Environment

The Chaos of Weather

January 21, 2015 — 2 Comments

After a long break I am finally back. This is the first post of the “Weather Forecasting” posts. Roughly speaking, to forecast the weather, scientists use computer models to mimic Earth dynamics. These models are mathematical equations of the atmosphere and oceans. However, the Earth dynamics is a big complex system. On top of that some Earth natural systems have a chaotic behavior. But what is chaos? Summarizing the wikipedia definition:

Chaos is when the behavior of dynamical systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions. Thus, small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems. Therefore, chaotic systems are predictable for a while and then appear to become random. In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.

Around 1960, the meteorologist Edward Lorenz (one of the fathers of chaos theory), was working on a set of differential equations describing convective processes in the atmosphere which were producing encouragingly realistic results. One day, he decided to enter data manually from a point part way through rather than waste time by starting the run over. He found that not long after the run had been restarted from this intermediate point, the forecast diverged and it was completely different. The reason behind, was the output data he used to restart the model. It had been rounded to 3 significant digits, while the computations were done to 6, an error of about 1%. With this unexpected results he discovered that the degree of numerical precision in the initial conditions provided to a numerical weather prediction (NWP) model affects the resulting forecast significantly after only a few days of forecast time (Lorenz 1963).  A good example (also from wikipedia) of chaotic behavior  is the double rod pendulum where the start of the pendulum from a slightly different initial condition would result in a completely different trajectory:

Double-compound-pendulum.gif
“Double-compound-pendulum” by Catslash – Own work. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Earth weather is one of the Earth natural systems with a chaotic behavior. Consequently, the use of different initial conditions in the atmospheric and oceans equations will lead to different final results. So why does not use the same initial condition always to forecast the weather and have the same results? The source of the errors in the forecasting is a more complex subject and I will explain in a post later. However if the Earth system is so unpredictable how come scientists can use computer models to reconstruct past and future climate? First it is necessary to explain the difference between weather and climate where the difference is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time. Weather is more difficult to predict and has more uncertainties than climate. An elegant demonstration of this difference can be seen in this short video from National Geographic. The astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson uses a dog walking to clarify the concept.

More additional information of computer models and how they are used to predict climate can be found here: Can we trust climate models?  and Numerical weather prediction.

Changes in the Water Cycle Expected with Climate Change. Are We Doomed?

November 10, 2014 — Leave a comment

Everybody know we are evolving as human beings. Is this true? When I see how clean water has being handled I have some questions. More than a billion people across the globe don’t have access to safe water. Every day 3900 children die as a result of insufficient or unclean water supplies. The situation can only get worse as water gets ever more scarce. The world without clean water. How many times I’ve heard that. The humankind is polluting, wasting, diverting, pumping, and degrading the clean water that we have. On top of that, water has being privatized. Why? Because is becoming rare and only what is rare is valuable! The rampant over-development of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth. There are companies now saying why don’t we bottle it, mine it, divert it, sell it, commodify it. Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geopolitical map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars. The following two documentaries show how the problem is affecting countries in the world. It is interesting how two documentaries show the same topic. They complement each other.


So, why can we be friends with nature? Is there any hope? According with this recent paper from nature climate:

Adaptation of water resources management will help communities adjust to changes in the water cycle expected with climate change, but it can’t be fixed by innovations alone.

The paper talks about the Pangani River, where the Tanzania Electric Supply Company has three hydropower plants. There, climate change is affecting the water cycle, changing precipitation amounts and droughts duration which is altering the way farmers, pastoralists and Tanzania’s energy company are managing water. All over the world new techniques and planning have been developed. The urban and rural development plans (sometimes) are moving away from large, static projects by combining sustainable approaches of engineering and ecology.

