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Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts

Saturday, 4 April 2020

08:17

Climate Change and Water Contamination

Climate Change and Water Contamination
Posted On: 02 MAR 2020 5:41PM by PIB Delhi
Climate model simulation studies done by various agencies including Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) project possible linkages of climate change with frequency and intensity of weather related events. However, any direct link between climate change and flooding resulting in water contamination has not been established.
The flow in rivers is dynamic and depends on many parameters such as rainfall, its distribution and intensity in the catchment, catchment characteristics and withdrawals/utilisations of water basins. Central Water Commission (CWC), Ministry of Jal Shakti monitors important/major rivers. Considering annual average flow of last 20 years of terminal sites of major rivers, no appreciable increasing/decreasing trend in total water availability in the country including the State of Bihar has been observed.
Ministry of Jal Shakti has drafted bills namely National Water Framework Bill, River Basin Management (RBM) Bill and Model Bill to ‘Regulate and Control the Development and Management of Ground Water’ for bringing reforms in water sector.
The draft RBM Bill proposes optimum development of inter-State rivers by facilitating inter-State coordination ensuring scientific planning of land and water resources taking basin/sub-basin as unit with unified perspectives of water in all its forms (including soil moisture, ground and surface water). The draft RBM Bill has been circulated to all States/Union Territories, concerned Central Government’s Ministries/Departments for pre-legislative consultations.
The National Water Framework Bill provides an overarching national legal framework based on principles for protection, conservation, regulation and management of water as a vital and stressed natural resource, under which legislation and executive action on water can take place at all levels of governance. The draft National Water Framework Bill has been circulated to States/UTs and the concerned Central Ministries for obtaining their views/comments.
Ministry has also circulated a Model Bill to ‘Regulate and Control the Development and Management of Ground Water’ to all the States/UTs to enable them to enact suitable ground water legislation for regulation for its development which includes provision of rain water harvesting. So far, 15 States/UTs have adopted and implemented the ground water legislation on the lines of Model Bill.
This information was given by the Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti & Social Justice and Empowerment, Shri Rattan Lal Kataria in a written reply in Rajya Sabha .

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Saturday, 24 March 2018

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Monday, 12 March 2018

06:44

Climate Change:The Ice Man of India Norphel artificial glaciers to solve water crisis

Climate Change:The Ice Man of India Norphel artificial glaciers to solve water crisis

Years back, on a harsh winter morning in Ladakh in the northernmost Himalayas in India, a young and curious boy in a remote mountain village of the cold desert observed water coming out of a semi-frozen pipe, collecting in a small crater on the ground and freezing, just like a glacier.

A few decades later, in 1986, the boy, Chewang Norphel -- as a civil engineer with the Jammu and Kashmir Rural Development Department -- took inspiration from his childhood observations and made a breakthrough by devising the first artificial glacier in picturesque Leh, thereby solving a water crisis faced by the local community, of which at least 80 per cent were farmers growing barley and wheat.

Spurred by the success of his experiment, he went on to create 17 such artificial glaciers across Ladakh, thereby earning his nickname -- "The Ice Man of India". Most of his projects received financial aid from several state-run programmes, the army and various national and international NGOs.

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Saturday, 4 February 2017

08:32

Coal imports by India to go end in next few years

Coal imports by India to go end  in next few years

A 25% drop in imports in 2016 leads minister to declare independence from foreign coal

India’s energy minister has pledged to end India’s imports of coal within a few years.

On Wednesday, Piyush Goyal tweeted the news that India’s imports had dropped by a quarter in 2016 and said the country “aims to eliminate coal dependency in the next few years”.2

The import drop comes as state-owned Coal India ramps up domestic production, despite the government drawing back on a short-lived billion tonne per year target in September last year due to slack demand.

The news will hearten campaigners in Australia who oppose the building of a massive new coal mine by Indian company Adani. The economics of the Carmichael mine have been justified by claims of sustained demand in India. The Australian government has pledged $1bn to support the mine.

