WEEKLY WATER NEWS

DataStreme WES Week Eleven: 7-11 April 2008

Water in the News:

• (Thurs.) South American flooding -- Comparison of images made from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Terra satellite at the start of February and two months later at the start of April show the effects of flooding from recent torrential rain along the northwest coast of Peru. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• (Thurs.) Predicting cholera outbreaks from space -- A professor from the University of Maryland recently reported that the outbreak of cholera epidemics around the world could be predicted using satellite-based sensors because of the relationship that has been determined between the epidemics and geophysical factors that include sea surface temperature and sea surface height. [EurekAlert!]
• (Thurs.) Floodplain development is decried -- A geologist at Washington University at St. Louis recently warned that residents in the Mississippi Valley could face widespread flood damage this spring from record snow and rain events that would parallel the monumental flood damage in 1993 because lessons from this event 15 years ago were not learned and improved floodplain management has been ignored. [Washington University at St. Louis]
• (Thurs.) Drought leads to water shortages in Israel -- Israeli water managers may be faced with extracting more drinking water from depleted aquifers at the same time as they will have to stop pumping water from the Sea of Galilee due to water shortages attributed to a major drought and increased demand. [US Water News Online]
• (Thurs.) Water resources become scarce in northern China -- News reports indicate that several northern Chinese provinces are competing over increasingly scarce water resources as a drought continues. [US Water News Online]
• (Tues.) African drought -- An image of the vegetation anomaly generated for a two-week span in March from data collected by the MODIS instrument on NASA's Terra satellite reveals the drought conditions that have developed across the African nation of Ethiopia. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• (Tues.) Vessel sewage discharge regulation comments are invited -- The NOAA’s Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary is seeking public input before the end of May 2008 on a proposal to regulate the discharge of sewage and graywater from cruise ships and container ships into sanctuary waters offshore of southern California. [NOAA News]
• (Tues.) Combating greenhouse gas release in wastewater treatment -- Soil scientists at Germany's Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research have developed a mathematical model to determine optimum conditions for wastewater treatment that they envision could be used to reduce the amount of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, released from wastewater. [Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres]
• (Tues.) Report card on Chesapeake Bay remains poor -- Researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and their colleagues from other institutions recently gave the ecosystem health of Chesapeake Bay a grade of C-minus in 2007, which was slightly better than the D+ in 2006, but well below what was deemed necessary for a healthy estuary. [EurekAlert!]
• (Tues.) Drugs in water supply gets increased attention -- A recent investigation has shown that trace amounts of a wide variety of pharmaceuticals have been detected in the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas. In an attempt to save money and water, a Colorado lawmaker is proposing a bill that would require pharmacies to accept unused medications from customers rather than seeing the drugs enter the wastewater system and appear later in drinking water. [US Water News Online] The city of Phoenix, AZ announced that it will begin testing its water supply for trace amounts of pharmaceuticals. [US Water News Online]
• (Tues.) Links between agriculture and environmental degradation probed -- Researchers from Sweden's Stockholm University and Canada's McGill University claim that current agricultural and land-use practices could lead to major disruptions of the water flow in the soil and through evapotranspiration around the world, resulting in sudden and terrible consequences in the planetary ecosystem. [EurekAlert!]
• (Tues.) Water quality could be protected during ethanol production -- A group of scientists recently provided a list of recommendations for advanced conservation measures that would minimize the losses of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients from corn being grown for ethanol production across the nation, thereby reducing the negative effects upon water quality, including the development of "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico. [Soils Science Society of America]
• (Tues.) No cosmic links to climate change seen -- Research at the United Kingdom's University of Lancaster and Durham University indicates that no causal relationship exists between cosmic ray fluctuations, low cloud formation and climate change. [EurekAlert!]
• Spring snowstorm track across the Upper Midwest -- A MODIS image obtained from NASA's Aqua satellite early last week shows the snow cover across the Plains and the Upper Midwest that followed the passage of a spring storm system. [NASA Earth Observatory] [Editor's note: Several of the rivers, notably the Mississippi, Minnesota and Missouri Rivers can be seen cutting through the region covered by snow, while several of Minnesota's larger lakes remained frozen with snow cover. EJH]
• Recent tornado outbreak seen from above -- Early last week, a spring storm traveling across the Plains produced severe thunderstorms that spawned tornadoes and generated strong winds and large hail. A visible image from NOAA's GOES satellite shows the tops of the thunderstorm clouds responsible for the severe weather. [NASA Earth Observatory]
  In addition to the severe weather, the thunderstorms also produced torrential rain that caused flooding. Images processed from data collected by NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite shows rainfall rates across the Ozark Plateau of Arkansas and Missouri, as well as accumulated precipitation totals across the region over an eight-day span. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Sediment swirls seen in Gulf of Alaska -- An image obtained from the MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite in mid-March shows a swirl of tan and turquoise colors in the waters of the Gulf of Alaska and Prince William Sound, indicating the sediment that was brought to the surface by strong winds associated with storms along the coast of south central Alaska. [NASA Earth Observatory]
• Study of ocean noise starts in a marine sanctuary -- Researchers have deployed listening devices in the waters of NOAA's Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Massachusetts to record the variety of sounds from whales, fish and human activity in an effort to develop a global monitoring network designed to protect marine mammals and fish from increased sound levels from anthropogenic sources. [Northeast Fisheries Science Center]
• Searching for active volcanoes on Venus -- Scientists analyzing data obtained from the European Space Agency's Venus Express are attempting to determine if the highly variable quantities of sulfur dioxide gas in the upper atmosphere of Venus provide sufficient evidence for active volcanoes on the planet, which could affect the Venusian climate. [ESA]
• Bacteria seen as a source of laughing gas, another greenhouse gas -- A scientist from the United Kingdom's University of East Anglia warns that bacteria could be responsible for producing "nitrous oxide, or laughing gas" from waste treatment plants and agriculture at an increasing rate. According to this scientist, nitrous oxide has 300 times the potential for warming than carbon dioxide. [EurekAlert!]
• Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, including drought, floods, and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
• Global Water News Watch -- Other water news sources can be obtained through the SAHRA Project at the University of Arizona [SAHRA Project]
• Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Concept of the Week: Desertification

