Researchers design tools to automatically detect natural disasters using images on social media

"We've demonstrated that it's possible to automatically detect incidents via social media such as Twitter, which could greatly help humanitarian aid organizations"

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITAT OBERTA DE CATALUNYA (UOC)

An international research team has designed a deep learning system able to detect natural disasters using images posted on social media. The researchers applied computer vision tools that, once trained using 1.7 million photographs, proved capable of analysing, filtering and detecting real disasters. One of the researchers on the project, led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was Àgata Lapedriza, leader of the AIWELL research group specialized in artificial intelligence for human well-being, attached to the eHealth Center, and a member of the Faculty of Computer Science, Multimedia and Telecommunications at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

As global warming progresses, natural disasters such as floods, tornadoes and forest fires are ever more frequent and devastating. As there are still no tools to predict where or when such incidents will occur, it is vital that emergency services and international cooperation agencies can respond quickly and effectively to save lives. "Fortunately, technology can play a key role in these situations. Social media posts can be used as a low-latency data source to understand the progression and aftermath of a disaster," Lapedriza explained.

Previous research focused on analysing text posts, but this research, published in Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, went further. During a stay at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Lapedriza contributed to the development of a taxonomy of incidents and the database used to train deep learning models, and performed experiments to validate the technology.

The researchers created a list with 43 categories of incidents, including natural disasters (avalanches, sandstorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, droughts, etc.) as well as accidents involving some element of human intervention (plane crashes, construction accidents, etc.). This list, together with 49 place categories, enabled the researchers to label the images used to train the system.

The authors created a database, named Incidents1M, with 1,787,154 images that were then used to train the incident detection model. From among these images, 977,088 had at least one positive label linking them to one of the incident classifications, while 810,066 had class-negative labels. Meanwhile, for the place categories, 764,124 images had class-positive labels and 1,023,030 were class-negative.

 

Avoiding false positives

These negative labels meant the system could be trained to eliminate false positives; for example, a photograph of a fireplace does not mean the house is on fire, even though it has some visual similarities. Once the database was constructed, the team trained a model to detect incidents "based on a multi-task learning paradigm and employing a convolutional neural network (CNN)".

When the deep learning model had been trained to detect incidents in images, the team ran a range of experiments to test it, this time using a huge volume of images downloaded from social media, including Flickr and Twitter. "Our model was able to use these images to detect incidents and we checked that they did correspond to specific, recorded incidents, such as the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal and Chile," Lapedriza said.

Using real data, the authors demonstrated the potential of a tool based on deep learning for obtaining information from social media about natural disasters and incidents requiring humanitarian aid. "This will help humanitarian aid organizations to find out what's happening during disasters more effectively and improve the way humanitarian aid is managed when needed," she said.

Following this achievement, the next challenge could be, for example, to use the same images of floods, fires or other incidents to automatically determine the seriousness of incidents or even to monitor them more effectively over time. The authors also suggested that the scientific community could follow up the research by combining the analysis of images with that of the accompanying text, to enable more accurate classification.

 

This research promotes Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3, Good Health and Well-being, and 10, Reduced Inequalities.

 

 

UOC R&I

The UOC's research and innovation (R&I) is helping overcome pressing challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century by studying interactions between technology and human & social sciences with a specific focus on the network society, e-learning and e-health.

Over 500 researchers and more than 50 research groups work in the UOC's seven faculties, its eLearning Research programme and its two research centres: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eHealth Center (eHC).

The university also develops online learning innovations at its eLearning Innovation Center (eLinC), as well as UOC community entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer via the Hubbik platform.

Open knowledge and the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development serve as strategic pillars for the UOC's teaching, research and innovation. More information: research.uoc.edu.

---

JOURNAL

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

DOI

10.1109/TPAMI.2022.3191996 

The invisible plant technology of the prehistoric Philippines

Stone tools bear tell-tale markings of fiber technology going back 39,000 years

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: FIBER TECHNOLOGY AT TABON CAVE, 39-33 000 YEARS AGO. AN ARTISTIC VIEW BASED ON THE LATEST ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA. DRAWING BY CAROLE CHEVAL-ART'CHÉOGRAPH. MADE FOR THE EXHIBITION "TRAJECTORIES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE PHILIPPINE IDENTITY" CURATED BY HERMINE XHAUFLAIR AND EUNICE AVERION. SCIENTIFIC ADVISING: HERMINE XHAUFLAIR. view more 

CREDIT: CAROLE CHEVAL - ART'CHÉOGRAPH, XHAUFLAIR & AVERION, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Stone tools bear microscopic evidence of ancient plant technology, according to a study published June 30, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hermine Xhauflair of the University of the Philippines Diliman and colleagues.

