PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet TERRA 3/2002 - 10 September 2002
-------------------------------------
"A discovery that it is much colder over the South Pole than
believed has exposed a major flaw in the computer models used to
predict
global warming, a new scientific paper claims. US scientists
based at the
Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station say they have measured the
temperature
of the atmosphere 30 to 110 kilometres (18 to 68 miles) over the
pole and
found it is 20 to 30 degrees Centigrade (68 to 86 degrees
Fahrenheit)
colder than computer models showed."
--Space Daily, 10 September 2002
(1) EXTREME COLD OVER SOUTH POLE REVEALS GLOBAL WARMING MODELS
ARE WRONG
Space Daily, 10 September 2002
(2) CLIMATE MODEL LAPSE
World Climate Report, 9 September 2002
(3) NEW CLIMATE SYSTEM SIMULATION ON SUPERCOMPUTER
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(4) N.Y. TIMES TO FACTS: DROP DEAD!
World Climate Report, 9 September 2002
(5) FLOODS 'NOT DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING'
The Times, 9 September 2002
(6) ENVIRONMENTAL 'DOOMSDAY PROPHECY' DEBUNKED IN NEW STUDY
CNSNEws, 6 September 2002
(7) PREDICTING VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS
Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
(8) ANTARCTIC ICE INCREASING?
James Perry <AJDPerry@aol.com>
(9) AND FINALLY: DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY AS OPTIMISM COULD PROLONG
AND ENRICH
YOUR LIFE
The Associated Press, 5 September 2002
(10) UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE: FUTURE SHOCK FOR BRITAIN
John-Daly.com, 9 September 2002
=============
(1) EXTREME COLD OVER SOUTH POLE REVEALS GLOBAL WARMING MODELS
ARE WRONG
>From Space Daily, 10 September 2002
http://spacedaily.com/news/020910020829.wq287cho.html
AUCKLAND (AFP) Sep 10, 2002
A discovery that it is much colder over the South Pole than
believed has
exposed a major flaw in the computer models used to predict
global warming,
a new scientific paper claims.
US scientists based at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station say
they have
measured the temperature of the atmosphere 30 to 110 kilometres
(18 to 68
miles) over the pole and found it is 20 to 30 degrees Centigrade
(68 to 86
degrees Fahrenheit) colder than computer models showed.
Various models are used to predict global climate and some
assumptions have
had to be made, including air temperatures over Antarctica.
Chester Gardner, a professor of electrical and computer
engineering at the
University of Illinois, Weilin Pan, a doctoral student at
Illinois and Ray
Roble of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research writing
in the
American Geophysical Union Letters say the models are wrong.
"Because of the obvious challenges, until now, the only
temperature data we
have had from either the North or South Poles has been from
surface
measurements and weather balloons that don't go any higher than
about 20-30
kilometres (12-18 miles)," Gardner told AFP.
The researchers used a laser radar system from the South Pole to
make the
first measurements of the temperature higher up and found it was
much colder
than assumed.
Global warming could be caused by greater concentrations of
carbon dioxide
(CO2) which is a strong absorber of infrared radiation.
In the lower atmosphere CO2 absorbs the heat. While CO2 also
emits heat
other CO2 absorbs it. In the thinner stratosphere and mesosphere,
much of
the heat emitted by CO2 is radiated into space and so in the
upper
atmosphere the primary affect of CO2 is cooling.
"Thus as CO2 levels continue to rise in the atmosphere, we
expect the lower
atmosphere to continue warming while the upper atmosphere ...
will cool."
During winter Antarctica receives little sunlight and its
atmosphere is
sealed off by a vortex of winds preventing warmer air from lower
latitudes
travelling to the pole.
"As a consequence the region cools to very low temperatures
in winter,
primarily by radiation of heat into space."
In May, June and July the stratopause was considerably colder
than model
predictions. The greatest difference occurred in July, when the
measured
stratopause temperature was about minus 17 degrees C (0 degrees
F) to about
4 degrees C (40 degrees F) predicted by the models.
"Current global circulation models apparently over-predict
the amount of
down-welling, because they show warmer temperatures than we
observed,"
Gardner said.
Their measurements will be a baseline for future temperature
studies.
"We believe a major flaw in current models is the way they
account for
compressional heating associated with down welling over the polar
cap in
winter," Gardner said.
"Of course you and I are really not interested in what
happens above the
South Pole. We do care about what happens where we live. Models
can help
predict those changes due to rising CO2 levels but only if we
believe they
give accurate results.
