Archive for the 'glaciers' Category

Melt Or Grow? Fate Of Himalayan Glaciers Unknown

Published on 04/24/2012 in climate change and glaciers. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.npr.org

“The Himalayas are sometimes called the world’s “third pole” because they are covered with thousands of glaciers. Water from those glaciers helps feed some of the world’s most important rivers, including the Ganges and the Indus. And as those glaciers melt, they will contribute to rising sea levels.

So a lot is at stake in understanding these glaciers and how they will respond in a warming world. Researchers writing in the latest issue of Science magazine make it clear they are still struggling at that task.

Just a few years ago, it seemed that the Himalayas were on the brink of disaster. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made alarming claims about the fate of all that ice. You can almost see Jeffrey Kargel at the University of Arizona cringe as he describes it.

“One page had the most egregious errors you could imagine, just one after another, including the claim that the glaciers would disappear by 2035,” he says.

But the claim was dead wrong. The error put a lot of egg on the face of the IPCC. But it also sent glacier scientists scrambling. They knew very little about the state and the fate of those glaciers, even the basics.”

Read more: NPR

 

lily victoria

Encroaching Deserts Threaten Life Along Tibet’s Longest River

Published on 03/02/2012 in agriculture, climate change, desertification, drought, glaciers, hydrology, hydropower, peak water, rivers and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Photo retrieved from: www.trust.org

“Rising temperatures, reduced rainfall and excessive numbers of grazing animals are worsening desertification and drying up grasslands in western Tibet, says a Chinese geologist who has explored one of the region’s uncharted rivers.

Yang Yong said he had observed desertification in parts of the upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, and believes this could be caused by climate change as well as human activity.

The Yarlung Zangbo (also called the Yarlung Tsangpo) is Tibet’s largest river, originating in the west of the region. Along its 2,057 km (1,286 mile) length, it passes through India, where it is known as the Dihang and the Brahmaputra, and Bangladesh, where it is called the Jamuna.”

Read more: AlertNet

 

lily victoria

Artificial Glaciers Water Crops in Indian Highlands

Published on 02/28/2012 in climate change, glaciers, hydrology, management, water conservation and water shortage. 0 Comments

Retrieved from: www.nationalgeographic.com

“A remote Indian village is responding to global warming-induced water shortages by creating large masses of ice, or “artificial glaciers,” to get through the dry spring months. (See a map of the region.)

Located on the western edge of the Tibetan plateau, the village of Skara in the Ladakh region of India is not a common tourist destination.

“It’s beautiful, but really remote and difficult to get to,” said Amy Higgins, a graduate student at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies who worked on the artificial glacier project.

“A lot of people, when I met them in Delhi and I said I was going to Ladakh, they looked at me like I was going to the moon,” said Higgins, who is also a National Geographic grantee.

People in Skara and surrounding villages survive by growing crops such as barley for their own consumption and for sale in neighboring towns. In the past, water for the crops came from meltwater originating in glaciers high in the Himalaya.”

Read more: National Geographic

 

lily victoria

Can Coca-Cola Keep Growing?

Published on 02/09/2012 in aquatic ecosystems, bottled water, contaminated water, displacement of people, glaciers, greenwashing, groundwater, management, privatization and water shortage. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

Retrieved from: Wikipedia

“Coca-Cola is a $156 billion nonalcoholic-beverage kingpin that sold more than $46 billion worth of drinks around the world in 2011. As if it needs underscoring, that’shuge. So when it comes to the future for Coca-Cola, is growth still possible?

“If you tuned into Coke’s fourth-quarter earnings release yesterday, you know that there was still growth to be had in the past year, at least. Comparable earnings per share — which adjusts the tally mainly for oddball adjustments from its bottler acquisition — increased 10% for the year to $3.84.