For the Pangani River, leaders adjusted water allocation policies with the changing needs of the communities. Still, they made water availability for ecosystems a main priority by maintaining at least a minimum flow of water to wetlands, riparian forests and mangroves to provide water for wildlife including fish, plants for medicinal use, timber and fruits, for example. Then, as the region’s population swelled, water uses for urban city centres were balanced with the needs of subsistence farmers, pastoralists and the Tanzanian energy company. That same kind of flexibility is the hallmark of the new thinking on water management. Rather than relying on large, long-lived concrete infrastructure, often built all at once and designed based on historical climatic conditions.

It makes sense. Rather than isolating water management issues within a single field, such as engineering or hydrology, the team to solve these problems should include economists, hydrologists, policymakers and engineers. Solutions have been proposed such as the redesigning of water treatment plants that can accommodate extreme rainfall, and the adding of city orchards and grassed bio-swales (which resemble marshy depressions in the land) to slow the flow of storm water from sidewalks. They will act as green sponges all over the city. Thus the water gets soaked up avoiding pumping every time it rains.

Another good example comes from Japan where it is possible to be sustainable (of course I am not talking about the Japanese nuclear power stations). Over centuries they reshaped the land where people and nature could remain in harmony. For the Japanese, it is important that they have a special word for it, satoyama, villages where mountains give way to plains. The satoyama landscape is a system in which agricultural practices and natural resource management techniques are used to optimize the benefits derived from local ecosystems. In the Satoyama villages, each home has a built in pool or water tank that lies partly inside, partly outside its’ walls… A continuous stream of spring water is piped right into a basin, so freshwater is always available. People rinse out pots in the tank and clean their freshly picked vegetables. If they simply pour the food scraps back in the water, they risk polluting the whole village supply. However, carps do the washing up there scouring out even the greasy or burnt pans. Cleaned up by the carp, the tank water eventually rejoins the channel. This documentary talks about the Satoyama villages:

In the Satoyama villages the products obtained (including food and fuel) help safeguard the community against poverty, but without degrading the land, water or other resources. Of course documentaries have a bias towards the ideas which they want to show but can you spot the difference? Also, is water public or private? Am I saying no more bottled water? Am I saying everybody should live in a Satoyama village? No. However I balance must exist between extraction and use. We need to reinvent ourselves.

Do you have anything to say? I’d like to hear your opinion.

More information:

http://satoyama-initiative.org/

http://onlinelearning.unu.edu/en/the-satoyama-initiative/

Click to access e_satoyama_pamph.pdf

Journal References:
Palmer, L. (2014). The next water cycle Nature Climate Change, 4 (11), 949-950 DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2420

Dr. Agr. Kazuhiko Takeuchi,Robert D. Brown Ph.D., Dr. Sci. Izumi Washitani, Dr. Agr. Atsushi Tsunekawa, Dr. Agr. Makoto Yokohari (2003). Satoyama, The Traditional Rural Landscape of Japan Springer Japan DOI: 10.1007/978-4-431-67861-8

Weather Forecasting: Is it better to toss a coin?

November 2, 2014 — 2 Comments

Why Is Weather Forecasting Always Wrong?  Have you asked yourself the same question? Have you cursed the weather forecasting when you were expecting a sunny day and then rained? Does this picture looks familiar?

tempoeficaz

Once I was in Toronto when the forecasting for the other day was a blizzard. Basically, lots of snow. When that day finally arrived we had half of the expected snow. I friend of mine said: “It is the government. They say more snow will fall than what is expected to scare the people.” Well at that time my knowledge about weather and atmospheric science was minimal. I did not know what to think. Is my friend right? Is the government really doing this? What is the real reason behind? Are the guys responsible for the weather forecasting incompetents? A few years ago i did a seminar giving a brief explanation of how hard is to predict weather. Unfortunately the slides do not come with detailed information. Thus, to answer some questions about weather forecasting I will do a series (not consecutive) of posts explaining why weather is so hard to predict. In addition I will try to give an overview of  how it is predicted. I will add the posts under the category ¨Weather Forecasting”.