Prehistoric communities likely made extensive use of plant materials for textiles and cordages, taking advantage of the flexibility and resistance of plant fibers just like modern communities do. However, plant-based materials like baskets and ropes are rarely preserved in the archaeological record, especially in the tropics, so prehistoric plant technology is often rendered invisible to modern science. In Southeast Asia, the oldest artefacts made of plant fibers are around 8,000 years old. In this study, Xhauflair and colleagues identify indirect evidence of much older plant technology.

This evidence comes from stone tools in Tabon Cave, Palawan Philippines dating as far back as 39,000 years old. These tools exhibit microscopic damage accrued during use. Indigenous communities in this region today use tools to strip plants like bamboo and palm, turning rigid stems into supple fibers for tying or weaving. Researchers experimentally followed these plant processing techniques and found that this activity leaves a characteristic pattern of microscopic damage on stone tools. This same pattern was identified on three stone artefacts from Tabon Cave.

This is among the oldest evidence of fiber technology in Southeast Asia, highlighting the technological skill of prehistoric communities going back 39,000 years. This research also demonstrates a method for revealing otherwise hidden signs of prehistoric plant technology. Further study will shed light on how ancient these techniques are, how widespread they were in the past, and whether modern practices in this region are the result of an uninterrupted tradition.

The authors add: “This study pushes back in time the antiquity of fiber technology in Southeast Asia. It means that the Prehistoric groups who lived at Tabon Cave had the possibility to make baskets and traps, but also ropes that can be used to build houses, sail boats, hunt with bows and make composite objects.”

#####

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.0281415

Citation: Xhauflair H, Jago-on S, Vitales TJ, Manipon D, Amano N, Callado JR, et al. (2023) The invisible plant technology of Prehistoric Southeast Asia: Indirect evidence for basket and rope making at Tabon Cave, Philippines, 39–33,000 years ago. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0281415. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281415

Author Countries: Philippines, France, Germany, Spain

Funding: The different stages of this project were supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement #843521 (marie-sklodowska-curie-actions.ec.europa.eu), the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (www.ird.fr), the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris (www.mnhn.fr/fr), Ile-de- France Region (www.iledefrance.fr), the Fondation Fyssen (www.fondationfyssen.fr/fr), the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research (University of Cambridge) (www.arch.cam.ac.uk/institutes-and-facilities-overview/mcdonald-institute-archaeological-research), the Institute for SE Asian Archaeology (iseaarchaeology.org), and the PrehSEA Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

---

JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0281415 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The invisible plant technology of Prehistoric Southeast Asia: Indirect evidence for basket and rope making at Tabon Cave, Philippines, 39–33,000 years ago

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Jun-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The power of Indigenous voices and data supporting the green transition

A new policy paper: “Data-driven Subnational Decision-making in the Arctic: The power of Indigenous voices and data supporting the green transition” will change the way we look at green transition

Reports and Proceedings

GRID-ARENDAL

 

IMAGE: A PHOTO WAS TAKEN DURING THE CONSULTATIONS FOR ARCTIC PASSION'S WORK ON THE POWER OF INDIGENOUS VOICES AND DATA SUPPORTING THE GREEN TRANSITION view more 

CREDIT: C. SARMIK

A new policy paper: “Data-driven Subnational Decision-making in the Arctic: The power of Indigenous voices and data supporting the green transition” will change the way we look at green transition. Published by the team at the University of Lapland, a partner in the Arctic PASSION project. 

 

The Policy Brief summarises the preliminary findings of Arctic PASSION’s work on enhancing evidence-based decision-making at the local and regional level in the Arctic, with respect to two themes:  The state of inclusion of Indigenous knowledge in sub-national decision-making; and data availability, needs and gaps with respect to managing and planning the green transition.

 

1. With regards to the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge in sub-national decision-making: The cooperation of Indigenous Peoples, science and governance could benefit from:

 

• Facilitating awareness among subnational policymakers of the specific issues and challenges Indigenous populations face in specific regions.

• Increasing the number of persons with Indigenous identity in administrative bodies.

• Ensuring a better understanding of Indigenous communities’ relations to land and water and facilitating further knowledge exchange between Indigenous communities, scientists/researchers and policymakers on practices of including Indigenous perspective in policies and plans.

