Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha paragraphs / August 30-31, 2010

Interesting: The fear that global temperature can change very quickly and cause dramatic climate changes that may have a disastrous impact on many countries and populations is great around the world. But what causes climate change and is it possible to predict future climate change? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen shows that it may be due to an accumulation of different chaotic influences and as a result would be difficult to predict.

The results have just been published in Geophysical Research Letters. For millions of years the Earth’s climate has alternated between about 100,000 years of ice age and approximately 10-15,000 years of a warm climate like we have today. The climate change is controlled by the Earth’s orbit in space, that is to say the Earth’s tilt and distance from the sun. But there are also other climatic shifts in the Earth’s history and what caused those?

Dramatic climate change of the past By analyzing the ice cores that are drilled through the more than three kilometer thick ice sheet in Greenland, scientists can obtain information about the temperature and climate going back around 140,000 years. The most pronounced climate shifts besides the end of the ice age is a series of climate changes during the ice age where the temperature suddenly rose 10-15 degrees in less than 10 years.

The climate change lasted perhaps 1000 years, then — bang — the temperature fell drastically and the climate changed again. This happened several times during the ice age and these climate shifts are called the Dansgaard-Oeschger events after the researchers who discovered and described them. Such a sudden, dramatic shift in climate from one state to another is called a tipping point.

However, the cause of the rapid climate change is not known and researchers have been unable to reproduce them in modern climate models. The climate in the balance "We have made a theoretical modeling of two different scenarios that might trigger climate change. We wanted to investigate if it could be determined whether there was an external factor which caused the climate change or whether the shift was due to an accumulation of small, chaotic fluctuations," explains Peter Ditlevsen, a climate researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute.

He explains that in one scenario the climate is like a seesaw that has tipped to one side. If sufficient weight is placed on the other side the seesaw will tip — the climate will change from one state to another. This could be, for example, an increase in the atmospheric content of CO2 triggering a shift in the climate. In the second scenario the climate is like a ball in a trench, which represents one climate state. The ball will be continuously pushed by chaos-dynamical fluctuations such as storms, heat waves,

heavy rainfall and the melting of ice sheets, which affect ocean currents and so on. The turmoil in the climate system may finally push the ball over into the other trench, which represents a different climate state. Peter Ditlevsen’s research shows that you can actually distinguish between the two scenarios and it was the chaos-dynamical fluctuations that were the triggering cause of the dramatic climate changes during the ice age. This means that they are very difficult to predict.

Warm future climate But what about today — what can happen to the climate of the future? "Today we have a different situation than during the ice age. The Earth has not had such a high CO2 content in the atmosphere since more than 15 million years ago, when the climate was very warm and alligators lived in England. So we have already started tilting the seesaw and at the same time the ball is perhaps getting kicked more and could jump over into the other trench.

This could mean that the climate might not just slowly gets warmer over the next 1000 years, but that major climate changes theoretically could happen within a few decades," estimates Peter Ditlevsen, but stresses that his research only deals with investigating the climate of the past and not predictions of the future climate.

Interesting2: There are a lot of things that can go into the ground water. The key is whether what goes in will readily biodegrade and if not can it harm you or the environment. In the first large study to track the fate of a wide range of antibiotics given to dairy cows, University of California (UC) Davis scientists found that the drugs routinely end up on the ground and in manure lagoons, but are mostly broken down before they reach groundwater.

Note that antibiotics are given to sick cows who are isolated from the regular milking herd until the antibiotic is absent from their system. Dairy cows may be found either in herds on dairy farms where dairy farmers own, manage, care for, and collect milk from them, or on commercial farms. Dairy cow herds range in size from small farms of fewer than five cows to large herds of about 20,000 with the average dairy farm having a few hundred.

Cows get sick just like any other animal or human. Sick cows are no good for milk production and it is not right to let them suffer either. So these cows will be treated with antibiotics. Health officials are worried that even if the sick cow is not producing milk for production, that the antibiotic will be released to the environment in urine or feces. When this happens, it may be transferred to the ground water and be ingested by others in their drinking water.

The antibiotic, if ingested in this way, may cause increased antibiotic resistance in disease causing bacteria. “What we found is that antibiotics can frequently be found at the manure affected surfaces of the dairy operation (such as corrals and manure flush lanes) but generally degrade in the top 12 inches of soil," said Thomas Harter, an expert on the effects of agriculture on groundwater quality and the Robert M. Hagan Chair for Water Management and Policy at UC Davis.

