Warfare, not climate, is driving resurgent hunger in Africa, says study

After years of progress on food security, some nations see sharp reversals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EARTH INSTITUTE AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: VIOLENT CONFLICTS ARE BEHIND INCREASED HUNGER IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA SAYS A NEW STUDY. HERE, A FARMER CARRIES FORAGE FOR HIS MULE IN SOUTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA. FURTHER NORTH IN THE COUNTRY, STARVATION SPREAD THIS YEAR IN THE FACE OF CIVIL WAR. view more 

CREDIT: JACQUELYN TURNER, INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SOCIETY

For years, it seemed the world was making progress eliminating hunger. Then, starting in 2014, the trend slid back slowly and reversed in many nations; now, some 700 million people—nearly 9 percent of the world’s population—go to bed hungry, according to the UN.

One of the hardest-hit regions is sub-Saharan Africa. Here, many people reflexively blame droughts stoked by climate change. However, a new study looking at the question in granular detail says that is not the case: long-running wars, not the weather, are to blame. The study, just published in the journal Nature Food, finds that while droughts routinely cause food insecurity in Africa, their contribution to hunger has remained steady or even shrunk in recent years. Instead, rising widespread, long-term violence has displaced people, raised food prices and blocked outside food aid, resulting in the reversal.

“Colloquially, people would say it’s climate-induced droughts and floods, because that’s what people tend to say,” said Weston Anderson, who led the study as a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. “But academics have not compared the importance of drought to violence in triggering food crises in a holistic way.”

To reach their conclusions, the researchers analyzed 2009-2018 data from the Famine Early Warning System, a USAID-funded network that provides information to governments and aid organizations about looming or ongoing food crises in dozens of countries. The system shows that the number of people requiring emergency food aid in monitored countries surged from 48 million in 2015 to 113 million in 2020. The system is not designed to quantify the different factors behind the emergencies. But Anderson and his colleagues were able to tease these out for 14 of Africa’s most food-insecure countries. The nations reach in a band from Mauritania, Mali and Nigeria in the west, through Sudan, Chad and other nations, to Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia in the east. The study also took in several nations further south, including Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Not surprisingly, the researchers found that periodic, well-documented droughts have been behind food crises across large areas. However, the overall effects of drought did not increase during the study period; of anything, they went down in some areas. When drought did hit, farmers usually bounced back in the next planting season, within a year or so. Animal herders took twice as long to recover, because the areas where they live saw with more extreme conditions, and it took people time to rebuild their hard-hit livestock herds.

Amid the usual ups and downs of rainfall, violence has been responsible for the progressive increase in hunger, the study found. Long-term conflicts ranging from repeated terrorist attacks to pitched combat between armies have caused shortages lasting year after year, with no end in sight, the authors say.

CAPTION

Frequency of violent conflicts 2009-2018 in 14 African countries studied.

CREDIT

Adapted from Anderson et al., Nature Food 2021

This has been especially the case in northeast Nigeria, where the Boko Haram guerrilla army has waged a relentless hit-and-run campaign against the government and much of the populace for the past decade. Also in South Sudan, where a messy, multi-sided civil war that started in 2013 continues to sputter along. Sudan and Somalia also have seen warfare-induced increases in hunger, but in those nations, droughts have been the more dominant factors, the study found. In most cases, pastoralists are again the most affected by violence as they are with drought, because they are more likely to live in the most violence-prone areas.

The latest casualty is Ethiopia, where hunger has arced upward across the country in recent years, mainly due to below-average rainfall. But civil war erupted in the country’s Tigray region last year, greatly adding to the misery. The study did not examine this new conflict, but a recent UN report said that more than 5 million people in the region urgently need food aid, and many are already seeing out and out famine. “This severe crisis results from the cascading effects of conflict, including population displacement, movement restrictions, limited humanitarian access, loss of harvest and livelihood assets, and dysfunctional or nonexistent markets,” a top UN official said. On top of that, the drought in Ethiopia is projected to continue through this year.

The researchers looked into a third possible cause of hunger: locusts. Again,  not surprisingly, locusts affect food security in some years by damaging forage and crops—but not on a scale large enough to account for the increase in hunger during the study period. (The study did not look at the unusually large waves of locusts that swept much of East Africa in 2019-2020; these may have had more drastic results.)

One further factor the researchers looked at: whether the onset of drought contributed to flareups of violence, and thus more hunger. One of the report’s coauthors, climatologist Richard Seager of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, connected the dots in this regard in a widely cited 2015 study arguing that one spark for the ongoing Syrian civil war was a multi-year drought that drove many people off their land, into cities. This does not seem to be the case for the African countries, he said. The authors write, “We found no systematic relation between drought and either frequency of conflict or deaths related to conflict. Conflict may be affected by environmental stress in some cases but the relationship across Africa in recent decades is complex and context-specific.”

CAPTION

Drought periodically causes widespread food insecurity across much of sub-Saharan Africa, and may exacerbate the effects of warfare. Here, farmers in the village of Diouna, southern Mali, listen for weather bulletins.

CREDIT

Francesco Fiondella/International Research Institute for Climate and Society

While warfare has been the predominant driver of hunger in some countries, that does not mean others have completely escaped the violence that can disrupt food supplies. For instance, over the last decade, much of Mali has been subject to on and off attacks by separatist and Islamist insurgents who at times have taken entire cities. Since 2015, the once largely peaceful nation of Burkina Faso has seen hundreds of attacks by rebels and jihadists, including a raid on a village in early June this year that killed more than 100 people.

