Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Drought Forces Desert Nomads to Settle Down
Desert Nomads
by Richard Harris
Morning Edition, July 2, 2007 · Climate change threatens ice sheets and ecosystems, but it also threatens human cultures.
For centuries, the Tuareg people have lived as nomads, herding their animals from field to field just south of the Sahara Desert in Mali, near Timbuktu.
"Our life is basically the animals we have, so we protect them and we feed them," says Mohamed Ag Mustafa, a herder living the traditional nomadic lifestyle. "Whenever we need tea or grain or clothes, we take an animal to the market and sell it and buy something."
But this way of life has become impossible due to a change in the climate.
Over the past 40 years, persistent drought has forced the Tuareg to give up their wandering way of life. To survive they have had to start settling in villages and cultivating land to secure a food supply which is less susceptible to drought.
Preserving Culture
CARE is an international humanitarian organization working to alleviate poverty. Uwe Korus, director of programs for CARE in Mali, visits the town of Er-Intedjeft near Timbuktu, where he is greeted warmly. He is here to learn what the Tuareg need in order to make the rapid and jarring transition to a new way of life. One of the big questions on Korus' mind is whether the Tuareg can retain their ancient culture.
The Tuareg welcome Korus with a mishwee, a traditional feast like they used to have in the desert. They build a fire in a sand pit, and when the sand gets scorching hot, they bury a sheep carcass in it. After the sheep has roasted, they blow off sand still clinging it and bring it over to straw mats laid out under rust-colored tents they erected for their guests.
As the women look on, the men of the village sit around the main dish along with Korus and the others from CARE. After the men are through eating, the bones are cleared away for the children and women to pick over, and the Tuareg sit down and talk for hours. They tell the people from CARE about their struggle to settle down. The nomads say they need to learn to farm, they need clean water, health care and veterinary care for their animals.
Welcoming Change
Mohammad Ag Mata, the chief of Er-Intedjeft , is in his mid-60s and appears frail. He is resolute about his decision to give up his nomadic ways.
Mohammad Ag Mata says droughts are responsible for the shift in the Tuareg lifestyle. He used to have 200 head of cattle, but they all died in droughts in the 1970s and '80s. "If it hadn't been for a little money I stole from my father and saved, we would have starved," he says.
Jacob Aromar also lives in Er-Intedjeft. Aromar is not a herder like his forefathers, but a school teacher. He points out the changes taking place all around him, such as the Tuareg homes which used to be tents, but are now built with mud bricks they make by the river.
The Tuareg diet has changed from one of meat and cheese to one with more grains and vegetables, and they still have a lot to learn about growing crops. A pump was donated so the town can draw water from the nearby Niger River and irrigate tomatoes, rice and potatoes. However the pump is not working because no one has been trained to use it.
end of excerpt
Africa: Water Is A Right, Not a Business
I am including this link because I believe the essential step to bringing potable water equally to all people in this world is to declare it a human right globally. This will ensure that corporations will not have as easy an access to indigenous water systems in third world countries to take advantage of them for profit. It will also give hope to millions around the world who see their resources dwindling due to privitization and as in Mali, changing rainfall patterns that are resulting in the droughts forcing them to find a different way of life because they depend on rain for irrigation.
Also, on the topic of this article, I am appalled by the attitude of the men in these tribes towards the women and children. It is only through education that the next generation in all countries will be better equipped to deal with the crises this world will face. Women and children should not be spending their days fetching water that is many times a dangerous task to perform in these countries, especially with it so scarce.
Declaring water a human right and truly working to give people the EDUCATION and resources they need and the ability to use those resources without relying upon The World Bank and other "new world order" type organizations that only seek to take advantage of their resources for profit is the way to a better world.
And for the people of Mali and countries throughout Africa, education is really the key to their survival along with water.
by Richard Harris
Morning Edition, July 2, 2007 · Climate change threatens ice sheets and ecosystems, but it also threatens human cultures.
For centuries, the Tuareg people have lived as nomads, herding their animals from field to field just south of the Sahara Desert in Mali, near Timbuktu.
"Our life is basically the animals we have, so we protect them and we feed them," says Mohamed Ag Mustafa, a herder living the traditional nomadic lifestyle. "Whenever we need tea or grain or clothes, we take an animal to the market and sell it and buy something."
But this way of life has become impossible due to a change in the climate.
Over the past 40 years, persistent drought has forced the Tuareg to give up their wandering way of life. To survive they have had to start settling in villages and cultivating land to secure a food supply which is less susceptible to drought.
