No tsunami threat to India due to Indonesia earthquake

There is no immediate tsunami threat to the Indian mainland and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands due to the earthquake which hit Indonesia today morning, the Indian government said.

"However, there is a possibility of a mild rise in the sea water level," the government said in a statement.

The union home ministry has advised the coastal states and union territories to take appropriate precautionary measures, it added.

Indonesia issued a tsunami warning after the 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the Sumatran coast of Aceh province.

DPA reports, quoting the Indonesian Meteorology, Geophysics and Climatology Agency, said the quake was recorded at 0559 GMT, with the epicentre 66 km southwest of Maulaboh in West Aceh district.

There were no reports of damage or casualties. (IANS)

No tsunami threat to India due to Indonesia earthquake

2 comments RSS Posted by Alluri Girish at 2:59 AM

Cyclone builds in south India, oilfield closes

A cyclone intensified over the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, forcing a southern Indian oilfield to shut and cut its gas output, and the evacuation of some 50,000 people in the region, officials said.

Officials also voiced concerns the cyclone, with wind gusts of up to 155 kph (100 mph), could slow the progress of the monsoon rains, vital for India's trillion-dollar economy.

Tropical Cyclone Laila was set to hammer the coast of the southern state Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, prompting Reliance Industries to stop oil production and reduce gas output from the region by 10 per cent, company sources said.

"We are monitoring the situation and if we find that the cyclone will directly hit our facilities, then our FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading facility) may have to be taken to a safer location," said a company source, which declined to be named, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The cyclone is forecast to move towards Orissa after striking Andhra Pradesh, but it is likely to weaken by the time it reaches the Paradip port, a hub for iron ore exports.

G.K. Biswal, deputy conservator of Paradip port, said port authorities were on alert although they did not expect any disruption.

Concerns for monsoon

Last year some forecasters blamed a cyclone in May for the failure of monsoon rains, but scientists are divided about the impact of tropical storms on the monsoon.

India has been hit by street protests due steep food prices, partly the result of last year's poor monsoon rains.

"We have to observe the post-Laila scenario," said Ajit Tyagi, the director general of India's Meteorology Department.

Tyagi said the weather office was standing by its forecast last month, which said the June-September monsoon rains would be 98 per cent of average.

Monsoon rains reached India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands and several parts of the Bay of Bengal on Monday, three days ahead of schedule.

"Conditions are favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon," the weather office said in its latest five-day forecast.

Local officials said heavy rainfall would help the rice crop that will be sown next month as rains would boost soil moisture and facilitate ploughing.

"Due to pre-monsoon rains, summer planning has started. If the state receives rain, the ploughing will further pick up," said Babaji Giri, director of the agriculture department in the eastern state of Orissa.

Officials in Bangladesh said they had also alerted ports and fishing vessels.

Heavy rains and lightning have already killed 10 people in Andhra Pradesh.A cyclone intensified over the Bay of Bengal on Wednesday, forcing a southern Indian oilfield to shut and cut its gas output, and the evacuation of some 50,000 people in the region, officials said.

Officials also voiced concerns the cyclone, with wind gusts of up to 155 kph (100 mph), could slow the progress of the monsoon rains, vital for India's trillion-dollar economy.

Tropical Cyclone Laila was set to hammer the coast of the southern state Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, prompting Reliance Industries to stop oil production and reduce gas output from the region by 10 per cent, company sources said.

"We are monitoring the situation and if we find that the cyclone will directly hit our facilities, then our FPSO (Floating Production Storage and Offloading facility) may have to be taken to a safer location," said a company source, which declined to be named, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The cyclone is forecast to move towards Orissa after striking Andhra Pradesh, but it is likely to weaken by the time it reaches the Paradip port, a hub for iron ore exports.

G.K. Biswal, deputy conservator of Paradip port, said port authorities were on alert although they did not expect any disruption.

Concerns for monsoon

Last year some forecasters blamed a cyclone in May for the failure of monsoon rains, but scientists are divided about the impact of tropical storms on the monsoon.

India has been hit by street protests due steep food prices, partly the result of last year's poor monsoon rains.

"We have to observe the post-Laila scenario," said Ajit Tyagi, the director general of India's Meteorology Department.

