Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / August 19-20, 2010

Interesting: Afghanistan and nations in sub-Saharan Africa are most at risk from shocks to food supplies such as droughts or floods while Nordic countries are least vulnerable, according to an index released on Thursday. "Of 50 nations most at risk, 36 are located in Africa," said Fiona Place, an environmental analyst at British-based consultancy Maplecroft, which compiled the 163-nation food security risk index.

Maplecroft said that it hoped the index could help in directing food aid or to guide investments in food production. Upheavals in 2010 include Russia’s grain export ban from August 15 spurred by the country’s worst drought in more than a century.

Afghanistan’s food supplies were most precarious, based on factors such as rates of malnutrition, cereal production and imports, gross domestic product per capita, natural disasters, conflicts and the effectiveness of government.

It was followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Angola, Liberia, Chad and Zimbabwe, all of which suffer from poverty and risk ever more extreme weather because of climate change. At the other end of the scale, the survey said that Finland had the most secure food supplies, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States.

Interesting2: The year 2010 is on track to become the hottest year on record since modern record keeping began, according to climate researchers at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. This follows confirmation that the first seven months of 2010 were the warmest since 1880, when the modern climate record began.

Worldwide, July was the second warmest July on record with an average temperature of 61.7 F. The warmest July recorded was July 1998. But for land alone, July 2010 was the warmest on record. All-time national record high temperatures were reached during July in Finland, Belarus and Ukraine due to the strength of severe European heat waves.

Moscow, Russia, had its highest temperature ever at 100.8 F. Other nations reaching their highest-ever temperatures included Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Cyprus, Chad, Sudan, Niger, Myanmar, Colombia and even the Solomon Islands.

Interesting3: A new simulation of oil and methane leaked into the Gulf of Mexico suggests that deep hypoxic zones or "dead zones" could form near the source of the pollution. The research investigates five scenarios of oil and methane plumes at different depths and incorporates an estimated rate of flow from the Deepwater Horizon spill, which released oil and methane gas into the Gulf from April to mid July of this year.

A scientific paper on the research has been accepted for publication by Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Princeton University conducted the research.

Based on their simulations, they conclude that the ocean hypoxia or toxic concentrations of dissolved oil arising from the Deepwater Horizon blowout are likely to be "locally significant but regionally confined to the northern Gulf of Mexico." A hypoxic or "dead" zone is a region of ocean where oxygen levels have dropped too low to support most forms of life, typically because microbes consuming a glut of nutrients in the water use up the local oxygen as they consume the material.

"According to our simulations, these hypoxic areas will be peaking in October," says study coauthor Robert Hallberg of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.. "Oxygen drawdown will go away slowly, as the tainted water is mixed with Gulf waters that weren’t affected. We’re estimating a couple of years" before the dead zone has dissipated, he adds.

Although the Princeton-NOAA study was carried out when the flow rate from the Deepwater Horizon spill was still underestimated, the simulated leak lasted longer than did the actual spill. Consequently, says Alistair Adcroft of Princeton University and the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, another study coauthor, "the overall impact on oxygen turns out to be about the same" as would be expected from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Interesting4: New research confirms the existence of a huge plume of dispersed oil deep in the Gulf of Mexico and suggests that it has not broken down rapidly, raising the possibility that it might pose a threat to wildlife for months or even years. The study, the most ambitious scientific paper to emerge so far from the Deepwater Horizon spill, casts some doubt on recent statements by the federal government that oil in the gulf appears to be dissipating at a brisk clip. However, the lead scientist in the research, Richard Camilli, cautioned that the samples were taken in June and circumstances could have changed in the last two months.

The paper, which appears in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, adds to a welter of recent, and to some extent conflicting, scientific claims about the status of the gulf. While scientists generally agree that the risk of additional harm at the surface and near shore has diminished since the well was capped a month ago, a sharp debate has arisen about the continuing risk from oil in the deep ocean.

So far, information has emerged largely from government reports and press statements by scientists. Many additional research papers are in the works, and it could be months before a clear scientific picture emerges.

The slow breakdown of deep oil that Dr. Camilli’s group found had a silver lining: it meant that the bacteria trying to eat the oil did not appear to have consumed an excessive amount of oxygen in the vicinity of the spill, alleviating concerns that the oxygen might have declined so much that it threatened sea life.

But Dr. Camilli said the plume, at the time he studied it, was dissipating so slowly that it could still be in the gulf many months from now. Assuming that the physics of the plume are still similar to what his team saw in June, “it’s going to persist for quite a while before it finally dissipates or dilutes away,” he said.

Concentrations of hydrocarbons in the plume were generally low and declined gradually as the plume traveled through the gulf, although Dr. Camilli’s team has not yet completed tests on how toxic the chemicals might be to sea life.

In a report on Aug. 4, a team of government and independent scientists organized by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that 74 percent of the oil from the leak had been captured directly from the wellhead; had been skimmed, burned, dispersed chemically or by natural processes; had evaporated from the ocean surface; or had dissolved into the water in microscopic droplets.

The report found the remaining 26 percent of the oil had mostly washed ashore or been collected there, was buried in sand and sediment, or was still on or below the water surface as sheen or tar balls.

While the government report expressed concern about the continuing impact of the spill, it was widely viewed as evidence that the risk of additional harm in the gulf was declining.

This week, scientists at the University of Georgia, who in May were among the first to report the existence of the large plume studied by Dr. Camilli’s team, sharply challenged the government’s assessment. They contended that the government had overestimated rates of evaporation and breakdown of the oil.

“The idea that 75 percent of the oil is gone and is of no further concern to the environment is just incorrect,” said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She has studied the spill extensively but has not yet published her results.

Responding to the University of Georgia criticism, Jane Lubchenco, the N.O.A.A. administrator, declared that the government stood by its calculations. “Some of those numbers we can measure directly,” she said. “The others are the best estimates that are out there.”

In another report this week, researchers from the University of South Florida reported that they had found oil droplets scattered in sediment along the gulf floor and in the water column, where they could pose a threat to some of the gulf’s most important fisheries. The dispersed oil appeared to be having a toxic effect on bacteria and on phytoplankton, a group of microorganisms that serves as a vital food for fish and other marine life, the scientists said, although they cautioned that further testing was needed.

Dr. Camilli’s paper tends to support the view that considerable oil may be lingering below the surface of the gulf. He said he was not especially surprised by the slow rate of breakdown, considering that the deep waters of the gulf are cold, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the vicinity of the plume.

“In colder environments, microbes operate more slowly,” Dr. Camilli said. “That’s why we have refrigerators.”

For weeks, BP, the company that owned the out-of-control well, disputed claims from scientists that a huge plume of dispersed oil droplets had formed in the gulf, with its chief executive at the time, Tony Hayward, declaring at one point, “There aren’t any plumes.”

The new paper settles that issue, providing detailed evidence that one major plume and at least one minor plume exist and that they contain large quantities of hydrocarbons, albeit dispersed into tiny droplets.

Dr. Camilli’s team measured the main plume at roughly 3,600 feet below the surface; it extended for more than 20 miles southwest of the well. It was more than a mile wide in places and 600 feet thick, traveling at about four miles a day.

At the time his team studied it in June, the plume appeared to have narrowed from measurements reported early in the spill by a team that included Dr. Joye and Vernon Asper, a marine scientist from the University of Southern Mississippi, but his results otherwise matched their report.

The slow breakdown of the plume, if verified by additional research, suggests that scientists may find themselves tracking the toxic compounds from BP’s well and trying to discern their impact on sea life for a long time.