• Providing results of scientific research transparently demonstrates a broad perspective on the activities that should be performed and how they would benefit the Indigenous and non-Indigenous population of the particular community.

• Ensuring that the inclusion of three parallel perspectives - Indigenous, local, and scientific - becomes a normal approach to developing risk assessments, reports, plans, and policies.

 

2. Regarding data availability, needs and gaps with respect to managing and planning green transition at a subnational governance level: There is a need to develop better tools for assessing local and global impacts and benefits of green energy investments.

 

• Comprehensive databases capturing green transition planning information and data are needed, reflecting the need for more holistic policy-making.

• National and EU policymakers could consider supporting cooperation between Arctic municipalities and regions with respect to climate mitigation and adaptation. Such collaborations should focus on concrete actions and the exchange of specific models, tools, and processes, rather than abstract sharing of good practices. A case study approach may be beneficial in this context.

• There is a need to invest more in generating data and aggregating information related to social indicators linked directly to green transition projects.

 

The above insights emerged from 30 semi-structured in-depth interviews with a sample of Arctic and sub-Arctic subnational decision-makers, rightsholders, and stakeholders.

 

• Municipalities: 
  • Rovaniemi, Kemi, Kuusamo (Finland) 
  • Luleå, Stockholm municipalities (Sweden) 
  • Municipalities of Harstad, Tana, Vardø, and Kvænangen (Norway)
  • Reykjavik municipality (Iceland) 
  • Avannaata municipality (Greenland) 
  • City & Borough of Juneau, Anchorage Municipality (Alaska, USA) 
• Arctic Council Permanent Participants: 
  • Inuit Circumpolar Council Canada
• Environmental agencies:
  • Norwegian Centre for Climate Services (Norway) 
  • Environment and Climate Change (Canada) 
• Governments: 
  • The Governments of Yukon, NWT, Nunavut (Canada) 
  • Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development of Norway 

 

Learn more

The 31-page policy paper

A flyer summarizing the main paper findings

About Arctic PASSION

 

---

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Data-driven Subnational Decision-making in the Arctic: The power of Indigenous voices and data supporting the green transition

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

19-Jun-2023

Brazilian Amazon: Deforestation in Indigenous Territories caused emission of 90 million metric tons of CO2 in 2013-21

Scientists analyzed data from 232 Indigenous Territories for the period. Results published in Scientific Reports show deforestation rates accelerating between 2019 and 2021

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

 

IMAGE: SCIENTISTS ANALYZED DATA FROM 232 INDIGENOUS TERRITORIES view more 

CREDIT: CELSO H. L. SILVA-JÚNIOR/UFMA

Deforestation in Indigenous Territories (ITs) in the Brazilian Amazon caused the emission of 96 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) between 2013 and 2021, modifying the forest’s role as a carbon sink in these areas. Emissions in the last three years of the period (2019-21) accounted for 59%, reflecting intensification of the destruction.

The data comes from a research project led by Brazilians and published in an article in Scientific Reports. The authors show that deforestation in ITs totaled 1,708 square kilometers (km²), or 2.38% of total deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon in the period. In an analysis of 232 ITs, they found that annual deforestation averaged 35 km², increasing 129% between 2013 and 2021. The increase was 195% in the last three years of the period.

Alarmingly, the article also shows that the distance of deforested areas from the borders of the ITs concerned increased significantly in the period, rising 30% from 6.80 km to 8.87 km on average.

“In absolute numbers, the areas deforested in these ITs may not seem so large, but ITs are supposed to be environmentally protected, so the impact is all the greater. In addition to the destruction of nature, deforestation brings other problems in its wake, such as diseases and threats to the survival of isolated Indigenous communities. A recent case involved the Yanomami, many of whom died owing to encroachment by wildcat miners [garimpeiros],” Celso H. L. Silva-Junior, first author of the article, told Agência FAPESP. He is a professor in the Program of Graduate Studies in Biodiversity and Conservation at the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA).

Considered an efficient forest conservation model, ITs have come under growing pressure from illegal alluvial panning and mining operations. The increase in deforestation, partly driven by setbacks such as the reversal of government policy on the rights of Indigenous communities, endangers the Amazon’s crucial role as a store of carbon. Tropical forests are key ecosystems in mitigating the adverse effects of climate change, acting as carbon sinks as long as they are left alone. Extensive logging, burning and clearing, however, can convert the areas in question into major sources of carbon emissions. Hence the importance of ITs in fostering conservation and combating deforestation.

