Thai police clear protesters after emergency order bans public gatherings

Issued on: 15/10/2020 - 02:50

Police officers advance with riot shields during the 47th anniversary of the 1973 student uprising, in Bangkok, Thailand, October 15, 2020. 

© Soe Zeya Tun, Reuters

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Thai riot police cleared thousands of protesters from outside the prime minister’s office early on Thursday as an emergency decree banned large gatherings and the publication of sensitive news in the face of escalating protests. 

A series of demonstrations over three months have brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets of Bangkok to demand the departure of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former junta leader, and a new constitution.

They have also broken a longstanding taboo by calling for reforms to the powerful monarchy of King Maha Vajiralongkorn – and in an act cited by the government as one reason for its emergency measures they obstructed a royal motorcade.

Shortly after the emergency decree took affect at 4 a.m. (2100 GMT), riot police advanced behind shields on protesters who had camped outside Government House. Many of the thousands who had protested there late on Wednesday had already left.

Some protesters tried to resist with makeshift barricades of garbage cans, but they were swiftly pushed back. By dawn, hundreds of police occupied the nearby streets and city workers began cleaning up.


At least three of the protest leaders were arrested, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said. Police made no immediate comment.

The government said it acted in the face of increasing disorder and after the obstruction of the motorcade.

“It is extremely necessary to introduce an urgent measure to end this situation effectively and promptly to maintain peace and order,” state television announced.

The emergency decree bans big gatherings of five or more people and allows authorities to stop people from entering any area they designate.

It also prohibits “publication of news, other media, and electronic information that contains messages that could create fear or intentionally distort information, creating misunderstanding that will affect national security or peace and order.”

Thai Lawyers for Human Rights said that three protest leaders had been arrested. It named them as Parit Chirawat, rights lawyer Arnon Nampa and Panupong Jadnok. It said Arnon had been arrested on charges related to a speech he gave in the northern city of Chiang Mai. It said it did not know the grounds for the other arrests.

Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Bangkok on Wednesday.

The protest movement aims to remove Prayuth, who took power in a 2014 coup that was meant to end a decade of violence between supporters and opponents of the country’s establishment.

Those marching on the streets also want a new constitution and have called for a reduction in the powers of the king.

Protesters shouted at the king’s motorcade in Bangkok on Tuesday after the arrest of 21 protesters. On Wednesday, some protesters slowed a convoy carrying Queen Suthida, giving the three-finger salute and chanted “get out” at police protecting the vehicle.

(REUTERS)

'I had to do it': the student leader defying Thailand's royal taboo

Issued on: 15/10/2020 - 

Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP
Bangkok (AFP)

Thai activist Rung jabbed at the establishment when she demanded reform of the all-powerful monarchy last month -- a stand that saw her bundled into a car and arrested on Thursday.

The university student, whose real name is Panusaya Sithijirawattanakul, has become one of the best-known faces of Thailand's swelling pro-democracy movement, now targeted by a forceful government crackdown.

She was the first to read out 10 demands to reform the kingdom's monarchy before thousands of protesters at a rally on August 10, leading the defiance against the country's biggest political taboo.

They included more transparency for the royal family's fortune and the abolition of the royal defamation law, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in jail per charge.

"When I left the stage, I felt like I had expanded the boundaries... raised the limits on how people can talk about the monarchy," the bespectacled sociology and anthropology student, now 22, told AFP late August.

Calls challenging the previously unassailable royal family have grown louder since, culminating in the unprecedented challenge by some protesters Wednesday who raised three fingers as the motorcade ferrying Queen Suthida and Prince Dipangkorn drove by.

By early Thursday, "serious" emergency measures were imposed in Bangkok to put a stop to what the government described as unconstitutional demonstrations.

As fellow activists were arrested, Rung criticised the emergency measures on a live feed.

"The crackdown is illegitimate, because in a democracy, we should be able to rally," she said.

Hours later, police arrested Rung in her hotel room, with the scene broadcast to tens of thousands of people on Facebook Live.

She is one of 22 detained for Wednesday's protest and a government spokesman has warned legal procedures will be pursued against those who had "acted in a way that defames the monarchy".