“There’s been no recession for Coke. In the chart below, you can see that earnings did dip in 2008, but when we consider the total earnings growth over the past five years, it’s clear that the Coca-Cola juggernaut is one that’s not easily knocked off course. 

anImageSource: S&P Capital IQ. 2010 earnings adjusted for gains from bottler acquisition. 

“If we break that total growth down to an average annual figure, we can say that Coke is still growing earnings at a clip of better than 11% per year. To deliver that kind of growth on a relatively consistent basis is no small matter no matter who you are, but it’s even more impressive when you’re a company the size of Coke.

“The company hasn’t been shy about deploying some of its ample cash flow to grow through acquisitions. Of note, in 2007 the company ponied up $4.2 billion to buy Vitaminwater maker Glaceau. More recently, the company took over the North American operations of bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises.”
Read more: Daily Finance
sammykayed

Thawing Permafrost Reduces River Runoff

Published on 01/14/2012 in climate change, glaciers, hydrology, peak water and rivers. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.nature.com

“Chinese researchers have revealed that the amount of water entering the Yangtze River near its source on the Tibetan plateau has fallen by 15% over the past four decades, despite a 15% increase in glacial melt and increased rainfall over the same period.

Wang Genxu, an ecologist at the Chengdu-based Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), says that the findings came as a surprise. “It is in contrast to results from the Arctic where global warming has generally caused increased river discharge,” he says.

Wang and his collaborators at the Cold and Arid Regions Environment and Engineering Research Institute (CAREERI) in Lanzhou, also part of the CAS, have just completed a five-year project to document changes in glaciers, snow and permafrost and to assess their impact on water resources in western China.”

Read more: Nature

 

lily victoria

Melting Glaciers Mean Double Trouble for Water Supplies

Published on 12/26/2011 in climate change, dams, glaciers, hydrology, lakes, peak water and world water supply. 0 Comments

Retrieved from: www.nationalgeographic.com

Glacial Water

“But glaciers act as natural reservoirs, storing water in the winter and doling it out in the summer as the ice slowly melts.

“If most of it disappears, there will be extreme consequences for most of these regions,” Clarke said. “The stream flow will change, the timing of peak stream flow will change, and the temperature of streams will change.”

Even the total volume of runoff will change, added Michel Baraer, of McGill University, Montreal, Canada, because glacial ice keeps the water locked away in a form in which it doesn’t easily evaporate.

Thus, even if precipitation remains the same in the high mountains, more of the water will be in liquid form, which evaporates more quickly.

Building dams also will not solve the problem of decreasing runoff. “Evaporation from reservoirs is much higher than sublimation [conversion of solid into gas] from glaciers,” Baraer said. “Dams will never, ever, replace the [natural] hydrological systems that are in place today.”

Peak Water?

Already, Baraer said, Peru is on the verge of facing water shortages. That’s because one of the largest rivers coming off the high Andes glaciers, the Rio Santa, is already running low on glacial melt, he said.

Previously, scientists had thought the problem lay several decades in the future.

But based on satellite measures of ice cover and water-flow at gauging stations in the river, his team has concluded that the Rio Santa has already hit “peak water”—the point at which glacial runoff plateaus and then begins to decline.”

 

Read more: National Geographic

 

lily victoria

Huge iceberg forms in Antarctica

Published on 11/04/2011 in glaciers. 0 Comments

 

Retrieved from: www.bbc.co.uk

“Scientists are monitoring the birth of a monster iceberg in West Antarctica.

A rift has formed in the shelf of floating ice in front of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG).

The surface crack in the PIG runs for almost 30km (20 miles), is 60m (200ft) deep and is growing every day.

US space agency (Nasa) researchers expect the eventual iceberg to cover about 880 sq km – an area the size of Berlin. It should break away towards the end of the year or early in 2012.

Pine Island Glacier is one of the largest and fastest-moving tongues of ice on the White Continent and drains something like 10% of all the ice flowing out of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the ocean.”