“The overall message is that if we’re going to predict and handle food crises, we need to be paying attention to conflicts, which can be really complicated—not just the more easily identified things like drought,” said Anderson. “Droughts have a clear start and a clear end. But there are all kinds of violence. And a lot of the time, there is no clear start or end to it.” That said, warfare is certainly behind surging hunger in other parts of the world that the team did not examine, he said, most obviously amid the civil war raging in Yemen.

The other authors of the study are Elisabeth Ilboudo-Nébie, Wolfram Schlenker, Fabien Cottier, Alex De Sherbinin, Dara Mendeloff and Kelsey Markey, all of Columbia University; and Sonali McDermid and Kelsey Markey of New York University.

# # #

Study: Political violence, not climate

 change, to blame for rising hunger in Africa

Violent conflicts are behind increased hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new study, including in parts of Ethiopia, where a farmer is pictured carrying forage for his mule in the southwest of the African nation. Photo by Jacquelyn Turner/International Research Institute for Climate and Society

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- After years of progress in the fight against hunger, food insecurity is again a growing problem in Africa, where famine threatens millions of people -- new research suggests prolonged violence is to blame.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where the problem is especially pronounced, many experts have traditionally blamed climate change and an increase in the frequency of extreme droughts for the expanding crisis.

To better understand the primary driver of hunger in the region, researchers took a focused, granular view of the problem, teasing out links between hunger and a variety of factors, including precipitation, locusts and political violence.

The analysis, published Thursday in the journal Nature Food, showed the effects of droughts and flooding on food security in Africa has remained mostly stable during recent decades

While extreme weather undoubtedly impacts access to food, researchers found the effect of extreme weather on hunger has declined in many parts of Africa.

On the other hand, increases in widespread, long-term violence and warfare has fueled steady increases in famine. Political violence has displaced thousands of people, fueled spikes in food prices and in some cases, prevented the transport of food aid.

"Colloquially, people would say it's climate-induced droughts and floods, because that's what people tend to say," study leader Weston Anderson said in a press release.

RELATED U.N.: 400,000 in Tigray now facing famine, nearly 2M more on the brink

"But academics have not compared the importance of drought to violence in triggering food crises in a holistic way," said Anderson, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

For the study, researchers relied on data collected between 2009 and 2018 as part of the Famine Early Warning System, a USAID-funded network that gathers data on hunger to warn policy makers about impending food crises in vulnerable nations.

Data collected by the network showed the number of people in Africa requiring emergency food aid increased from 48 million in 2015 to 113 million in 2020.

By tracking changes in weather and political stability across 14 nations most hard hit by the growing hunger crisis -- a band stretching west-to-east from Mali and Nigeria to Kenya and Somalia -- researchers were able to identify the primary drivers of famine across sub-Saharan Africa.

While the data showed droughts can cause periodic dips in food supply, leading to increases in hunger, researchers found farmers were typically able to recover by the following growing season.

Prolonged political violence and regional warfare, however, have led to long-term increases in hunger. Ongoing conflicts between state armies, guerrilla groups and terrorists have led to regional food shortages year after year.

Authors of the new study suggest the impacts of violence on hunger are most evident in places like northeast Nigeria, where Boko Haram continues to carry out guerrilla attacks on both government forces and local civilians, and South Sudan, where a complex civil war has caused large numbers of people to go to bed hungry.

In Syria, some researchers have argued prolonged droughts, which forced thousands of people from the countryside and into cities, sparked the political instability that triggered the region's ongoing civil war.

But when researchers looked at whether droughts themselves have triggered political violence in Africa, thus fueling further hunger, they found no evidence of such a feedback loop.

"We found no systematic relation between drought and either frequency of conflict or deaths related to conflict," the authors write. "Conflict may be affected by environmental stress in some cases but the relationship across Africa in recent decades is complex and context-specific."

As climate change continues to stress natural resources, researchers suggest food policy experts must consider the impacts of ongoing political violence in some of the world's most food-insecure nations.

"The overall message is that if we're going to predict and handle food crises, we need to be paying attention to conflicts, which can be really complicated -- not just the more easily identified things like drought," said Anderson.

"Droughts have a clear start and a clear end. But there are all kinds of violence. And a lot of the time, there is no clear start or end to it," he said.

Anderson added that warfare is certainly behind surging hunger in other parts of the world that the team did not examine, offering an obvious example of the civil war raging in Yemen.

Flash floods kill 11 as Turkey reels from multiple disasters

Heavy rains produced flash floods that turned streets into running rivers and sparked mudslides that buckled roads - Demiroren News Agency (DHA)/AFP/File

Issued on: 12/08/2021
Istanbul (AFP)

Turkish rescuers distributed food and relocated thousands of people into student dormitories Thursday as the death toll from flash floods that swept across several Black Sea regions rose to 11.

The torrential rains descended on Turkey's northern stretches just as rescuers reported bringing hundreds of wildfires that have killed eight people since late July under near total control in the south.

Turkey has been grappling with drought and reeling from a rapid succession of natural disasters that world scientists believe are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change.

Storms that swept in from the Balkans late Tuesday turned streets into running rivers and set off mudslides that buckled roads and tore down bridges in three mountainous regions hugging Turkey's rugged Black Sea coast.

Emergency services said waters briefly rose in some parts as high as four metres (13 feet) before subsiding and spreading across a region stretching more than 150 miles (240 kilometres) wide.

Agriculture and Forestry Minister Bekir Pakdemirli warned on Wednesday that the area was facing "a disaster that we had not seen in 50 or 100 years".

Rescuers were forced to evacuate a hospital holding 45 patients -- four of them in intensive care -- in the region around the coastal city of Sinop on Wednesday.