"Our South Pole measurements will help the modellers and
theoreticians
better understand the atmosphere and incorporate that
understanding in their
models, making their future predictions more accurate."
All rights reserved. © 2002 Agence France-Presse.
==============
(2) CLIMATE MODEL LAPSE
>From Wold Climate Report, 9 September 2002
http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/v8n01/hot.htm
The "Great Debate" in climatology these days focuses on
the differences
between two temperature records: surface and satellite. The
problem is this:
Thermometer readings from across the planet's surface are warming
at a
greater rate than satellite temperature measurements of the lower
atmosphere, or troposphere. That difference is probably real and
not a
result of errors in the data sets, since the satellite record is
a measure
of the temperature of the overlying atmosphere and not the
surface.
Meteorologists call the difference between the surface readings
and those
from the overlying atmosphere the "lapse rate," a term
that refers to the
rate at which temperature declines with height.
Figure 1 shows the details of the two records, which Gabriele
Hegerl and
John Wallace carefully examined in the latest issue of the
Journal of
Climate. The top panel is the satellite record (which began in
1979) of
global temperatures (departures from the average) with the
independent
weather balloon record superimposed. Note the close
correspondence between
these two records during the overlapping period. The middle
panel, which is
a plot of global mean temperatures at the surface, depicts a
larger
temperature increase. To calculate the "lapse rate"
(bottom panel), we
subtract the middle panel from the top panel. The result?
Declining lapse
rates from 1964 to 1980 and increasing lapse rates thereafter.
One of Hegerl
and Wallace's goals was to determine the cause of that trend.
The latter period of increasing lapse rates during the era of
satellite data
is particularly interesting. When the spatial lapse rate patterns
are
computed (Figure 2), it's obvious that the biggest differences
are present
over the tropics. In other words, over the low latitudes, the
surface is
warming faster than the atmosphere.
The authors attempt to account for this pattern by comparing it
to El
Niño/La Niña influences and other atmospheric stability factors
that arise
because warm air masses tend to reside over land and cold air
masses are
found preferentially over oceans. Yet even after accounting for
these
issues, the trends in lapse rate remained.
So the data were then run through a climate model, in both a
control run and
with changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols. Although the
climate model
could simulate the shorter-term, month-to-month changes in lapse
rate well,
it did not get the decadal scale changes right. The model had a
much tighter
coupling between the surface and the overlying atmosphere than is
observed
in nature.
The bottom line is that no one seems to know why these
differences in
temperature trends exist. Given that, it's unlikely a climate
model would
somehow magically figure it out. Indeed it didn't. There seems to
be a lapse
in our understanding of heat transfer between the surface and the
atmosphere. And until we figure out that fundamental issue,
climate models
will continue to give us the wrong answers.
Reference:
Hegerl, G.C., and J.M. Wallace, 2002. Influence of patterns of
climate
variability on the difference between satellite and surface
temperature
trends, Journal of Climate, 17, 2412-2428.
============
(3) NEW CLIMATE SYSTEM SIMULATION ON SUPERCOMPUTER
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Contact:
Jon Bashor, (510) 486-5849, jbashor@lbl.gov
September 4, 2002
NERSC Helps Climate Scientists Complete First-Ever 1,000-Year Run
of
Nations's Leading Climate-Change Modeling Application
BERKELEY, CA -- Scientists from the National Center for
Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) have just completed a 1,000-year run of a powerful new
climate system
model on a supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy's
National Energy
Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley
National
Laboratory.
Accurately predicting global climate change demands complex and
comprehensive computer simulation codes, the fastest
supercomputers
available, and the ability to run those simulations long enough
to model
century after century of the global climate. Scientists at NCAR
in Boulder,
Colorado, ran the millennium-long simulation of their new
Community Climate
System Model (CCSM2) for more than 200 uninterrupted days on the
IBM SP
supercomputer at NERSC.
According to Warren Washington, a senior scientist at NCAR and
recently
elected chair of the National Science Board, being able to more
accurately
model climate change over a very long time scale is of great
societal
importance. The scientific problem of climate prediction
continues to
require complex interactions between atmosphere, ocean,
land/vegetation and
the cryosphere. State-of-the-art climate models such as the CCSM
are making
the interactions over day- to century-long time scales much more
accurate,
though a number of uncertain aspects can still be improved.