But the minister’s pledge does not include imports made by private companies, according to Swati Dsouza, ‎associate fellow at Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute. Adani has its own fleet of coal power stations in India that it could seek to supply.

“This is regarding the government of India imports and not directly related to Adani’s coal mine. Indirectly it may impact coal imports from the Adani mine due to higher availability of domestic coal and therefore lack of other consumers,” she said.

Goyal was also championing India’s clean energy ambitions this week, telling a renewable energy conference that presidential developments in the US would not forestall the country’s progress.

“Irrespective of what other countries do or do not do, India stands committed to being part of green energy,” he said.



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08:21

Coal and oil demand ‘could peak in 2020’

Coal and oil demand ‘could peak in 2020’

Solar power and electric vehicles will wreak havoc on the energy sector, say analysts from Carbon Tracker and Grantham Institute, in contrast to rosy industry forecasts

Fossil fuel giants are vastly underestimating the disruptive power of solar panels and electric cars, which could see coal and oil demand peak by 2020.

That is the conclusion of a report by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and Grantham Institute published on Thursday.

Energy companies pursuing business as usual are in for a rude awakening, by this analysis, with many mines and oil fields likely to become surplus to requirements.

Based on dramatic cost reductions in recent years, the model foresees these two technologies taking a 10% chunk of market share from carbon majors in a decade. That may not sound like much, but was enough to devastate the US coal sector.

“If people are just waiting on policy to happen, they could get bitten by clean technology coming up behind them,” said James Leaton, an author of the report.

Solar panel costs have fallen 85% in the past seven years and car battery costs 73%. Despite these advances, the traditional energy companies continue to forecast linear growth at best.

BP predicts electric cars will make up 6% of the market by 2035. Carbon Tracker reckons a third is feasible.

Exxon Mobil expects all renewables to supply 11% of electricity in 2040. Carbon Tracker says solar alone could produce 23%.

It is not enough to meet the Paris Agreement upper limit on global warming of 2C, but bends the curve to 2.4-2.7C, compared to 3-4C under industry scenarios. Policies targeting other sectors would bring the international climate goal within reach.

Source:Climate Home
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Tuesday, 10 January 2017

08:04

Microsoft, ICRISAT pilot increases crop yield in Andhra

Microsoft, ICRISAT pilot increases crop yield in Andhra

A pilot project using cloud technology by Microsoft and ICRISAT in Andhra Pradesh has increased the groundnut crop yield, it was announced at the 20th National Conference on e-Governance here on Monday.

Launched in June last year, the pilot, based on Intelligent Cloud, involves a new sowing application for farmers combined with a personalised village advisory dashboard and results show a 30 percent higher average in yield per hectare.

The sowing app was developed to help farmers achieve optimal harvests by advising on the best time to sow depending on weather conditions, soil and other indicators.

The pilot under a partnership between the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Microsoft, and Andhra Pradesh government was implemented in Devanakonda in Kurnool district and the advisory applied only to the groundnut crop.

ICRISAT adopted Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite including Machine Learning (ability of computers to learn without being specifically programmed) and Power BI or Business Intelligence, to empower farmers and government officials with technology, and promote digital farming practices in the state, said a Microsoft official.

The Personalised Village Advisory Dashboard has been especially developed to enable officials to better manage programs of scale. Using powerful BI tools, this dashboard provides important insights around soil health, fertiliser recommendations, and seven-day weather forecasts derived from the world's best available weather observations systems and global forecast models.

This data is then downscaled for the highest possible accuracy at the village level, to transform how small holder farmers tackle climate change to drive effective decision-making for their crops.

"This result is proof of the efficiencies that cloud technology can bring and thereby help farmers economically by improving agricultural productivity," said Anil Bhansali, Managing Director, Microsoft India.

"The applicability of the Intelligent Cloud is a significant start for digital agriculture and we hope more governments and stakeholders come forward to reap benefits of this innovation," he added.