Images on television and social media showed stranded villagers being plucked off rooftops by helicopter and bridges collapsing under the force of the rushing water below.

Turkey's disaster response authority said 10 people had lost their lives in the northern Kastamonu province and one in the neighbouring region of Sinop.

 

Nine people have lost their lives in flash floods in the northern Kastamonu province - 

Demiroren News Agency (DHA)/AFP

Rescuers were also searching for a person who disappeared in the northern city of Bartin.

- More rain -

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office said he held a phone call with the heads of the affected regions Thursday and promised to provide all state assistance available.

The emergencies authority said more than 1,000 rescuers were working in the region while Turkish Red Crescent teams were distributing food packages and hot meals.

Officials said more than 5,000 places had been allocated in student dormitories to shelter those displaced by the floods.

Dozens of villages suffered electricity and mobile phone service disruptions as masts and power lines went down.

The Anadolu state news agency said rescuers were focusing on a four-floor apartment building that partially crumbled and another one next to it that completely collapsed.

Images showed parts of both river-front buildings toppling into the rushing flood of brown water below.

Weather services predicted rains to continue to lash the affected area for the remainder of week.

The disaster struck less than a month after six people died in floods caused by heavy rains in the northeast Rize province.

Turkey's mountainous Black Sea regions frequently experience heavy rains that produce flash floods and mudslides in the summer months.

© 2021 AFP

'Bath time': Volunteer vets tend to Greece's fire-hit pets

Issued on: 12/08/2021 - 
   

The volunteers are exploring what help they can give to stricken animals on Evia ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP/File

Athens (AFP)

With balm and bandages for scorched paws, volunteers at a makeshift animal shelter north of Athens are doing what they can for cats and dogs, whether strays or left behind as their owners fled advancing wildfires.

The volunteer vets have organised an "intensive care" area to monitor severely burnt animals under a tarpaulin in an abandoned quarry on the outskirts of the capital.

"So far we have taken in 233 animals," Yannis Batsas, president of Action Volunteers Greek Veterinarians, told AFP.

And the animals keep coming. "We receive about 20 every day."

A dog recovering from burns to his paws at a makeshift shelter in Athens

STRINGER AFP

The less severely affected four-legged survivors get baths every two to three hours to cool their burns.

"It's time for a bath," one young volunteer said as she took hold of two small puppies, easing them into a small basin of water.

- First victims -

Many in the Athens area were evacuated at the start of August as advancing wildfires ravaged pine forests and homes some 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of the capital.

Along roads lined with the charred husks of pine trees, AFP reporters met groups of volunteers collecting abandoned aminals in Efnides and other affected villages.

As people fled Evia, some refused to leave their pets behind

 ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP/File

With strays common in the area, the animals are the first victims of the fires, the vets say, not to mention the many domesticated animals left in gardens as their owners fled.

The volunteers at the shelter do what they can to comfort the animals, circulating among cages where dogs with bandaged paws await their owners.

In a cacophony of barking, the dogs, burnt on their paws or on their bodies, joyfully welcome the volunteers whenever they approach.

Settled on sheets filled with ice cubes, about 20 of the canines are waiting for their owners to come and reclaim them or, failing that, a family to adopt them.

So far, nearly 90 animals have found their families, said Elena Dede, founder of nonprofit organisation Dogs' Voice.

Dede said more than 2,000 people showed up to volunteer, many agreeing to take dogs home for a couple of weeks to ease pressure at the shelter.

A volunteer cools down two puppies with burn injuries from Greece's wildfires, at a makeshift shelter in Athens STRINGER AFP

"Instead of having 200 animals all in one place, you'll never have more than about 50, and that's because of the shelters and adoptions," said Batsas.

- Outpouring of solidarity -

Dede said the group had received donations amounting to about 10 tonnes of dog and cat food.

"That will be distributed all over Attica, in areas affected by the fires and here of course," she said.

The outpouring of solidarity in Athens is encouraging volunteers to open another centre on the island of Evia, where wildfires continued to rage on Thursday.

A volunteer tends to a dog at the Athens shelter STRINGER AFP

"A team left for Evia to go and see the farms, the goats, the sheep that were burnt," said Batsas.

"Evia is a different story. We have to be sure that we’ll have the capacity to respond with the same efficiency that we have here," said Dede.

Evacuating injured animals from Greece's second largest island is complicated.

"They have to be transported by boat, which lengthens the journeys," said Irini Tapouti, director of the Chalkida veterinary clinic on Evia.

On the beach at Pefki, where deckchairs are now covered with ash, Roula Papadimitri and her daughter Eva are bringing first aid and comfort to a dozen dogs they saved from the flames.

They were forced to abandon their house in the adjoining village of Artemisia on foot.

"There is no way I'm leaving without them," Eva said.

"How can you abandon dogs," asked her mother, incredulous.

A shepherd walks among goats that perished in a wildfire on the Greek island of Evia ANGELOS TZORTZINIS AFP

Slowly, Roula poured water into the animals' thirsty mouths. A small cat rescued from the flames weaves in and out between the trembling dogs.

Three dogs have been caged to stop them running away and endangering themselves, said Roula.

"I'm not going to let them go and be taken by a wolf."

© 2021 AFP

Algeria combats wildfires, observes day of mourning

Heavy smoke rises during a wildfire in the forested hills of the Kabylie region, east of the Algerian capital Algiers Ryad KRAMDI AFP

Issued on: 12/08/2021 - 

Tizi Ouzou (Algeria) (AFP)

Blazes raged across northern Algeria on Thursday as the country observed a national day of mourning for dozens of people killed in the latest wildfires to sweep the Mediterranean.