"One reason we need a long control simulation is that it
gives the climate
modeling community a very good idea of the 'natural' model
variability on
annual, decadal, and century time scales, so that as we perform
climate
change simulations, we can separate the natural forcing from the
anthropogenic changes caused by increasing greenhouse gases,
aerosols and
land surface changes," said Washington, an internationally
recognized expert
in computer modeling of the Earth's climate.
The CCSM2 effort is headed by Jeff Kiehl at NCAR. CCSM2 tightly
couples four
complex models, including atmosphere and land modeling codes
developed at
NCAR and ocean and sea ice models
developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Because of its
comprehensive
integration of four complex component models, CCSM2 has emerged
as one of
the United States' flagship computer codes for studying climate
change.
The CCSM2 simulations being run at NERSC are part of the Climate
Change
Prediction Program in the Office of Science of the Department of
Energy.
Data from CCSM2 simulations run at NERSC and NCAR will be made
freely
available to the nation's climate research community.
"As the Department of Energy's flagship facility for
unclassified
supercomputing, NERSC is able to provide both the uninterrupted
computing
resources and the staff expertise to enable this important
simulation to
run, as well as the data storage facility and network
connectivity necessary
to ensure that the resulting data can be easily accessed and
analyzed," said
Horst Simon, director of the NERSC Center.
NCAR scientist Tony Craig began the CCSM2 millennium-long run at
NERSC last
January. The lengthy run served as a kind of "shakedown
cruise" for the new
version of the climate model and demonstrated that its
variability is
stable, even when run for century-after-century simulations.
"This simulation will enable climate scientists to study the
variability of
the climate system on decade to century time scales, which is an
important
aspect of climate change detection and attribution studies,"
said Jeff
Kiehl, a climate scientist at NCAR and chair of the scientific
steering
committee for CCSM2. "The computational resource provided by
NERSC was
essential for accomplishing this important simulation."
Previous climate models have suffered in accuracy by allowing too
much
"drift," which meant the resulting climate temperature
changes could have
too much variation to be scientifically useful. The 1,000-year
CCSM run had
a total drift of one-half of one degree Celsius, compared to
older versions
with two to three times as much variance.
"The 1,000-year simulation is the first ever fully coupled
climate
simulation with this high of spatial resolution," Kiehl
said.
The CCSM model was developed by a community of climate
researchers that
includes scientists and software engineers at the National Center
for
Atmospheric Research, many universities and DOE laboratories. The
CCSM
simulates a number of natural variability signals such as El
Nino, the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation.
"This is a significant accomplishment, and results from the
improved
representation of physics of the atmosphere, land, ocean and
ice," said Inez
Fung, director of the Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences Center at UC
Berkeley.
"Climate variability on interannual and interdecadal time
scales
reveals the dynamic non-linear internal interactions within the
climate
system. For example, there are 'active' periods when El Ninos are
strong and
frequent, as well as 'quiescent'
periods for the El-Nino/Southern Oscillations. The results
establish the
'naturally varying' base-line against which externally-forced
climate
change, such as from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, can be
compared."
In addition to Washington, Kiehl and Craig, other scientists
contributing to
the successful 1,000-year run include Gerald Meehl, Jim Hack and
Peter Gent
of NCAR, Burt Semtner of the Naval Postgraduate School and John
Weatherly of
the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory
located in
Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific
research and is
managed by the University of California.
Additional information:
More about NERSC, http://www.nersc.gov/
IMAGE CAPTION:
[ http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/NERSC-1000-Year-climate-model2.html
]
Two hundred years of modeling El Nino events and surface
temperatures on the
Community Climate System Model (CCSM2) closely correlates with 50
years of
actual climate data.
==============
(4) N.Y. TIMES TO FACTS: DROP DEAD!
>From World Climate Report, 9 September 2002
http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/v8n01/feature.htm
Maybe the heat prostrates dowager New York Times late in the
summer. Two
years ago, it carried a breathless front page story about the
melting of the
polar ice cap, only to retract it a few weeks later (on page
C-18) when
confronted with the historical record of polar temperatures. On
August 28 of
this year, thanks in part to a dissonant convergence of climate
stories-drought in New York, yet another U.N. environment confab,
this time
in Africa, evil President Bush refusing to wreck our economy with
the Kyoto
Protocol-the Times published a real lulu headlined "Forecast
for the Future:
Deluge and Drought."