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Monday, 28 November 2016

23:12

Deep sea corals face threat from climate change, global warming

Deep sea corals face threat from climate change, global warming

New Delhi: As per a new study, deep sea corals which support a variety of sea life are facing immense threat from climate change and global warming, reveals a study.

As per the report, North Atlantic coral populations face this threat and scientists have warned that changing winter weather conditions may upset fragile marine ecosystems.

Corals allow diverse forms of marine life to thrive by building reef structures that provide protection from predators and safe spaces to reproduce.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, focused on a species of cold-water coral - known as Lophelia pertusa - which grows in deep waters, creating elaborate reefs that are hotspots of biodiversity.

These populations are maintained by tiny, fragile coral larvae that drift and swim on ocean currents, travelling hundreds of miles between reefs where they attach and begin to grow.

Researchers used computer models to simulate the migration of larvae across vast stretches of ocean.

They did so to predict the effect weather changes could have on the long-term survival of Lophelia pertusa populations in the North Atlantic.

They found that a shift in average winter conditions in Western Europe - one of the predicted impacts of climate change - could threaten coral populations.

Ocean currents - affected by changing wind patterns - could drive larvae away from key sites in a new network of marine areas established to help safeguard coral populations, said researchers.

The team found Scotland's network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) appears to be weakly connected, making it vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

A coral population on Rosemary Bank seamount, an undersea mountain off Scotland's west coast, is key to maintaining the network.

Corals also thrive on oil and gas platforms in the North Sea and west of Shetland, which may help to bridge a gap in the MPA network between populations in the Atlantic and along the coast of Norway, said researchers.

"We can not track larvae in the ocean, but what we know about their behaviour allows us to simulate their epic journeys, predicting which populations are connected and which are isolated," said Alan Fox, from the University of Edinburgh.

"In less well connected coral networks, populations become isolated and cannot support each other, making survival and recovery from damage more difficult," said Fox.

"Scotland's seabed plays a unique role as a stepping stone for deep-sea Atlantic species," said Murray Roberts from the University of Edinburgh.

Source:ZeeNews

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Monday, 7 November 2016

08:35

Your carbon footprint destroys 30 square metres of Arctic sea ice a year

Your carbon footprint destroys 30 square metres of Arctic sea ice a year

New research calculates the impact of the average westerner’s carbon emissions to help people understand their own contribution to climate change

The average westerner’s carbon emissions destroy 30 square metres of Arctic sea ice every year, according to new research.

The work indicates that, even with current efforts to cut emissions, the Arctic will lose all its ice in summer within about 20 years.

Plummeting Arctic sea ice cover is one of the most obvious signs of climate change and is increasingly linked to extreme weather events such as storms and floods in Europe and severe cold snaps in the US.

The new study revealed a linear link between emissions of CO2 and the loss of Arctic sea ice, which has shrunk by half in the last 40 years. The link enables people to understand their own contribution to climate change, according to the leader of the work, Prof Dirk Notz, at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

“It allows us, for the first time really, to intuitively grasp how we all individually contribute to global warming,” he said. “The observed numbers are very simple. For each tonne of CO2 that a person emits anywhere on this planet, three square metres of Arctic summer sea ice disappears.”

“So far the global warming debate has always been about very large numbers like billions of tonnes of CO2 or very small numbers like 0.1C of temperature change,” he said. “Our study allows us to understand that it is really our own individual actions, every day, that contribute to ongoing global warming.”

The research, published in the journal Science, analysed the declining extent of Arctic sea ice from 1953 to 2015 and found it tracked the emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel burning and other human activities. The relationship fits well with the underlying physics.

As a result, it is possible to calculate how much Arctic sea ice is lost as a result of an individual’s emissions. The average annual emissions of a citizen of the 35 rich nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is 10 tonnes per year, leading to 30 sq m of ice being lost. Citizens of the US, Canada and Australia have a higher carbon footprint - about 16 tonnes - each causing almost 50 sq m of ice loss per year. In the UK, the average emissions are 7.5 tonnes per year, meaning 22.5 sq m of ice loss.