“We should bear in mind that ITs are fundamental for Brazil to be able to meet its environmental targets and mitigate the impact of climate change. Conservation of the forest and rivers in these areas is essential. The law must be enforced so that they continue acting as a force field to protect the standing forest and the traditional communities who live in them,” said Guilherme Mataveli, a co-author of the article. Mataveli is a researcher in the Earth Observation and Geoinformatics Division (DIOTG) of Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) and has a postdoctoral scholarship from FAPESP.

The study also received funding from the Research Center for Greenhouse Gas Innovation (RCGI), an Engineering Research Center (ERC) established by FAPESP and Shell at the University of São Paulo (USP), and via a Thematic Project linked to the FAPESP Research Program on Global Climate Change (RPGCC). 

In an article published last year in Science, Mataveli had already warned that growing deforestation in ITs endangered Brazil’s ability to meet its targets (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/38410). Brazil promised to restore and reforest 12 million hectares of forest by 2030, and to achieve zero net carbon emissions by 2050, as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement. 

A third study conducted by scientists in the same group highlighted the expansion of wildcat mining activities in ITs in the Legal Amazon, an area spanning nine Brazilian states defined by federal law for environmental protection and developmental purposes. All mining in these areas is illegal. In the period 1985-2020, it increased 1,217% from 7.45 km² to 102.16 km². The overwhelming majority (95%) took place in the Kayapó, Munduruku and Yanomami ITs in Pará and Roraima states (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/40689). 

Concentration

In the latest study, deforestation increased in 42% of the ITs analyzed, significantly so in 20, from Arara in Pará with a rate of 0.02 km² per year to Apyterewa, also in Pará, with 8.58 km² per year. 

On the other hand, deforestation decreased in 11% of the ITs analyzed, significantly in five. They included Alto Turiaçu (Maranhão state), home to some 1,500 members of the Awa Guajá, Ka’apor and Tembé communities.

“The focus of the article was the threats to Indigenous Territories, but this decrease was an interesting finding. In the case of Maranhão, for example, the Indigenous communities achieved this positive result because they have initiatives of their own to combat deforestation, such as groups who patrol the area as forest guardians,” Silva-Junior said.

He noted that the team of researchers was multidisciplinary, with two anthropologists providing different angles on the topic: Maycon Melo, from the Program of Graduate Studies in the Environment at CEUMA University (Maranhão), and Bárbara Maisonnave Arisi, from the Free University of Amsterdam (VUA, Netherlands).

Recommendations

The article ends with six public policy recommendations to stop deforestation in these areas: strengthening enforcement authorities; repealing laws and measures that have caused environmental degradation; creating a 10 km buffer zone between ITs and mining areas or high-impact projects; supporting sustainable land-use initiatives, including ecosystem restoration; more investment in monitoring by remote sensing, including new systems with improved frequency and scale; canceling all Rural Environmental Registrations (CAR) inside ITs; and strengthening FUNAI, the federal agency responsible for guaranteeing the rights of Indigenous communities, with increased funding and staffing. This year, lawyer Joenia Wapichana became the first Indigenous person ever appointed to head FUNAI.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

---

JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.11606/issn.2316-901x.v0i66p108-129 

ARTICLE TITLE

Brazilian Amazon indigenous territories under deforestation pressure

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

Smoke from Canadian wildfires has been hanging over Germany for weeks

New method improves detection of smoke particles in the atmosphere

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE FOR TROPOSPHERIC RESEARCH (TROPOS)

 

IMAGE: MARTHA (“MULTIWAVELENGTH ATMOSPHERIC RAMAN LIDAR FOR TEMPERATURE, HUMIDITY, AND AEROSOL PROFILING") IS THE BIGGEST AND OLDEST LIDAR AT TROPOS IN LEIPZIG. IT RECEIVED AN ADDITIONAL RECEIVING CHANNEL IN AUGUST 2022 THAT CAN MEASURE FLUORESCENCE BACKSCATTER WHICH IS CURRENTLY PROVING VERY HELPFUL IN OBSERVING SMOKE FROM WILDFIRES. view more 

CREDIT: CRISTOFER JIMENEZ, TROPOS

Leipzig. Huge wildfires in Canada have destroyed millions of hectares of forest, displaced more than 100,000 inhabitants and affected the air quality of millions of people in North America. The traces of this ecological disaster can also be felt in the atmosphere over Germany: since mid-May, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) have been recording thin layers of smoke at altitudes between 3 and 12 kilometers above Leipzig. The proof that the particles are smoke from wildfires was made possible by a new technique: smoke particles are of biological origin and glow when illuminated with UV light from a laser. This allows them to be clearly distinguished from other particles such as volcanic particles or Sahara dust. The origin of the smoke layers could be traced back to North America using air currents.