Desertification is one of the world's most pressing environmental issues, threatening the existence of more than a billion people who depend on the land for survival. In 1992, the United Nation's Conference on Environment and Development defined desertification as "land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climate variations and human activities." Through desertification, arable land is transformed into desert-like land, greatly reducing or eliminating the land's capacity to produce food. Desertification's impact on people dependent on subsistence farming and herding is food insecurity. Often, their only option to avoid famine is to migrate to urban areas.

According to U.N. estimates, desertification affects about 130 million hectares (320 million acres) of land worldwide, equivalent to the combined areas of France, Italy, and Spain. Portions of some 110 nations are impacted, including parts of the North American Great Plains, the Pampas of South America, the steppes of Asia, the Australia's "outback," and the edges of the Mediterranean. But by far the most widespread and severe impact is in Africa, where two-thirds of the continent's land area is desert or dry land. Almost three-quarters of Africa's dry-land agricultural area is degraded to some extent. Desertification is a very serious problem in Sub-Saharan Africa with its considerable year-to-year variability in seasonal rainfall and frequent long-term droughts (described on pages 83-84 of the DataStreme WES Textbook).

The systems approach is valuable in understanding desertification in that the process involves interactions of climate, Earth's land surface, the water cycle, and human activity. Desertification of dry lands accelerates during prolonged drought. Climate change can alter the frequency, duration, and intensity of drought and thereby contribute to soil desiccation. Although climate change may play an important role in desertification, a key factor is human mismanagement of the soil resource. Poverty and subsistence agriculture drive people to over-cultivate the land, quickly exhausting the soil's fertility. Overgrazing by livestock and deforestation exacerbate an already bad situation by removing the protective vegetative cover and exposing the topsoil to erosion by wind and running water. Winds can transport fine topsoil thousands of kilometers and sandstorms strip the leaves from plants and bury crops under dunes.

Land mismanagement also impacts the local climate and water budget, speeding up desertification. Without a vegetative cover, soil surface temperatures rise, accelerating evaporation of water, depletion of soil moisture, and build up of salts in the soil. Less soil moisture means that more of the available heat is used for raising the air temperature through conduction and convection (i.e., sensible heating). In this way heat stress combines with moisture stress to cut into crop yields.

