The consequences of global warming

[likearock 2]

I wonder if we'll all still be arguing about this when we are fighting over dwindling water supplies ala Mad Max...

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2139

Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes
Bolivia accounts for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it will soon be paying a disproportionately high price for a major consequence of global warming: the rapid loss of glaciers and a subsequent decline in vital water supplies.

by Carolyn Kormann

Earlier this year, the World Bank released yet another in a seemingly endless stream of reports by global institutions and universities chronicling the melting of the world’s cryosphere, or ice zone. This latest report concerned the glaciers in the Andes and revealed the following: Bolivia’s famed Chacaltaya glacier has lost 80 percent of its surface area since 1982, and Peruvian glaciers have lost more than one-fifth of their mass in the past 35 years, reducing by 12 percent the water flow to the country’s coastal region, home to 60 percent of Peru’s population.

And if warming trends continue, the study concluded, many of the Andes’ tropical glaciers will disappear within 20 years, not only threatening the water supplies of 77 million people in the region, but also reducing hydropower production, which accounts for roughly half of the electricity generated in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

Chances are that many of Bolivia’s Aymara Indians heard little or nothing about the report. But then the Aymara — who make up at least 25 percent of Bolivia’s population — don’t need the World Bank to tell them what they can see with their own eyes: that the great Andean ice caps are swiftly vanishing. Those who live near Bolivia’s capital city of La Paz need only glance up at Illimani, the 21,135-foot mountain that looms over the city, and watch as its ice fields fade away. Their loss adds to a growing unease among the Aymara — and many Bolivians — who realize that the loss of the country’s glaciers could have profound consequences.

The Aymara worship the ice-draped mountains as Achachilas, or life-giving deities, whose meltwater is vital to a region that suffers a five-month dry season and relies on agriculture to survive. Now, as greenhouse gas emissions heat the earth, the Aymara are bracing for a future in which glaciers no longer can be counted on to supply life-sustaining water.

In recent decades, 20,000-year-old glaciers in Bolivia have been retreating so fast that 80 percent of the ice will be gone before a child born today reaches adulthood. So far this melting has brought temporary increases in stream flow and contributed to massive Amazonian floods that forced several hundred thousand people from their homes last year.

But within the next decade, scientists predict that this torrent of meltwater will turn into a trickle as glaciers shrink, meaning that the age-old source of water during the dry season will steadily dwindle. Some highland farmers near La Paz already report decreased water supplies.

“Here you have precipitation only part of the year,” said French glaciologist Patrick Ginot as he stood at 16,500 feet next to Zongo glacier last year. “But it’s stored on the glacier and then melting throughout the year, and so you have water throughout the year. If you lose the glacier, you have no more storage.”

In effect, underdeveloped countries such as Bolivia are paying dearly for the massive energy consumption of the United States and the industrialized world. The so-called “carbon footprint” of the average Bolivian peasant is negligible, yet Bolivia’s poor are not only among the first to feel the harsh effects of climate change, but also are sorely lacking the resources to adapt to it.

“The grand question here is, who compensates,” says Oscar Paz, director of Bolivia’s National Climate Change Program, “because we are not culpable for climate change. It’s not fair that a country like Bolivia, which emits 0.02 percent of global greenhouse emissions, already has annual economic losses from the impacts of climate change equivalent to four percent of our GDP.” These losses, about $400 million, are largely due to the recent Amazonian floods.

Bolivia is one of many countries, nearly all in the developing world, facing looming water shortages from melting glaciers. Up and down South America’s western coast, Andean glaciers are the natural water towers to tens of millions of people, including those in the capital cities of Quito, Ecuador; Lima, Peru; Santiago, Chile; and La Paz.

Similarly, on the opposite side of the world, two billion people rely on meltwater from the Himalayas, which have lost 21 percent of their glacial mass since 1962. Himalayan glaciers are the main source of water for five major river systems whose flow irrigates much of China, India, and Pakistan’s rice and wheat and which also supplies much of the region’s drinking water. These river basins are the Ganges, with 407 million people; the Indus, with 178 million people; the Brahmaputra, with 118 million people; the Yangtze, with 368 million people; and the Yellow, with 147 million. Scientists predict that the Himalaya’s smaller glaciers will be gone by 2035 and that many large ones will disappear by century’s end, possibly leading to famine in a region whose population continues to soar.

“The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia,” Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, wrote last year.

Studies show glaciers melting at alarming rates throughout the world, yet unlike mountains in higher latitudes, ice melts year-round off tropical glaciers, which are found on peaks close to the equator and receive the sun’s strongest rays.