The North African country has been in the grip of devastating fires since Monday that have claimed at least 69 lives -- 41 civilians and 28 soldiers.

Soldiers and civilian volunteers have joined firefighters on multiple fronts in the effort to extinguish the blazes that have been fanned by windy and tinder-dry conditions.

In Tizi Ouzou district, the area with the highest casualty toll, an AFP journalist reported entire sectors of forest going up in smoke.

Villagers forced to evacuate in order to escape the flames began trickling back to their homes, overwhelmed by the scale of the damage.

Deadly wildfires in northern Algeria Cléa PÉCULIER AFP

"I have nothing left. My workshop, my car, my flat. Even the tiles were destroyed," one of them told AFP.

But he said he had "managed to save his family", while adding that "neighbours died or lost their relatives".

- 'Surge of solidarity' -

Flags were flying at half-mast after President Abdelmadjid Tebboune declared three days of national mourning starting from Thursday.

Algerian authorities say they suspect widespread arson after so many fires erupted in such a short space of time.

The country's state prosecutor on Thursday ordered an investigation after a mob allegedly lynched a man they accused of sparking the wildfires.

Video footage posted online Wednesday showed a crowd beating to death 38-year-old Jamal Ben Ismail and setting him ablaze in the Tizi Ouzou district.

On the fourth day of the wildfires, efforts to overcome the blazes are continuing in many regions where civilians and soldiers often with limited means joined the fight.

Flags of Algeria fly at half-mast in mourning for the victims of the Kabylie region forest fires in Algeria's capital Algiers, on August 12, 2021 Ryad KRAMDI AFP

Images of trapped villagers, terrified livestock and forested hillsides reduced to blackened stumps have been shared on social media.

Algeria is also chartering two firefighting planes from the European Union.

France also announced the arrival in Algeria of two Canadair firefighting planes it has sent.

"They will help the rescue efforts to deal with the terrible fires," French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

Neighbouring Morocco, with whom Algeria has long had strained ties over the Western Sahara, also offered to help by providing two planes.

Burned houses stand amid charred trees, following a wildfire in the forested hills of the Kabylie region, east of the Algerian capital Ryad KRAMDI AFP

Faced with the scale of the disaster, pleas for assistance are multiplying in Algeria and beyond.

"Individuals and associations are mobilising... by organising collections of clothes, foodstuffs, medicines and hygiene products," said Algeria's TSA news website, calling it a "surge of solidarity".

Djaffar, a resident of the village of Agoulmim in Kabylie, expressed his gratitude on Berber TV.

"God bless them... We had no electricity and people brought in generators from all around," the exhausted villager said after his ordeal.

"The flames were so high, they destroyed everything. Suddenly it was like a volcano," he said.

- Heatwave -

High winds fuelled the rapid spread of the flames in tinder-dry conditions created by a heatwave across North Africa and the wider Mediterranean.

The authorities have raised the possibility of criminal behaviour.

Volunteers of the SIDRA Association NGO take part in an initiative with the Algerian Food Bank to send aid packages to victims of the Kabylie region forest fires in Algeria's capital Algiers, on August 12, 2021 Ryad KRAMDI AFP

Four suspected "arsonists" were arrested so far, but their identities or suspected motives have not yet been disclosed.

Armed forces chief Said Chengriha visited soldiers in Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia, another badly affected area. Prime Minister Aimene Benabderrahmane also visited Tizi Ouzou.

Each summer, Algeria endures seasonal wildfires, but rarely anything approaching this year's disaster.

Meteorologists expect the Maghreb heatwave to continue until the end of the week, with temperatures in Algeria reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

An injured man looks on during a wildfire in Tizi Ouzou Ryad KRAMDI AFP

Across the border in Tunisia, where almost 30 fires have been recorded since Monday, the mercury hit an all-time record of 50.3 Celsius in the central region of Kairouan (centre).

Almost 30 fires have been recorded in Tunisia since Monday.

On the northern shores of the Mediterranean, deadly wildfires have been raging in Turkey and Greece for the past two weeks.

In Italy, where firefighters were battling more than 500 blazes overnight, Sicily recorded a temperature of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit) on Wednesday that is believed to be a new European record.

© 2021 AFP

Greek wildfires: 'a major ecological catastrophe', PM says

 

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday described the devastating wildfires that burned across the country for more than a week as the greatest ecological catastrophe Greece had seen in decades. The fires broke out as the country roasted during the most intense and protracted heat wave experienced since 1987. Hundreds of wildfires erupted across the country, stretching Greece’s firefighting capabilities to the limit and leading the government to appeal for help from abroad. Hundreds of firefighters, along with planes, helicopters and vehicles, arrived from 24 European and Middle Eastern countries to assist.

Italian wildfires rage on after 49 degree heat record

  

Italian firefighters continued to battle blazes in Sicily as temperatures reached what may possibly be a record high in Europe.The region's agriculture-meteorological information service (SIAS) reported that the temperature rose to 48.8 degrees Celsius on Wednesday afternoon.

Sicily's temperature of nearly 120 degrees may be record for Europe

A fire is seen in the Ragusa area of Sicily, Italy, on Thursday. Firefighters are battling hundreds of blazes that are being aided by a heat wave. Photo by Francesco Ruta/EPA-EFE

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- The World Meteorological Organization is trying to determine if Sicily set a new record Wednesday for the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe, with a temperature of 119.84 degrees Fahrenheit.

