Notes VI

Heat Wave in the Indus Valley, June 2007

Source NASA Earth Observatory

When I began preparing materials for use with the course on World Water Resources in the autumn, I copied a NASA space photograph of the Indus Valley (not the one above), encompassing Pakistan and large portions of its neighbors India and Afghanistan. Of necessity, India and especially Pakistan will be central topics in the course, but I did not anticipate the catastrophic flooding that has accompanied the summer monsoonal rains of 2010. Control of the waters of the Indus is one of the longest activities of civilization, for the residents of  Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, civilizations which flourished almost 5,000 years ago, used the Indus to irrigate their fields and feared its droughts and floods. The current flooding is but one season in an almost constant effort of people to make a livelihood from a beautiful but punishing environment.

Sumer Flooding in the Indus Valley, 3 August 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

Meanwhile, rains have cooled Moscow somewhat, but peat fires remain a problem. This morning's New York Times has a good piece on peat fires. Along with an explanation of why those fires are so smoky, it also examines how a decision some years ago to drain bogs and mine the peat to use as fuel in electrical generating plants is partially to blame for the smoky fires, dangerous to health, of the extraordinarily hot summer of 2010.

Near the Potomac River, in Loudon County, VA a few kilometers northwest of the Fairfax County boundary, the real estate speculator Donald Trump is redeveloping a golf course. Today's Washington Post reported on the massive tree clearance on that roughly 325 hectare site. The spokesperson for Trump was quoted as saying "The trees threatened the shoreline. Many of the trees, ... stress and eroding (sic) the soil." I guess those trees are like the forest trees claimed by other public relations flacks to create air pollution and acid rain. Loudon County, and its neighbor Fairfax County should encourage widespread cutting of trees, deforestation, in order to protect the environment!

Notes V

San Juan Argentina, about 1910Image via Wikipedia

Several weeks ago I posted a piece on the Guaraní aquifer and commented on cooperation through Mercosur between the four South American states under which the vast underground deposit of water is found. On 2 August 2010 in the city of San Juan, Argentina (a pleasant city well outside the boundaries of the aquifer), Brasil, Paraguay, and Uruguay signed an agreement for use and management of that aquifer  (the website of the Brasilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministéio das Relaçoes Exteriores) posts the text of the agreement in Portuguese and Spanish). From an outsider's perspective, this is a remarkable achievement, for the agreement has been reached before there is any serious problem with the aquifer, and the agreement has been concluded between a set of states often at odds with each other, including open warfare in the 19th century and threats of war in the 20th. Whether the agreement is truly meaningful remains to be demonstrated, and at least one commentator has raised questions about its application once ratified.

Map of the Guaraní Aquifer

Source: Guarani Project

Those who, like an antediluvian and prehensile senator from the benighted state of Oklahoma (a state with what is apparently an early stone age Kultur), like to point to the hideous cold and snow of last winter as refutation of climate change, need to be corrected. A recent piece from Scientific American online should put their pseudo-argument to rest as it clearly demonstrates the cold and snow were evidence of short-term trends and not of any longer term phenomena. Climate change can never be shown by the events of a single season, and a period of colder than normal temperature with greater than normal snowfall in one season points to nothing in a long term pattern. The same can be said for the current hideously hot summer, though it is in line with the long-term trend for ever warmer summers in the Northern Hemisphere.

Smoke over Western Russia, 9 August 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

A price of the smoke in Russia has been a substantial increase in illness and in the death rate in Moscow. Wildfires in agricultural areas, brush lands and desiccated forests are all but inevitable with climate change.

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Smoke, Trash and Dams

Three Gorges Dam, Yangtze River, China under construction below and nearly complete top

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

When it was proposed and during construction of the Three Gorges Dam, many commentators said it would fail to stem the floods for which the Yangtze is notorious. Since its completion the rains of summer 2010 mark the first season of precipitation greatly in excess of long-term averages, and events of the past two months would seem to prove their point. There has been substantial flooding both above and below the dam. Although the Chinese authorities claim the dam itself is sound,  it has been able to hold back only a small part of the additional flow of the massive river. Devastating flooding has wiped out towns and villages, farm fields, and transportation facilities both up and downstream from the world's largest barrage. Built for all four of the magic goals of dams, for the foreseeable future the Three Gorges Dam may fail at three of them, flood control, navigation, and hydroelectric generation, while the rains make the final one, irrigation, unnecessary.