- 'Time to adapt' -

Born 1998 in Nonthaburi to a middle-class family running an auto workshop, Rung said she was just 10 years old when she first questioned the reverence with which the country was expected to treat the royals.

Her entire neighbourhood was ushered out onto the streets to pay respects to a royal motorcade.

"I remember thinking: 'Why did I have to go? Why did they have to force me and other people to kneel down?'"

Shielded by draconian defamation laws, the super-rich monarchy wields enormous influence in nearly every sphere of Thai society -- and is buttressed by an arch-royalist military.

Rung said she became "radicalised" as she saw the 2014 coup unfold when she was 15.

"Soldiers don't have the authority to rule the country and everything broadcast then was propaganda," she told AFP.

Partly inspired by the Hong Kong democracy protests, Thai activists are calling for a complete overhaul of the government of Premier Prayut Chan-O-Cha, the former army chief who led the 2014 coup.

The current protesters see Prayut's administration as only serving the elite.

At the apex of power sits King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who has made unprecedented changes to the institution since ascending the throne in 2016.

He has taken personal control of the palace's fortune, worth an estimated $60 billion, and also moved two army units under his direct command.

The burgeoning youth-led movement wants changes "meant to sustain the monarchy in a way that is adapted" to the modern world, said Rung.

"No one should be more important or higher than anyone else."

- 'My life would change forever' -

But speaking out comes at a cost.

At least nine pro-democracy activists who fled Thailand since the 2014 coup have disappeared in the past two years, according to Human Rights Watch.

Even before their latest arrest Thursday, Rung and other student leaders had been hit with multiple charges, including sedition, carrying a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.

Some analysts -- and even student leaders themselves -- have recalled the events of 1976, when students protesting the return of a military dictator were shot, beaten to death and lynched by state forces and royalist mobs.

But Rung continued to travel to rallies outside Bangkok to make speeches and helped organise gatherings in encrypted message groups that attracted thousands.

"I knew that after I read out the 10 demands, my life would change forever," the softly-spoken activist said as she played with her kitten.

"I still had to do it."

© 2020 AFP

'Free our friends!': Thousands defy Thai crackdown after emergency decree, arrests http://f24.my/6ygp

Thailand protests, pro-democrary protesters and royalists hold rival rallies

Thailand protests: Hundreds of protesters gather in Bangkok, defying ban

 

Whitebark pine declines may unravel the tree's mutualism with Clark's Nutcracker

Whitebark pine depends heavily on nutcrackers for seed dispersal and germination; but if whitebark pine seeds aren't abundant, the nutcracker will find another food source, making it harder for remaining pines to reproduce

THE INSTITUTE FOR BIRD POPULATIONS

Research News

 

IMAGE: A CLARK'S NUTCRACKER PERCHES IN A WHITEBARK PINE. PHOTO BY FRANK D. LOSPALLUTO/FLICKR. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO BY FRANK D. LOSPALLUTO/FLICKR. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The relationship between the whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), an iconic tree of western mountaintops, and the Clark's Nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana), a brash bird in the crow family, is often used as an example of the biological concept of mutualism: a relationship between species where both benefit. The pine provides large, nutritious seeds to the nutcracker. The nutcracker buries these seeds for later use in scattered hiding spots, inevitably failing to retrieve some and effectively planting the next generation of whitebark pine. But the mutualism between the pine and the nutcracker is not equal. While the pine depends heavily on nutcrackers for seed dispersal and germination, the nutcracker merely prefers the whitebark pine's seeds. If whitebark pine seeds aren't available or abundant, the highly mobile nutcracker will fly off and find another food source.

A study published today in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that the inequality in the pine-nutcracker mutualism may make this partnership vulnerable when the populations of one of the partners declines. Scientists from The Institute for Bird Populations, the National Park Service, and the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative found that the mutualistic relationship between whitebark pine and Clark's Nutcrackers may be threatened by local declines in the tree's population.

The researchers used data from separate tree and bird monitoring programs in five national parks to examine the relationship between Clark's Nutcracker and whitebark pine in each park. The parks included two in the Pacific Northwest: Mount Rainier and North Cascades, and three in central California: Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia. In the Pacific Northwest, whitebark pine populations have been decimated by a fungal disease called blister rust. But the disease is not yet widespread in the central California region.