Preserving Culture
CARE is an international humanitarian organization working to alleviate poverty. Uwe Korus, director of programs for CARE in Mali, visits the town of Er-Intedjeft near Timbuktu, where he is greeted warmly. He is here to learn what the Tuareg need in order to make the rapid and jarring transition to a new way of life. One of the big questions on Korus' mind is whether the Tuareg can retain their ancient culture.
The Tuareg welcome Korus with a mishwee, a traditional feast like they used to have in the desert. They build a fire in a sand pit, and when the sand gets scorching hot, they bury a sheep carcass in it. After the sheep has roasted, they blow off sand still clinging it and bring it over to straw mats laid out under rust-colored tents they erected for their guests.
As the women look on, the men of the village sit around the main dish along with Korus and the others from CARE. After the men are through eating, the bones are cleared away for the children and women to pick over, and the Tuareg sit down and talk for hours. They tell the people from CARE about their struggle to settle down. The nomads say they need to learn to farm, they need clean water, health care and veterinary care for their animals.
Welcoming Change
Mohammad Ag Mata, the chief of Er-Intedjeft , is in his mid-60s and appears frail. He is resolute about his decision to give up his nomadic ways.
Mohammad Ag Mata says droughts are responsible for the shift in the Tuareg lifestyle. He used to have 200 head of cattle, but they all died in droughts in the 1970s and '80s. "If it hadn't been for a little money I stole from my father and saved, we would have starved," he says.
Jacob Aromar also lives in Er-Intedjeft. Aromar is not a herder like his forefathers, but a school teacher. He points out the changes taking place all around him, such as the Tuareg homes which used to be tents, but are now built with mud bricks they make by the river.
The Tuareg diet has changed from one of meat and cheese to one with more grains and vegetables, and they still have a lot to learn about growing crops. A pump was donated so the town can draw water from the nearby Niger River and irrigate tomatoes, rice and potatoes. However the pump is not working because no one has been trained to use it.
end of excerpt
Africa: Water Is A Right, Not a Business
I am including this link because I believe the essential step to bringing potable water equally to all people in this world is to declare it a human right globally. This will ensure that corporations will not have as easy an access to indigenous water systems in third world countries to take advantage of them for profit. It will also give hope to millions around the world who see their resources dwindling due to privitization and as in Mali, changing rainfall patterns that are resulting in the droughts forcing them to find a different way of life because they depend on rain for irrigation.
Also, on the topic of this article, I am appalled by the attitude of the men in these tribes towards the women and children. It is only through education that the next generation in all countries will be better equipped to deal with the crises this world will face. Women and children should not be spending their days fetching water that is many times a dangerous task to perform in these countries, especially with it so scarce.
Declaring water a human right and truly working to give people the EDUCATION and resources they need and the ability to use those resources without relying upon The World Bank and other "new world order" type organizations that only seek to take advantage of their resources for profit is the way to a better world.
And for the people of Mali and countries throughout Africa, education is really the key to their survival along with water.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Message In A Bottle
Message In A Bottle
By: Charles Fishman
The largest bottled-water factory in North America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of the plant stretches the staging area for finished product: 24 million bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters, liters, "Aquapods" for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the refrigerator.
Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off in plastic, extending across 6 acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced by another lake's worth of bottles.
Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty.
Bottled water has become the indispensable prop in our lives and our culture. It starts the day in lunch boxes; it goes to every meeting, lecture hall, and soccer match; it's in our cubicles at work; in the cup holder of the treadmill at the gym; and it's rattling around half-finished on the floor of every minivan in America. Fiji Water shows up on the ABC show Brothers & Sisters; Poland Spring cameos routinely on NBC's The Office. Every hotel room offers bottled water for sale, alongside the increasingly ignored ice bucket and drinking glasses. At Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI), the upscale emporium of the organic and exotic, bottled water is the number-one item by units sold.
Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.
When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We're buying the convenience--a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn't the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we're buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn't just good, it's positively virtuous.
Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)
Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.
A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.
end of excerpt.
Great article. Worth the read.
By: Charles Fishman
The largest bottled-water factory in North America is located on the outskirts of Hollis, Maine. In the back of the plant stretches the staging area for finished product: 24 million bottles of Poland Spring water. As far as the eye can see, there are double-stacked pallets packed with half-pint bottles, half-liters, liters, "Aquapods" for school lunches, and 2.5-gallon jugs for the refrigerator.