 

"It is impressive and frightening at the same time to see the dimensions these wildfires have reached in the meantime: When forests burn for weeks in Canada and the USA, it is not only the people there who suffer from this disaster. The atmosphere over Europe is also affected: In the high, normally cloud-free air layers, thin veil clouds appear to form due to the smoke particles," reports Benedikt Gast from TROPOS, who is supervising and evaluating the current measurements as part of a doctoral thesis.

 

In contrast to North America, where in June the metropolises of the East Coast, among others, were covered in smoke for days and a fine dust alarm was issued, the smoke from North America certainly does not represent a health risk in Europe. The smoke layers at high altitudes and are now highly diluted. But it does affect the atmosphere and the climate: on the one hand, solar radiation is scattered by the particles and the light is thus slightly dimmed. Similar to Saharan dust, the sky can also look slightly cloudy. In addition, the smoke could influence cloud formation in higher layers of the atmosphere. At least that is what recent research suggests: during the MOSAiC expedition in the Arctic in 2020, TROPOS researchers were able to measure an unusually large amount of smoke in the atmosphere around the North Pole and observe the formation of cirrus clouds in those smoke environments. A recent study from Cyprus shows that smoke particles can act as nucleation nuclei for the formation of ice crystals under certain conditions. For this purpose, researchers from the Eratosthenes Centre of Excellence, the Cyprus University of Technology and TROPOS analysed data from Limassol in autumn 2020, when smoke from severe wildfires in North America was transported to the whole Mediterranean region from Portugal to Cyprus. The measurements at that time provided clear evidence that aged smoke particles at around -50°C triggered ice formation at the transition between the humid troposphere and the dry stratosphere, leading to the formation of ice clouds.

 

"Our current observations over Leipzig also show indications of such connection. During several measurements in the last few weeks, we were able to observe smoke layers, and ice clouds (also known as cirrus clouds) in its surroundings at altitudes from 10 to 12 km. Such smoke layers in the strong presence of cirrus clouds were observed not only in Leipzig but also in various stations in Europe: From the southwest in Evora (Portugal), through Warsaw (Poland) to Kuopio (Finland) in the northeast. The smoke causing more clouds, could open a new impact-pathway in the context of climate change, since clouds can have a cooling or warming effect, depending on their optical thickness, phase, and microphysical properties. The more intense and more frequent wildfires are potentially affecting atmospheric radiation budget at a still unknown extent. This potential motivates us to further investigate the interplay of forest-fire smoke and cloud formation," says Benedikt Gast from TROPOS.

 

Due to climate change, the number and intensity of wildfires are increasing, and with it the amounts of aerosol that are released into the atmosphere when biomass is burned. These aerosol particles can not only be distributed in the troposphere, but can even reach the stratosphere above and influence the Earth's radiation budget and cloud cover over long periods and large areas. "Since the start of the 2023 wildfire season in the northern hemisphere, we have seen smoke in almost every layer of the atmosphere, including the lower stratosphere. From an atmospheric science perspective, this is a worrying trend: global warming does not only seem to be causing the burn of large forests around the Arctic Circle, but those fires are more sever and frequent. It is also significantly changing our atmosphere and in turn influencing the climate. In addition, there is new evidence suggesting that the smoke is also disrupting the ozone layer and thus posing a health risk to millions of people," explains Dr Albert Ansmann from TROPOS.

 

In order to fully understand and quantify the effects of aerosols on climate, accurate aerosol typing is crucial. Multi-wavelength polarisation lidars, such as those operated by TROPOS at various locations, are very powerful tools in this respect for the detection and classification of aerosol with parameters such as the lidar ratio, the depolarisation ratio and the Ångström exponent. However, it has been difficult to distinguish stratospheric smoke from volcanic sulphate aerosol.