“Glaciers, especially tropical glaciers, are the canaries in the coal mine for our global climate system,” Lonnie Thompson, a preeminent glaciologist from Ohio State University, said during a climate change forum in Peru last summer.

Bolivia’s glaciated mountains are almost all in the Cordillera Real, or Royal Range, which soars from the northwest to southeast of La Paz and its adjacent slum city, El Alto, separating the arid, windswept expanse of the altiplano (high plain) from the dripping verdure of the Amazon. Among these remote spires is a glacier that has become the most glaring symbol of Bolivia’s rapidly transforming cryosphere.

Called Chacaltaya, which means “cold road” in Aymara, the glacier was once Bolivia’s only ski resort and the world’s highest. Now it is a barren, russet moraine studded with clues of its past: a lonely chunk of ice sticking out like an elongated diving board and a dirty white signpost with the fading graphic of a cartoonish condor on skis.

Looking down from Chacaltaya, the significance of its disappearance hits home. In the distance, the corrugated tin roofs of El Alto gleam across the endless altiplano, which stretches like a placid brown ocean to the horizon. Water for the city’s nearly one million residents comes mainly from the region’s largest reservoir, situated at the base of a glaciated mountain cluster called Tuni Condoriri. Since 1983, the cluster has lost 35 percent of its ice mass. Glaciers Tuni and Condoriri, the two largest, are projected to disappear by 2025 and 2040, respectively, if not sooner.

Even closer is the glacier Zongo, the source for 10 cascading hydropower plants that provide a quarter of Bolivia’s electricity. These days, Zongo is receding 33 feet a year. To the southwest stands Illimani, and though scientists have not monitored its glacial retreat, residents of nearby Palca say it is extreme.

The Andean Regional Project on Adaptation to Climate Change (PRAA) says that Palca and two other townships are most reliant on meltwater for survival and the most vulnerable rural districts to glacial loss. Pure geography, the areas’ extreme poverty, and the lack of efficient irrigation methods are all factors.

Some residents already report decreases in flow, in part due to a drastic change in rainfall patterns. Worried about imminent water shortages, many Palca residents are migrating to the city or to other countries, such as Argentina. One irony of this migration is that many are moving from Palca to El Alto in hopes of a better life, yet water there also is running dry — the combined result of skyrocketing demand and diminishing natural reserves. A few decades ago, El Alto was just a small barrio next to the airport. In less than 20 years, the population has grown from 200,000 to 900,000, without any urban planning.

Edson Ramirez, Bolivia’s leading glaciologist, published a study several years ago warning that water shortages would soon begin in El Alto and the outskirts of La Paz and worsen over the next decade. His team plotted a curve approximating when the water demand will surpass the amount that glaciers on Tuni and Condoriri will provide.

“Right now there is not a major problem in El Alto because the additional glacial melt has compensated for the demand, providing more water flow,” says Germán Aramayo, the vice minister of water resources. “But we’re going to begin to have problems.”

In 1998, Ramirez and a team of French scientists presented Bolivian officials with the first results of their glacier-monitoring work, warning of the rapid retreat that was to come. No one believed them. Now there is little time to adapt before major water shortages begin. Nor does the government have the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to pay for these projects, which include building dams and reservoirs.

Victor Rico, the director of the public water utility, EPSAS, blames this lack of foresight on the political and economic upheaval that has plagued Bolivia, embodied by the bloody “Water War” of 2000, a fight over water privatization. President Evo Morales’s socialist government only created EPSAS in January 2007, after nationalizing its predecessor.

“This situation of who’s going to be in charge of the water companies created major conflict,” says glaciologist Ramirez. “But they were not looking at the core problem — what are we going to do when we no longer have this water resource?”

Many Bolivian officials believe that industrialized nations, the source of most greenhouse gases, have an obligation to help countries such as Bolivia mitigate the impact of climate change. Bolivia is planning to launch pilot projects in La Paz, El Alto, and four nearby communities that would, among other things, build more storage tanks to capture water in the rainy season; the World Bank will provide most of the funding. But far greater investment is needed to build larger reservoirs, help farmers acquire efficient drip-irrigation technology, tap into underground aquifers, and rebuild municipal water systems, some of whose pipes leak half the water they carry.

Meanwhile, concern grows in places such as Palca.

“When I was a boy, the snows covered practically all these hills, but now year after year, they are melting away,” says Roger Seja, leader of the Palca farmers’ union. “It’s very sad. How do we find a solution if nature herself, the universe itself, brings us this?”

