The Science

NASA Launches Arctic Sea Ice Expedition

Coast Guard Cutter Healy (Photo by Petty Officer Patrick Kelley, US Coast Guard)

Next week, a NASA team of more than 40 scientists will take to the seas for a five-week expedition in the Arctic to study how changing conditions there are affecting ocean chemistry and ecosystems.  The voyage, NASA’s first dedicated oceanographic research mission, is named ICESCAPE, which stands for “Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment.”  It will take place aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy.

“We’re  trying to address what is the long term impact of climate variability and change, both natural and anthropogenic, on the biogeochemistry and ecology of the Arctic,” said Paula Bontempi, program manager for NASA’s ocean biology and biogeochemistry research program.

The expedition will give scientists a chance to make field observations about the ocean, sea ice, and the atmosphere in regions where researchers often must rely on remote sensing technology for their data.  One main focus of the research will be to observe how changes, such as a substantial decrease in sea ice, may be affecting the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and the consequent effects on ecosystems.

“The Arctic is in the midst of some substantial changes,” said ICESCAPE Chief Scientist Kevin Arrigo of Stanford.  “In the last 10 years, the ice-free season in the Arctic Ocean has increased by about 45 days.  And this has a big impact on organisms in the Arctic that are keyed to these events.”

Arrigo says that the sea ice retreats about 28 days sooner than it did just a decade ago, and advances about 17 days later. He says this change has shifted the timing of food production.  Phytoplankton, the base of the food chain in the Arctic Ocean, are now growing a month earlier than they did in the 1990s, says Arrigo, which could spell a problem for organisms such as the California gray whales, which time their migrations around peak food production.

“Over the years satellite imagery has shown a significant decline in the Arctic ice cover,” said Don Perovich, a research geophysicist at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH, who is part of the ICESCAPE expedition. “But there’s really more to it than just the ice.  It’s important to remember that sea ice isn’t just some isolated component. It’s part of larger system.”

Sea ice, he said, serves as a barrier between the atmosphere and the ocean, limiting the exchange of heat, moisture and gases; acts as a reflector of sunlight; and is a habitat for a rich marine ecosystem.

“It’s an ecosystem where sea ice and biology are intricately intertwined,” said Perovich. “You can think of the ice and the biology as executing this intricate dance, but it’s a dance where one of the partners has started changing its steps. And that partner is the sea ice cover.”

The 2010 ICESCAPE expedition starts in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, will continue across the southern Chukchi Sea and into the Beaufort Sea along Alaska’s northern shelf.  A second expedition is planned for 2011.   NASA estimates the cost of the ICESCAPE project to be $10 million over four years.

The expedition blog has already launched, and will be updated daily once the expedition is underway, according to NASA spokesman Steve Cole.

I’ll be launching my own “Arctic expedition” next week.  Starting June 18th, I’ll be spending two weeks with climate scientists at the Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska, as part of the Logan Science Journalism Program, run by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.   Check back here for periodic dispatches about the science, the landscape, and the impacts of constant daylight on one journalist’s mental state.

The Science

Study Eyes Climate Impacts on Ocean Ecosystems

Farallone Islands (Photo: Jan Roletto, NOAA)

The north-central California coast is likely to experience rising seas, more extreme weather events and coastal erosion, increased ocean acidity, and shifting marine habitats as a result of climate change, according to a new report released today from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report, “Climate Change Impacts: Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries,” was developed in collaboration with 16 agencies and organizations and was released today at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

“This report provides insight into how climate change will play out in our region, how the ocean environment in the Gulf of the Farallones and over Cordell Bank will change and how the organisms that live there will be impacted by it,” said the report’s lead author, oceanographer John Largier of the Bodega Marine Laboratory and UC Davis.

Largier was careful to explain that the report does not make predictions about the future, nor is it a complete assessment of current conditions.

“It’s a group of scientists getting together and making their best judgment of how things are changing, how things will change, and what are we most concerned about,” said Largier.