A little content and balance analysis: The article contains 31
sentences
about the awful effects of global warming, four sentences
allowing that
there is another view, and five neutral ones.
The Times starts bad and gets worse: "Rains have deluged
Europe and Asia,
swamping cities and villages and killing some 2,000 people, while
drought
and heat have seared the American West and Eastern cities...Many
warn that
such extremes will be increasingly common as the world grows
warmer."
FACTS: There is no evidence for an increase in the frequency of
severe
European flooding. Further, even the climate models used by the
United
Nations in their compendia of climate change tend to predict
reduced summer
precipitation in that region.
And still further, as Figure 1 shows, there is absolutely no
trend in U.S.
drought, even as mean temperatures have risen a very little bit
(about
0.4°C). Instead, there is a slight but statistically significant
trend for
increasing wetness.
Lest that make you feel good, the Times goes on: "Rain is
more likely to
fall in field-scouring torrents. Government scientists [that'll
give em
credibility! -Eds.] have already measured a significant rise in
downpour-style storms in the United States in the last 100
years."
Back when we took journalism, we were remonstrated to ask not
only "how" or
"what," but also "how much." Apparently they
don't do this anymore,
especially if the facts get in the way of a good climate scare
story.
The truth is that there is an increase in the percentage of rain
falling in
the U.S. from storms of two or more inches per day. Within this
class, the
majority of the increase is in storms of more than two but less
than three
inches. Big deal. Those are not floods. With regard to storms
producing five
or more inches per day, the increase is so slight as to be
meaningless.
Suppose the Times' Andy Revkin had written the following truth:
"Government
scientists have determined that the average person is now
experiencing two
more days in his entire life (two out of 27,350 days) in which it
will rain
five inches or more, compared with his grandparents."
The story would have been ash-canned. But those are the facts,
published in
the scientific literature recently by the American Meteorological
Society,
in an article by none other than the Virginia State
Climatologist.
More from the Dowager:
A warmer world is more likely to be a wetter one, experts
warn...but in a
troublesome twist, that world may also include more intense
droughts, as the
increased evaporation parches soils between occasional storms.
Statements like that have consequences. That same week, Maryland
Gov. Parris
Glendening blamed the East Coast drought on global warming. Given
that
precipitation has tended to increase as the world warms, we
decided to check
and see if there's any tendency toward increased evaporation.
Figure 2 gives the history of "potential
evapotranspiration," a mathematical
estimate of how much water can be released from a wet surface on
an annual
basis, for the Mid-Atlantic region. Of course, that is highly
dependent upon
annual temperature, as more water evaporates in a warmer year.
Note that there's no trend at all, and that the annual values
vary about an
inch or so. Annual rainfall varies by eight inches or so. Do the
math. Gov.
Glendening was wrong. The New York Times was wrong, too. There's
no tendency
for increasing droughts in the "Eastern cities" because
of higher
temperatures.
(Oh, sure, they didn't come right out and say it, but the
conflation in the
article is obvious. First we talk about eastern drought, then
increased
evaporation (from global warming)....Connect the dots.)
Having raised the spectre of floods and droughts, the Times moved
on the
Monsoon (like Pokemon, they apparently "gotta catch 'em
all"), which, they
say, "as part of the warming trend, has already
intensified."
We covered that one last issue, citing the most recent (2001)
U.N.
compendium of climate. There's scant evidence for any significant
systematic
changes in South Asian rainfall (WCR, Vol. 7, No. 23, 8/19/02).
Little evidence exists for subtle changes in the monsoon
structure. And
there's not much to show for it. The background article for
Revkin's
assertion, published last month in Science by David Anderson and
two
co-authors, says this:
The trend in all-India rainfall, although positive, is small and
statistically insignificant*. However, the regional and
year-to-year
variability is large. Using historical data, Mooney and Pant
found no change
in the last 200 years in the frequency of extreme drought
events....
So there we have it. A little fact-checking by the Times would
have revealed
no trend toward increasing U.S. drought, a slight trend toward
increasing
wetness, an increase in "flooding" rains so small that
no one could possibly
notice (two out of 27,350 days), an East Coast drought that was
not related
to global warming, and no significant changes in monsoonal rain
or drought.
But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
*A little science education: A trend that is not statistically
significant
cannot be distinguished from a trend of zero. In other words,
there's no
real positive trend, either. (Just a testimony to the quality of
scientific
review of global warming papers in today's climate.)