"We observed a dramatic decline in Clark's Nutcracker within Mount Rainier National Park, where the number of birds counted in the park fell steadily to zero over a decade, and those losses appeared to track an observed decline in healthy whitebark pine," says the lead author of the paper Dr. Chris Ray, a research ecologist with The Institute for Bird Populations. An observational study like this one cannot determine whether the decline in whitebark pine caused the nutcrackers to leave, but the lack of nutcrackers, regardless of the cause, has important consequences for the remaining whitebark pine. "There might be other reasons why we no longer detect many nutcrackers at Mount Rainier during the summer," explains Ray, "but a total loss of nutcrackers would clearly disrupt the mutualism there, curtailing local seed dispersal and germination of whitebark."

Whitebark pine health is designated by the National Park Service as a "vital sign" of the subalpine ecosystems where it grows because it is a keystone species. This means that it is critical to their ecological function, supporting many other plants and animals that live there and influencing processes like snow retention and spring run-off. Declines in whitebark pine populations have been attributed to an interacting set of factors including blister rust disease, mountain pine beetle infestations and climate change.

Park managers are very concerned about the dramatic declines in whitebark pine in recent decades and what they mean for the ecosystems the pine calls home, says National Park Service ecologist and co-author of the study Dr. Jonathan Nesmith. "These declines have been so severe that whitebark pine is a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act. By understanding what is going on with whitebark pine we can better understand what is happening more broadly in the high elevation systems where they grow and how they might be changing due to climate change and other stressors."

The researchers note that in North Cascades National Park, where whitebark pine populations have also declined, Clark's Nutcracker populations "fluctuated wildly" rather than declining to zero as in Mount Rainier National Park. It is possible that nutcrackers, who routinely fly up to 30 kilometers in a day, may be taking advantage of whitebark pines outside the park boundaries.

The nutcrackers may also be shifting their foraging patterns and seeking other tree species. In the central California parks, where whitebark pine populations are still relatively healthy, Clark's nutcrackers were not always associated with whitebark pine. "In Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, nutcrackers were often detected in areas where foxtail pine appeared more common than whitebark," says Ray. "These results suggest that nutcrackers can leave areas where whitebark pine is in decline and seek resources elsewhere, which might mean that declining seed dispersal should be added to the list of current threats to whitebark."

The mathematical model developed by the researchers to examine the association between Clark's Nutcrackers and whitebark pine integrates data from two completely separate monitoring programs in these 5 national parks, one focused on birds and another focused on subalpine trees. This largescale approach yielded findings that would not have been obtainable from either program alone, or from monitoring in just a single park. The model can now be used to study the nutcracker-whitebark mutualism further, as more data become available, and perhaps improve monitoring of the bird and the pine. From Ray's perspective, this may be the most important implication of the study: "During the process of developing this model we identified ways that these monitoring programs might expand to help answer questions relevant to the management of these species." 

Ivory Coast without ivory? Elephant populations are declining rapidly in Côte d'Ivoire

PLOS
IMAGE: FOREST ELEPHANTS IN CÔTE D'IVOIRE
CREDIT: SERY GONEDELÉ BI (2020)

Recent years have witnessed a widespread and catastrophic decline in the number of forest elephants in protected areas in Côte d'Ivoire, according to a study published October 14 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sery Gonedelé Bi of Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny d'Abidjan-Cocody, and colleagues.

In precolonial and colonial times, Côte d'Ivoire probably hosted one of the largest elephant populations in West Africa, resulting in the country's name, which translates to Ivory Coast. During the last three decades, elephant populations have sharply decreased, mainly because of forest agricultural clearing. By the early 1990s, the total number of savannah and forest elephants in the entire country was estimated to be less than 360. The most recently collected data on Côte d'Ivoire elephants are at least one decade old, and most of these studies did not follow a standardized protocol. In the new study, the authors present updated information on the distribution and conservation status of forest elephants in Côte d'Ivoire. The authors analyzed dung counts, records of human-elephant conflicts, media reports, and interview survey data obtained from 2011 to 2017.