Topping the list of concerns, he said, are rising sea levels of approximately 1.5 meters by 2100, warming oceans, an increase in the variability of precipitation (drier dry years and wetter wet ones), and ocean acidification, which he called, “the other CO2 problem,” and stressed as both a global and regional concern.

“There are a lot of things we know that are happening.  The real question we have to figure out now is how much this could all this change the ecosystem,” said Largier.  “The system is so complex, it’s not totally clear how it’s going to evolve.  Some populations might do a lot better with climate change, and others are going to be hammered. ”

NOAA
Image: NOAA

The report makes some recommendations for the sanctuaries, including a greater focus on public education, implementing policies that allow for flexibility and adaptation to change, and mitigating other factors that impact the ecosystem such as pollution, invasive species, fishing, and infrastructure development.

“We are just now getting to the state where we say what does climate change mean for us, for my community?” said Largier.  “It’s warming, sure, but what does it mean for ‘here’?  How is it going to play out? And what are the things that are going to happen that really matter at a regional and local level?  This is a huge scientific challenge that we are struggling with, but it’s an essential management and policy challenge.”

Bill Douros, the West Coast Regional Director of NOAA’s Marine Sanctuary program expressed the same sentiment in his opening remarks at the Cal Academy today.

“As we all know, the ocean is going to warm, it’s going to get more acidic, sea levels are going to rise, and those concepts are important, but what’s really important to someone who might be managing those marine protected areas is “How much?” and “By when are the sea levels going to rise and temp going to increase?”  And that’s what this report today provides to us.”

Key Issues highlighted in the report:
⇒ Observed increase in sea level (100-year record at mouth of San Francisco Bay)

⇒ Expected increase in coastal erosion associated with changes in sea level and storm waves

⇒ Observed decrease in spring runoff of freshwater through San Francisco Bay (decreased Sierra snowpack)

⇒ Observed increase in precipitation variability (drier dry years, wetter wet years)

⇒ Observed increase in surface ocean temperature off the continental shelf
(50 year record)

⇒ Observed increase in winds driving coastal upwelling of nutrient-rich waters and
associated observed decrease in surface ocean temperature over the continental
shelf (30 year record)

⇒ Observed increase in extreme weather events (winds, waves, storms)

⇒ Expected decrease in seawater pH, due to uptake of CO2 by the ocean

⇒ Observed northward shift of key species (including Humboldt squid, volcano
barnacle, gray whales, bottlenose dolphins)

⇒ Possible shift in dominant phytoplankton (from diatom to dinoflagellate blooms)

⇒ Potential for effects of climate change to be compounded by parallel
environmental changes associated with local human activities

Government & Business

Bay Area Planners Get Greenhouse “Guidelines”

The San Francisco Bay Area is among the first metropolitan areas in the nation to set up local developer guidelines for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Craig Miller
Photo: Craig Miller

The new rules, passed Wednesday by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, mean that developers planning anything that will produce GHG emissions above certain thresholds will face an environmental impact review. For “stationary” sources, projected emissions above 10,000 metric tons (tonnes) per year will now trigger an EIR under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). For other, “non-stationary” projects, the trigger is set at 1,100 tons per year or 4.6 tonnes per person affected, such as residents or workers.

The GHG thresholds are coupled with similar triggers for local pollutants such as particulates and for some emissions that play a role in both local air quality and warming, such as nitrous oxides (NOX). Air District spokesman Aaron Richardson couldn’t confirm that the first-in-the-nation status applied to the GHG guidelines, but that it placed the Bay Area “among the first.”

District chief Jack Broadbent said, in a release, that they “provide a blueprint for local agencies to use in making smart development decisions that protect residents from harmful air emissions and greenhouse gases.” Broadbent said the rules will be “especially protective of communities that already have significant air quality concerns.”

Exactly how they’ll be applied is something that even Air District staffers had a tough time explaining. Abby Young, an environmental planner at the District, who worked on the guidelines, explained that 10,000 tonnes per year is a benchmark that might be associated with a major expansion of an oil refinery. She said 1,100 tonnes per year is more or less the level of GHG emissions associated with a typical 50-home suburban housing development, but that vehicle trips in and out of the neighborhood would also be counted toward the threshold. “It’s a very complex, multi-layered thing,” she said.