Read more: BBC

 

lily victoria

Wanted: Bridges Over Troubled Waters

Published on 09/08/2011 in dams, glaciers, hydrology, hydropower, peak water, policy, riparian zone, rivers and water wars. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Indus River. Retrieved from: www.afaq.com

“As Pakistan went to the Court of Arbitration in The Hague once again in mid-August 2011, seeking an order for India to put on hold construction of the Kishanganga dam until the final decision of the court, the overwhelming response among Indian policymakers was: “Oh, not again.”

The project on the Jhelum River, one of the main tributaries of the Indus, has been opposed by Pakistan since it got off the drawing board. But India has steadfastly maintained that the run-of-the-river project follows the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between the two countries to the letter. Just about everybody in India feels that the treaty is the best basis for apportioning the waters of the giant Indus river basin, that India as the upper riparian country has stuck to the treaty through war and peace, and that Indians are unfairly blamed for Pakistan’s water woes to cover up the inefficiency or worse of the water policymakers in Pakistan.

Given the near-unanimity of this view in India, and the near-constant rhetoric in Pakistan that “India is stealing our waters”, there is very little space for any level-headed, rational and scientific conversation on the subject. The trust deficit is so high – especially in India since many of the country’s terrorist attacks over the last three decades have been traced back to Pakistan – that anybody advocating a dialogue would be lucky not to be dubbed a spy.”

Read more: China Dialogue

lily victoria

Iceberg Harvesting Can End Third-World Drought

Published on 08/08/2011 in drought, glaciers and solutions and outreach. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Iceberg Archway

“A French entrepreneur backed by a software company claims to have proved that he can tow giant icebergs across the world to end drought conditions.

“Georges Mougin, 86, has championed his plan to harvest icebergs to solve water shortages for 40 years — and a computer simulation now shows that the ambitious project might be possible, The (London) Sunday Times reported.

“Under the plan, engineers would encircle an iceberg with a harness that contains a skirt made from an insulating textile. The skirt unfolds underwater and covers the iceberg to stop it from melting.
With the help of ocean currents, the iceberg is then towed to drought-stricken lands.

“They are floating reservoirs,” Mougin said.

“He formed his company, Iceberg Transport International, in 1976 but shelved his iceberg-towing project after he was told repeatedly that it was too expensive and too difficult.

“However, in 2009, he was approached by the French software firm Dassault Systemes, which provided Mougin with 15 engineers to build a computer simulation to test his ideas.

“The simulation proved that it was possible to tow a seven-ton (6.35-tonne) iceberg from the waters around Newfoundland, easternCanada to Spain’s Canary Islands in 141 days, with only 38 percent of the iceberg melting.”

Read more: fox news

sammykayed

Icebergs to Go: Delivering Freshwater Across the Seas

Published on 06/06/2011 in glaciers, greenwashing, hydrology and world water supply. 0 Comments Tags: .

Photo retrieved from: www.takepart.com

“Towing icebergs to places desperate for water is something of a non-urban myth. The idea sounds good on the surface. The planet is running short of freshwater, and gloomy forecasts predict a 30 percent rainfall decrease around the globe. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of big, purely freshwater icebergs crack off Greenland and Antarctica every year, only to drift into warmer waters and melt.

The notion of harnessing these massive, glassy natural resources is hardly new. In 1773 Captain James Cook brought small icebergs aboard The Resolution to replenish fresh water supplies. Towing bergs north or south has been seriously talked about in this century since the 1950s.

Unfortunately, every time a visionary entrepreneur floats a plan for navigating all that solid freshwater to parched markets, the H2O innovator is stymied by 1) the high cost of the towing and 2) the unacceptable amount of ice lost along the route.

Still, new iceberg theorists pop up every few years. The latest proposal comes from a University of Cambridge professor of ocean physics named Peter Wadhams. Wadhams claims to have partners in Canada and France who want to use tugboats to lug bergs from Newfoundland to the Canary Islands.”

Read more: Take Part

 

 

lily victoria