To explain the whole weather forecasting problem it is really hard, almost impossible. For example:

Despite the detailed knowledge about precipitation including the complete hydrological cycle (evaporation, water vapour, convection, condensation, clouds, soil moisture, groundwater and the origin of rivers), predicting precipitation accurately is still one of the most difficult tasks in meteorology (Kuligowski:1998)

I know the paper is old but the problem persists. Even in 2014 precipitation still a major forecasting challenge. Some of the reasons are:

  • The chaotic nature of the atmosphere and the complexity of the processes that are involved in precipitation
  • The difficulties of precipitation measurements including problems with rain gauges, radar and satellites
  • The limited temporal and spatial scales of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models?

My goal is to provide information about the most important parts of the weather forecasting. Of course at the end of the posts, if I am missing something please let me know but I hope my posts will be enough to anyone know that the scientists are doing a really good job and they are really hard work guys and if they are missing is not because conspiracy or incompetence. It is because the problem is really hard.

 

Journal references:

Kuligowski, R., & Barros, A. (1998). Localized Precipitation Forecasts from a Numerical Weather Prediction Model Using Artificial Neural Networks Weather and Forecasting, 13 (4), 1194-1204 DOI: 10.1175/1520-0434(1998)0132.0.CO;2

Telling the Climate Change Story

October 23, 2014 — Leave a comment

Chantal Bilodeau's avatarArtists & Climate Change

There are many ways to tell the climate change story. It can be told in numbers organized in charts or graphs – the tools preferred by scientists. Or it can be told in a myriad of artistic ways as evidenced by the categories on this blog. For painter and photographer Diane Burko, the climate change story is best told in large-scale images that capture both the majesty of the depicted subject, and the poignancy of its potential demise. Inspired by the science of climate change, Burko’s paintings and photographs invite us to revere what we have, and to understand that despite its magnitude and seemingly unlimited resources, our earth is at risk and requires as much nurturing from us as we do from it. The merging of the aesthetic and the rational in a single experience invites us to confront our own understanding of, and response to, climate change.

In the interview below, Burko talks about her two current projects: Politics of Snow and Polar Investigations. For more on these projects, see…

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PalyPump an Awesome Idea to Mitigate the Clean Water Problem

October 11, 2014 — Leave a comment

Clean water is a problem for some countries, mainly in Africa. In my last post about water there is a link to a documentary called FLOW. For 4 or 5 seconds a guy mention something about a playpump. So I decided to know a little bit more about that idea. Roundabout Water Solutions, who has an agreement with the South African Department of Water Affairs and the Governments of Malawi, Lesotho and Swaziland, is raising donor funds to supply rural communities, with clean drinking water, by means a sustainable pumping system, called a PlayPump, that is powered by the play of children.

PlayPump

Ideas like that to help small communities are more than welcome as in How Solar Energy Empowered a Nicaraguan Community Once Devastated by War. However there are some disadvantages as mentioned by this report released by UNICEF in 2007. For example the pumps cost around $14 000 which are more expensive than traditional pumps. Also a Playpump could theoretically provide the bare minimum water requirements for about 200 people a day based on two hours’ constant “play” every day[1]. It is a great idea but it is not to solve to problem the intention is to mitigate it. Of course the costs should be lower than that.

via (read more in) Welcome to Roundabout Water Solutions.

There’s nothing quite like renewables: Natural gas production will not reduce future greenhouse gas emissions as hoped

October 4, 2014 — 1 Comment

jptrinastic's avatarGood Night Earth

Appropriate and useful climate policy-making requires accurate and reliable data about the future.  Nowhere is this more important than when setting carbon emission standards and projecting percentages of each energy source to match energy needs (coal, natural gas, nuclear, renewables, etc.).  But projecting how emissions will change in the decades to come, say to meet the 2030 standards, is a tricky business.  In particular, natural gas has been touted as a ‘bridge’ to a low-carbon future with predictions that it would take over a share of energy production from coal and thereby reduce net emissions (natural gas has about a fourth of the greenhouse potential of coal, if you take away methane leaks in transportation pipes).