Of the 25 protected areas surveyed, elephant presence was confirmed in only four areas, where elephant density was low. More than half of the protected areas had been completely converted to farms and human settlements. Protected areas with higher levels of protection had a higher probability of hosting an elephant population. The presence of elephants inside protected areas was affected by human population size, habitat degradation, and the proportion of forest converted to cocoa plantation. According to the authors, aggressive conservation actions, including law enforcement and ranger patrolling, are needed to protect the remaining forest elephant populations.

The authors add: "The large majority of the protected area of Côte d'Ivoire has lost its entire elephant populations as a consequence of the lack of conservation measures. Out of the 25 protected areas surveyed, forest elephants of Côte d'Ivoire are now confined into small populations in four protected areas."

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Citation:

Kouakou J-L, Gonedelé Bi S, Bitty EA, Kouakou C, Yao AK, Kassé KB, et al. (2020) Ivory Coast without ivory: Massive extinction of African forest elephants in Côte d'Ivoire. PLoS ONE 15(10): e0232993.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232993

Funding:

The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing Interests:

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232993

 

AUSTRALIA

Human activity has made Murray estuary more vulnerable to drought

Historic metallic 'fingerprints' allow scientists to reconstruct estuary formation

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Research News

 

IMAGE: DR THOMAS JOB COLLECTING CORE SAMPLES ON LAKE ALBERT, MURRAY ESTUARY, SOUTH AUSTRALIA. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Human impacts on the Lower Lakes of the Murray River estuary have made its ecosystem more vulnerable to drought, according to findings by University of Sydney geoscientists.

The new science shows that since the construction of the Goolwa Barrages in 1940, which effectively cut the estuarine ecosystem off from the ocean, the risk of acidification of its waters has increased.

Researchers led by Dr Thomas Job from the School of Geosciences said their findings need to be taken into account when setting environmental baselines for the management of the Murray estuary. Their work is published in The Holocene journal.

"The Millennium Drought from 1996 to 2010 saw historic lows in Lake Albert's water levels," Dr Job, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, said. "This triggered widespread oxidation of exposed sulfide minerals, causing surface waters to become acidic."

Without ocean water entering the system during drought, as would have occurred before the Goolwa Barrages were built, lake levels can drop to low levels, causing major acidification.

"This isn't just an estimate," lead author on the paper Dr Job said. "We have seen direct evidence for this in the recent geological record going back thousands of years: droughts leave historic fingerprints deep in the lake sediments. We see these fingerprints more distinctly in sediments deposited after the barrages were built."

Increased acidity dissolves metals from soils into the lake waters, lowering water quality. Eventually, these metals end up back in the lake sediments.

"We looked at the geologic record for these metals. Combining these new data with our understanding of the shape of the lake system over time, we have created a more dynamic picture of how the system formed and how it responds to changes in climate," Dr Job said.

"We hope this information will improve management of the Murray-Darling estuary."

WETLAND OF INTERNATIONAL IMPORTANCE

Rather than looking to precolonial conditions, current baselines used by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority aim to conserve the system with reference to 1985, when the estuary was listed as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Critically, this is after changes to the ecosystem that locked in its vulnerability to acidification during drought.

"When we look at the complexity of the Albert and Alexandrina lakes, it's important that baselines capture they system's natural conditions. Previous models have struggled to identify how the system has changed over time," Dr Job said.

Contested interpretations of the estuary's formation and uncertainty surrounding the sustainability of current water usage practice for farming and domestic use mean that a robust understanding of how the system has evolved is required.

"Half of Australia's farming - and two-thirds of its irrigated agriculture - relies on careful management of the Murray-Darling system," Dr Job said.

By combining environmental chemistry with studies of the system's geomorphology, Dr Job and colleagues found previously hidden complexity and dynamism in how the lakes formed.

"It's not clear yet what this means for how we manage the precious water resources of our greatest river system, but we are getting a much better understanding of how complex - and how sensitive to change - the Murray estuary is," Dr Job said.