Really, it is a lake of Poland Spring water, conveniently celled off in plastic, extending across 6 acres, 8 feet high. A week ago, the lake was still underground; within five days, it will all be gone, to supermarkets and convenience stores across the Northeast, replaced by another lake's worth of bottles.
Looking at the piles of water, you can have only one thought: Americans sure are thirsty.
Bottled water has become the indispensable prop in our lives and our culture. It starts the day in lunch boxes; it goes to every meeting, lecture hall, and soccer match; it's in our cubicles at work; in the cup holder of the treadmill at the gym; and it's rattling around half-finished on the floor of every minivan in America. Fiji Water shows up on the ABC show Brothers & Sisters; Poland Spring cameos routinely on NBC's The Office. Every hotel room offers bottled water for sale, alongside the increasingly ignored ice bucket and drinking glasses. At Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI), the upscale emporium of the organic and exotic, bottled water is the number-one item by units sold.
Thirty years ago, bottled water barely existed as a business in the United States. Last year, we spent more on Poland Spring, Fiji Water, Evian, Aquafina, and Dasani than we spent on iPods or movie tickets--$15 billion. It will be $16 billion this year.
Bottled water is the food phenomenon of our times. We--a generation raised on tap water and water fountains--drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we're raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion. We've come to pay good money--two or three or four times the cost of gasoline--for a product we have always gotten, and can still get, for free, from taps in our homes.
When we buy a bottle of water, what we're often buying is the bottle itself, as much as the water. We're buying the convenience--a bottle at the 7-Eleven isn't the same product as tap water, any more than a cup of coffee at Starbucks is the same as a cup of coffee from the Krups machine on your kitchen counter. And we're buying the artful story the water companies tell us about the water: where it comes from, how healthy it is, what it says about us. Surely among the choices we can make, bottled water isn't just good, it's positively virtuous.
Except for this: Bottled water is often simply an indulgence, and despite the stories we tell ourselves, it is not a benign indulgence. We're moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That's a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water. (Water weighs 81/3 pounds a gallon. It's so heavy you can't fill an 18-wheeler with bottled water--you have to leave empty space.)
Meanwhile, one out of six people in the world has no dependable, safe drinking water. The global economy has contrived to deny the most fundamental element of life to 1 billion people, while delivering to us an array of water "varieties" from around the globe, not one of which we actually need. That tension is only complicated by the fact that if we suddenly decided not to purchase the lake of Poland Spring water in Hollis, Maine, none of that water would find its way to people who really are thirsty.
A chilled plastic bottle of water in the convenience-store cooler is the perfect symbol of this moment in American commerce and culture. It acknowledges our demand for instant gratification, our vanity, our token concern for health. Its packaging and transport depend entirely on cheap fossil fuel. Yes, it's just a bottle of water--modest compared with the indulgence of driving a Hummer. But when a whole industry grows up around supplying us with something we don't need--when a whole industry is built on the packaging and the presentation--it's worth asking how that happened, and what the impact is. And if you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.
end of excerpt.
Great article. Worth the read.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Water As The Source Of Life And Strife
Water As The Source Of Life And Strife
WATER WORLD
Water As The Source Of Life And Strife
by Claude Salhani
UPI International Editor
Amman (UPI) Jordan, May 21, 2007
The next major Middle East war could well be fought not over land, oil or religion --the traditional causes of conflict to date -- but over water, a precious commodity becoming rarer by the day. Addressing top leaders in industry, business, banking and the media in his speech at the opening session of the World Economic Forum held on the shores of the Dead Sea last week, King Abdullah II of Jordan raised the alarm over the scarcity of water in the region and warned of the dire consequences for not only the developing nations, but the havoc water scarcity would have on the developed world as a whole.
Indeed, much of the Israeli-Palestinian land dispute is in fact centered on water rights, as both communities are battling for control of extremely limited water resources.
Additionally, Israel has long envied Lebanon's Litani and Zahrani rivers that flow through the south of the country. During the last three decades Israel has launched repeated military operations in southern Lebanon in which Israeli troops found themselves in control of the rivers, albeit temporarily, following international pressures on Israel to withdraw.
In previous years Egypt had threatened to go to war with Sudan to prevent Khartoum from trying to mess with the natural course of the Nile River -- the lifeline of Egypt without which the tiny strip of arable land on either bank of the river and its loamy delta would become engulfed by the desert sands.
