Tag Archives: water resources

State of the Climate 2015

The American Meterological Society has released State of the Climate 2015. I would love to take a week and scrutinize each and every map and figure, but alas…

One thing that caught my eye was by far the coolest cover art I have ever seen on a scientific report! Seriously, have a look if you look at nothing else!

Another thing that caught my eye is the idea of an “accelerating hydrologic cycle”. I hadn’t heard that before, but I suppose it makes sense if there is more energy/heat being added to the Earth on balance.

Overlaying a general increase in the hydrologic cycle, the strong El Niño enhanced precipitation variability around the world. An above-normal rainy season led to major floods in Paraguay, Bolivia, and southern Brazil. In May, the United States recorded its all-time wettest month in its 121-year national record. Denmark and Norway reported their second and third wettest year on record, respectively, but globally soil moisture was below average, terrestrial groundwater storage was the lowest in the 14-year record, and areas in “severe” drought rose from 8% in 2014 to 14% in 2015. Drought conditions prevailed across many Caribbean island nations, Colombia, Venezuela, and northeast Brazil for most of the year. Several South Pacific countries also experienced drought. Lack of rainfall across Ethiopia led to its worst drought in decades and affected millions of people, while prolonged drought in South Africa severely affected agricultural production. Indian summer monsoon rainfall was just 86% of average. Extremely dry conditions in Indonesia resulted in intense and widespread fires during August–November that produced abundant carbonaceous aerosols, carbon monoxide, and ozone. Overall, emissions from tropical Asian biomass burning in 2015 were almost three times the 2001–14 average…

Records of observation-based global evaporation only span the satellite era. This has not prevented a handful of studies from attempting to disentangle the impact of climate change on trends in evaporation. Jung et al. (2010) suggested a reversal in the rise of evaporation since the late 1990s, which was later shown to be a temporary anomaly caused by ENSO (Miralles et al. 2014b). Nonetheless, these studies, together with more recent contributions (Zhang et al. 2015, 2016), have indicated the existence of a slight positive trend over the last few decades, in agreement with expectations derived from temperature trends and global greening, and the theory of an accelerating hydrological cycle…

The discussion of “biomass burning in Indonesia” caught my eye because it is one thing to read about it, and another to get a lungfull of it as my family did when living in Singapore in 2013. It was shocking – you looked out the window and could barely see the next high rise maybe 50 feet away. We had a newborn baby at the time and decided to go to the trouble of traveling interanationally with him to get him out of there. And it sounds like this year’s pollution was worse than what we experienced.

The tendency for increased drought in the tropics during El Niño leads to increased release of CO2 from increased tropical wildfires. In 2015, out-of-control agricultural biomass burning was exacerbated in Indonesia (see Sidebar 2.2) by ignition of the subsurface peat. These changes in terrestrial carbon storage likely contributed to the record 3.1 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory from 1 January 2015 to 1 January 2016. The previous highest annual increase of 2.9 ppm occurred in 1998. Biomass burning in Indonesia also led to regional increases in atmospheric carbon monoxide, aerosols, and tropospheric ozone in 2015 (Sidebar 2.2). Huijnen et al. 2016 suggest that the 2015 carbon emissions from the Indonesian fires were the largest since those during the El Niño year of 1997 (section 2g7; Fig. 2.60), although still only 25% of the 1997 emissions…

The 2015 Indonesia fire season began in August, and by September much of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Singapore, and parts of Malaysia and Thailand were covered in thick smoke, affecting the respiratory health of millions of people. Visibility was also reduced to less than 10% of normal over Borneo, and large parts of the region could not be seen from space, as was documented for previous fire events in that region (Marlier et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2004). Preliminary estimates suggest that greenhouse gas emissions from the burning (in CO2 equivalent) exceeded Japan’s 2013 emissions from fossil fuel combustion (Van der Werf 2015). Even after the worst of the 2015 Indonesian fires were no longer burning, the remaining pollution stretched halfway around the globe.

Comparing the emissions to those from a major industrial economy like Japan puts the staggering scale in perspective. Beyond the effect on human health and the climate, this is also a loss of diverse tropical ecosystems and fertile soils.

April 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

  • The U.S. government’s dominant ideology of free trade and globalization may have roots in U.S. government propaganda designed to provide hidden subsidies to Japan and Korea, our Cold War allies in Asia. And resulting financial deregulation in the 1990s may have been the beginning of the end for the U.S. empire.
  • A new study says that ice melting in Antarctica could double sea level rise projections in the long term. Meanwhile, in the short term, the drought in Southeast and South Asia is getting more and more severe.
  • Robert Paxton says Trump is pretty much a fascist. Although conditions are different and he doesn’t believe everything the fascists believed. Umberto Eco once said that fascists don’t believe anything, they will say anything and then what they do once in office has nothing to do with what they said.

3 most hopeful stories

  • Brookings has a new report on encouraging innovation in the water sector. A lot of it is just about charging more, and it should be fairly obvious why that is politically controversial even if it is the right thing economically. But the report did have an explanation of decoupling (p. 28) which I found helpful. Decoupling is an answer to the puzzle of how a utility can support conservation without losing its revenue base.
  • The U.S. Department of Energy says the technical potential of solar panels is to supply about 39% of all energy use. And electric cars may be about to come roaring back in a big way.
  • Better management of agricultural soil might be able to play a big role in carbon sequestration.