[mnealtx 0]

http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[billvon 3,072]

========================
Guardian.co.uk
Thursday 6 August 2009

Climate change melting US glaciers at faster rate, study finds

Climate change is melting America's glaciers at the fastest rate in recorded history, exposing the country to higher risks of drought and rising sea levels, a US government study of glaciers said today.

The long-running study of three "benchmark" glaciers in Alaska and Washington state by the US geological survey (USGS) indicated a sharp rise in the melt rate over the last 10 or 15 years.

Scientists see the three - Wolverine and Gulkana in Alaska and South Cascade in Washington - as representative of thousands of other glaciers in North America.

"The observations show that the melt rate has definitely increased over the past 10 or 15 years," said Ed Josberger, a USGS scientist. "This certainly is a very strong indicator that climate change is occurring and its effects on glaciers are virtually worldwide."
======================
World Glacier Monitoring Service

2006/07:

Mean annual specific mass balance (mm w.e.) -528

Number of positive/reported balances 19/82 (23%)
======================

[yourmomma 0]

Blogging does not equal science. When he posts the quantitative measurements that have led him to argue that galciation is indeed increasing in these places, he will then have taken a first step towards science. Until then here's a list of shades of red;
Blue, green, yellow, black, white.

[1969912 0]

Will it cause an increase in cocaine prices?

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[mnealtx 0]

And Hubbard continues to grow, nonetheless...

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[mnealtx 0]

Quote

Blogging does not equal science. When he posts the quantitative measurements that have led him to argue that galciation is indeed increasing in these places, he will then have taken a first step towards science. Until then here's a list of shades of red;
Blue, green, yellow, black, white.

Blather doesn't equal debate, either - got a point?

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[Amazon 7]

Quote

And Hubbard continues to grow, nonetheless...

As you raise the temps of the ocean... there is more evaporation and hence localized deposition in a few coastal glaciers.

BUT overall MOST of the worldwide glaciers are retreating... and melting. FAST..from one pole to the other. I have seen a lot of glaciers in a lifetime of climbing.

Quite a few of the glaciers in the Cascades and Rockies that I used to do ice climbs on... are gone.. or nearly gone to the point that there is no climbable ice left.

But you will never believe me.. what do I know.

[kallend 2,106]

I expect the US Geological Survey is in on the conspiracy too, along with NOAA and NASA.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lawrocket 3]

I find it interesting that tropical glaciers are the new fad. Considering that anthropogenic greehouse warming is predicted by consensus science to be by far the strongest in the poles, and considering the comparative dominance of sublimation in ablation of tropical glaciers compared to polar glaciers, what are they getting at?

AGW would be mild in the tropics, and would have a substantial probability of increasing air moisture (warm air holds more water (which is why humidity is relative (and true moisture content is seen with dew point))) and thus increasing precipitation. This would build glaciers above the snow levels. The snow level may rise but be offset with increased snowfall, decreased sublimation, etc.

These are possibilities assuming that proponents are correct. As much as the tropics can be interesting places for study considering the lack of seasonal changes, that lack gives greater weight to different physical processes that, like climate change, are not greatly understood. We've got plenty of knowledge about ablation and accretion, etc. The interaction of these physical forces - therein lies the lack of understanding.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

We've got plenty of knowledge about ablation and accretion, etc. The interaction of these physical forces - therein lies the lack of understanding.

I don't completely understand the process of food digestion, but I know that if I eat too much I will get fat.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lawrocket 3]

Quote

As you raise the temps of the ocean... there is more evaporation and hence localized deposition in a few coastal glaciers.

This would be the case in the event of a localized tall mountain range on the coast with a predominant onshore breeze in a tropical environment. However, inland glaciers such as Kilimanjaro are affect by humidity in the air and the updraft. A studay many years ago linked local deforestation with the retreat of Kilimanjaro's glacier - the theory that the deforestation led to lower humidity at the lower perimeter. Updrafts would not condense enough to allow sufficient accretion to stave off ablation.

While not proven, it is plausible - and would support the idea of localized climate change brought on by anthropogenic causes. There is a great deal of complexity, Jeanne, that is simply glossed over. "Glaciers retreating. Ergo melting. Therefore, warming. Global warming." It does not necessarily follow.

Exercise - check out the water levels of lakes. They rise and fall as they evaporate and get replenished. Glaciers are frozen lakes. Like lakes they flow. Ever see a basin dry up? Same thing.

Glaciers sublimate - especially in the tropics. They also can melt. If the snowfall does not match ablation, they retreat. A retreating glacier does not necessarily mean increased melting! Either ablate or accrete. Less accretion means more ablation.