"A very small amount of certain antibiotics do travel into shallow groundwater. Our next task is to determine whether these particular antibiotics are further degraded before reaching domestic and public water wells." Antibiotics are commonly used in food animal production to treat illness, promote growth, and ward off disease. These drugs and their metabolites appear in animal wastes and can eventually enter ground and surface waters following the common practice of applying manure to agricultural fields.

Given that low levels of antibiotics can promote the development of microbial drug resistance, their presence in ground and surface waters constitutes an environmental health concern. This study provides the first comprehensive data set to assess and compare potential local impacts to groundwater from the wide variety of antibiotics in use on dairy farms.

The new UC Davis study looked at two large operations in the San Joaquin Valley, in a region with highly vulnerable groundwater due to its shallow depth and sandy soils. The two dairies had a total of more than 2,700 milking cows and 2,500 heifers.

Soil and water samples were collected from the ground surface under the animals; surfaces such as flush lanes, which carry waste; manure lagoons, where feces and urine are collected; farm fields where lagoon contents were spread for fertilizer; the first 12 inches of soil immediately below the surface of various sections in the dairy operation; and from groundwater 10 to 30 feet beneath the animal areas, adjacent to the lagoons, and beneath the manured fields.

Interesting3: An Indonesian volcano, inactive for four centuries, erupted again on Monday, pitching ash 1.5 miles into the air and sending nearby residents scurrying from their homes. Villages were emptying fast near Mount Sinabung on the north of Sumatra island, leaving behind only officials from the bureau of meteorology and the police. Short-haul flights skirting the volcano were delayed. Surono, head of Indonesia’s vulcanology center, told Reuters Monday’s eruption was more powerful than the first a day earlier.

"Earlier today was another eruption at 6.30 a.m., sending out smoke as high as two km, more or less," he told Reuters. A Reuters photographer said he saw plumes of smoke rising from the 2,460-meter volcano after the second eruption. Inactive since 1600, it had been rumbling for several days. "I saw some hot pieces of volcanic rock come out and burn trees in the area," he said. A smell of sulphur pervaded the air as residents moved out of their homes to temporary shelters.

Indonesia is on the so-called Pacific Rim of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and geological fault lines triggering frequent earthquakes around the Pacific Basin. The eruption triggered the highest red volcano alert. About 21,000 people had been evacuated from largely farming areas. Many fled to Medan, 30 miles, Indonesia’s third-largest city, northeast of the volcano. Officials said much of the movement was unnecessary.

"People have been evacuated from areas within a four-mile radius of the volcano," vulcanologist Surono said. "Beyond six km it is safe, but there has still been a lot of panic among people here who don’t understand that." He said it was impossible to know when the eruptions would stop, but it was unlikely volcanic dust would drift to neighboring countries.

"Here, it is 1/8 of an inch thick on the leaves of plants," he said. "It has the potential to damage people’s respiratory tracts, but in my lifetime of studying volcanoes I have never heard of anyone dying from inhaling volcanic ash."

Interesting4: Ever since the banning of the pesticide DDT, which weakened eggshells, bald eagles have been making a comeback in the Great Lakes region. In Michigan, however, that recovery has been lackluster, and researchers have found one potential reason why: flame retardants and pesticides in the blood of eagle nestlings. "(Eagles) have recovered mostly, but not to what was expected," said Marta Venier of Indiana University.

Venier is the lead author of a paper in the August issue of the journal Chemosphere, which describes a "snapshot" of what is in eagle nestlings’ blood in near lakes around Michigan. Venier and her colleagues were able to collect blood samples of bald eagle nestlings in the Great Lakes region by arduously climbing trees, bagging the large nestlings and carrying them carefully to the ground to draw a small sample of blood.

The birds were then returned to their nests angry, but unharmed. Tests on the blood show that the national symbol of the United States is ingesting flame retardants and pesticides via its food. The chemicals are originally from pesticides or foam padding for furniture and mattresses, which contain a variety of flame retardants.

Interesting5: China’s decision to slash export quotas of rare earth elements was a necessary step to protect the country’s environment, commerce minister Chen Deming said following criticism from Japanese officials. "Mass extraction of rare earth will cause great damage to the environment and that’s why China has tightened controls over rare earth production, exploration and trade," Chen was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying on Saturday.

China issued export quotas for 30,258 metric tones by the end of July, down 40 percent compared to last year, following a nationwide campaign to consolidate the sector and clamp down on illegal production. China has been steadily reducing export quotas since 2005 for rare earth elements, which consist of 17 metals used in crucial new green technologies like hybrid cars, wind turbines and superconductors, as well as in missile guidance systems and mobile phones.