References:
Anderson, D.M., et al., 2002. Increase in the Asian Southwest
Monsoon during
the past four centuries. Science, 297, 596-599.
Karl, T.R., R.W. Knight, and N. Plummer, 1995. Trends in
high-frequency
climate variability in the twentieth century. Nature, 377,
217-220.
Michaels, P.J., P.C. Knappenberger, R.E. Davis, and O.W.
Frauenfeld, 2002.
Rational Analysis of Trends in Extreme Temperature and
Precipitation.
Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Applied Climatology, 13-16
May,
Portland, OR, 153-158.
U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2002. Climate
Change 2001:
The Scientific Basis.
================
(5) FLOODS 'NOT DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING'
>From The Times, 9 September 2002
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,175-406117,00.html
THE devastating floods that struck Central Europe this summer
were not a
result of global warming, leading meteorologists said yesterday.
Extreme
summer rainfall of the sort that led to the inundation of cities
such as
Prague and Dresden is out of line with the way in which climate
is predicted
to change as the world warms, an international conference at
Reading
University heard. Far from being a global warming symptom, as
observers such
as Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, have suggested, the
best models
indicate that summers will get dryer, rather than wetter, over
coming
decades. Heavy flooding is expected to become a greater problem
mainly in
winter months....
=============
(6) ENVIRONMENTAL 'DOOMSDAY PROPHECY' DEBUNKED IN NEW STUDY
>From CNSNEws, 6 September 2002
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200209/FOR20020906f.html
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
Johannesburg (CNSNews.com ) - A "doomsday prophecy"
that says mankind needs
at least 1.2 more planet Earths to maintain its present standard
of living
is based on a weak scientific foundation, according to a new
study.
The 43-page analytical study, "Assessing the Ecological
Footprint: A Look at
the [World Wildlife Fund's] Living Planet Report 2002," was
released by
Bjorn Lomborg's Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, and it
was timed
to coincide with the Earth summit here.
The report
( http://imv.dk/dk/index.asp?catid=\{03476B22-DDD2-4703-8AC1-91DFF49CF9C5\&doc_guid=\{C9A2A9B2-7065-4B9C-A78B-CB368EA8081C\
)
refutes computer models used
in the "doomsday prophecy."
Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, blames his
conversion
from a committed member of the Green movement to a skeptic on the
Green's
distortion of eco-science.
An associate of Lomborg, Olivier Rubin, told CNSNews.com that
said the World
Wildlife Fund's "dire predictions" about the Earth were
"generated by
excluding technological progress and human creativity from a
model that
already has inherent mathematical tendency to overshoot and
collapse."
But Gordon Shepherd of the World Wildlife Fund defended the
Living Planet
report, calling Lomborg's analysis "complete nonsense."
The Fund's Living Planet report
(http://www.panda.org/livingplanet/lpr02/index.cfm)
maintains that the Earth
is currently in a "global overdraft" and "the only
sustainable solution is
to live within the biological productive capacity of the
earth."
Unless sustainability is adhered to, "severe ecological
backlashes
undermining future population and economic growth" will
occur, the Living
Planet report says.
'Deficit spending of the worst kind'
Since the Living Planet report was released, the worldwide media
and the
international environmental community have cited it frequently.
Time magazine, in its special August 26 Earth Summit edition,
based the
following assessment on the Living Planet report: "The
amount of crops,
animals and other bio matter we extract from the earth each year
exceeds
what the planet can replace by an estimated 20%, meaning it takes
14.4
months to replenish what we use in 12 [months] - deficit spending
of the
worst kind," the magazine said.
Others have also expanded upon the initial "1.2 extra
planets" estimate. The
exaggerated number of Earths hit a high at the Earth summit this
week, when
former Governor of California Jerry Brown said mankind needs
"another five
planets" for ecological survival.
According to the Danish institute's analysis, the Living Planet
report holds
that a doomsday scenario will unfold if current development
trends are not
reversed. Under that scenario, future global life expectancy
would be 25
years; global per-capita gross domestic product would fall to a
level
equaling that of present-day Sudan; and education levels would
fall by 2050.
Rubin called the World Wildlife Fund's report remarkable for it's
pessimism.
"The WWF presented some very ominous predictions for the
mid-century
generations," Rubin said.
