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World facing increasingly challenging water situation
New measure developed for sustainability of global groundwater water supply points to overuse of water in Asia and North America; approximately 1.7 billion people, most residing in Asia, live in areas where groundwater resources or groundwater-dependent ecosystems are under threat
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July flooding in China causes $8.3 billion of economic losses
Insurance industry faces agriculture losses from China to the United States in July 2012: flooding caused more than $8.3 billion in economic losses across China during July, while the worst drought in decades worsened across much of the United States; severe weather also prompted widespread damage in parts of the United States and Europe
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Rising temperature reduces economic activity
It is relatively straightforward to see how droughts and hot weather might hurt agriculture, but a new study shows that hot spells have much wider economic effects; the study finds that higher temperatures substantially reduce economic growth in poor countries: every 1-degree-Celsius increase in temperature in a poor country, over the course of a given year, reduces that country’s economic growth by about 1.3 percentage points
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California’s hydropower is vulnerable to climate change
Fifteen percent of California’s electricity comes from hydropower, a cheap and relatively clean energy source; .about 75 percent of this hydropower comes from high-elevation units, located above 1,000 ft.; with most of them located in Northern California and the Sierra Mountains; if California loses snowpack under climate warming, these high-elevation reservoirs might not be able to store enough water for hydropower generation in summer months when the demand is much higher
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Dropping lake levels in Michigan are a cause for concern
In a state that boasts 11,000 lakes, Michigan is going through a year long drought that has residents and businesses scrambling as water levels continue to decrease; the low waters is the result of low snowpack last winter and a hot dry summer this year
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Extreme summer heat events, global warming linked: research
Since the late 1980s researches have been asserting that global warming would reach a point in the coming decades when its connection to extreme events would become more apparent; while some warming should coincide with a noticeable boost in extreme events, the natural variability in climate and weather can be so large as to disguise the trend; to distinguish the trend from natural variability, NASA researchers turned to statistics; the researchers did not focus on the causes of temperature change, analyzing instead surface temperature data
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Study finds correlation between injection wells and small earthquakes
Most earthquakes in the Barnett Shale region of North Texas occur within a few miles of one or more injection wells used to dispose of wastes associated with petroleum production such as hydraulic fracturing fluids, according to new research
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Study finds substantial water pollution risks from fracking
The Marcellus Shale region covers approximately 124,000 square kilometers from New York to West Virginia and is being intensely developed; a new study finds that the disposal of contaminated wastewater from hydraulic fracturing — commonly known as fracking — wells producing natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region poses substantial potential risks of river and other water pollution
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Canadian company offers the first treatment to neutralize red mud
Red mud is the most significant waste product of the traditional Bayer process for aluminum production; the industry produces more than 100 million tons of red mud a year, of which less than 5 percent is be reused; the rest is stored in ponds and reservoirs, posing serious environmental and economic risk; on 4 October 2010, for example, a flood of toxic red mud devastated Hungary after a retaining dyke ruptured, causing an ecological disaster; Canadian company Orbite Aluminae offers a technology to tackle the aluminum industry’s most serious problem
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Forget blizzards and hurricanes, heat waves are deadliest
Tornadoes, blizzards, and hurricanes get most of our attention because their destructive power makes for imagery the media cannot ignore; for sheer killing power, however, heat waves do in far more people than even the most devastating hurricane; Hurricane Katrina and its floods, which devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005, exacted a death toll of 1,836 people; the heat wave which enveloped Europe during the course of three excruciating weeks in August 2003 of that year, killed an estimated 70,000 people
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Improving oil recovery, aiding environmental cleanup
Researchers have taken a new look at an old, but seldom-used technique developed by the petroleum industry to recover oil, and learned more about why it works, how it could be improved, and how it might be able to make a comeback not only in oil recovery but also environmental cleanup
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Federal mapping tool used in Gulf spill expanded to Arctic
A new federal interactive online mapping tool used by emergency responders during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has been expanded to include the Arctic, and will help address numerous challenges in the Arctic posed by increasing ship traffic and proposed energy development
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Earthquake risk looms large in the Pacific Northwest
A comprehensive analysis of the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Northwest coast confirms that the region has had numerous earthquakes over the past 10,000 years, and suggests that the southern Oregon coast may be most vulnerable based on recurrence frequency
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Earth’s oceans, ecosystems still absorbing about half the greenhouse gases emitted by people
Earth’s oceans, forests, and other ecosystems continue to soak up about half the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, even as those emissions have increased, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Nature
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Under industry pressure, DHS drops chemical plant employee screening proposal
Security experts agree that short of a nuclear attack on a U.S. city, the most casualty-heavy disaster would occur as a result of an accident in, or a terrorist attack on, a chemical plant which would release a cloud of toxic fumes; there are about 15,000 plants in the United States which produce, process, use, or store volatile and toxic chemicals; more than 300 of the these plants are so close to large population centers, that a chemical release in any one of them would cause more than 50,000 casualties; DHS wanted to have employees in these plants screened for potential ties terrorism, but the chemical industry objected, saying this would be too costly; last Thursday DHS pulled the proposal
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More headlines
The long view
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”