The complete guidelines are available as a PDF download from the Air District’s website.

The Science

Fire Data: Dry Winters Mean More Charred Acres

Tim Walton
Photo: Tim Walton

Last year around this time, I asked some state fire officials what to expect in terms of the fire season and got a definite “It depends.” On the one hand, scant precipitation over the winter had left behind a dry landscape. On the other hand, spring rains had given a boost to rebounding vegetation, providing more fuel for later in the season. I was reminded of the old joke about politicians searching for a “one-handed economist” and found myself wishing for a one-handed forester.

Whether a good spring dousing is more likely to inhibit wildfires or feed them is a common source of confusion, which San Jose Mercury News writer Paul Rogers has sought to extinguish. By dipping into four decades of fire data, Rogers and his researchers at the Merc conclude that dry winters generally make for more intense fire seasons in California.

Rogers writes that “the worst fire seasons come after dry winters, not wetter ones like the one we’ve just had.” That would seem to bear out a conversation I had in 2007 with Crawford Tuttle, Chief Deputy Director at CalFire, fire protection arm of the state’s department of forestry. Walking through the burn zone of a Sierra wildfire that broke out in May of that year, Tuttle said that early-season fire was “a great demonstration of how (the) fire regime–fire severity is expanding in California.” Tuttle told me that when moisture levels in the air, vegetation and soil are lower, earlier in the season, it’s likely that the fire season will be intense.

The preceding winter had been dry by historical standards, with just over half the normal amount of precipitation and indeed, wildfires went on to char almost a million acres in the state that year.

Government & Business, Water

Population: The “Other” Climate Debate

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Recently I saw a startling graph, plotting world population from the Middle Ages to projections for 2050. The red line remains relatively flat for several centuries, starts ramping up around the time of the 19th century Industrial Revolution, and then takes off like a Roman candle right about the time of my own birth, in the mid-1950s. Granted, the steep rise was enhanced by the drawn-out time scale of that particular graph. As you shorten the time frame you’re looking at, the slope flattens out. But the numbers paint a sobering picture on their own.

A world population graph similar to the one I saw. Image: United Nations
World population from 1750 to 2020. Extending the curve leads to 9 billion people by 2050. Source: United Nations

I decided to plot some of my own family history against that curve. When my father entered the world on the eve of the Great Depression, there were barely two billion people populating the globe. By the time I came along, the number had nudged above three billion.  This was America’s legendary Baby Boom and the beginning of the Roman candle phase (an exponential growth trajectory which continues today). Should I be so fortunate (or unfortunate) to make it to my own century mark, demographers project that by then (2055), the Earth will be asked to support more than nine billion people. That’s a tripling of the world’s population just in my (theoretical) lifetime.

Population growth seldom takes center stage in discussions of climate change, though the connection is undeniable (heck, nine billion people just breathing is a lot of CO2).

Pakistan87712955_blogBiologist William Ryerson, President of the Washington-based Population Institute, says that population growth is “not an inconsequential impact on the climate crisis.” But breathing is not the problem; it’s consumption. Appearing on KQED’s Forum program with Michael Krasny, Ryerson said that were that prediction of nine billion people by 2050 to be realized, it would be “the climate equivalent of adding two United States to the planet.”

Ryerson, who also heads the Population Media Center in Vermont, says we’ll be lucky to make it to nine billion. Ryerson said that in his view, “the resources just aren’t there,” for a doubling of the current population. He cites research by Stanford biologist Peter Vitousek, indicating that humans are already appropriating half of the total global “products of photosynthesis, i.e. all green plants.”

It seems that after decades of being dismissed by mainstream economists, 18th-century philosopher Thomas Malthus is getting a fresh hearing. Malthus made his reputation as a doomsayer in 1798, when he wrote that “the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.”