The temperature was recorded by the Sicilian Meteorological Information Service for Agriculture amid a prolonged heat wave.

If the WMO confirms the temperature as a record, it will top the previous mark of 118.4 set in Athens, Greece, in 1977.

"We can't yet confirm or deny its validity," the WMO said in a Twitter post Thursday. "The WMO will seek to verify reports."

Lt. Col. Guido Guidi of Italy's Aeronautical Meteorological Service told The New York Times it may take some time to verify the record. He said data recorded by stations across the region need to be validated.

The hottest temperature ever recorded worldwide, according to the WMO, was set in Furnace Creek, Calif., in 1913 -- 134 degrees.

The mark in Sicily came a couple days after a United Nations climate change report said human-led increases in extreme weather conditions are unavoidable, but noted that there's still a small window open to dodge the worst effects.

Sicily registers record 49°C heat as Italy's wildfires rage on

Issued on: 12/08/2021 - 

A man refreshes himself at a fountain in Palermo, Italy, on August 11, 2021. 

© Alberto Lo Bianco/LaPresse via AP

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Fires stoked by hot winds swept through southern Italy on Thursday, a day after a monitoring station in Sicily reported temperatures of 48.8 Celsius (119.84°F) which some scientists believe could be the highest in European history.

The record temperature, which still needs to be verified by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), was reported close to the city of Syracuse, in the southeast of the island of Sicily.

"If the data is validated, it could become the highest value ever recorded in Europe, beating the previous record of 48 degrees measured in Athens on July 10, 1977," meteorologist Manuel Mazzoleni wrote on 3Bmeteo.com, a specialist website.

Firemen said on Twitter they had carried out more than 500 operations in Sicily and Calabria in the last 12 hours, employing five planes to try to douse the flames from above. They said the situation was now "under control" on the island.



Local media reported that trees and land were burning in the Madonie mountains some 100 km from the Sicilian capital of Palermo and in the small town of Linguaglossa, on the slopes of the Etna volcano.

"Our small town was really invaded by fire. It is a catastrophe ... We are living through some really sad moments," said Giovanna Licitra, from the village of Giarratana in the south of the island which was hit by fires on Wednesday.

Serious damage has also been reported in Calabria, the toe of Italy's "boot", where some families left their homes and a man died on Wednesday.

A woman refreshes at a fan nebulising water next to the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, on August 12, 2021. © Cecilia Fabiano/LaPresse via AP

Temperatures are expected to rise in several Italian cities including the capital Rome on Friday, when the heatwave could reach its peak, according to a health ministry bulletin.

(REUTERS)

Congolese warned not to use toxic 'volcano salt'

Issued on: 12/08/2021 -

Mount Nyiragongo erupted on May 23, killing 32 people and destroying several hundred homes in nearby Goma Guerchom Ndebo AFP/File

Goma (DR Congo) (AFP)

Nearly three months since the eruption of the Nyiragongo volcano in the east of the DR Congo, authorities warned local people on Thursday that a salt-like substance in the lava flows is unfit for human consumption.

The "whitish mineral substance" is being used by people in and around the small, local Bukumu kingdom "for domestic needs in the place of kitchen salt," the North Kivu governor's office said in a statement.

Scientific analysis revealed "siliceous substances insoluble in water, traces of heavy metals and traces of radioactive substances," the statement said.

"So it's not common kitchen salt (and) we strictly forbid the consumption of this substance, which is toxic," it said.

Mount Nyiragongo erupted on May 23, killing 32 people and destroying several hundred homes in nearby Goma.

© 2021 AFP

WHAT KENNEY AND BIG OIL ARE PROMOTING FOR ALBERTA

Touted as clean, ‘blue’ hydrogen may be worse than gas, coal

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – “Blue” hydrogen – an energy source that involves a process for making hydrogen by using methane in natural gas – is being lauded as a clean, green energy to help reduce global warming. But Cornell and Stanford University researchers believe it may harm the climate more than burning fossil fuel.

The carbon footprint to create blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than using either natural gas or coal directly for heat, or about 60% greater than using diesel oil for heat, according to new research published in Energy Science & Engineering.

Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell, together with Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, authored the report.

Blue hydrogen starts with converting methane to hydrogen and carbon dioxide by using heat, steam and pressure, or gray hydrogen, but goes further to capture some of the carbon dioxide. Once the byproduct carbon dioxide and the other impurities are sequestered, it becomes blue hydrogen, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The process to make blue hydrogen takes a large amount of energy, according to the researchers, which is generally provided by burning more natural gas.

“In the past, no effort was made to capture the carbon dioxide byproduct of gray hydrogen, and the greenhouse gas emissions have been huge,” Howarth said. “Now the industry promotes blue hydrogen as a solution, an approach that still uses the methane from natural gas, while attempting to capture the byproduct carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, emissions remain very large.”

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, Howarth said. It is more than 100 times stronger as an atmospheric warming agent than carbon dioxide when first emitted. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released on Aug. 9 shows that cumulatively to date over the past century, methane has contributed about two-thirds as much to global warming as carbon dioxide has, he said.

Emissions of blue hydrogen are less than for gray hydrogen, but only by about 9% to 12%.

“Blue hydrogen is hardly emissions free,” wrote the researchers. “Blue hydrogen as a strategy only works to the extent it is possible to store carbon dioxide long-term indefinitely into the future without leakage back to the atmosphere.”

On Aug. 10, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes several billion dollars to develop, subsidize and strengthen hydrogen technology and its industry.

“Political forces may not have caught up with the science yet,” Howarth said. “Even progressive politicians may not understand for what they’re voting. Blue hydrogen sounds good, sounds modern and sounds like a path to our energy future. It is not.”