Prof Len Shaffrey, at the University of Reading in the UK, said the new research was sound and showed a new way of linking Arctic sea ice loss and personal CO2 emissions: “It means on average we are [each] responsible for the loss of tens of square metres of summer Arctic sea ice. That’s a pretty sobering thought.”

The link also allows the calculation of how much CO2 can be emitted in future before the Arctic is entirely ice-free in September, usually the month of the smallest extent. The scientists found 1,000 gigatonnes (GT) of CO2 was the limit. If all the carbon-cutting pledges currently made by the world’s nations are implemented, the Arctic will be ice free in summer in about 22 years, according to the new research.

“There is not a god-given year when the ice will be gone but there is this number of 1,000GT - once we have emitted that amount, the [summer] Arctic sea ice will be gone,” Notz said. “If emissions don’t change at all from today’s level, which is extremely unlikely, then the ice will be gone in 25 years. If emissions continue to rise then the ice will be gone sooner than that.”

The 1,000GT carbon budget is also the limit for keeping climate change below the internationally agreed threshold of 2C. This means that even if the Paris climate treaty, which enters into force on Friday, is successful, the Arctic will still become ice-free in summer.

However, the Paris treaty also includes an aspiration to limit the temperature rise to 1.5C, which would require radical cuts in CO2 emissions, including sucking the gas out of the air and burying it. If this was achieved, the Arctic ice cap would remain year round.

Arctic sea ice fell to its second lowest recorded extent in September, and scientists say this matters for a number of reasons. “By losing Arctic sea ice, we are losing a very effective refrigerator, as sea ice today reflects most of the sunlight and keeps the Arctic cool,’ said Notz. “If we lose this refrigerator, the Greenland ice cap will melt much more rapidly, for example, and drive up sea levels.”

Other scientists are increasingly linking the loss of Arctic sea ice to a weakening of a high level wind, called the jet stream, which is in turn linked to increasing extreme weather events, such as storms and floods in western Europe, severe cold snaps in the US and drought in California. “The jury is still out on how robust these studies are but there is mounting evidence,” said Notz.

“Also, we are destroying a landscape from this planet which is extremely beautiful and future generations would have nothing to look at but open water in September, so for me that is an ethical thing,” he said.
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Friday, 4 November 2016

07:42

Kerala declared Open Defecation Free

Kerala declared Open Defecation Free 
The State of Kerala today became the third State overall and the largest State so far to be declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) under the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) (Gramin). The declaration was formally made by the Chief Minister of Kerala, Shri Pinarayi Vijayan, in a magnificent ceremony at the Central Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram. Shri Vijayan also distributed awards to and felicitated district collectors and other government officials who had been instrumental in bringing about this landmark achievement for the State. 

With this, all 14 districts, 152 blocks, 940 Gram Panchayats and 2117 villages of the State have been declared free from open defecation. Freedom from open defecation has been proven to lead to significant health benefits in terms of incidences of water-borne diseases, especially in children, and provide safety and dignity for all, especially women and senior citizens. Kerala, with a rural population of approximately 3.5 crores, is also the largest State so far to have achieved the ODF Status, after Sikkim (~6 lakhs) and Himachal Pradesh (~70 lakhs). 

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister, Shri Pinaray Vijayan, emphasized the importance of behaviour change communication in the efforts made by the State to achieve ODF status. He also underscored the need to sustain this status now that it has been achieved through a continued focus on sanitation. 

Dr KT Jaleel, State Minister for Local Self Government, Welfare of Minorities, WAKF and Haj Pilgrimage, in his Presidential address, spoke about the importance of effective solid and liquid waste management to truly create a Swachh Bharat and Kerala. 

In his welcome address on the occasion, the Chief Secretary, Shri SM Vijayanand emphasized the role of local governance in sustaining the ODF Status of the State and to focus on solid and liquid waste management in the next phase of efforts. 

The Secretary, Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Shri Parameswaran Iyer, in his address, lauded the State government’s focused efforts on sanitation and congratulated the State on this landmark achievement. He assured that the Centre will continue supporting the State’s efforts towards creating a Swachh Bharat and Swachh Kerala in the next phase as well, as they continue their efforts to sustain ODF and focus on solid and liquid waste management. 