[Reply]BUT overall MOST of the worldwide glaciers are retreating... and melting.

[billvon 3,072]

>I find it interesting that tropical glaciers are the new fad.

Actually all the glaciers have been "the fad."

>AGW would be mild in the tropics, and would have a substantial
>probability of increasing air moisture (warm air holds more water (which is
>why humidity is relative (and true moisture content is seen with dew
>point))) and thus increasing precipitation.

True in some places, not in others. Here in Socal, for example, rising temperatures will result in less rainfall, since land warms up faster than water does.

Hence, what you would expect to see is most glaciers to be receding, with a few in stasis (primarily ocean terminus glaciers) and a few increasing in mass. Which is what we're seeing.

[lawrocket 3]

Quote

Quote

We've got plenty of knowledge about ablation and accretion, etc. The interaction of these physical forces - therein lies the lack of understanding.

I don't completely understand the process of food digestion, but I know that if I eat too much I will get fat.

I also know that if I were to, say, break my legs, I could likely get fat.

Measuring calories in, I could likely eat fewer calories than when I had two pristine femurs. But since my calories out would be much less, it would not be the case that I am fat because I increased my calorie intake.

The balance can be tilted in two ways: (1) increase calories in; or (2) decrease calories out.

This is why the climate equation has energy in on the left and energy out on the right to get to equilibrium.

The body mass equation has calories in on the left and calories out of the right.

"Get some exercise you fat fuck!"
"Quit eating all those pork rinds you fat fuck."

Why, digestive processes are easy to point to. Weight gain does not necessarily implicate a change in that digestive equilibrium. Food in need not change to experience profound effects on weight.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

Quote

Quote

We've got plenty of knowledge about ablation and accretion, etc. The interaction of these physical forces - therein lies the lack of understanding.

I don't completely understand the process of food digestion, but I know that if I eat too much I will get fat.

I also know that if I were to, say, break my legs, I could likely get fat.

Measuring calories in, I could likely eat fewer calories than when I had two pristine femurs. But since my calories out would be much less, it would not be the case that I am fat because I increased my calorie intake.

The balance can be tilted in two ways: (1) increase calories in; or (2) decrease calories out.

This is why the climate equation has energy in on the left and energy out on the right to get to equilibrium.

The body mass equation has calories in on the left and calories out of the right.

"Get some exercise you fat fuck!"
"Quit eating all those pork rinds you fat fuck."

Why, digestive processes are easy to point to. Weight gain does not necessarily implicate a change in that digestive equilibrium. Food in need not change to experience profound effects on weight.

Who said it did? "Too much" is simply too much for the circumstances.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[lawrocket 3]

So we've got too much heat energy for the ciircumstances?
John - you've got yourself stuck.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

So we've got too much heat energy for the ciircumstances?
John - you've got yourself stuck.

No, I am quite skinny and can get out of my chair just fine.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[nerdgirl 0]

Quote

I wonder if we'll all still be arguing about this when we are fighting over dwindling water supplies ala Mad Max...

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2139

Retreat of Andean Glaciers Foretells Global Water Woes

Thanks for posting that. It’s a neat, short piece, imo.

Even if one completely disregards the anthropogenic climate change explanation, i.e., put the causal force aside for a moment, glaciers around the world are receding at unprecedented rates. (Yes, there are rare exceptions; that study is looking at the top of the glaciers not the terminus (bottom) btw.)

There are likely to be consequences of receding glaciers like the ones outlined in the article relating to water shortages, which particularly affect agricultural-intensive and developing nations.

I’m more familiar with the situation in the Himalayas, in which melting glaciers are filling in behind the ‘receded’ glacier creating moraine lakes that have already produced outburst floods. The Tibetan Zhangzhangbo glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) caused extensive infrastructural damage and nearly US$3M in losses. The Luggye Tso GLOF in Bhutan in 1994 damaged agricultural land, destroyed crops, and resulted in lives lost. A GLOF from the newly formed Dig Tsho glacial lake in Nepal destroyed 14 bridges and caused US$1.5M worth of damage was caused to the nearly completed Namche Small Hydropower Plant.

So there are monetize-able losses due to receding glaciers.

If receding glaciers are the result of purely natural forces, then it’s just bad luck of geography.

Regardless of the cause, I thankful that for the accident of geographical luck that we have the Great Lakes and all that fresh water.

/Marg

Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters.
Tibetan Buddhist saying

[likearock 2]

Quote

http://www.iceagenow.com/List_of_Expanding_Glaciers.htm

As someone else already said, it would be nice to see a little more hard data to go along with his conclusions.