An ecologically friendly “green” hydrogen does exist, but it remains a small sector and it has not been commercially realized. Green hydrogen is achieved when water goes through electrolysis (with electricity supplied by solar, wind or hydroelectric power) and the water is separated into hydrogen and oxygen.

“The best hydrogen, the green hydrogen derived from electrolysis – if used wisely and efficiently – can be that path to a sustainable future,” Howarth said. “Blue hydrogen is totally different.”

This research was supported by a grant from the Park Foundation. Howarth is a fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

-30-

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JOURNAL

Energy Science & Engineering

DOI

10.1002/ese3.956

ARTICLE TITLE

How green is blue hydrogen?

Study says 'blue hydrogen' likely bad for

 climate

"We suggest that blue hydrogen is best viewed as a distraction, something that may delay needed action to truly decarbonize the global energy economy," 

Issued on: 12/08/2021 -

A paper released Thursday said hydrogen production was difficult to justify on environmental grounds, even at sites like this Shell project in Germany which employs renewable energy Ina FASSBENDER AFP/File

New York (AFP)

Use of "clean" hydrogen has been seen as a viable and environmentally benign energy alternative, but a study released Thursday said it could lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

The study takes aim at an energy source touted by President Joe Biden's administration, the International Energy Agency, and some major energy companies.

The authors lambast "blue hydrogen," saying it "appears difficult to justify on climate grounds."

"Blue hydrogen is hardly emissions free," according to an article in academic journal Energy Science and Engineering that alludes to the broad support for the fuel in Washington and beyond.

Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill which the Senate passed on Tuesday, does not mention "blue hydrogen" but includes $8 billion in funding for at least four "regional clean hydrogen hubs."

But the researchers warned that using the fuel, which involves carbon capture and storage (CCS), as part of a clean energy strategy "only works to the extent it is possible to store carbon dioxide long-term indefinitely into the future without leakage back to the atmosphere."

The US Energy Department in June announced $52.5 million in funding for 31 projects to support "next generation clean hydrogen."

And a 2019 IEA report touted hydrogen's potential "to become a critical part of a more sustainable and secure energy future."

But the production is energy-intensive, with emissions released during the heating and pressuring process and from the use of natural gas as a base fuel to generate hydrogen, according to the study by Cornell's Robert Howarth and Stanford's Mark Jacobson.

While blue hydrogen does contain some of emissions, the paper notes that energy also is needed in the carbon-capture process.

As a result, it "provides no benefit," since the combined emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas, are greater for blue and gray hydrogen than for natural gas, diesel oil or coal, the paper said.

"We suggest that blue hydrogen is best viewed as a distraction, something that may delay needed action to truly decarbonize the global energy economy," the authors wrote.

© 2021 AFP

Passing clouds cause some marine animals to make mini-migrations during the day

Business Announcement

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: THIS IMAGE, CAPTURED BY AN ASTRONAUT ABOARD THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, SHOWS CLOUDS CASTING THEIR SHADOWS ON THE PHILIPPINE SEA ON JUNE 25, 2016. view more 

CREDIT: CREDITS: ISS CREW EARTH OBSERVATIONS FACILITY AND THE EARTH SCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING UNIT, JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

Every evening, small fish and microscopic animals called zooplankton journey to the ocean surface, where they feast on microscopic plants under the moonlight before returning to the depths at dawn. With data collected during the EXport Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing (EXPORTS) field campaign in 2018 to the Northeastern Pacific Ocean, scientists have now shown that some zooplankton living in the twilight zone of the ocean at depths of greater than 300 meters swim up and down also in response to shifts in light due to cloud cover.

The nightly trek from the ocean depths to the surface has been called the largest migration on Earth, because of both the number of animals who make the nightly trek and how far these tiny creatures travel roundtrip. NASA has observed this global migration with a space-based laser on the CALIPSO satellite. Scientists have also documented these migrations during events such as eclipses, full moons and storms.

"The amount that they swim is pretty remarkable given their body length, said Melissa Omand, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography. "It's like me in Rhode Island going to Boston and back every day," she said, roughly 80 miles.

Throughout the day, when clouds pass overhead, zooplankton make "mini-migrations" of about 50 feet on average. These add up to 30% of the average nightly migration distance, the team reported in a study published August 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings could have implications for scientists' knowledge of the metabolic requirements of zooplankton, which are key players in the marine food web and the transfer of carbon in the ocean.

The discovery comes from data collected during NASA's EXPORTS mission, which seeks to better understand the export and fate of carbon from the upper ocean to the deep using satellite observations and state of the art ocean technologies. Omand was one of the more than 100 scientists from nearly 30 research institutions that participated in the science campaign. During the expedition, they used an instrument called an acoustic doppler current profiler, or ADCP, to measure ocean currents. The instrument sends out pings of sound that bounce off suspended material in the water column, like particles or zooplankton. Some of those pings are reflected to the instrument, while others are scattered. 

When Omand went below deck to analyze the ADCP data on her computer, she noticed something intriguing. There were unusual "wiggles" in the data, signifying that something was moving up and down in the water column. Based on the frequency of the sound waves, 150 kHz, and the marine animals captured in nets of other concurrent EXPORTs experiments, that something was most likely zooplankton. She also noticed that those wiggles lined up with the changes in sunlight measured by the radiometer – a device that measures the intensity of sunlight – mounted on the ship.