Tyagi said the weather office was standing by its forecast last month, which said the June-September monsoon rains would be 98 per cent of average.

Monsoon rains reached India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands and several parts of the Bay of Bengal on Monday, three days ahead of schedule.

"Conditions are favourable for further advance of southwest monsoon," the weather office said in its latest five-day forecast.

Local officials said heavy rainfall would help the rice crop that will be sown next month as rains would boost soil moisture and facilitate ploughing.

"Due to pre-monsoon rains, summer planning has started. If the state receives rain, the ploughing will further pick up," said Babaji Giri, director of the agriculture department in the eastern state of Orissa.

Officials in Bangladesh said they had also alerted ports and fishing vessels.

Heavy rains and lightning have already killed 10 people in Andhra Pradesh.

Cyclone builds in south India, oilfield closes- Hindustan Times

1 comments RSS Posted by Alluri Girish at 8:43 PM

Even plants cannot help cool earth if CO2 is in excess: Study

Contrary to the belief that plants could help cool earth, scientists have found that they will directly warm the land surface when there is excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A recent global scale model study points to an emerging consensus that the physiological effects of increasing atmospheric CO2 on plants on land will contribute to global warming beyond what is caused by the ‘radiative’ effects of CO2, Prof. Govindasamy Bala of Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, one of the authors of the study, said.

Carbon dioxide warms the earth because it is a greenhouse gas. However, elevated CO2 in the atmosphere causes plants to transpire less and provide less ‘evaporative cooling’, he said.

“For scientists trying to predict global climate change in the coming century, the study underscores the importance of including plant biology in their climate models,” Bala, who conducted the study jointly with Long Cao and Ken Caldeira of Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University, said.

Explaining plant physiology, Bala said, “The CO2—physiological effect arises from a change in plant transpiration rate under elevated atmospheric CO2“.

“On a hot day, we sweat more, release more water through pores in our skin and cool ourselves. Similarly, while doing photosynthesis (food production process in plants using photons from sun), plants cool the environment by releasing water through the pores called stomata on the surface of leaves,” Bala said.

“But stomata opens less widely and the canopy sweats less when CO2 is increased which causes a decline in plant transpiration and thus warming of the land surface,” he said.

“Plants do photosynthesise and remove CO2 from the atmosphere and thus could help in cooling down the warming planet,” Prof. Bala said.

Plants have a very complex and diverse influence on the climate system, Prof Ken Caldeira from Stanford said, adding .

“plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere, but they also have other effects, such as changing the amount of evaporation from land surface. It’s impossible to make good climate predictions without taking all of these factors into account.”

An increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration influences climate both directly through its radiative effect (trapping long wave radiation) and indirectly through its physiological effect (reducing transpiration of land plants), he said.

“We compared the climate response to radiative and physiological effects of increased CO2 using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) coupled Community Land and Community Atmosphere Model,” he said.

The paper was published in the May 3—7 online edition of Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.

“The scale is important when we deal with global climate change. For average land, plants transpire about 25 cm of water each year. With doubling of CO2, this amount goes down to 20 cm. This change of 5 cm is about the same magnitude as decrease of evaporation from deforestation or annual global water extraction by humans for irrigation and other consumptive use,” the scientists said.

The greenhouse warming effect of CO2 has been known for a long time but Prof Bala and his colleagues were concerned that it is not as widely recognised that CO2 also warms planet by its physiological effects on plants.

“There is no longer any doubt that CO2 decreases evaporative cooling by plants and that decreased cooling adds to global warming. This effect would cause significant warming even if CO2 were not a greenhouse gas,” lead author Cao said.

In their climate modelling study, scientists doubled the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and recorded the magnitude and geographic pattern of warming from the greenhouse and physiological effects. They found that over the entire global land surface, the effects from physiological change account for 15 per cent of warming.

The scientists also found larger runoff from the land surface in most areas for elevated CO2, as more water from precipitation bypasses the plant cooling system and flows directly to rivers and streams.