As procreation and climate change accelerate in tandem, the two forces may place a double bind on basic resources like water (see also Gretchen Weber’s post on “peak water“). Ryerson, who recently visited Pakistan, says that nation currently has 20% of the water that they had 50 years ago, on a per-capita basis, and “they’re on a 30-year doubling time,” meaning 368 million people by 2040.

The entire Forum program is available online.

Water

Has the Southwest Passed “Peak Water”?

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Historic water marker on the shores of Lake Powell, April 2010 (Photo: Gretchen Weber)

People have been talking about “peak oil” for decades now, debating when oil production will peak and then start to decline as remaining resources become scarcer and harder to access.   Less attention has been given to the idea of “peak water,” which is the subject of a new analysis by the Oakland-based Pacific Institute.  The concepts of peak oil and peak water aren’t entirely analogous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that, overall, water is a renewable resource.  But there are limits to what water is renewable, and how fast supplies recharge.  While the world is not going to run out of water, the report authors argue, in parts of the world including the southwestern US, we’re likely long past the point of peak water.  That matters a lot, said study co-author Meena Palaniappan, because unlike oil, which is shipped across the world, water is still a local and regional issue.

“We’re not going to run out of water,” said Palaniappan, “but we’re going to see a change.  We’re at the end of cheap, easy access to water.  We’re going to have to go further, pay more, and expect less in terms of fresh water.”

The report divides peak water into three types: peak renewable water, the total annual supply of water from sources such as rainfall, rivers, and groundwater sources that are refilled relatively quickly; peak non-renewable water, which includes groundwater aquifers that either do not refill or do so extremely slowly; and peak ecological water, past which, the value of ecological services provided by water is greater than the value it provides in direct human services.  Or simply, it’s the point where taking water causes more ecological damage than it’s worth.

“The goal is to find the sweet spot, where we can maximize the human value water provides as well as the ecological value,” said Palaniappan.

In the western US, we are definitely past peak ecological water, said Palaniappan.  As evidence of this, she cited the Central Valley aquifer, which is being pumped down far faster than it can recharge and the Colorado River, which supplies Southern California with much of its water, and no longer reaches the ocean most years because every drop of it is appropriated for human use.

Last week, I was in Salt Lake City to talk with Terry Fulp, the Bureau of Reclamation‘s Deputy Regional Director of the Lower Colorado Region.  He said that after 10 years of drought on the Colorado, each of the seven states that draw from it are still getting their allotted water supply, and the reservoirs are about half full.  The Colorado River system, which supplies water to more than 30 million people, has a huge storage capacity, equal to four times the river’s annual flow, Fulp said. But increasing demand due to the drought and to population growth have the Bureau looking ahead at the challenges the system may be facing in the not-too-distant future.

“The supply and demand curves basically have crossed,” said Fulp.  “If you look over the last 100 years, the water supply has been above the demand, but demand has been growing, and essentially, today they have met.  We’re operating on a tight margin, a very tight margin, so the question is about projecting what we think the future will look like twenty years out.”

Like Palaniappan, Fulp says that conservation is critical and may become increasingly so in the near future. But even so, he said he doubts the demand for Colorado River water is going to decrease. The supply may, however.  Long droughts are common in the paleorecord, and water managers are planning for an additional 10-15% reduction in flow due to the effects of climate change.   This matters a great deal in a system where just about every drop is spoken for.  Fulp says that developing methods for accessing new water supplies, such as groundwater and desalinization plants, needs to be central to a long-term water management strategy for the region.

Government & Business, Power

The Solar Jobs Solution: Some Perspective

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As anyone who got stuck in the traffic knows, President Obama made a call at one of the Bay Area’s new darlings of green tech, Fremont-based Solyndra Inc., which he called a “testament to American ingenuity and dynamism.”

The firm is tapping more than a half-billion dollars in federal loan guarantees to build a manufacturing plant for its photovoltaic (PV) technology. Governor Schwarzenegger and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have also used Solyndra as a backdrop for showcasing California’s burgeoning clean tech sector. The company has developed a new type of PV technology designed for commercial rooftops.

Solyndra's rooftop solar panels use a new type of cylindrical module. Image: Solyndra, Inc.
Solyndra's rooftop solar panels use a new type of cylindrical module. Image: Solyndra, Inc.