The new model also shows that before about 5400 years ago, Lake Albert experienced very different conditions, due to higher sea levels and a more direct southern connection to the ocean, increasing tidal influences and inflows of saltwater.

"We have updated two previous studies, one published in 1994 and the other in 2007," Dr Job said. "Ours is the first to incorporate the historic environmental chemistry of the lakes."

The research team hopes the improved historic picture of Murray estuary can be applied to the environmental management of the system.

The researchers say that the ecological health and function of Lake Albert, and the degree to which it has been altered, should be measured with reference to its natural estuarine state before the Goolwa Barrages cut the lakes off from tidal brackish waters and changed the system's hydrology.

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DOWNLOAD photos of Dr Thomas Job at Lake Albert and the paper at this link.

INTERVIEWS

Dr Thomas Job | Postdoctoral researcher | School of Geosciences
thomas.job@sydney.edu.au

MEDIA ENQUIRIES

Marcus Strom | Science Media Adviser | The University of Sydney
marcus.strom@sydney.edu.au | +61 423 982 485

DECLARATION

Carbon and lead dating were funded with support from the Australian government at the Centre for Accelerator Science at ANSTO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). The South Australia Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources authorised the undertaking of this research within the River Murray Estuary.

We particularly acknowledge the Ngarrindjeri community for whom this land is of deep cultural and spiritual significance.

Climate change undermines the safety of buildings and infrastructure in Europe

CMCC FOUNDATION - EURO-MEDITERRANEAN CENTER ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Research News

 

IMAGE: MEAN TEMPERATURE ANOMALY FOR DJF (DECEMBER-JANUARY-FEBRUARY) AND JJA (JUNE-JULY-AUGUST) SEASONS UNDER THE CONCENTRATION SCENARIOS RCP4.5 (FIRST ROW) AND RCP8.5 (SECOND ROW); 2056-2085 VS 1971-2000. DATA PROCESSING BY DATACLIME.... view more 

CREDIT: WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE WORLD CLIMATE RESEARCH PROGRAMME'S WORKING GROUP ON REGIONAL CLIMATE, AND THE WORKING GROUP ON COUPLED MODELLING. WE THANK THE CLIMATE MODELLING GROUPS. WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE EARTH SYSTEM...

Buildings and infrastructure also need to adapt to the changing climate. Updating structural design standards is crucial to improving European climate resilience and ensuring the safety of constructions, that are expected to suffer from changes in atmospheric variables and more frequent and intense extreme weather events.

In 2017, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) - the European Commission's science and knowledge service - established the scientific network on adaptation of structural design to climate change. A network of experts, which includes the CMCC Foundation, dedicated to studying how research can help decision-makers take predicted changes in the climate system into account when amending the Eurocodes, the European standards for structural design.

The role of expected increases in temperature in Europe over the coming decades is at the centre of two new reports realised by the network, the first focused on thermal actions on structures (Thermal design of structures and the changing climate), and the other on corrosion in the context of a changing climate (Expected implications of climate change on the corrosion of structures).

In their contribution to these publications, CMCC researchers from the REMHI division - Regional Models and geo-Hydrological Impacts - analyzed temperature variations and other atmospheric variables expected over the next 50 years, a period that usually represents the use lifespan of a structure built today. The study used the results of the projections included in the EURO-CORDEX ensemble.

The first study, considered the "worst-case" scenario (RCP8.5) - or rather the "high emissions scenario", predicts a growth in greenhouse gas emissions at current rates for the future as a reference scenario to investigate the case study of Italy, noting for the entire country a relevant temperature increase by 2070.

"Taking as a reference the maximum and minimum temperature levels that are expected to occur at least once in 50 years, we found a significant increase in both the maximum values of the maximum temperature - which in some areas of Italy can reach +6°C - and the maximum values of the minimum temperature - with variations up to +8°C in the mountain ranges," explains Guido Rianna, CMCC researcher and one of the authors of the study. "The increase in minimum temperature may not be that relevant for buildings, as it implies that constructions will be exposed to less rigid temperatures than today, and therefore less stress. Instead, the increase in the maximum expected temperature could lead to the need for a revision of building standards to ensure the safety of constructions: linear structures such as bridges and viaducts, for example, are subject to thermal expansion."

