Monday, August 22, 2011

Climate change is turning rivers of Mekong Delta salty

Climate change is turning rivers of Mekong Delta salty, spelling disaster for millions of poor farmers.   See full Guardian article

The Mekong delta is one of the major crop growing areas of the world. Losing this growing area will put greater strain on the world's food system. Since the rising seas is not a local problem, it is not surprising that the Nile delta is experiencing a similar problem. See full article on "Nile River Delta Falls Prey to Climate Change"

A post from Columbia University (see full post) tells how the Mississippi River delta is eroding away primarily from river management practices of the Army Corps of Engineers. With New Orleans already below sea level, how will Louisiana cope if the oceans rise even a little? With some forecasts for the oceans to rise three to six feet by 2100, how will that be managed? Will New Orleans have to be abandoned? What will we do for the people displaced? What will happen to all the food production of the Mississippi delta? Can we adapt to growing other foodstuffs?

Of course, these questions will need to be addressed for every river that flows into the sea.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Arctic Melting Close to Setting New Record

The Arctic is getting close to setting a new record for minimum summer ice.
The current northern hemisphere sea ice area is at 3.344 million sq. kilometers. This is 1.994 million square kilometers less than than average area for August 13th from 1979 to 2008. An area equivalent to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Nevada is not covered with ice as it normally would be. 

This is just a continuation of the trend towards less and less summer ice. Combined with the record minimum winter ice set last winter, the direction is unmistakable. The Arctic IS losing ice. The ice that is there is much thinner than it used to be making it that much easier for ice to melt each succeeding year. 

Now changing weather conditions, changing currents, and changing winds will ensure that some minor recoveries in ice area may occur. The years after the record summer ice minimum of 2007 seemed to show some minor recovery since they did not exceed that record. However, for each year since 2007 the record minimum was less than the 1979-2008 norm by more than 2 std. deviations. That means that the old Arctic ice pattern is permanently changed.  



The Arctic ice minimum for 2011 will happen in another four to five weeks. Looking at the graphs and the Arctic conditions now,  The above picture is from Cryosphere Today. Notice the large areas that are blue or green.  These are areas that that have much less than 100% ice coverage. In effect, they are like a huge ice slushy. The blue area could also melt before the minimum is set. As you can see, that is a large area. Gong by this, a record low of 2.0 to 2.5 million sq. kilometers could be set.