But even if we concede that some glaciers are increasing in size, how does that contradict the proponents of global warming? The science does not say that all parts of the globe will be uniformly warmed. Instead, it says that the effect will be for some portions to become abnormally warmer while others will become colder. But that sucks for people in those warmer regions who depend on glaciers for their drinking water.

[mnealtx 0]

I can't reach the nasa page listed (url "http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/himalayan-warming.html"]Clicky[/url]), but here's a bit of interesting news via wattsupwiththat.com - emphasis mine:

Quote

A new modeling study from NASA confirms that when tiny air pollution particles we commonly call soot – also known as black carbon – travel along wind currents from densely populated south Asian cities and accumulate over a climate hotspot called the Tibetan Plateau, the result may be anything but inconsequential.

In fact, the new research, by NASA’s William Lau and collaborators, reinforces with detailed numerical analysis what earlier studies suggest: that soot and dust contribute as much (or more) to atmospheric warming in the Himalayas as greenhouse gases. This warming fuels the melting of glaciers and could threaten fresh water resources in a region that is home to more than a billion people.

Lau explored the causes of rapid melting, which occurs primarily in the western Tibetan Plateau, beginning each year in April and extending through early fall. The brisk melting coincides with the time when concentrations of aerosols like soot and dust transported from places like India and Nepal are most dense in the atmosphere.
“Over areas of the Himalayas, the rate of warming is more than five times faster than warming globally,” said William Lau, head of atmospheric sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Based on the differences it’s not difficult to conclude that greenhouse gases are not the sole agents of change in this region. There’s a localized phenomenon at play.”

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

I can't reach the nasa page listed (url "http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/himalayan-warming.html"]Clicky[/url]), but here's a bit of interesting news via wattsupwiththat.com - emphasis mine:

Quote

A new modeling study from NASA confirms that when tiny air pollution particles we commonly call soot – also known as black carbon – travel along wind currents from densely populated south Asian cities and accumulate over a climate hotspot called the Tibetan Plateau, the result may be anything but inconsequential.

In fact, the new research, by NASA’s William Lau and collaborators, reinforces with detailed numerical analysis what earlier studies suggest: that soot and dust contribute as much (or more) to atmospheric warming in the Himalayas as greenhouse gases. This warming fuels the melting of glaciers and could threaten fresh water resources in a region that is home to more than a billion people.

Lau explored the causes of rapid melting, which occurs primarily in the western Tibetan Plateau, beginning each year in April and extending through early fall. The brisk melting coincides with the time when concentrations of aerosols like soot and dust transported from places like India and Nepal are most dense in the atmosphere.
“Over areas of the Himalayas, the rate of warming is more than five times faster than warming globally,” said William Lau, head of atmospheric sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Based on the differences it’s not difficult to conclude that greenhouse gases are not the sole agents of change in this region. There’s a localized phenomenon at play.”

OK, carbon from burning fossil fuels is a doubly bad actor.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[mnealtx 0]

Certainly looks that way.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[lawrocket 3]

Black carbon is one of those substances that does give its own whammy. While many aerosols have a tendency to increase albedo, black carbon actually decreases it - absorbing heat and light energy instead of reflecting it. It also isn't a great aerosol for condensing water vapor.

Yes - double whammy.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kallend 2,106]

Quote

Black carbon is one of those substances that does give its own whammy. While many aerosols have a tendency to increase albedo, black carbon actually decreases it - absorbing heat and light energy instead of reflecting it. It also isn't a great aerosol for condensing water vapor.

Yes - double whammy.

When I was a kid and coal fires were common (OK, back in the stone age) I can recall people putting chimney soot on snow to melt it. (Soot was free, salt cost money).

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

Quote

I can recall people putting chimney soot on snow to melt it.

I saw something rather amusing today. The city where I live put up a radar device which flashes your speed as you approach it (I have no idea if it is also a photo radar device, I am not dumb enough to speed by this device), but what was funny that it is powered by solar panels and ROFLMAO ... the solar panel was covered in snow so the radar device was not working today. Now don't get me wrong I think we should use more solar and wind energy to supplement existing power grids, but wind can not power an entire city and what good are your solar panels when they are covered by snow? Not everyone has the luxury of being powered by Hydro. Coal is a necessary evil. I say go Nuclear and eliminate the dirty coal, but the granola eco freaks have a ape shit when you talk nuclear. It's as if the eco freaks want us all to live in the stone age. Fine and dandy if you live in a warm climate, but it is just not going to happen when you live up north.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over