The second publication is about a study - conducted on a European scale - on the expected variation in air temperatures and relative humidity in 2070 due to climate change, aimed at understanding to what extent these atmospheric variables may affect the corrosion of buildings in the future. Indeed, increasing temperature and relative humidity can accelerate the corrosion process of steel structures or bars embedded in reinforced concrete, undermining their resistance and therefore threatening the safety of buildings.

"Climate simulations tell us that temperatures in the next 50 years are increasing significantly throughout Europe, albeit with regional differences," continues Rianna. "The extent of this increase is between 3 and 5°C on average and depends on the climate change mitigation measures that will be implemented." Here too, the authors explain, an amendment of the Eurocodes may be necessary, in order to take into account the acceleration of the corrosion process in buildings induced by climate change and provide for measures to limit it. Future changes in relative humidity, the study explains, are not significant. Indicating that the real engine of corrosion processes of structures on a European scale will be represented by increases in temperature, rather than humidity.

"These publications are the result of a series of studies aimed at supporting the definition and revision of the European standards for structural design most suited to the world of the future," says Paola Mercogliano, director of the REMHI division of the CMCC Foundation. "After having analyzed, in the past, the impact of snowpack and in these recent studies, thermal impact, the next step will be to study the impact of wind. Our ultimate goal is to support policy-makers and builders with sound services and information for the update of current structural design standards, considering the various atmospheric phenomena and the different types of constructions, in order to allow for the implementation of effective policies and adaptation actions."

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More information

Athanasopoulou, A., Sousa, M.L., Dimova, S., Rianna, G., Mercogliano, P., Villani, V., Croce P., Landi, F., Formichi, P., Markova, J., Thermal design of structures and the changing climate, EUR 30302 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020, ISBN 978-92-76-20776-4, doi:10.2760/128894, JRC121351.

M.L. Sousa, S. Dimova, A. Athanasopoulou, G. Rianna, P. Mercogliano, V.Villani, M. Nogal, H. Gervasio, L. Neves, E. Bastidas-Arteaga, G. Tsionis. Expected implications of climate change on the corrosion of structures, EUR 30303 EN, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2020, ISBN 978-92-76-20782-5, doi:10.2760/05229, JRC121312.

 

Warm central equatorial pacific sea surface temperatures and anthropogenic warming boosted the 2019 severe drought in East China

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Research News

 

IMAGE: A PERSISTENT SEVERE DROUGHT OCCURRED OVER EAST CHINA ALONG THE YANGTZE RIVER IN 2019. THE PHOTO ON THE COVER OF ADVANCES IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES SHOWS CRACKED LAKE BOTTOM OF POYANG... view more 

CREDIT: JUFANG HU

Drought usually originates from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time and is identified as one of the extreme aspects of the hydrological cycle. Because of its destructive impacts on human life, agriculture, ecology, and physical systems of affected regions, there is increasing interest in understanding changes in drought under global warming and quantifying the role of human and other external influences on drought.

A severe drought occurred in East China from August to October 2019 against a background of long-term significant warming and caused widespread impacts on agriculture and society, emphasizing the urgent need to understand the mechanism responsible for this drought and its linkage to global warming.

"Whether severe droughts of this type are likely to increase under anthropogenic global warming is of great concern for both the public and policymakers," says Congwen Zhu, the corresponding author of a recently published paper in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. "Thus, our study was aimed at understanding the possible mechanisms responsible for this most severe drought in East China and to further explore its linkage with natural climate variability and anthropogenic global warming."

Zhu is a researcher from the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences (CAMS). He and his colleagues found that warm central equatorial Pacific sea surface temperatures and anthropogenic warming were possibly responsible for this drought event.

"This drought was naturally driven by the extremely warm central equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature. However, global warming has enhanced the probability of a severe drought like this occurring," concludes Shuangmei Ma, the first author of the paper, who is an associate researcher at CAMS.