“We find that the impact of physiological effect is stronger than greenhouse effect on land surface hydrology,” Prof. Bala added.

http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article432057.ece?homepage=true

3 comments RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 4:03 AM

Australia carbon laws in doubt

CANBERRA, Dec. 1 (Reuters) - Australia's plans to cut carbon emissions were set for defeat in a hostile Senate after the election of a new opposition leader opposed to carbon-trade laws, setting the stage for a possible early 2010 election.

New Liberal opposition leader Tony Abbott, elected Tuesday, said conservative Senators, many climate change skeptics, would reject the government's carbon emissions trading laws if they are not deferred until early 2010.

Mr. Abbott said he believed in climate change, but told reporters he was opposed to the government's emissions trading scheme model, and was not afraid of fighting an election on the issue.

"As leader, I am not frightened of an election on this issue. This is going to be a tough fight. But it will be a fight. You cannot win an election without a fight," said Mr. Abbott, a boxer in his university days who once studied for the priesthood.

Greg Combet, assistant climate change minister, said the government would still push for its carbon trade laws to be passed this week. He hoped some opposition lawmakers would side with the government and defy Mr. Abbott.

"The extremists have gained control of the Liberal Party. They are opposed to taking action on climate change, they dispute the science," Mr. Combet told reporters.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has struggled to have his climate change legislation passed in the Senate before parliament adjourns until February.

Mr. Rudd, who was in Washington on Monday meeting President Barack Obama, was keen to take a lead role at next week's Copenhagen summit on climate change by enacting a "cap-and-trade" scheme requiring polluters to buy permits for their emissions.

Mr. Rudd wants emissions trading to start in Australia in July 2011, covering 75 percent of emissions in the developed world's bigger per capita emitter. The planned carbon-trade scheme would be the biggest outside Europe.

The United States is closely watching Australia's debate and a political agreement on carbon trading in Australia would help garner support for action from other countries.

If the Senate ends up rejecting the carbon scheme for a second time, Rudd will have a trigger to call an early 2010 election on climate change, most likely for March of April, with polls suggesting his government would win an increased majority.

Business, election uncertainty
Mr. Abbott said while the opposition rejected the emissions trading scheme, it still backed the government's emissions reduction target of at least 5 percent from 2000 levels by 2020, with a 25 percent target if nations agree on an ambitious climate pact in Copenhagen.

The prolonged political debate has caused some dismay among companies, coal and power firms in particular, who see some sort of scheme as inevitable and are looking for pricing certainty.

Banks and fund managers see the emissions trading scheme, the biggest economic policy change in modern Australian history, as a boon for traders, investors and new green technologies, while major polluters generally oppose it as a tax on heavy industry.

International Power Australia, a unit of International Power and Australia's largest private-sector generator, says the uncertainty has impinged on talks with its lenders.

Major miners such as BHP Billiton and oil and gas firms such as Woodside Petroleum have criticized the scheme, though have been mollified somewhat by government pledges last month to raise state compensation.

"This is the worst possible outcome for us, as this guy (Mr. Abbott) is the figurehead for the climate change skeptics within the conservative party," said Tim Hanlin, managing director Australian Climate Exchange Limited.

"Australian industry is now thrown into total uncertainty regarding a price on carbon and therefore cannot make any informed investment decisions," said Mr. Hanlin.

"This is going to put Kevin Rudd under enormous pressure to call an election on this issue."

But Monash University analyst Nick Economou said Rudd would now miss his Copenhagen deadline and be in no rush for an election, putting the chances of an early poll at 20 percent.

"They may as well play the long game, the patient game," Mr. Economou said, saying Mr. Rudd would prefer a normal election later in 2010, giving him time to build up an attack against Mr. Abbott's Liberals, with the carbon laws waiting to be passed.

Mr. Rudd has repeatedly said he does not want an early poll and would prefer elections to be held on time in late 2010.