3 most interesting stories

Obama vs. Drought

Obama is worried enough about drought that he stopped whatever else he was doing and issued a presidential memorandum called Building National Capabilities for Long-Term Drought Resilience. It’s pretty vague but basically orders federal agencies to work together on resilience and support for new technologies.

Also, according the Wikipedia, the difference between an executive order and a presidential memorandum is…there is no difference. There are different kinds though. I like that there is one called a “memorandum of disapproval”. I can think of a few people I may send those to tomorrow.

the path to water innovation

Brookings has a new paper called The Path to Water Innovation. Here’s an excerpt:

The primary barriers to innovation are related to the way that the many layers of governmental agencies and water entities manage the nation’s water sector. Among the main management and policy barriers are (1) unrealistically low water pricing rates; (2) unnecessary regulatory restrictions; (3) the absence of regulatory incentives; (4) lack of access to capital and funding; (5) concerns about public health and possible risks associated with adopting new technologies with limited records; (6) the geographical and functional fragmentation of the industry; and (7) the long life expectancy, size, and complexity of most water systems. Although the last three factors are inherent to the water sector and hard to change, substantial policy reforms are feasible that could alter pricing, regulation, and finance in the water sector—all in ways that would encourage innovation.

We focus on several recommendations: (1) pricing policies that would both better align with the full economic cost of supplying water and decouple revenues from the volume of water supplied; (2) regulatory frameworks to create an open and flexible governance environment that is innovation friendly and encourages valuable new technologies; and (3) financing and funding mechanisms, such as a public benefit charge on water, that can help raise sufficient funds to implement innovative solutions. As has been demonstrated in the clean energy sector, implementation of these policy reforms would facilitate greater innovation in the water sector. In addition, we recommend the creation of a state-level water innovation vision that would identify state-specific innovation opportunities and policies, along with state innovation offices to help implement the vision across the many varied agencies and firms relevant to the sector. While we expect these state water innovation offices would become common, a small group of states with the greatest water challenges—such as California, Florida, and Texas, or a consortium of like-challenged states in a region such as the West—would begin the process. Based on the lessons learned, other states could follow.

March 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

Mekong drought

The El Nino drought in Southeast Asia appears to be getting worse.

While Thailand continues to block rivers feeding the Mekong and divert small volumes, Vietnam said it had recorded the lowest levels of the Mekong River since 1926.

Salinity in the Mekong Delta is a growing problem for Vietnam’s rice bowl and has been made worse by rising sea levels pushing salty water upstream.

Modelling conducted by the Mekong River Commission predicted salt intrusion on Vietnam’s main Mekong channel would reach up to 162 kilometres inland this year, which is nearing the Cambodian border.

A normal year would see salt intruding only 98 kilometres inland.

Thailand is hoping the rainy season comes in late May, but the current El Nino weather pattern has so far exceeded forecasts — meaning South-East Asia’s water resources and regional relations could be further tested.

 

February 2016 in Review

I’m going to try picking the three most frightening posts, three most hopeful posts, and three most interesting posts (that are not particularly frightening or hopeful) from February.

3 most frightening posts

3 most hopeful posts

3 most interesting posts

  • The U.S. election season certainly is getting interesting, although not really in a good way. ontheissues.org has a useful summary of where U.S. political candidates stand…what are the words I’m looking for…on the the issues. Nate Silver has an interesting online tool that lets you play around with how various demographic groups tend to vote.
  • Fire trucks don’t really have to be so big.
  • Titanium dioxide is the reason Oreo filling is so white.

drought in the Mekong basin

Here’s a Straits Times story on drought in the Mekong basin, focusing on increased pumping of river water for agriculture in Thailand.

The Mekong, which originates in the Tibetan plateau, travels for more than 4,000km through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam before draining into the South China Sea. It supports the world’s largest inland fishery, and is a vital source of water for agricultural communities in that area.

Yet it is also a contested resource. China’s hydroelectric dams to the north, as well as those being built in Laos, have been fingered for hampering the migration of fish and blocking the movement of nutrient-rich silt downstream.

Riverside communities suffering sudden, drastic fluctuations in water level they attribute to dam operations upstream fear Thailand’s plans will only make their lives more difficult.

So it’s fed by snowmelt in an age of climate change, then goes through several countries that are considering or in the process of building dams, then provides food and economic livelihood for a whole lot of people. It sounds like a dangerous recipe. Hopefully this year’s drought is El Nino related and will not recur for awhile.

By the way, shame on you Straits Times for using a picture of a drainage channel in Nakhon Sawan province, which is in the Chao Praya basin and nowhere near the Mekong. It doesn’t change the story but it just seems like lazy journalism, and when a journalist is lazy about one detail you happen to know about, you wonder what other details they might be lazy about that you don’t.

agent based modeling

Agent-based modeling is one of those things I want to play around with some day if I theoretically ever had some time.

Modelling domestic water demand: An agent based approach

The urban water system is a complex adaptive system consisting of technical, environmental and social components which interact with each other through time. As such, its investigation requires tools able to model the complete socio-technical system, complementing “infrastructure-centred” approaches. This paper presents a methodology for integrating two modelling tools, a social simulation model and an urban water management tool. An agent based model, the Urban Water Agents’ Behaviour, is developed to simulate the domestic water users’ behaviour in response to water demand management measures and is then coupled to the Urban Water Optioneering Tool to calculate the evolution of domestic water demand by simulating the use of water appliances. The proposed methodology is tested using, as a case study, a major period of drought in Athens, Greece. Results suggest that the coupling of the two models provides new functionality for water demand management scenarios assessment by water regulators and companies.