Similarly, tension between Syria and Turkey rose to near danger levels a few years ago over the distribution of the water of the Euphrates River, which flows through Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
"One critical challenge is water," said the Jordanian monarch. "From the snowy peaks of the Atlas Mountains to the Empty Quarter of the Arab Peninsula, most of our region's countries cannot meet the current water demands.
"As a region, if we do not plan how we will meet this most basic need, if we do not commit the necessary investments to resolve this problem, we will not be fighting for peace, we will be fighting for our lives," said Abdullah. "We need to rise to this challenge."
A witness to the king's testimony over water shortages was only a stone's throw from the convention center and easily visible to anyone who took a few minutes to venture onto the terrace facing the Dead Sea.
The sinking levels of the Dead Sea waters have authorities both in Jordan as well as in Israel seriously worried. The current rate at which the waters are receding is about 1 meter a year. During the 20th century the level of the Dead Sea dropped from about 390 meters below sea level in 1930 to 414 meters below sea level in 1999, with the average rate of fall accelerating in recent years. Today it stands at 418 meters below sea level.
End of excerpt
To be continued.
My last entry regarding this conflict:
http://water-is-life.blogspot.com/2006/08/is-israelilebanon-war-over-water.html
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Desalination Not The Solution/WWF
Desalination Not The Solution
Desalination 'not the solution'
Untapped resource: oceans contain 97% of the planet's water
Turning salt water into drinking water is not a solution to tackle global water scarcity, the WWF has said.
A report by the environmental group said a growth in the energy intensive technology would increase emissions and damage coastal and river habitats.
More attention should instead be paid to conserving supplies, it suggested.
The study was published as Australia announced plans to build one of the world's biggest desalination plants to supply drinking water to Melbourne.
"Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy intensive and greenhouse gas emitting way to get water," said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's global freshwater programme.
"It may have a place in the world's future freshwater supplies but regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment."
The report called for greater emphasis on managing existing supplies before the go-ahead was given to major water projects.
It added that new desalination plants, which were primarily located in coastal areas, should also be subject to tighter impact assessments to minimise damage to the marine environment.
Advances in technology meant that it was also possible to develop alternative "manufactured water" systems, such as treating waste water, the authors wrote.
end of excerpt.
As I have written here before, I too believe that desalination (reverse osmosis process) is an expensive GHG emitting procedure that is simply a bandaid on a crisis that will not be solved by looking to methods that actually exacerbate the problem of emitting GHGs, particularly the Co2 that causes drought, wildfires, and water shortages.
In many cases it is only through the wasteful practices of humans that water becomes scarce. Seventy percent of the water that is wasted in this world is lost through wasteful irrigation practices. Why then is it easier for man to expend countless hours and dollars in building these huge desalination plants that do nothing to replace the water lost and threaten the habitat of other marine animals, instead of simply looking to their moral compasses and conserving what we have?
Is it because we simply do not wish to admit that we are the cause of this crisis?
However, that is not to say that I am against desalination as a process when it is absolutely necessary to provide water to people, as in the case of the Middle East where water scarcity makes it necessary to emply such methods. I personally prefer geothermal desalination as the best method to protect marine life and cut down on carbon emissions.
This report from the Pacific Institute dated last year is a totally comprehensive and expert analysis of desalination globally and in the United States with both pros and cons explained in detail. There is no doubt that as we head further into the 21st Century in a world where water will be in greater demand desalination can be a part of a water management plan if absolutely needed (especially regarding using it in agriculture to conserve fresh water for human use,) but certainly not as the solution to this crisis and at the expense of other species and our environment especially regarding the clean up process. Only moral courage to conserve and to devise ways to use irrigation water more effectively and funds more effectively to shore up substandard water systems can we find the balance necessary to preserve all life.
Desalination 'not the solution'
Untapped resource: oceans contain 97% of the planet's water
Turning salt water into drinking water is not a solution to tackle global water scarcity, the WWF has said.
A report by the environmental group said a growth in the energy intensive technology would increase emissions and damage coastal and river habitats.
More attention should instead be paid to conserving supplies, it suggested.
The study was published as Australia announced plans to build one of the world's biggest desalination plants to supply drinking water to Melbourne.
"Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy intensive and greenhouse gas emitting way to get water," said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's global freshwater programme.
"It may have a place in the world's future freshwater supplies but regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment."
The report called for greater emphasis on managing existing supplies before the go-ahead was given to major water projects.
It added that new desalination plants, which were primarily located in coastal areas, should also be subject to tighter impact assessments to minimise damage to the marine environment.
Advances in technology meant that it was also possible to develop alternative "manufactured water" systems, such as treating waste water, the authors wrote.
end of excerpt.