If Mr. Rudd wins a double dissolution election of both houses of parliament, he can then push his climate policy through a special joint sitting of the houses.
Australia carbon laws in doubt

0 comments RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 3:24 AM

Elevated carbon dioxide levels may mitigate losses of biodiversity from nitrogen pollution

The study, published in December 4 in the journal Science, involved a 10-year open-air outdoor experiment in which 48 plots planted with 16 different species of plants were tested using ambient and elevated levels of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Researchers measured the number of species observed in each plot, the plant biomass both above and below ground, as well as factors related to soil, water and light that might affect plant growth.
Over time, the diversity of plants growing in the research plots changed significantly, depending on the combinations of plants and the way added CO2 and nitrogen affected the health of different species. One of the study's key findings is that while the combination of ambient carbon dioxide and nitrogen pollution reduces species richness by 16 percent, adding more CO2 to the mix reduces that change by half.
"From a biodiversity perspective, there was no evidence to support the worst-case scenario, in which impacts of rising CO2 and nitrogen deposition combine to suppress diversity by 30 percent, 40 percent or even 50 percent or more," Reich said. "Instead, their interaction ameliorated the diversity loss due to nitrogen enrichment that occurs under ambient CO2. Given the importance of biodiversity to the effective health and function of our ecosystems this is good news, or perhaps better labeled as "not quite as bad" news."
Reich, a Regents professor in the department of forest resources, notes that "while it is a relief to find out that rising CO2 and nitrogen may not directly cause enormous losses of diversity, this finding does not detract from the urgent need for us to curb CO2 emissions given the other critical CO2 effects, such as overheating the planet and threatening marine life through ocean acidification."
Elevated carbon dioxide levels may mitigate losses of biodiversity from nitrogen pollution

0 comments RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 2:41 AM

Antarctica served as climatic refuge in Earth's greatest extinction event

The new species belongs to a larger group of extinct mammal relatives, called anomodonts, which were widespread and represented the dominant plant eaters of their time.
"Members of the group burrowed in the ground, walked the surface and lived in trees," said Fröbisch, the lead author of the study. "However, Kombuisia antarctica, about the size of a small house cat, was considerably different from today's mammals -- it likely laid eggs, didn't nurse its young and didn't have fur, and it is uncertain whether it was warm blooded," said Angielczyk, Assistant Curator of Paleomammology at The Field Museum. Kombuisia antarctica was not a direct ancestor of living mammals, but it was among the few lineages of animals that survived at a time when a majority of life forms perished.
Scientists are still debating what caused the end-Permian extinction, but it was likely associated with massive volcanic activity in Siberia that could have triggered global warming. When it served as refuge, Antarctica was located some distance north of its present location, was warmer and wasn't covered with permanent glaciers, said the researchers. The refuge of Kombuisia in Antarctica probably wasn't the result of a seasonal migration but rather a longer-term change that saw the animal's habitat shift southward. Fossil evidence suggests that small and medium sized animals were more successful at surviving the mass extinction than larger animals. They may have engaged in "sleep-or-hide" behaviors like hibernation, torpor and burrowing to survive in a difficult environment.
Earlier work by Fröbisch predicted that animals like Kombuisia antarctica should have existed at this time, based on fossils found in South Africa later in the Triassic Period that were relatives of the animals that lived in Antarctica. "The new discovery fills a gap in the fossil record and contributes to a better understanding of vertebrate survival during the end-Permian mass extinction from a geographic as well as an ecological point of view," Fröbisch said.
The team found the fossils of the new species among specimens collected more than three decades ago from Antarctica that are part of a collection at the American Museum of Natural History. "At the time those fossils were collected, paleontologists working in Antarctica focused on seeking evidence for the existence of a supercontinent, Pangaea, that later split apart to become separate land masses," said Angielczyk. The fossils collected in Antarctica provided some of the first evidence of Pangaea's existence, and further analysis of the fossils can refine our understanding of events that unfolded 250 million years ago.
"Finding fossils in the current harsh conditions of Antarctica is difficult, but worthwhile," said Angielczyk. "The recent establishment of the Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies at The Field Museum recognizes the growing importance of the region," he said.
This research is part of a collaborative study of Dr. Jörg Fröbisch (Department of Geology, Field Museum, Chicago), Dr. Kenneth D. Angielczyk (Department of Geology, Field Museum, Chicago), and Dr. Christian A. Sidor (Burke Museum and Department of Biology, University of Washington), which will be published online December 3, 2009 in Naturwissenschaften.
Funding for this research was provided through a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to J. Fröbisch and grants of the National Science Foundation to C. A. Sidor.
Antarctica served as climatic refuge in Earth's greatest extinction event

0 comments RSS Posted by Krasugir & Co at 2:38 AM