Today in Silicon Valley, the big, green hype machine was running at full tilt. Solyndra’s CEO, Chris Gronet, talked up the California location. “If our factory was someplace else (outside the US), we probably would not have the supply chain across 29 US states,” he told KQED’s Cy Musiker today.

Mike Mielke of Silicon Valley Leadership Group added to the frenzy: “Clearly California’s leadership in the emerging trillion-dollar clean energy technology market has put us in an ideal investment position,” he said in a statement issued after the Presidential appearance.  “We would not be as competitive without the state’s landmark clean energy policies like AB 32.”

But some temperance was injected into the festivities by Severin Borenstein, co-director of the Energy Institute at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Asked if investments in solar panel production necessarily translate to permanent job growth, he told Musiker: “The evidence from a longer-run perspective really doesn’t support that.”

Borenstein says what history does demonstrate is that dominance in a given technology lasts just about as long as the government subsidies supporting it. He pointed to both Germany and Spain, both of which have recently lost some of their edge in production of solar components. Much production of solar and wind energy products has already moved to China.

“This idea that you’re going to create a permanent competitive advantage in producing green technology by subsidizing it now is really not very well born out in the data,” said Borenstein, who doesn’t deny that federal stimulus funding has “helped push forward” some key technologies. In the absence of a meaningful price mechanism for carbon emissions, Borenstein says that “pushing forward on some of these alternative technologies is the best thing we can do.”

Regarding California’s landmark climate law, the aforementioned AB 32, Borenstein agrees with the state’s Legislative Analyst that implementation would not have a significant impact on California’s overall economy, in either direction. But Borenstein doesn’t see the point in abandoning the state’s primary comprehensive climate strategy to save jobs, as some have suggested it would. “Climate change is real and it is potentially catastrophic,” said Borenstein. “If every time we have an economic setback, we put the environment second, we’re never going to make any progress.”

Government & Business, Power

Series Explores 33×20 Renewable Energy Goal

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California has set some ambitious targets for ramping up renewable energy sources. Some say too ambitious. Utilities won’t make the first milepost of 20% renewable power by this year, and many are skeptical that the longer-term goal of 33% by 2020 is doable, either, the executive order signed by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2008 notwithstanding.

A thermal-solar array of the type planned for southern California. Photo: Brightsource Energy
A thermal solar array of the type planned for southern California. Photo: BrightSource Energy

A major hurdle is the permitting process for large “utility-scale” solar and wind installations, described by the Governor’s own senior advisor as “tortuous.” In the months ahead, we’ll take you through some of the obstacle course in a multimedia series called “33 x 20: California’s Clean Power Countdown.” A collaboration of Climate Watch and Quest, KQED’s science and environmental initiative, the series of radio reports and web features explores the promise and pitfalls of the state’s 33 x 20 plan.

The series begins Monday with Lauren Sommer’s review of California’s clean power legacy and an assessment of the present push. Future reports will look at a solar siting case study in central California, as well as prospects for major development of wind and geothermal sources. California currently leads the nation in solar generation but trails Texas and Iowa in the race for wind power. See Lauren’s interactive map for an overview of how California stacks up against other states in its ambitions toward renewable energy.

Future reports will examine the potential impact of large-scale power generation on deserts and tribal lands and the progress toward what some consider the “holy grail” of energy technology; large-scale storage of electricity. In June, Quest Senior Editor Andrea Kissack and I will team up for a kind of case study in one company’s ambitions; the 4,700-acre photovoltaic array planned by Solargen Energy for Panoche Valley in San Benito County.