'Disparity in consumption'
The Living Planet Report's recommendations to avoid catastrophe
include
redressing the "disparity in consumption between high and
low income
countries" and controlling population growth through the
promotion of
"universal education and health care," in order to
avoid ecological disaster
"We have no doubt that the information is correct...from a
scientific and
technical point of view," said Gordon Shepherd of the World
Wildlife Fund.
Shepherd did concede, however, that more data is necessary to
project
accurately into the future.
"There is a paucity of information available, and if
governments stopped
listening to attacks from people like Lomborg, we would have more
data,"
Shepherd told CNSNews.com .
'Eco-centric'
But Rubin countered that Living Planet projections are of an
"arbitrary
nature," and the supposed need for 1.2 more planets is
"a one-dimensional
figure that relies on an extremely eco-centric sustainability
understanding."
Rubin believes the whole focus of the report on present-day
deprivation is
misguided.
"At present it could seem that we focus so much on the
problems ahead that
we fail to address the problems facing vast parts of humanity
every day -
the lack of access to food, water, sanitation and
education," Rubin said.
"We are simply not spending enough of the Earth's
sustainable capacity to
accommodate present basic needs. The world's poor and hungry have
a
legitimate right to demand that we try," Rubin said.
Copyright 1998-2002 Cybercast News Service.
=============
(7) PREDICTING VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS
>From Andrew Yee <ayee@nova.astro.utoronto.ca>
Press and Public Relations Office
University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK
Contact:
Mary Pallister, m.pallister@uea.ac.uk,
+44 (0)1603 59300
Embargo until 04 Sep 2002 19:00
Predicting Volcanic Eruptions
The weather forecast could help predict volcanic eruptions,
according to new
research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).
Scientists from UEA's School of Environmental Sciences found that
intense
rainfall can trigger volcanic dome collapse -- a particular type
of eruption
that occurs when a build-up of molten rock inside the side of the
mountain
becomes unstable and collapses releasing lava, toxic gases and
rocks and boulders.
"The eruption on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in July
last year
coincided with the first heavy rainfall in seven months, within
hours of the
rainfall starting the volcanic dome collapsed," said Dr
Adrian Matthews, a
meteorologist who lead the research together with UEA
volcanologist, Dr
Jenni Barclay.
The scientists also found that two previous eruptions of the
Montserrat
volcano were preceded by heavy rainfall.
One of the most dangerous aspects of volcanic dome collapse is
the
accompanying pyroclastic flow -- an avalanche of searingly hot
rocks and
boulders, carried at high speed down the mountain on a bed of
volcanic
gases.
Using weather forecasts in conjunction with recent rainfall
records could
help improve the accuracy of predicting volcano eruptions and so
provide
additional warning.
"The next step is to work out how the rainfall triggers the
eruption, it may
be the water being turned to steam and building up inside the
dome, like a
pressure cooker," said Dr Matthews.
Notes for editor
1. Dr Adrian Matthews and Dr Jenni Barclay are lead authors
of the research, which is published as a paper
entitled
"Rainfall-induced volcanic activity on
Montserrat" in
Geophysical Research Letters, vol 29 (issue 13),
10.1029/2002GL014863.
2. Pictures of the volcano are available electronically -- please
contact Mary Pallister in the UEA press office for
details.
3. This research was supported with funding from the Natural
Environment Research Council (NERC), www.nerc.ac.uk .
============================
* LETTERS TO THE MODERATOR *
============================
(8) ANTARCTIC ICE INCREASING?
>From James Perry <AJDPerry@aol.com>
Benny,
Wondered if you'd seen this:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020820southseaice.html
"While recent studies have shown that on the whole Arctic
sea ice has
decreased since the late 1970s, satellite records of sea ice
around
Antarctica reveal an overall increase in the southern hemisphere
ice over
the same period."
My question is this: if southern hemisphere ice is increasing,
what's with
all these recent stories about big icebergs breaking off?
(For example,
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/sailing/05/24/iceberg.satellite.tech/index.htm
l)
Whatever the answer, I predict this story will get little play in
the
mainstream press.
Sincerely,
James Perry
===========
(9) AND FINALLY: DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY AS OPTIMISM COULD PROLONG
AND ENRICH
YOUR LIFE
>From The Associated Press, 5 September 2002
By CHARLEY GILLESPIE, Associated Press
Optimism could be key to prolonging life, study finds
Keeping a positive attitude about aging can extend life by seven
and half
years, which is longer than gains made by not smoking and
exercising
regularly, a study finds.
