New NASA data in Eos today shows remarkable melting in Greenland:
A new NASA-supported study reports that 2007 marked an overall rise in the melting trend over the entire Greenland ice sheet and, remarkably, melting in high-altitude areas was greater than ever at 150 percent more than average. In fact, the amount of snow that has melted this year over Greenland could cover the surface size of the U.S. more than twice.
Today’s paper of the day is Regional climate change over eastern Amazonia caused by pasture and soybean cropland expansion:
Field observations and numerical studies revealed that large scale deforestation in Amazonia could alter the regional climate significantly, projecting a warmer and somewhat drier post-deforestation climate.
, C. Nobre, M. H. Costa, P. Satyamurty, B. S. Soares-Filho, and M. Cardoso (2007), Regional climate change over eastern Amazonia caused by pasture and soybean cropland expansion, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L17709, doi:10.1029/2007GL030612.
Looking south down the Rio Grande from the Paseo del Norte Bridge in Albuquerque Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007.
That’s maybe 450 cubic feet per second of flow, which is getting down toward what they call “base flow“. That’s the minimum flow in a desert river, the point at which you’re really just seeing the water table moving downstream rather than runoff. Not sure how close we actually are to it here, because they still seem to be letting water through the dams upstream, but we can’t be far above base flow right now. The river rarely gets lower than this.
It’s that autumn moment when we’re gathering and taking stock. The irrigation season is all but done, there’s no new water coming into the system and not much going out. The plants aren’t quite shut down, but evapotranspiration is on the wane, and the first yellow-brown leaves are showing on the cottonwoods. If we could see inside the trees, we’d no doubt find the soft light colored wood slowing as they prepare to put on the hard dark thin ring of winter. There’s no snow on the mountains yet, but soon we’ll be looking north and monitoring the growing snowpack and starting to wonder about next year. A sort of climatological, ecological, sociological pivot point in a place where things revolve around the water.
From our trip to the New Mexico State Fair a week ago. It’s a scale model of Hoover Dam, the great monument to America’s confidence in its ability to tame the great Colorado River and make the desert bloom. I’ve always loved the triumphant architecture of Hoover Dam, along with its downstream sibling, Parker Dam. Those were the days when we Americans could do stuff. The doing and the stuff are both too complicated to be summed up in a simple icon. In fact, like many icons, the triumphant architecture misleads, because the big dams aren’t as simple as all that, as we’re still coming to understand. But the model eschewed such political and moral complexity. It honors men building big stuff, and I liked it.
Wandering on the bike today, I stumbled (rolled?) into this lovely little new park in the Sawmill neighborhood, just north of Albuquerque’s Old Town.
The problem with meat is that it’s yummy. But it’s also probably the lowest hanging greenhouse gas reduction fruit in the developed world. Simon Donner has more:
In order to achieve the twin goals of reducing poverty and fighting climate change, we will need to decrease the GHG emissions required to produce a gram of food protein. And that may very well mean reducing consumption of foods from low efficiency production systems, especially grain-fed beef.
On the federal budget process and its implications for the nuclear weapons program:
The new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1— in just 10 days. But Congress hasn’t completed any spending bills, and partisan bickering has broken out in Washington over what to do about the problem.
In the long term, the battle is over deep divisions between the House of Representatives, which wants to cut the nuclear weapons program, and the Senate, which does not.
This year’s nuclear weapons budget is $6.3 billion, including $1.5 billion at Los Alamos and $1 billion at Sandia. The House is proposing a 9.4 percent cut in 2008. The Senate wants to increase the budget 3.3 percent. The specific effect of cuts on each lab is unknown.
Proposed House cuts, in addition to eliminating thousands of jobs at Sandia and Los Alamos, would put the brakes on a plan to expand the manufacture of plutonium nuclear weapon parts at Los Alamos.
But all eyes are on the short term now— what to do come Oct. 1 to fund things while a final spending plan is worked out.
Every state in the Western U.S., save Colorado, currently has below average reservoir storage.
Via Stoat comes word that the fight against global warming does not come without a price:
The British Surfing Association (BSA) and the environmental campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) back the principle of wave power and the Wave Hub project. But they remain worried that if the size of the project is increased or others introduced, the waves that reach the shore could be significantly reduced.