Concept of the Week: Questions

1. Through desertification, crop productivity [(declines) (increases)].
2. Human mismanagement of the soil resource [(is) (is not)] a key factor in desertification.

Historical Events:

• 7 April 1952...The breakup of ice along the Missouri River and its tributaries at Bismarck, ND, and above, and on the Big Sioux, created the worst flood conditions in that area in thirty years. U.S. Coast Guard personnel rendered assistance in that major disaster, evacuating stranded persons and providing other needed assistance. (US Coast Guard Historians Office)
• 8-10 April 1958...A global 48-hour precipitation record was established at Aurere, La Reunion Island , when 97.1 in. of rain from a tropical cyclone fell on the Indian Ocean island. (The Weather Doctor)
• 8-14 April 1984...Intense Tropical Cyclone Kaimsy crossed and re-crossed the northern portion of Madagascar. Winds exceeding 112 mph destroyed 80 percent of Antseranana and Mahajanga. Rainfall from this system reached 27.99 in. Eighty-two people were killed and 100,000 were made homeless. Damage was greater than 150 million US dollars. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar) (The Weather Doctor)
• 9 April 1977...A storm brought 15.50 in. of rain to Jolo, WV in thirty hours. (The Weather Channel)
• 9-13 April 1991...A 3-mile long ice jam on the St. Johns River in Maine broke up, resulting in a 30-foot wall of ice. The ice crushed cars and destroyed bridges and houses. In Allagash, the sight was described as "surreal" -- "like walking on the moon." (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 9 April 2000...A record April snowfall of 14.6 in. shut down Montreal, Quebec. Snow removal contracts had ended on 1 April. (The Weather Doctor)
• 10 April 1877...The first of two great coastal storms struck the Virginia and North Carolina coasts. The Oregon Inlet was widened by three-quarters of a mile. The "entire topography of country is materially altered," according to a description of the altering of sand dunes at Cape Hatteras, NC. (Intellicast)
• 10 April 1996...A strong coastal storm gave New England is second heavy snowfall in only 3 days. North Foster, RI was buried under 21.5 inches of snow, while Jaffery, NH measured 21 inches. Other heavy totals included 27.4 inches on Mount Washington, NH, 20.1 inches at Ashburnham, MA, 17 inches at Windham, CT, and 12.6 inches at Brookhaven, NY. Tree damage was extensive due the heavy, wet nature of the snow. This storm took care of the remaining seasonal snowfall records as records were exceeded at the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, MA, Worcester, MA, Concord, NH, and Bridgeport, CT. Many locations in the northeast now exceeded 120 inches for the winter season, with a few locations over 150 inches, making the winter of 1995-96 without question the snowiest winter on record for a large part of the Northeast. (Intellicast)
• 10 April 1998...Northeast winds at 40 mph on the 9^th and 10^th combined with high levels of Lake Erie produced waves to 14 feet along the lakeshore in Ottawa and Sandusky Counties in Ohio. Much damage resulted, along with the destruction of 10 houses. Bulldozers were needed to clear the debris from roads. Downtown Port Clinton streets were flooded. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
• 11-14 April 1984...Ice from an ice storm accumulated up to 6 inches thick on power lines in St John's, Newfoundland. Power outages left 200,000 residents of Avalon Peninsula in the dark and cold. (The Weather Doctor)
• 11 April 1987...Ten days of flooding in the northeastern U.S. finally came to an end. Damage from flooding due to rain and snowmelt ran into the billions of dollars. The collapse of the New York State Thruway Bridge over Schoharie Creek claimed ten lives. (Storm Data)
• 12 April 1994...While hiking in a nearly dry creek near Laie, HI, a group of Boy Scouts was surprised by a rapid 2 to 4 foot rise in water. One boy was swept away by the flash flood. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)

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Prepared by AMS DataStreme WES Central Staff and Edward J. Hopkins, Ph.D., email hopkins@meteor.wisc.edu
ã Copyright, 2008, The American Meteorological Society.