NASA to carry out research on climate in Bangladesh

NASA to carry out research on climate in Bangladesh

Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha . Dhaka

The National Aeronautic and Space Administration, the US space research centre, is keen to carry out research on weather and climate in Bangladesh, the most vulnerable country to climate change.
The visiting chief scientist of Earth Science Division of NASA, Hal Maring, expressed this when she called on the environment and forest minister, Hasan Mahmud, at the latter’s secretariat office in Dhaka Thursday.
Maring said the NASA would conduct the multidisciplinary research on Bangladesh’s environment and climate change under its South and South East Asia Composition, Cloud, Climate Coupling Regional Study Programme.
Over 250 scientists of this region, using the biggest aircraft of NASA, would take part in the research in the Asia-Pacific region’s sky including Bangladesh scheduled to begin from August and September next, the NASA scientist said.
She said information and data, to be collected from this research, would help efficient weather forecasting and agriculture research activities of Bangladesh which at risk of climatic disorders including cyclone, floods and tidal surge.
Lauding the NASA’s research initiative, Hasan said Bangladesh would be benefited enormously as the research on environment and climate change would help exchange information and data among the member states of this region.

Source:- http://newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2012-04-13&nid=7147

Minister praises the value of early warning systems at United Nations General Assembly debate on Disaster Risk Reduction

Media release

13 April 2012

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr today said the value of investing in regional Tsunami early warning systems was confirmed following this week's earthquakes off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Senator Carr said Australia's regional neighbours received an Indian Ocean wide tsunami warning just seven minutes after the 8.5 magnitude earthquake occurred at 6:38pm Australian Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday 11 April.

"Early warning systems are critical to saving lives and to reducing the risks and costs of natural disasters caused by tsunamis.

"Our region gets more than its share of natural disasters and early warning systems are now agreed as essential to limiting their impacts."

Senator Carr was speaking at a United Nations General Assembly debate on Disaster Risk Reduction where he praised the partnership between Australia and Indonesia in managing the risk of disasters in the region.

"It was a great relief to all Australians and our regional neighbours when the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre issued a nil tsunami threat for Australia within 24 minutes of the earthquake.

"I am advised by the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre, which is operated by Geoscience Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology that all warnings issued as part of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System were delivered within normal operational timeframes.

"Following the devastating tsunamis in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and in Japan last year, the international community has become acutely aware of the value of investing in disaster risk reduction.

"Australia is a strong supporter of international efforts to reduce the risk that natural disasters pose in developing nations – particularly countries in our region.

"In May 2005, following the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Australian Government committed $69.8 million over four years (2005-09), to the Australian Tsunami Warning System initiative.

"This initiative:

• Provides a comprehensive tsunami warning system for Australia
• Supports establishment of an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system
• Helps facilitate a tsunami warning system for the South West Pacific

"Through the Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction, the Australian aid program has provided support to Indonesia's Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) and Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMMKG) to assist in quickly estimating the impact of earthquakes.

"In eastern Indonesia, Australia is also supporting a program with funding of $1 million to assist communities to identify priorities for disaster risk reduction through mapping the parts of their community that are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters using a free 'wiki-map'.

"And in the Pacific, Australia has upgraded equipment at monitoring stations in 12 countries to strengthen tsunami warning capacity and measure sea level changes," Senator Carr said.

Media enquiries

• Minister's office: (02) 6277 7500
• DFAT Media Liaison: (02) 6261 1555

Source:- http://www.foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2012/bc_mr_120413.html

Scientists pin down historic sea level rise

Scientists pin down historic sea level rise

Reuters . London

The collapse of an ice sheet in Antarctica up to 14,650 years ago might have caused sea levels to rise between 14 and 18 metres, a study showed on Wednesday, data which could help make more accurate climate change predictions.
The melting of polar ice could contribute to long-term sea level rise, threatening the lives of millions, scientists say.
Sea levels have increased on average about 18 centimetres since 1900 and rapid global warming will accelerate the pace of the increase, experts say, putting coastlines at risk and forcing low-lying cities to build costly sea defences.
Scientists last month said that thinning glaciers and ice caps were pushing up sea levels by 1.5 millimetres a year, and experts forecast an increase of as much as two meters by 2100.
A very rapid sea level rise is thought to have occurred 14,650 years ago but details about the event have been unclear.
Some past sea level records have suggested glacier melt led to a 20 metre increase in less than 500 years.
But uncertainty lingered about the source of the melt, its force and its link to the changes in climate.
A team of scientists, including researchers from France’s Aix-Marseille University and the University of Tokyo, claim to have solved the mystery which may shed light on climate change.
They reconstructed sea level changes by analyzing samples of coral collected from reefs in Tahiti and dated them to determine the extent and timing of the sea level rise.
‘Our results ... reveal that the increase in sea level in Tahiti was between 12 and 22 meters, with a most probable value between 14 and 18 metres, establishing a significant melt-water contribution from the southern hemisphere,’ said the authors of the study published in the journal Nature.
This implies the rate of sea level rise was more than 40 millimetres a year, they said.
A UN climate panel on Wednesday said all nations will be vulnerable to the expected increase in heat waves, intense rains, floods and a probably rise in the intensity of droughts.