To Omand, this implied that the zooplankton were swimming up and down as the light changed due to clouds passing overhead. She made a simple computer model that confirmed her suspicions: the zooplankton were following isolumes, or areas in the ocean with the same amount of light throughout. For example, when cloud cover prevented sunlight from reaching as deep in the ocean, the zooplankton would swim toward the surface to stay in water with their preferred brightness. When the clouds passed, they would swim back down. According to the model, the zooplankton were responding to changes in brightness of only 10% or 20% – an imperceptible difference to Omand and the rest of the crew standing on the ship deck.

"This finding poses some really good questions about whether there's an evolutionary or ecological advantage to this daytime behavior," said Omand. She notes, however, that this is just one series of observations in one spot in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. In addition, the ADCP data cannot pinpoint specific zooplankton species. These new results show that some twilight zone animals are considerably more active than previously thought. More information is needed to fully understand why zooplankton exert energy swimming up and down all day in response to small changes in light, and if this behavior is common among different zooplankton species and throughout oceans worldwide.

"But it's such a cool thing to have a window into the daytime lives of these little animals," Omand said, "and hopefuly this sheds light on the cues these animals are using and why they do what they do." 

By Sofie Bates
NASA's Earth Science News Team

NASA satellites help plan future for Palau fish stocks

Business Announcement

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: WORKING WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF PALAU, AND USING NASA SATELLITE DATA AND IMAGERY, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY DESIGNED A MARINE AQUACULTURE PROJECT TO SUSTAINABLY LOCATE AND MANAGE CLIMATE-READY AQUACULTURE FARMS IN PALAU. THE PROJECT IS DESIGNED TO FURTHER THE UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS OF PROTECTING LIFE BELOW WATER AND ENSURING GOOD HEALTH AND WELLBEING. view more 

CREDIT: CREDITS: NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

It’s the weekend, and freshly caught fish sizzles on the grill. The view: an unforgettable beach and the cobalt blues of the Pacific Ocean in the backdrop.

 

This is not paradise. It’s a typical Sunday for many people in Palau, an archipelago nation in Micronesia.

 

“We would go to the Rock Islands, spend a couple of nights there, and we would go fishing,” recalled Fabio Siksei, a fisheries specialist with Palau’s Bureau of Marine Resources, about growing up near the country’s famed Rock Islands Southern Lagoon. “Most Palauan kids have almost the same experiences growing up.”

 

People in Palau, a small nation with a population of about 20,000, consume more wild fish per capita than nearly any other country in the world. But in recent years, populations of rabbit fish and other staples of their cultural diet began to dwindle because of a combination of factors, including increasing food demand and changing ocean conditions.

 

To meet the country’s need for food supplies and keep traditions alive for future generations, Siksei and others are working with international scientists to build sustainable aquaculture farms in the ocean. Their projects are using NASA’s satellites to help protect the nation’s pristine waters, coral reefs, and shorelines.

“We found that fish stocks were declining due to [our waters] being unable to produce enough to maintain the population of the fish, and that was reason enough for the fishermen to start thinking about management issues,” Siksei said. “We talked with fishermen about ensuring that our fish are there and our resources are there, also about ensuring that our culture continues to thrive for generations to come, because fish is a big part of our life.”

 

With more than 300 small islands amounting to a landmass about twice the size of Washington D.C., Palau is one of the tiniest nations in the world. Surrounded by a 200-mile radius of scenic ocean and coral reefs that make for a scuba diver’s paradise, the country’s economy relies primarily on tourism and fishing.

 

But even though tourism serves as an important driver for the economy, Palau’s islands are under pressure to provide the resources to sustain the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the country in normal, non-pandemic times, Siksei said.

 

For several years, Siksei and others in Palau have been working with scientists at The Nature Conservancy to manage the aquaculture sector and find the best locations within Palauan shores to build marine aquaculture farms necessary to meet future food production needs.

 

The idea, Siksei said, is to breed fish and shellfish without disrupting marine ecosystems and other aspects of the country’s nature, culture and economy. For that, the team is focusing on rabbit fish and giant clams, two types of seafood entrenched within the cultural history of the nation.

 

“We don't want to stop people from fishing or stop people from doing what they usually do,” Siksei explained. “We're trying to find a way where they can continue to make a living and enjoy these resources.”

 

The Potential of Marine Aquaculture

 

As part of a nation that cherishes its natural resources, the government and fishermen of Palau teamed up with scientists at the Nature Conservancy more than 30 years ago to establish marine protected areas, improve the management of fisheries, and meet other environmental and societal needs.

 

In its early stages, the collaboration included conversations with aquaculture farmers who needed to gain a better understanding about the circulation of the ocean, the ideal distance to farm from the shore, and other parameters that can make aquaculture economically and environmentally viable for the country.

 

The team is also integrating several layers of satellite data into maps that the people of Palau can use to assess their objectives when setting up aquaculture farms. In recent years, the team also secured support from NASA’s Earth Science Applied Sciences Program, and is now producing interactive mapping tools Palauans can use to identify areas that can serve as a better fit for sustainable aquaculture.

Marine aquaculture has much more potential to be sustainable than other forms of animal protein production, said Robert Jones, who leads The Nature Conservancy’s global aquaculture program. But when done the wrong way, farms situated in the ocean can put more stress on marine ecosystems. Preventing that problem is one of the key goals that the project seeks to address.

 

 

 

“Almost every coastal country in the world has an aquaculture development plan, and all of them are saying we need to boost production to meet increased demand for animal protein and seafood,” Jones said. “But there's so few people who actually know how to do the right industry planning and siting work to ensure the environment is protected while achieving development goals.”