But is this really true?  Does the data back this up?  These are the key questions policymakers must know the answer to when deciding whether to promote natural gas expansion with subsidies, etc.  And it falls…

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And the Water Pollution Continues…

September 28, 2014 — 3 Comments

Do you remember the post about China and Brazil water pollution? The newspaper which before reported the problem returned to the same place 10 months later . Do you want know how is the place now? Take a look:

Image Credit: Guga Matos/ JC Imagem

For me what is more disturbing are the flags on the sides. The flags are electoral propaganda. Yeah it is time for new elections. The candidate paid someone to put the flags there because it is a really busy area.

Image Credit: Guga Matos/ JC Imagem

Is this a poor place? Well, it is hard to say because it was one of the host cities during the world cup. World cup host cities are not chosen randomly. They are normally big cities with infrastructure. Yes, there is infrastructure. Just take a look at the stadium they built for the world cup called arena pernambuco:

Arena pernambuco. Foto credit: Sergio Dutra.

Arena pernambuco. Foto credit: Portal da copa

What? It doesn’t make any sense. In addition one of the biggest soccer stadiums in Brazil is located not only in the same city but in the same neighbourhood of the polluted water channel.

Arruda Stadium. Image credit: Jrnicolas

However the stadium didn’t fit in the fifa standard so the government decided to build a new one (instead of renovate the old big stadium) . Stadiums and world cup are the priorities now of the governments but in the future when water will be a value commodity the priority is likely to change. Check this documentary called FLOW for love of water:

Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century – The World Water Crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question “CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?”

Nuclear Power: a Possible Solution for Global Warming. Really???

August 24, 2014 — 2 Comments

That’s what I first heard. It is clean because it does not release CO2. Indeed, nuclear power plants produce energy without the releasing of large CO2 amount but is it really clean? I tried to learn a bit more about the topic. I won’t get into the details about how nuclear power is generated, I think this wikipedia text does a good job explaining how it works:

Just as many conventional thermal power stations generate electricity by harnessing the thermal energy released from burning fossil fuels, nuclear power plants convert the energy released from the nucleus of an atom via nuclear fission that takes place in a nuclear reactor. The heat is removed from the reactor core by a cooling system that uses the heat to generate steam, which drives a steam turbine connected to a generator producing electricity.

So the key factor is basically the nuclear fission:

nuclear fission is a process in which the nucleus of an atom splits into smaller parts. The fission process often produces free neutrons and photons (in the form of gamma rays), and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay.

An induced fission reaction.

 

The products of nuclear fission are on average far more radioactive than the heavy elements which are normally fissioned as fuel (for example Uranium), and remain so for significant amounts of time. Thus, is it nuclear energy safe? The world had 434 operable reactors with 66 others currently under construction. Statistically, considering the number of reactors and number of accidents, nuclear power plants are not really unsafe. Well, statistics is powerful and should be used carefully. Each nuclear accident could  represent environmental concerns of  hundreds of years (maybe thousands depending of the element and nuclear decay process). Therefore, only one accident can lead to catastrophic environmental consequences.

I started watching a movie about the Chernobyl accident and then I found more documentaries including nuclear power accidents, nuclear footprints and nuclear waste. It was an amazing journey. I hope these movies help you to understand more about this technology which is amazing but at the same time scary. Personally, after all these movies I though: “Wow, coal energy is kind of cleaner when compared to nuclear energy.”. It is important to mention there is a debate about the use of Thorium instead of Uranium or Plutonium in the nuclear power plants.  The claim is that Thorium is cheaper, safer and also abundant. Well, soon we will see the reality of these claims.

Into Eternity

This wasn’t the first movie that I saw about the topic but it was the most impressive for me. It was for me the scariest because of the time-dimension of the problem and the solution. 100,000 years. Wow, 100,000 years!

Every day, the world over, large amounts of high-level radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants is placed in interim storages, which are vulnerable to natural disasters, man-made disasters, and to societal changes.

