, the taking of these large numbers of forage fish interferes with food security for humans, she said.

On average, it takes three to five pounds of fish meal to produce a pound of farm-raised fish, Pikitch said.

“If you’re creating protein for humans to consume, does it make sense to take three to five pounds of perfectly good food and convert it into only one pound of food?” she said.

Most forage fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids associated with heart health, she said, adding that it makes sense for humans to consume these fish directly rather than to feed them to livestock and farmed fish.

But human consumption of these fish needs to be monitored, said Joshua Reichert of the Pew Environment Group.

“Whatever people take out of the sea needs to be carefully calibrated to ensure that sufficient fish are left to sustain populations of other fish, seabirds and marine mammals, which all play a major role in the healthy functioning of the world’s oceans,” Reichert said in a statement.

The study is the product of a nine-year partnership between the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and the Pew Charitable Trusts, funded by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, which is transitioning to become the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook.

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Ethanol from cellulose, the kind of sugar in the likes of cornstalks and sawdust, is being promoted as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels, with the advantage that it does not use food crops such as corn as raw materials.

The genetically engineered bacteria ferment cellulose to produce ethanol more efficiently, the scientists wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Naturally occurring bacteria can also ferment cellulose but they do it at lower temperatures that require the use of an expensive enzyme called cellulase, said Lee Lynd of Dartmouth College, an author of the study.

The newly engineered bacterium, known as ALK2, can ferment all the sugars present in biomass and can do it at 122F (50C), compared with conventional microbes that cannot funct ion above 98.6F (37C).

At higher temperatures, the fermentation process required 2-1/2 times less cellulase in one controlled experiment, Lynd said in a telephone interview.

Doing it the natural way produces organic acids in addition to the ethanol, while ethanol is the only organic product of fermentation with the new bacteria, Lynd said.

ALK2 is more efficient than the microorganisms now in use in breaking down all five sugars present in cellulosic biomass simultaneously, he said.

“This bug will ferment them all and it will ferment them at the same time,” Lynd said.

Cellulosic ethanol has almost no net emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gases because the carbon dioxide captured in growing the plants that go into it roughly equals what is emitted while running an engine, the college said in a statement.

In addition to being a professor at Dartmouth, Lynd is chief scientific officer and co-founder of Mascoma Corp., a company working to develop processes to make cellulosic ethanol.

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