 

If done with inappropriate procedures, aquaculture can lead to poor water quality near Palau’s shores. That’s especially significant for fish farms, since fish also produce waste that can muddy the water and change ocean conditions, blocking some of the sunlight that organisms like coral need to survive.

 

“If you have fish in a pen, they poop,” Jones said about the cage or net system used in aquaculture farms. “If we have coral in the proximity of that plume coming out of the fish pen, that can really damage [the coral's] ability to survive. It puts further stresses on the coral that’s already experiencing [stress] from climate change.”

 

Fish Farms Seen From Space

 

Jones’s team integrates several layers of satellite data into maps that the people of Palau can use when setting up aquaculture farms—including maps that estimate the clarity of the water. That’s important for giant clam farms, which also need sunlight to penetrate the water to survive.

 

“We can look at the area and find out where you might have a better chance of sunlight reaching the giant clams to help produce their energy,” said Jonathan MacKay, a Marine Spatial Scientist with The Nature Conservancy and NOAA, who leads the team’s data and mapping efforts.

 

To create these maps, which analyze chlorophyll concentrations and the cloudiness of the water, MacKay uses satellite data from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. He also uses sea surface temperature data from the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments Program.

 

“Part of this project is also looking ahead at climate change, and how that might affect things like sea surface temperature,” MacKay said. “We can see where warm water sits in the lagoon and see if there's maybe not a lot of ocean circulation with water sitting still and warming up more than the surrounding waters.”

 

One of the highlights of the mapping tools relies on satellite images that estimate the bathymetry, or underwater depth, of shallow areas in the ocean. To do that, the project team uses data from Landsat 8, a joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that has been tracking changes on the surface of the planet since 1972, and generating the longest continuous record of its kind.

 

The maps also include nearly 30 layers that overlay vital environmental data, such as locations of dugongs and other marine animals protected by the government of Palau—as well as social data on World War II historic sites or scuba diving sites that play an important role for tourism.

 

A Promising Tool for a Global Challenge

 

Already, these mapping products are being shared with people in Palau through an online web map and hands-on training modules focusing on geographic information systems, remote sensing, and other key topics needed to establish new marine aquaculture farms.

 

Led by MacKay and hosted by The Nature Conservancy’s conservation training website, these courses are administered in partnership with the Palau Community College to students from various backgrounds of the government, such as the country’s Environmental Quality Protection Board.

 

Helping Palauans to continue using the maps with new data layers in the future is a top priority for Siksei, Jones, and MacKay. And it’s an aspect of their work that NASA values tremendously, according to Maurice Estes, who helps manage the NASA program that supports the project, because it can offer a promising toolset for coastal communities worldwide that depend on the ocean and fisheries for food supplies.

 

“They’ve developed a novel method in terms of using Landsat data to estimate the bathymetry in shallow areas,” Estes said. “The challenge of sustainable food supplies being addressed by this project is a global challenge.”

Facial recognition AI helps save multibillion dollar grape crop

Grant and Award Announcement

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – New technology, using robotics and AI, is supercharging efforts to protect grape crops and will soon be available to researchers nationwide working on a wide array of plant and animal research.

Biologist Lance Cadle-Davidson, an adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) at Cornell University and a research plant pathologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), is working to develop grape varieties that are more resistant to powdery mildew, which can show up in infrared before they are visible to the naked eye. But his lab’s research has been bottlenecked by the need to manually assess thousands of grape leaf samples for evidence of infection.

So Cadle-Davidson’s team developed prototypes of imaging robots that could scan grape leaf samples automatically – a process called high-throughput phenotyping – through the USDA-ARS funded VitisGen2 grape breeding project and in partnership with the Light and Health Research Center. This partnership led to the creation of a robotic camera they named “BlackBird.”

The BlackBird robot can gather information at a scale of 1.2 micrometers per pixel – equivalent to a regular optical microscope. For each 1-centimeter leaf sample being examined, the robot provides 8,000 by 5,000 pixels of information.

Extracting useful information from such a large, high-resolution image was the challenge for engineer and computer scientist Yu Jiang, an assistant research professor in SIPS’ Horticulture Section at Cornell AgriTech – and his team used AI to solve it.

Using breakthroughs in deep neural networks developed for computer vision tasks like face recognition, Jiang applied this knowledge to the analysis of microscopic images of grape leaves. In addition, Jiang and his team implemented the visualization of the network inferential processes, which help biologists better understand the analysis process and build confidence with AI models.

Working together, Cadle-Davidson’s team tests and validates what the robots see, enabling Jiang’s team to teach them how to identify biological traits more effectively. The results are astounding, Cadle-Davison said. Research experiments that used to take his entire lab team six months to complete now take the BlackBird robots just one day.

“It has revolutionized our science,” Cadle-Davidson said. “And we’re finding that Yu’s AI tools actually do a better job of explaining the genetics of these grapes than we can do sitting at a microscope for months at a time doing backbreaking work.”

In July the team was awarded a two-year, $150,000 grant from the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture Research Innovation Fund to begin upgrading the BlackBird robot to see beyond the red-green-blue color spectrum and into infrared.

If the researchers can develop tools to help farmers detect disease early, it would enable farmers to target fungicide sprays before infection spreads, meaning less fungicide and fewer lost crops. They’re also working to integrate AI more effectively with scientists in data analysis.

They were also awarded a $100,000 grant from the USDA-ARS to disseminate BlackBird to ARS field offices working on other crops that do the same kind of high-throughput phenotyping work.

“We hope to find collaborative labs who can join us in taking advantage of this tool,” Jiang said. “We see potential applications for this research in plant studies, animal fields or medical purposes.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.