The State Leader of Opposition, Shri Ramesh Chennithala, Minister for Revenue, Shri E Chandrasekharan, Minister for Water Resources, Shri Mathew T Thomas, Member of Parliament, Shri Shashi Tharoor, and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion.

Source:PIBNEWS 
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Monday, 31 October 2016

07:54

Climate change and cities: Green buildings shouldn't be treated as an option anymore

Climate change and cities: Green buildings shouldn't be treated as an option anymore

The first of the two-part series on climate change and cities delved into the migration, erratic urban flooding, and near-absolute neglect of environmental-friendly measures in policy making process of urban planning. The following second part explains the need and plausible solutions on erecting green buildings in urban landscapes.

It’s only a joke to think that cities are being built keeping the environment in mind. Energy-efficient green buildings, at present, account for only five percent of the total stock in India. Surprisingly, of all the cities, which have been selected under the smart city development program, only Bhubaneswar – leading the Smart City list – has shown actual commitment to make its housing infrastructure green. The rest of the cities seem to be ambiguous on this aspect. Moreover, there seem to be no binding on inculcating green building aspects in the construction sector which are presumably most resource-intensive ones. So, what kind of smart cities are we contemplating about?



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Friday, 30 September 2016

07:45

Indian Ocean sea level on the rise according to new study

Indian Ocean sea level on the rise according to new study

A new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that sea level rise in the northern Indian Ocean rose twice as fast as the global average since 2003. This represents a stark contrast to the previous decade when the region experienced very little sea level rise at all.

The science team led by Philip Thompson, associate director of the University of Hawaiʻi Sea Level Center in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), analyzed two and a half decades of ocean surface height measurements taken from satellites. The satellite data showed a substantial and abrupt increase in decade-long sea level trends in the Indian Ocean region, which prompted the oceanographers to investigate the cause of the shift using computer simulations of ocean circulation.

“Wind blowing over the ocean caused changes in the movement of heat across the equator in the Indian Ocean,” said Thompson. “This lead to suppression of sea level rise during the 1990s and early 2000s, but now we are seeing the winds amplify sea level rise by increasing the amount of ocean heat brought into the region.”

Reversal of winds
When trade winds in the Indian Ocean are weaker north of the equator compared to the south, warmer water at the ocean surface is driven out of the Northern Hemisphere, and colder, deep water is moved in. This has a net cooling effect on the ocean, leading to the suppression of sea level rise. This is what occurred early in the satellite record, but recently the situation reversed, causing heat to build up in the northern Indian Ocean and enhancing the rate of sea level rise.

Many of the world’s most vulnerable populations to sea level rise can be found in these parts of the Indian Ocean, including those in Bangladesh and Jakarta.

“What we are learning is that the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere causes sea level to rise like a staircase instead of a straight line—starting and stopping for many years at a time. What we’ve done here is described one stair, which will help us better understand and plan for the future,” said Thompson.

The science team will continue their work using similar techniques to understand sea level variability in the South Indian Ocean, investigating how heat is exchanged between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

More information on sea level rise can be found on the UH Sea Level Center website. 

Source:Hawaii.edu 
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Tuesday, 13 September 2016

18:13

Climate change could lead to more violent typhoons for China, Japan: study

Climate change could lead to more violent typhoons for China, Japan: study

Research on typhoons has led scientists to believe that China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas will experience more violent typhoons.

China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas will experience more violent typhoons under climate change, said researchers today, presenting evidence for a recent rise in storm intensity caused by ocean warming.

Scientists have struggled to identify changes in the intensity and frequency of typhoons over the northwest Pacific ocean -- never mind trying to pinpoint a role for global warming.

Contradictory trends emerge from records such as the Joint Typhoon Warning Center​ and the Japan Meteorological Agency -- the two most widely-used data sets in typhoon research, according to the US-based study authors Wei Mei and Shang-Ping Xie.