As I have written here before, I too believe that desalination (reverse osmosis process) is an expensive GHG emitting procedure that is simply a bandaid on a crisis that will not be solved by looking to methods that actually exacerbate the problem of emitting GHGs, particularly the Co2 that causes drought, wildfires, and water shortages.
In many cases it is only through the wasteful practices of humans that water becomes scarce. Seventy percent of the water that is wasted in this world is lost through wasteful irrigation practices. Why then is it easier for man to expend countless hours and dollars in building these huge desalination plants that do nothing to replace the water lost and threaten the habitat of other marine animals, instead of simply looking to their moral compasses and conserving what we have?
Is it because we simply do not wish to admit that we are the cause of this crisis?
However, that is not to say that I am against desalination as a process when it is absolutely necessary to provide water to people, as in the case of the Middle East where water scarcity makes it necessary to emply such methods. I personally prefer geothermal desalination as the best method to protect marine life and cut down on carbon emissions.
This report from the Pacific Institute dated last year is a totally comprehensive and expert analysis of desalination globally and in the United States with both pros and cons explained in detail. There is no doubt that as we head further into the 21st Century in a world where water will be in greater demand desalination can be a part of a water management plan if absolutely needed (especially regarding using it in agriculture to conserve fresh water for human use,) but certainly not as the solution to this crisis and at the expense of other species and our environment especially regarding the clean up process. Only moral courage to conserve and to devise ways to use irrigation water more effectively and funds more effectively to shore up substandard water systems can we find the balance necessary to preserve all life.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
India's Rivers Dying Due to Sewerage, Say Activists
This is a classic example of overpopulation and poverty and the effects it brings to our natural resources. As Himalayan glaciers continue to recede at an alarming rate with predictions that they could be gone within the next forty to fifty years, India cannot afford to continue polluting the water they have left. And this begs the question when rightfully blaming it on poor management: why are people not crying out for changing it? What has happened to our moral will to stand up for what is right? To stand up for our planet and for ourselves? To respect the lifeblood of our planet that is sacred?
India's Rivers Dying Due to Sewage, Say Activists
INDIA: June 15, 2007
NEW DELHI - The daily dumping of millions of tonnes of sewage is killing India's rivers and threatening the lives of thousands of poor people, an environmental think-tank said on Thursday.
New Delhi alone produces 3.6 billion litres of sewage every day but due to poor management less than half is effectively treated. The remaining untreated waste is dumped into the Yamuna river. "We talk a lot about industrial pollution of our rivers, but sewage pollution is a big problem," Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, told reporters.
"What is happening to the Yamuna is reflective of what is happening in almost every river in India," she added. "The Yamuna is dead, we just haven't officially cremated it yet."
According to the Central Pollution Control Board, around 70 percent of the pollution in the Yamuna is human excrement.
This results in water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea -- one of the biggest killers of children in India -- and affects thousands of poor people living near the river who drink the water and bathe in it.
Environmentalists say while India has over 300 sewage treatment plants, most are underutilised and poorly positioned. Treated waste is often mixed with untreated sewage and thrown back into rivers.
India's drainage system is also decrepit and in serious need of repair, with more than half of the country's drains virtually redundant.
Narain said India's sewage management and treatment system needed to be revamped and rivers kept clean, rapid industrialisation and urbanisation leading to greater demand for water.
Climate change is also another threat to India's water supplies with Himalayan glaciers -- the source of many of India's rivers -- rapidly receding, and erratic rainfall predicted due to global warming.
Skirmishes are beginning to occur in parts of India where farmers have been protesting over rights to more water, Narain added.
"We should first look at effectively treating our waste water," said Narain. "And then using it for drinking or as irrigation rather than just throwing it back into the rivers."
Story by Nita Bhalla
About The Yamuna River
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Global Warming Is Shrinking The Great Lakes
Global Warming Is Shrinking The Great Lakes
Global warming is shrinking the Great Lakes
30 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Jessica Marshall Duluth
Tom Mackay reckons his backyard in Duluth shows what is happening in Lake Superior as well as any place. In November 2005, the metre-tall wooden "Bay Ness Monster" statue he installed in the water just off his home dock was submerged up to its gaping mouth. Today, his would-be water serpent is high and dry.