"People's perception of aging predicted the length of their
survival," said
Dr. Suzanne Kunkel, director of the Scripps Gerontology Center at
Miami
University and co-author of the study.
"It illustrates the mind-body connection. Even if we cannot
control what
happens to us, we can control how we define it."
The findings about attitude and survival rates were made by
analyzing and
matching data collected since 1975 about 660 people age 50 or
older in
Oxford, Ohio, with data from the National Death Index.
Kunkel began the research in the small southwestern Ohio town as
a graduate
student and has helped maintain the database for more than two
decades.
Researchers at Miami and Yale universities looked at how the 338
men and 322
women responded to several questions about aging in 1975, and
then examined
how their responses predicted their survival up to 23 years
later.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology,
was funded by the National Institute on Aging.
Researchers found respondents with more positive views on aging
live longer,
even after taking into account factors such as age, gender,
socio-economic
status, functional health, self-reported health and loneliness.
"The median survival of those in the more positive self
perceptions of aging
group was seven and a half years longer than those in the more
negative
perceptions," Kunkel said.
The attitudes on aging had a greater impact on life span than
lower body
mass index, not smoking and regular exercise - each of which
extends life by
one to three years.
"Our study carries two messages," said Dr. Becca Levy,
a researcher at Yale
University and the study's lead author. "The discouraging
one is that
negative self perceptions can diminish life expectancy; the
encouraging one
is that positive self-perceptions can prolong life
expectancy."
But Richard Suzman, associate director for behavioral and social
research
for the National Institute on Aging, said while a positive self
perception
helps, it should not replace proper health care.
"Any notion that positive thinking is more powerful than not
smoking ...
there just isn't evidence of that," he said. "There is
enormous clinical
evidence to show the value of not smoking and exercising."
The researchers found that the will to live partially accounts
for the
relationship between positive self perceptions of aging and
survival, but
does not completely account for difference in longevity.
Levy's earlier research at Yale's Department of Epidemiology and
Public
Health has shown cardiovascular response to stress can be
adversely affected
when elderly persons are exposed to negative stereotypes of
aging.
The new study said stereotypes about aging are acquired decades
before the
person becomes old and are therefore rarely questioned.
"Once individuals become older, they may lack the defenses
of other groups
to ward off the impact of negative stereotypes on self
perceptions," the
report said.
Kunkel said the study offers a strong message about life.
"There is nothing we can do about aging," she said.
"It's like sitting in
traffic when you're late. The natural response is to get very
stressed about
the situation. The other choice is to not get upset and think
about how to
deal with the consequences of being late."
The key is learning how to see a situation for what it is, she
said, and to
give it no more power than it needs to have.
"We enter later adulthood with our habitual ways of dealing
with stress,"
she added. "People need to learn new strategies to deal with
it."
Copyright © 2002 AP Online
============
(10) UNDER THE BOTTOM LINE: FUTURE SHOCK FOR BRITAIN
>From John-Daly.com, 9 September 2002
http://www.john-daly.com/
A premonition of what the Kyoto Protocol will be like in the
future for
those developed countries foolish enough to ratify it, is now
being played
out in Britain.
Britain's biggest electricity generating company, British Energy,
is facing
insolvency unless immediate financial help from the British
government is
forthcoming (see BBC story,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2240233.stm).
It made a loss of £518
million in its latest annual accounts and is reported to be
heavily in debt.
What's worse is that British Energy runs eight nuclear power
stations, the
primary means by which the European Union expects to meet their
greenhouse
gas targets - by substituting nuclear power for fossil fuels.
Part of the problem for British Energy is that the electricity
market in
Britain has become more competitive, with the more expensive
nuclear option
at a cost disadvantage, while the British government's 'Climate
Levy' has
proved to be an albatross around the neck of industry. What
is particularly
galling for British Energy is that they too have to pay that levy
even
though they do not emit greenhouse gases.
The government is now considering exempting British Energy from
the
controversial 'Climate Levy', a blanket tax designed to fund a
futile fight
against `climate change'. If they do grant the exemption, it
won't be long
before other industries in trouble start calling round to No.10,
demanding
the same favoured treatment. Once the Kyoto Protocol starts to
take effect
in Europe, we can expect many more such disruptions to normal
economic
activity, an object lesson for other developed countries like the
USA,
Canada, and Australia, to steer well clear of Kyoto. It
will do much harm
to otherwise healthy economies, swell unemployment, and do
absolutely
nothing for the climate.
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