Source:- http://newagebd.com/detail.php?date=2012-04-02&nid=5981

Indo-French satellite to boost climate insight

Indo-French satellite to boost climate insight

Papri Sri Raman

12 October 2011 | EN

The Indo-French Megha-Tropiques satellite will boost tropical climate climate data.

CNES

[CHENNAI] A newly launched Indo-French satellite will help scrutinise weather over the tropics in detail and permit better understanding of the monsoon, cyclones and floods.

The one-tonne ‘Megha-Tropiques’ (Megha means cloud in Sanskrit) was launched along with three other smaller satellites on an Indian rocket ‘Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle’ this week (12 October) from the Indian space port of Sriharikota, an island in the Bay of Bengal, 90 kilometres off Chennai.

The new satellites would help study greenhouse gases, vegetation and land use, and help locate ships at sea.

Megha-Tropiques, perched at an angle of 20 degrees, 867 kilometres above the earth, and orbiting the earth five times daily in a north-south direction, will gather data on clouds including ice formation, water vapour and solar radiation, in a three-year experimental mission.

"It opens up a new era of atmospheric research in the tropical system," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K. Radhakrishnan said after the nationally televised launch. "This mission will provide a lot of information about the tropical regions and how it contributes to global weather."

The French National Space Centre (CNES) and ISRO jointly developed the instrument for ‘Microwave Analysis and Detection of Rain and Atmospheric Structures’ to study clouds in detail, including ice formation.

CNES separately developed the Sondeur Atmosphérique du Profil d'Humidité Intertropicale par Radiométrie (SAPHIR) payload to study water vapour, and Scanner for Radiation Budget Measurement (SCARAB) to study radiation.

"It is part of a constellation of the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM), an international cooperative mission to track precipitation, such as rainfall and snowfall, around the world," a senior scientist from CNES said after the launch. The GPM is run by the National Aeronautics and Space Agency of the United States and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency.

According to CNES, the data would help scientists understand the processes leading to dramatic weather events affecting the tropical countries, such as hurricanes, systems producing heavy rainfall and processes governing monsoon variability or droughts.

Extreme events such as the El Nino of 1997-98, repeated droughts across parts of Africa, and the Atlantic hurricanes are linked to changing climate trends and point to the importance of studying tropical weather systems in the context of climate change, CNES said.

Roddam Narasimha, chairman from the Indian scientific group for Megha-Tropiques, told the daily, 'The Hindu', that scientists worldwide have not been able to "cash in on the predictability" of tropical weather because global prediction models are not as efficient over the tropics as with higher latitudes.

Source:- http://www.scidev.net/en/south-asia/news/indo-french-satellite-to-boost-climate-insight.html

Climate Conversations - Preparing for drought can pay off as climate impacts take hold

By Esther Williams | Yesterday at 4:44 PM | Comments ( 0 )

Internally displaced Somali women and their children camp outside their makeshift shelter in the Somali capital of Mogadishu on August 6, 2011. REUTERS/Ismail Taxta

By Esther Williams

A humanitarian emergency continues to persist across the Horn of Africa. Farmlands are brown and months of blazing sunshine have dried up lakes, rivers and pasture as the worst drought in 60 years weighs on parts of the region.

More than 12 million people are affected by severe food shortages and aid agencies like Tearfund are responding with life-saving assistance. Over 40,000 people across the region are receiving clean water, non-food items, and veterinary support for their animals as part of the aid agency’s efforts.

In the midst of a food crisis, meeting people’s immediate needs is crucial. However, as questions are asked as to why this part of world is regularly hit by food shortages, it is vital to highlight that the situation in East Africa had been forecast months before the region began to receive high profile media attention and before donors sat up and paid attention.

The reality is that governments are wedded to emergency response and remain painfully slow to invest in disaster risk reduction strategies. We know which parts of the world are most disaster-prone and that lives can be saved through preventative measures.

GAME CHANGER

We know that climate change is a game-changer and, unless rapid action is taken to curb it, the odds are these life-threatening weather events will only increase. So it’s shameful that we continue to stick plasters on gaping wounds.

Read in detail at :- http://cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=22347

Survey of environmental history

The human-environment interaction goes back to the remotest possible times in the history of humanity. Sometimes, it is seen as a manifestation of a struggle between the two. There have also been times when this relationship took the form of respectable coexistence. While the history of humanity of the last several millennia is noted for its constant (if not consistent) progress in different walks of life, the mysteries of nature have often proved to be quite tempting to be solved by human thinking and actions.

It is, therefore, not without reason that theOxford English Dictionary gives the meaning of ‘environment' as “the totality of the physical conditions in which a human society lives,” and of ‘ecology' as “the branch of knowledge that deals with the interaction of humans with their environment.” In the emerging field of historical disaster studies looking into the adaptability and agency of pre-industrial societies on a global scale, the special issue of The Medieval History Journal (Vol. 10, 2007) titled ‘Coping with Natural Disasters in Pre-Industrial Societies' brought to the fore the ideas that “neither disasters themselves nor the conditions that give rise to them are undeniably natural”; that “‘natural disaster' is a convenience term that amounts to a misnomer”; and that “disasters occur at the intersection of nature and culture and illustrate, often dramatically, the mutuality of each in the constitution of the other.”

Read in detail at :- http://cdrn.org.in/show.detail.asp?id=22348