Much of the detritus caused by the flooding, it turn, has washed into the river, and the dam has blocked that material coming from upstream in much the same way that it blocks silt in periods of normal flow. Upstream of the dam the accumulating trash in the reservoir, already about a meter thick and strong enough to form islands capable of supporting a person, could clog a floodgate and threaten the integrity of the dam itself, but more likely is blockage of the navigation locks (right hand side of the pictures) and fouling of the water flowing over and through the dam with trash that makes downstream use difficult. There are dire predictions about navigation dangers on the river, a crucial route for Chinese commerce, due to the accumulated trash. Upstream, the immense city of Chongqing (Chongqing (重庆; Chóngqìng formerly spelled Chungking), may have to draw water into its public supply that has been fouled by industrial and agricultural chemicals, farm waste, and human sewage. Rapid flow would serve to dilute those pollutants if the river had been left undammed, but the slack water behind dams results in far less mixing of waters and dilution of pollutants.

Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the rainfall spectrum, the severe drought and excessive heat that have plagued European Russia for most of the summer of 2010 have resulted in some serious problems of heat and smoke in the capital. Moscow, a city where air conditioning is rare because in the past it has been needed infrequently, has suffered multiple days with 35+ degrees Celsius. In addition to the heat, Muscovites are breathing air with dangerous levels of smoke, soot and other pollutants, a consequence of field, brush and forest fires, some of them burning down into the layers of peat beneath birch woods and brush lands surrounding the city. Peat, used as a fuel in several parts of the world, can smolder and burn for a long time once ignited, and until drenching rains or the winter cold begins, smoke will continue to plague Moscow even when temperatures moderate.

Most Russian grain is rain-fed with no supplemental irrigation, and the combination of drought and fires have devastated the 2010 crop. World grain prices have soared because analysts expect the grain crop in Russia to be far smaller than usual, and that country has banned grain exports. Increases in grain prices could spark serious food problems worldwide.Should the Argentinian and Australian grain areas suffer serious drought in the 2010-11 growing season, the year of 2011 could have a food crisis.

Temperature anomalies in Russia, Summer 2010

Source: NASA Earth Observatory

As always one must remember that the events of a single summer say nothing about climate change, but the flooding in Pakistan and China and the drought and heat in Russia are precisely the kinds of conditions that warmer earth temperatures point toward. Those include long spells of hot weather in many northern hemisphere cities, redistribution of precipitation with increases in some areas and deficits in others, and an increasing frequency of extreme weather events including both drought and torrential rainfall.

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Droughts and Floods

Navy Memorial Fountain, Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 2010

©EOP

Todays feed from Huffington Post includes a rather apocalyptic piece by Toby Barlow "Let's Call it Climate Chaos." I have enough experience with both climatology and statistics to realize that the current nexus of climate related issues worldwide is in itself neither proof nor disproof of climate change—only trends over a longer period can serve that purpose—but current conditions give powerful reasons to fret about the future of a warmer world. Those of us unfortunate enough to live in the Mid-Atlantic states have experienced a prolonged spell of very hot and uncomfortable weather, though neither New York nor Washington, DC actually set new records for the month of July, merely matching older ones. Just the discomfort of hotter summers is adequate to make one hope global warming is limited to only a few degrees at most. It is clear that warming has many effects, most of them much scarier than simple discomfort.

Source: Novosti Infographics

Much of European Russia has had one of its hottest and driest summers ever. It seems that Moscow is posting new heat records almost daily even as its residents are forced to breathe smoke filled air from countless brush, field, and forest fires in the surrounding region. In addition to the dessicating heat, rainfall in the breadbasket areas south of Moscow are far below long term norms with some areas receiving only a tiny fraction of the precipitation expected. Grain yields are in turn now expected to be well below long-term averages, and it will soon be too late, if it is not already, for additional rainfall to benefit the current year's crop. The expected deficit in grain production is likely to raise world grain prices, for it has already raised grain futures.

The drought in Russia points to the changes in the global distribution of precipitation during a hotter Northern Hemisphere summer. The summer of 2010 is entrain to be the hottest ever recorded (just as the 2009-10 winter was the warmest recorded). Common to post el Niño seasons, the southwestern United States, including Southern California and the lower Colorado River Basin has enjoyed above average rainfall, somewhat breaking the years long drought. That has started to refill the various reservoirs, though it is unlikely to leave Lake Mead, Lake Powell or the others anything close to bank-full. For the moment at least, a drought has been broken in an area where water supplies are historically very limited.

In Asia excess rainfall is the issue with deadly flooding in both Pakistan and China. Pakistanis wish for rain in the wet part of the monsoon in mid to late summer, but this year has brought rainfall far in excess of long term averages, and 1,000 or more people have been killed by flood-related causes even as bridges, roads, and rail lines have been severed, towns destroyed, and agricultural areas devastated as rushing waters was away topsoil and growing crops. Instead of providing needed water for crops, the monsoonal rainfall of 2010 has caused massive damage. The situation in southern China is similar to that in Pakistan, though it is a function of typhoon circulation rather than the Asian Monsoon. 