In Finland the world’s first permanent repository is being hewn out of solid rock – a huge system of underground tunnels – that must last 100,000 years as this is how long the waste remains hazardous.

Once the waste has been deposited and the repository is full, the facility is to be sealed off and never opened again. Or so we hope, but can we ensure that?

And how is it possible to warn our descendants of the deadly waste we left behind? How do we prevent them from thinking they have found the pyramids of our time, mystical burial grounds, hidden treasures? Which languages and signs will they understand? And if they understand, will they respect our instructions?

While gigantic monster machines dig deeper and deeper into the dark, experts above ground strive to find solutions to this crucially important radioactive waste issue to secure mankind and all species on planet Earth now and in the near and very distant future.

Is Nuclear Energy Safe? Nuclear Energy Risks and Consequences

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima: This original Earth Focus investigative report looks at the untold stories behind three of the world’s largest nuclear disasters.

Discovery Channel – The Battle of Chernobyl (2006)

This documentary analyzes the Thursday 26th April 1986 when one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in northern Ukraine, exploded. The plant, just 20 km away from the town centre, was made up of four reactor units each generating an output of 1,000 megawatts. The reactor in question exploded due to operational errors and inadequate safety measures and the meltdown was directly linked to routine testing on the reactor unit’s turbine generators.

More than 200 people died or were seriously injured by radiation exposure immediately after the explosion. 161,000 people had to be evacuated from a 30 kilometer radius of the reactor and 25,000 square km of land were contaminated. As time went on millions of people suffered radiation related health problems such as leukemia and thyroid cancer and around 4,000 people have died as a result of the long-term effects of the accident.

Nobody was prepared for such a crisis. For the next seven months, 500,000 men will wage hand-to-hand combat with an invisible enemy – a ruthless battle that has gone unsung, which claimed thousands of unnamed and now almost forgotten heroes. Yet, it is thanks to these men that the worst was avoided; a second explosion, ten times more powerful than Hiroshima which would have wiped out more than half of Europe. This was kept secret for twenty years by the Soviets and the West alike.

Uranium – Is It A Country? Tracking the Origins of Nuclear Power

This is a documentary that takes a look at the footprints of nuclear energy. In Europe nuclear energy is more and more often celebrated as saving the climate. Clearly, nuclear power plants need uranium.

The aim is to comprehensively illustrate the opportunities and risks posed by nuclear energy, whilst paying particular attention to uranium mining. Australia has the world’s largest deposits of this resource. They go to the “land down under” to exemplify where uranium comes from, where it goes to and what is leftover from it.

The Fukushima Nuclear Accident

Examines the incident, aftermath and implications for the adoption of Nuclear energy in other countries. From ‘Four Corners’, an Australian investigative program on the ABC.

 

 

 

The New Norm: Environmental Accidents

August 10, 2014 — 3 Comments

I was writing a post about nuclear energy when an environmental accident happened in British Columbia, Canada. So I decided to postpone for one more week the nuclear energy post to make a comment about the accident.  First this is what happened.

In 04/08/2014 a copper-gold mine wastewater spilled into creeks, lakes, and flowed into central B.C. river systems. Debris and effluent flowed into a lake from the tailings pond, where waste from the mine’s chemical and mechanical operations was being stored. The wastewater and tailings sediments has contaminated several lakes, creeks and rivers in the region. Approximately 10 billion litres of water and 4.5 million cubic metres of metals-laden fine sand has been released. This is so big that I can’t even pay attention on the numbers. Because of that, a complete water ban has been issued for the interior community of BC. Therefore, the water is not appropriate for drink, swim, etc.

Image credit: Cariboo Regional District/Facebook

The company said:

.. the tailings are not acid-generating and the water is alkaline with a pH of roughly 8.5, but it could not confirm the exact quantity and composition of the discharged wastewater.