They have now corrected the available data for differences in methodology and discovered a single, clear trend.

"Over the past 37 years, typhoons that strike east and southeast Asia have intensified by 12-15 percent," they wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.

And the data showed this intensification, in turn, was linked to ocean surface warming -- possibly caused by climate change, though this is yet to be proven.

Projections for ocean warming if humans continue to emit planet-harming greenhouse gases, said the team, "suggest that typhoons striking eastern mainland China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan will intensify further.
"Given disproportionate damages by intense typhoons, this represents a heightened threat to people and properties in the region."

The human population in these coastal areas was growing fast, they pointed out, and sea levels were rising.

Source:DNA
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Saturday, 10 September 2016

17:43

Warning: World's wildest places disappearing fast

Warning: World's wildest places disappearing fast

A tenth of global wilderness has disappeared in a little over 20 years and if we don't act soon the rest will go, too, scientists are warning.

Researchers say a vast area -- some 3.3 million square kilometers (1.27 million square miles) -- has been lost since the early 1990s.

The impact has been greatest in the Amazon and central Africa, they say.

The study compared recent maps of wild areas free of significant human disturbance with ones produced in the same manner in the 1990s.

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Tuesday, 16 August 2016

08:11

Middle East heat wave could be global warming’s hellish curtain-raiser

Middle East heat wave could be global warming’s hellish curtain-raiser

BAGHDAD — Record-shattering temperatures this summer have scorched countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and beyond, as climate experts warn that the severe weather could be a harbinger of worse to come.
In coming decades, U.N. officials and climate scientists predict that the mushrooming populations of the Middle East and North Africa will face extreme water scarcity, temperatures almost too hot for human survival and other consequences of global warming.

If that happens, conflicts and refugee crises far greater than those now underway are probable, said Adel Abdellatif, a senior adviser at the U.N. Development Program’s Regional Bureau for Arab States who has worked on studies about the effect of climate change on the region.

“This incredible weather shows that climate change is already taking a toll now and that it is — by far — one of the biggest challenges ever faced by this region,” he said.

These countries have grappled with remarkably warm summers in recent years, but this year has been particularly brutal.

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08:06

Ancient ice reveals vital clues about Earth’s past climate

Ancient ice reveals vital clues about Earth’s past climate

Clues about global warming found frozen in Antarctica

Geoffrey Hargreaves, curator of the National Ice Core Laboratory, carries an arctic ice core inside the minus-33 degree Fahrenheit environment of the lab’s archive warehouse, in Lakewood. Using a wide range of data, from ice cores to trace gas analysis and other methods, scientists are attempting to measure the past and present so they can better model the near and distant future of our planet.

LAKEWOOD – Inside a huge walk-in freezer in suburban Denver, a college student in a thick parka shoots a jolt of electricity through a yard-long column of ice extracted from Antarctica.
Just outside the freezer, in a much warmer room, a computer wired to the ice registers a sudden spike in a jagged red line crawling across the screen.

“Hey, we got a volcano,” says T.J. Fudge, a University of Washington researcher. The electric current has detected a thin layer of volcanic residue in the ice, deposited by an eruption about 8,000 years ago.

This is the National Ice Core Laboratory in Lakewood, where ice pulled from the depths of Antarctica and Greenland is sliced up, photographed and tested. Most of it is shipped to other labs, where researchers do more experiments looking for clues about Earth’s past and future.

Smooth and milky white, the 4- to 5-inch-diameter pieces – called ice cores – provide scientists with a wealth of historical information, from air temperature to greenhouse gases to evidence of cosmic events. The record reaches as far back as 800,000 years.

The ice is the remnant of centuries of snowfall, compressed by the weight of successive years of accumulation.

“You can drill into it, and it’s much like looking at tree rings,” Fudge said. “It’s just year after year after year of climate information that’s preserved out in the ice sheet.”