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A new land surface model to monitor global river water environment

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

Research News

 

Climate change and human activities, including heat emission, nitrogen (N) emission, and water management are altering the hydrothermal condition and N transport in the soil and river systems, thereby affecting the global nitrogen cycle and water environment. "We need to assess the impacts of these human activities on global river temperature and riverine N transport," said Prof. Zhenghui Zie with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, "because quantitative assessment can not only improve our understanding of the material and energy cycle that occur in response to anthropogenic disturbances, but also contribute to protecting river ecosystems."

Xie and his collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences incorporated the schemes of riverine dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) transport, river water temperature, and human activity into a land surface model, and thus developed a land surface model CAS-LSM. They applied the model to explore the impacts of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances on global river temperature and DIN transport.

"We found that the water temperature of rivers in tropical zones increased at about 0.5oC per decade due to climate change from 1981 to 2010, and the heat emission of the once-through cooling system of thermal power plants further warmed the temperature. In Asia, power plants increased local river temperatures by about 60%." Said Dr. Shuang Liu, the lead author of the study published in Global and Planetary Change.

Climate change determined the interannual variability of DIN exports from land to oceans, and water management controlled the retention of DIN by affecting the water cycle and river thermal processes.

"From the perspective of anthropogenic N emission, we found the riverine DIN in the USA was affected primarily by N fertilizer use, the changes in DIN fluxes in European rivers was dominated by point source pollution, and rivers in China were seriously affected by both fertilization and point source emission." said Dr. Yan Wang, the lead author of the team's another study published in Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.

In general, the results indicated that incorporating schemes related to nitrogen transport and human activities into land surface models could be an effective way to monitor global river water quality and diagnose the performance of the land surface modeling.

This series of studies have been published in Global Change Biology, Global and Planetary Change, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems and other journals. One of the papers is highlights by Nature Climate Change.

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Modern humans took detours on their way to Europe

UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Research News

 

Favourable climatic conditions influenced the sequence of settlement movements of Homo sapiens in the Levant on their way from Africa to Europe. In a first step, modern humans settled along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Only then did they spread out into the Sinai desert and the eastern Jordanian Rift Valley. This is the result of archaeological research conducted by Collaborative Research Centre 'Our Way to Europe' (CRC 806) at the universities of Cologne, Bonn, and Aachen. The article 'Al-Ansab and the Dead Sea: mid-MIS 3 Archaeology and Environment of the Early Ahmarian Population of the Levantine Corridor' was published in PLOS ONE.

For more than ten years, the team has been analysing sediments, pollen, and archaeological artefacts around the site of Al-Ansab 1 near the ancient ruin-city of Petra (Jordan). The goal was to gain an understanding of the environmental conditions that prevailed at the time of human expansion. 'Human presence consolidated in the region under favourable climate conditions', said Professor Dr Jürgen Richter, lead author of the study.

The success story of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa began about 100,000 years ago with well-known sites such as Qafzeh and Skhul in Israel. However, these early records only reveal a brief, temporary expansion of the territory into the Levant. Permanent settlement of the region only dates back to about 43,000 years ago, scientists believe. During the epoch of the so-called 'Early Ahmarian', modern humans gradually had been spreading throughout the Levant - a first step on their way to Asia and Europe.

Favourable climatic conditions were preconditions for permanent human settlement. On a large scale, this is illustrated by the presence of the so-called Lake Lisan. This freshwater lake was located where the Dead Sea is today. However, it was of a much larger extent and carried greater water volume. Most of the water evaporated only with the end of the last ice age, leaving behind the hypersaline Dead Sea known today.

Even on a small scale, the scientists were able to recognise the favourable environmental conditions: geo-archaeological teams from the University of Cologne and RWTH Aachen University examined the site of Al-Ansab 1. Whereas today, the Wadi Sabra, in which the site is located, is strongly shaped by seasonal flash floods, geomorphological and archaeological investigations showed that at the time of settlement, the conditions were less erosive and continuously wet, permitting the presence of humans.

'This enabled the spread of humans from the coastal Mediterranean area to the formerly drier regions of the Negev desert and the eastern slopes of the Jordan Rift Valley. They hunted gazelles in the open landscape - a prey we found in many sites in the region from this period', says Richter. 'Humans did not come by steady expansion out of Africa through the Levant and further to Europe and Asia. Rather, they first settled in a coastal strip along the Mediterranean Sea.'