Humm good. But what are exactly the company disposals? According with Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory in 2013  the mine’s byproducts are:

  • Arsenic (and its compounds): 406 tonnes
  • Lead (and its compounds) 177 tonnes
  • Nickel (and its compounds) 326 tonnes
  • Vanadium (except when in an alloy): 5,047 tonnes
  • Zinc (and its compounds): 2,169 tonnes
  • Cadmium (and its compounds): 6 tonnes
  • Cobalt (and its compounds): 475 tonnes
  • Phosphorus (total): 41,640 tonnes
  • Copper (and its compounds): 18,413 tonnes
  • Antimony (and its compounds) 14 tonnes
  • Manganese (and its compounds): 20,988 tonnes
  • Mercury (and its compounds): 3 tonnes
  • Selenium (and its compounds): 46 tonnes

Honestly a statement like “tailings are not acid-generating…” is ridiculous. On the next day dead fish and devastation were spotted in the region. It is only the beginning because Mount Polley mine tailings pond breach followed years of government warnings. They had 5 warnings in 14 inspections. What???? No, not in Canada, a first world developed country. But Indeed, it is true. Negligence? Inaction? Is It really hard to explain. Well, disasters like these often spawn comments calling for the immediate shutdown of all mines, forestry and industry. Is it the solution? Just, remember,  in general we need the products that the raw materials from these industries provide to manufacture computers, tvs, cellphones, tablets, cars, etc. Also they provide employment, revenue and taxes that pay for the majority of health care and education. Ops, this is getting complicated.

Image Credit: Gary Zorn/Ecotours-B.C

To find solutions for the problem is not really easy because the governments are dependent of these industries and vice-verse. However i have a theory. My theory is recycle more and waste less (???). Well, but think about it. I blogged before about waste and consumption.These companies are necessary because our lifestyle. Would you give up of your actual lifestyle? Should we revert to a simple life of ride horses?  How about eat fruits and share fish with the bears? I doubt it. However these companies are driven by demand and supply. If we start to recycle more and waste less the demand will decrease, so some of the companies won’t be more necessary. Ok if the population doesn’t grow, etc, etc, remember the problem is not that simple.

Do you remember that old computer sitting on the garage? Or that old cellphone? I can guarantee that both have some amount of the same material that is byproduct of Mount polley mine. I know, the amount are really small, but normally these products go to normal garbage to be buried or burned. That is the part which doesn’t make sense to me. Why burn something that can be used again? How about the jobs, revenues, taxes? I think this could be re-allocated to recycling companies, or companies that recycling our waste. It is only a theory. Far from the truth. We have to be realistic and accept that we live in a waste culture. Unfortunately, I believe that zero waste is not possible, but I also believe that we can reduce the waste drastically and respect more the environment. These are small steps but with big consequences.

More about the accident:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mount-polley-mine-tailings-breach-should-not-have-happened-bill-bennett-says-1.2727776

http://www.theprovince.com/news/bc/Water+effect+southeast+Quesnel+after+Mount+Polley+mine+tailings/10088935/story.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mount-polley-mine-tailings-spill-imperial-metals-could-face-1m-fine-1.2728832

“Microbial gardens” reduce the amount of heat reflected back into space by ice sheets

July 18, 2014 — 2 Comments

CGS Leeds's avatarCLIMATE AND GEOHAZARDS

The first ecological study of an entire glacier has found that microbes drastically reduce surface reflectivity and have an impact on the amount of heat available to warm our planet.

The new research lead by the School of Earth and Environment academics finds a “microbial garden” of life flourishing in the ice. These microbe and algal material act to darken the ice surface and thus limit its ability to reflect the sun’s rays back into space.

The sun is the main source of energy for the Earth. A lot of the it’s energy is reflected back into space by the polar ice caps thanks to their white reflective surface. This acts against the effects of greenhouse gases, which trap the sun’s energy within the atmosphere and act to warm the planet.

However, if large parts of the ice are darkened by microbial activity then the amount of sunlight reflected back…

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