Specialized drilling rigs pull the cores from as deep as 9,800 feet below the surface of the ice sheets. Crews then tuck them into protective tubes, pack them in chilled containers and ship them to the U.S. Refrigerated trucks haul them to Colorado lab, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

In a bustling, white-walled workroom in the Lakewood freezer – kept at about minus 11 Fahrenheit – workers push the cores through a series of saws on metal frame benches, divvying up the ice according to a prearranged pattern for different experiments.

Part of every ice core is archived in another, larger room at about minus 33 degrees, so future researchers can verify old results or try new tests. The archive contains nearly 56,000 feet of ice.

Scientists tease data from the ice in various ways. Differences in the weight of molecules in the frozen water hold clues about the air temperature at the time the snow fell.

Air trapped in bubbles can be analyzed to measure how much carbon dioxide and other gases were in the atmosphere when the ice formed.

A solar flare or other cosmic events can leave distinctive radioactive atoms on the snow. Dust blown in from distant continents offers clues about atmospheric circulation.

“The ice sheets are in direct contact with the atmosphere,” said Mark Twickler, the lab’s science director. “Everything that’s in the atmosphere we capture as time goes by, and it gets buried in snow.”

The depth of the core and evidence of volcanoes help determine how old the ice is.

Scientists already know when major eruptions occurred, so a layer of volcanic residue indicates the year the adjacent ice formed. That becomes a reference point for annual layers above and below.

The record is remarkably precise, even reflecting seasonal changes, scientists say.

“It’s as if we’re standing on the ice sheet writing down the temperature for the last 800,000 years,” said Bruce Vaughn, a University of Colorado-Boulder lab manager who works with the ice. “It’s that good.”

Without a record of its depth and age, the ice has little research value, said Geoffrey Hargreaves, curator of the Lakewood lab.

“An ice core without any depth references – I shouldn’t say this – it’s good for margaritas,” he said, poker-faced.

No, Hargreaves said, scientists don’t actually do that.

“There’s drill fluids in these things that you really don’t want to drink,” he said.

Some experiments are done only on ice from the core’s interior, away from the fluids.

Ice cores have led scientists to significant conclusions about climate, including that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere today are higher than at any other time recorded in the ice.

“The only reason we can make that statement is because we have the ice core air archived,” said Murat Aydin, a researcher at the University of California-Irvine.

Ice cores also help refine computer models used to make climate predictions.

“If we run them backwards with the parameters that we measure in the ice core and we get it right, that gives us a lot more confidence in the climate models going forward,” Vaughn said.

As technology improves, researchers find new ways to analyze the ice. A technique called continuous flow analysis lets them slowly melt a 1-yard stick of ice and analyze it drop-by-drop, instead of cutting it into small pieces, melting them one-by-one and averaging the results. The new technique gives scientists up to 2,400 measurements per yard instead of 20, Vaughn said.

“There’ll be science for dozens of years with researchers who are maybe only now getting their degrees or learning about this,” Vaughn said. “It’s exciting. How could you not be excited about it?”

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Friday, 8 July 2016

07:16

Environmental clearance must for Railway projects, says NGT

Environmental clearance must for Railway projects, says NGT 

Noida: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has made it mandatory to obtain environmental clearances for Indian Railway projects before any work begins on the ground.

The NGT bench, headed by the tribunal’s chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar, delivered the order on Tuesday in response to a petition filed by environmentalist Vikrant Tongad.

In a petition filed on May 3, 2016, Tongad alleged that the Indian Railways project of laying 140km new track from Noida in UP to Rewari in Haryana will affect the ecology of the area because the Hindon River’s 800-metre stretch in Noida is being averted without obtaining environmental clearance (EC).

Indian Railways argued before the tribunal that its projects are exempted from obtaining EC as they are big infrastructure projects of national importance.

“But NGT did not go by Indian Railways counsel’s argument and made it clear that a railway project should obtain EC, like Delhi Metro projects,” Rahul Chaudhary, advocate on behalf of the petitioner, said.

Tongad is all set to file another petition in the NGT demanding a stay order on the work at Hindon River in Noida.

Source:RailNews
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