The region around the site of Al-Ansab 1 therefore was a stepping stone on Homo sapiens' way - a journey that did not take a straight path to the European continent, but was guided by complex interactions between humans and their environment.

Unexpectedly large number of trees populate the Western Sahara and the Sahel

CNRS

Research News

 

IMAGE: CATTLE HERD NEAR NIAKHAR (SENEGAL) UNDER AN ACACIA TREE AND CLOSE TO A BALANITES TREE. view more 

CREDIT: LAURENT KERGOAT - GET

The number of trees inhabiting the Western Sahara, the Sahel and the Sudanian zone has exceeded the expectations of scientists, with more than 1.8 billion having been located thanks to an international collaboration including researchers from the CNRS*. High-resolution remote sensing made it possible to gather a multitude of satellite images of these areas, which were then analysed by applying an artificial intelligence pattern recognition method. According to the study, which focused on trees with a crown size greater than 3m², isolated trees cover an area of 1.3 million km², about 2.5 times the surface area of France. Scientists also noted that crown size and tree density depends closely on the climatic regime and land use. These trees make a major contribution to local resources, biodiversity and carbon storage, as well as playing a crucial role in dry tropical ecosystems and agrosystems. This work, published on 14th October in Nature, highlights the possibility of creating an inventory of all the non-forest trees on the planet, in order to assess their contribution to environmental issues.

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*French scientists working at the Laboratoire « Evolution et Diversité Biologique » (CNRS/Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier/IRD) and the Laboratoire « Géosciences Environnement Toulouse » - OMP (CNRS/CNES/Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier/IRD).

Thawing permafrost releases organic compounds into the air

UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI

Research News

 

When permafrost thaws due to global warming, not only the greenhouse gases known to all, but also organic compounds are released from the soil. They may have a significant impact on climate change.

Arctic peatlands are very rich in carbon. The effects of the Arctic permafrost thawing on carbon dioxide and methane emissions have been investigated and assessed extensively globally. It is known that when the permafrost thaws, carbon dioxide and methane, which accelerate climate change, are released from the soil. Less attention has been paid to the fact that thawing permafrost may also release volatile organic compounds into the air.

Researchers at the University of Helsinki observed in a study for the first time that large quantities of volatile organic compounds, including monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes and diterpenes, are released from permafrost peatland soil thawed in laboratory incubations. The peatland soil samples were collected from Finnish Lapland. The study demonstrated that global warming accelerates the release of these compounds, particularly those with lower volatility, from the Arctic permafrost.

In the Arctic region, the anthropogenic influences are weak and aboveground vegetation is scarce. The released organic compounds from thawing permafrost can be highly reactive and contribute to the formation of small particles that suspend in the air. These processes can significantly impact the complex causalities associated with climate change and, consequently, the Arctic climate as well as global warming as a whole.

Compounds released from the soil and formed in the air can, for example, increase cloud formation, making increased cloudiness reflect solar radiation away from the Earth, which curbs global warming.

"For now, it's impossible to say with certainty whether the release of organic compounds accelerates or decelerates climate change. They introduce in any case additional uncertainties to climate change modelling." says Associate Professor Federico Bianchi from the University of Helsinki's Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR).

According to Bianchi, much more research is needed to determine the significance of the findings now made. One of the biggest uncertainties in modelling climate change is precisely the effect aerosols have on global warming. Finnish researchers are at the global top in aerosol research.

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Specialists of several fields at the University of Helsinki contributed to the study, which was published in the esteemed Environmental Research Letters journal.

Article:

Li, H., Väliranta, M., Mäki, M., Kohl, L., Sannel, A. B. K., Pumpanen, J., Koskinen, M., Bäck, J., and Bianchi, F.: Overlooked organic vapor emissions from thawing Arctic permafrost, Environ Res Lett, 2020. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abb62d

Further information:

Haiyan Li, postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, University of Helsinki, +358 50 4387 670, haiyan.li@helsinki.fi

Federico Bianchi, associate professor, Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research, University of Helsinki, +358 50 3188 157, federico.bianchi@helsinki.fi