The combined effects of these weather conditions, especially droughts and flooding, could have substantial impact on food prices throughout the world. European Russia and southern China export food to other parts of those countries and to world markets. Pakistan is a net food importer, and destruction of good agricultural land is likely to lead to greater demands for imported food. The combination of reduced production and demand from those areas made unproductive by drought and flood is almost certain to led to increased prices for at least some commodities. Those price increases are already apparent in world agricultural markets.

Once again it is important to note that the current summer is not in itself evidence for climate change, but it offers us a shocking preview of what warmer global temperatures portend. From the point of view of water supplies, a massive global redistribution of precipitation will be making some areas much drier than they have been in the past while other areas suffer from excessive precipitation. Severe storms are likely to become much more common, and 100-year floods may become 10-year floods. Instead of being expected not more than once in a century, those water levels will be expected once a decade. Some presently habitable areas will be erased from the map by flooding (granted other areas currently uninhabitable may be added to the ecumene but a net loss of usable land is the most likely outcome), while others will become too dry to use for crops. The world's food supplies are likely to be reduced and food prices increased by the combined effects of drought, flooding, and loss of land accompanying an increase in average world temperatures. It is all quite scary to contemplate!

Image via Wikipedia

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Dams - The Fascination of the Immense

Three Gorges Dam and Reservoir, Yangtze River, China, June 2009

NASA Earth Observatory

Standing on the Nevada shore (being careful not to cross over into Arizona where one might be arrested as an enemy alien) and admiring the sleek arch and art deco works of the great Boulder Dam (aka Hoover Dam) across the Colorado it is difficult not to be awed at the power of humanity. Many years ago a famous architect working on one of the megalomaniac urban design projects for which his field is notorious said something to the effect "make no little plans for they have no power to stir men's blood."  The design project thankfully came to naught, but his statement still has power. Nowhere is that more true than in the construction of huge dams. The icons of the New Deal in the United States are large dams, from the impressive structures on the Tennessee River and its tributaries as a part of the TVA to the grandest two of all, Boulder Dam on the Colorado and Grand Coulée on the Columbia. Subsequently dictators, autocrats, and even a few leaders in nominally democratic states have ordered construction of immense dams including ones on most of Russia's great rivers, on the Nile, on the Paraná, and on China's Yangtze. The dams have been variously designed to prevent flooding, to improve navigation, to store water for irrigation, and to produce electricity, with most of them intended to do at least two of that magic four.

Immense dams have come with a set of problems, however. Blocking the normal flow of the river, they serve also to block the flow of silt, and it collects behind the dams. The Aswan Dams on the Nile have blocked the flow of silt onto Egypt's riverine fields. While they generate a huge amount of electricity, much of that is used to produce fertilizer to take the place of the silt that once made the Nile Valley a breadbasket. Meanwhile the Nile delta is rapidly receding (and Egypt is getting smaller) as it is not receiving silt from upstream. The huge dams on the Colorado in the United States are also rapidly silting, though the low flows of the past decade mean that silting has been slowed. Eventually silting will render the dams useless for water storage and degrade or eliminate their benefits of flood control, navigation, irrigation water storage, and hydroelectric production. All dams are subject to silting, but the problem is especially great on rivers like the Colorado and the Nile whose headwaters include areas of easily eroded materials like sandstone.

A motto of the early Soviet experiment was "socialism plus electricity equals communism," and the construction of immense hydroelectric dams was a key goal throughout the ill-fated Leninist-Stalinist pseudo socialist experiment. A year ago Sayano–Shushenskaya Dam, one of the huge dams in Russia built by the Soviets to produce electricity, experienced a large explosion in its powerhouse, flooding the powerhouse and among other things sending a plume of lubricant oil down the Yenisei toward the Arctic, destroying several turbines, and killing at least 74 people. For a time Russia's electricity supply was reduced by a sizable percentage, and several key export industries, including aluminum production, were harmed. The flooded powerhouse had ot be closed and repaired, a process still ongoing, though the dam is again producing electricity.

Yesterday evening BBC News America had a story on flooding in China, high water on the Yangtze below the world's largest dam. One of the functions of the dam was to prevent downstream flooding, but it would seem it is having almost the opposite result. At least according to Chinese authorities the dam itself, also intended to  is secure  Earlier it was discovered that large dams in China were creating earthquakes and might have been directly responsible for several large and deadly temblors.

One must hope the Three Gorges Dam is the final immense dam built on earth to improve navigation on the Yangtze, to store water for downstream irrigation, and to produce hydroelectricity. Given the predilictions of totalitarian governments that may be a vain hope, but accumulated evidence makes it clear that huge dams create problems far greater than those they are intended to resolve.

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