For residents of this lakeside Minnesota city, located more than 3000 kilometres by boat from the open Atlantic, the transformation is disturbing. Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world by surface area, is experiencing its lowest water levels since the record set in 1926. The lake is down by 34 centimetres from a year ago, and more than half a metre below its long-term mean. At least part of the drop can be attributed to a multi-year drought that has been particularly severe since 2006. More troubling, however, is evidence that global warming is driving a long-term shrinkage of this massive natural reservoir.
A rapidly warming lake is the key to understanding the change, says Jay Austin, a limnologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory. Earlier this year he reported that Superior's surface waters had warmed by about 2.5 °C since 1979 - far more than average air temperatures in the region during the same period (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 34, p L06604). Austin's findings link the warming to a reduction in winter ice cover on the lake. The less ice is present to reflect sunlight, the more solar energy the lake can absorb. On average, the onset of summer warming of the lake is happening half a day earlier each year. The reduced ice cover also contributes to shrinkage by allowing more evaporation. "Most of the evaporation goes on in winter," Austin says, as cold, dry air swoops over the warmer lake. Without the ice cap to block evaporation, water losses increase.
"Lake Superior's surface temperature has warmed by 2.5 °C since 1979 - far more than average local air temperatures"Cynthia Sellinger of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, agrees. While the lake's level has dropped precipitously since last year, Sellinger has tracked a longer-term decline of an average of 10 millimetres per year since 1978. Evaporation has increased by an average of 4.6 millimetres per year over the same period, she says, while precipitation has decreased by 4.1 millimetres per year. These drops are consistent with climate change models, Austin says, which predict a decline in Great Lakes levels of 0.5 to 2.5 metres with a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The falling water level is already affecting Lake Superior's shipping industry. Freighters carry less cargo now for fear of running aground. Natural beds of wild rice growing in the lake's shoreside wetlands and harvested by Native Americans are also threatened. The long-term effects of prolonged warming on Lake Superior's aquatic ecosystems are not yet known.
end of excerpt
I wrote about this last August here:
Great Lakes Going Down?
Drought In Minnesota
News About The Great Lakes
Global warming is shrinking the Great Lakes
30 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Jessica Marshall Duluth
Tom Mackay reckons his backyard in Duluth shows what is happening in Lake Superior as well as any place. In November 2005, the metre-tall wooden "Bay Ness Monster" statue he installed in the water just off his home dock was submerged up to its gaping mouth. Today, his would-be water serpent is high and dry.
For residents of this lakeside Minnesota city, located more than 3000 kilometres by boat from the open Atlantic, the transformation is disturbing. Lake Superior, the largest body of fresh water in the world by surface area, is experiencing its lowest water levels since the record set in 1926. The lake is down by 34 centimetres from a year ago, and more than half a metre below its long-term mean. At least part of the drop can be attributed to a multi-year drought that has been particularly severe since 2006. More troubling, however, is evidence that global warming is driving a long-term shrinkage of this massive natural reservoir.
A rapidly warming lake is the key to understanding the change, says Jay Austin, a limnologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth's Large Lakes Observatory. Earlier this year he reported that Superior's surface waters had warmed by about 2.5 °C since 1979 - far more than average air temperatures in the region during the same period (Geophysical Research Letters, vol 34, p L06604). Austin's findings link the warming to a reduction in winter ice cover on the lake. The less ice is present to reflect sunlight, the more solar energy the lake can absorb. On average, the onset of summer warming of the lake is happening half a day earlier each year. The reduced ice cover also contributes to shrinkage by allowing more evaporation. "Most of the evaporation goes on in winter," Austin says, as cold, dry air swoops over the warmer lake. Without the ice cap to block evaporation, water losses increase.
"Lake Superior's surface temperature has warmed by 2.5 °C since 1979 - far more than average local air temperatures"Cynthia Sellinger of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Michigan, agrees. While the lake's level has dropped precipitously since last year, Sellinger has tracked a longer-term decline of an average of 10 millimetres per year since 1978. Evaporation has increased by an average of 4.6 millimetres per year over the same period, she says, while precipitation has decreased by 4.1 millimetres per year. These drops are consistent with climate change models, Austin says, which predict a decline in Great Lakes levels of 0.5 to 2.5 metres with a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The falling water level is already affecting Lake Superior's shipping industry. Freighters carry less cargo now for fear of running aground. Natural beds of wild rice growing in the lake's shoreside wetlands and harvested by Native Americans are also threatened. The long-term effects of prolonged warming on Lake Superior's aquatic ecosystems are not yet known.
end of excerpt
I wrote about this last August here:
Great Lakes Going Down?
Drought In Minnesota
News About The Great Lakes
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