Northern California listeners can hear the radio series as part of KQED’s Quest radio service (airs Mondays during NPR’s Morning Edition on KQED and KQEI in Sacramento) or statewide on The California Report. You can follow the entire series and see the related web features as they appear on our “33 x 20” series page.
Government & Business, Power

California Slogs Toward Cap-and-Trade

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Dispatch from the bureaucratic trenches:

A cloud settles over the state capitol. Photo: Craig Miller
Clouds linger over California's cap-and-trade future. Photo: Craig Miller

The notion may be losing momentum in Washington but in Sacramento, California’s Air Resources Board continues the trudge toward a carbon trading program mandated under the state’s 2006 climate law, AB 32. This week its staff held the latest in a series of public meetings to discuss “program development” and “allowance allocation.” The topic may be a certified snore for most people but the CalEPA auditorium in Sacramento was nearly packed with representatives from utilities, environmental groups, public health advocates and an assortment of other interested parties, many with diametrically opposed views of how carbon allowances should be meted out for trading.

One of them was Chris Busch of the Center for Resource Solutions, who gave voice to a contingent disillusioned with what they read as momentum toward giving away allowances to industry. Busch coined what was probably the phrase of the day, accusing the Air Board of some “creative re-framing” of how carbon allowances might be distributed. Environmentalists have been pushing for something close to a “100% auction” of permits, while many business interests are hoping to get them free of charge, at least in the early stages of the program.

To many in the room, the update from the Air Board staff appeared to indicate a drift toward free permits. The Board’s Kevin Kennedy stressed that the staff had never come out officially for a 100% auction and said they’re “taking a close look” at how best to distribute them. His colleague, Matt Zaragoza put it more bluntly, saying “We’re strongly considering the need for free allocations.”

Regarding the state’s plan to join in a regional carbon market with several other states and some Canadian provinces known as the Western Climate Initiative, Kennedy insisted that “reports of it’s death have been greatly exaggerated.” But when pressed on how many US states are actually prepared to move forward, he confirmed that only New Mexico is in lockstep with California. Arizona’s governor recently signed an executive order pulling that state out of the proposed regional carbon market.

Here in the Golden State, industry is still angling for anything it can get to keep emissions fees to a minimum. Some complain that valid considerations are being left out of the plan.

“A lot of us are producing products today that are very focused on energy savings.,” said Phil Newell, who heads energy and environmental affairs for Guardian Industries, a maker of “low-E” glass products which promote energy efficiency. Newell says that a system of traded carbon permits and offsets should account for the energy savings achieved by his company’s products. “Every time we use a unit of energy in producing a coated product, we’re reducing 500 units of pollution elsewhere,” Newell claimed in a hallway interview. “We need some recognition of that.” Newell said that without that recognition, the high cost of carbon allowances might force his company to shut down manufacturing in California. Guardian operates a plate glass manufacturing plant near Fresno.

The Air Board’s staff says it is pushing for a “design document” describing a plausible allowance system by mid-summer.

Water

The Rain in May Falls Mainly Near the Mean

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Rainbow following late spring rains in Vallejo. Photo: Craig Miller
Rainbow following late spring rains in Vallejo. Photo: Craig Miller

Just a passing admonishment from meteorologist Jan Null, who keeps meticulous, often eye-opening records of weather patterns in northern California: We can stop talking about the “unusual weather” we’ve been having.

In California’s Mediterranean climate, precipitation tapers off to virtually nothing between June and October. So any rain this close to the end of “the rainy season” tends to create some buzz.

But Null, a former forecaster with the National Weather Service and founder of his own weather consulting firm, pointed out in an email this week that “the amount and number of days (with rain) so far in May are right near the 30-year normals for San Francisco and San Jose.” Null confirmed for me this morning that:

“So far in May, San Francisco has had three days of rain for a total of 0.44 inches.  The May normal is 3.3 days of rain for a total of 0.54 inches.  Last year, there were 5 days of rain for a total of 0.80 inches.  Even if there is a little more rain (this week), it will be pretty close to a normal May.

Similarly in San Jose the normal is 0.44 inches in 3.0 days. So far in May 2010 there have been three days of rain totaling 0.19 inches.  Last year San Jose had 0.09 inches over three days.”

By George, I think we’ve got it.

The Bay Area’s weather has been unusually cool, however. Null says the April-May period could end with “dramatic cool averages.” He says average daily highs for the two months could be “on the order of three to five degrees below normal.”

Null regularly updates local weather statistics on his website.