 

Recent studies have shown that fluorescence lidar has great potential to improve aerosol classification because it provides another parameter - the so-called fluorescence capacity (ratio of fluorescence backscatter to elastic backscatter coefficients). The researchers have therefore expanded their large, stationary atmospheric lidar at TROPOS in Leipzig: the "Multiwavelength Atmospheric Raman Lidar for Temperature, Humidity, and Aerosol Profiling" (MARTHA) received an additional receiving channel in August 2022 that can measure fluorescence backscatter in the spectral range of 444 - 488 nanometres. The experience gathered with the fluorescence observations at TROPOS, shows that it has great potential not only for aerosol typing, but also for finding smoke layers in the first place. "Since the new channel is only sensitive to particle scattering, it is perfectly suited for aerosol profiling. Several cases have proven this. A fluorescence channel in the lidar is like a having a loupe for aerosol layers," reports Dr. Cristofer Jimenez from TROPOS, "especially at low particle concentrations, the new approach could provide interesting and completely new results. There is much to explore and expect from the technique".

 

A more powerful laser, which can also be used to study even higher layers of the atmosphere and lower concentrations, is to follow in the next few months. Both the station in Leipzig and the one in Limassol belong to PollyNet, a network of lidar systems that use laser beams to study the atmosphere from the ground. It is part of the European research infrastructure ACTRIS, which studies aerosols, clouds and trace gases.

  

Canadian smoke and cirrus clouds over Leipzig - observed with the fluorescence lidar MARTHA at TROPOS during the night of 29/30 May 2023. The different evaluation methods show that thin smoke layers only become clearly visible with the fluorescence method: a) The classical elastic lidar signal at a wavelength of 1064 nanometres hardly reveals the aerosol layer at an altitude of 12 km (top graph). b) The measurement of the fluorescence component at a wavelength of 466 nanometres backscattered laser light, on the other hand, shows that there was a layer of smoke above the clouds at an altitude of about 11-12 km (centre graph). C) The evaluation of the so-called fluorescence capacity (G_F) makes clear that at the beginning of the measurement until about midnight (= 22:00 UTC) the upper part of the clouds was partly within the smoke layer.

CREDIT

Benedikt Gast, TROPOS

 

---

JOURNAL

Atmospheric Measurement Techniques

DOI

10.5194/amt-16-2353-2023 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

DeLiAn – a growing collection of depolarization ratio, lidar ratio and Ångström exponent for different aerosol types and mixtures from ground-based lidar observations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-May-2023

COI STATEMENT

At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. The peer-review process was guided by an independent editor, and the authors also have no other competing interests to declare.

The battle in Syria that looms behind Wagner’s rebellion

June 30, 2023 

By Ishaan Tharoor 

foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post,

The single bloodiest clash between U.S. and Russian forces since the Cold War took place in early February 2018. In the depths of the Syrian night, near the dusty banks of the Euphrates River, a small force of U.S. Marines and Green Berets found themselves besieged by a larger contingent of pro-Syrian regime forces, including a significant detachment of Russian mercenaries. The battle centered around a U.S. outpost by the Conoco gas plant near Deir al-Zour in northeastern Syria.

A company of some 300 to 500 pro-Syrian regime troops advanced on the refinery, equipped with heavy weapons including armored vehicles and tanks. Over an intense four-hour gunfight, the attackers pinned down U.S. forces under a barrage of artillery and mortar rounds. Earlier this year, investigative reporter Kevin Maurer sketched a compelling account of the battle, based on firsthand accounts from a number of U.S. Special Forces personnel involved in the fight, and he detailed the grim horror that set in as Russian tanks slowly motored into position.

“They called the team a pirate ship because if anything happened, they were all going down together,” Maurer wrote of the U.S. combatants. “And now facing tanks, that was a real chance. Despite recent showings on the battlefields of Ukraine, the tank is still an apex predator on the battlefield. The American Special Forces didn’t have a weapon that could stop them.”

Instead, U.S. air power entered the fray and presided over a stunning slaughter. Reaper drones, F-22 stealth jets, B-52 bombers and Apache helicopter gunships took out the attacking force’s antiaircraft capability and then mowed them down. The bulk of the Russian tanks and artillery were destroyed, and hundreds of Syrian and Russian fighters were believed killed. Not one U.S. casualty was sustained.

“I’m a full believer that without the air that responded to us on station, we all would’ve been a bunch of grease stains on the earth in a line in an oil field in Syria,” one of the Special Forces officers told Maurer.

Russia’s Ukraine war builds on tactics it used in Syria, experts say

After leading a short-lived mutiny over the weekend, Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin defended his actions on June 26 in a Telegram audio message. (Video: Reuters)

Why bring up this episode from five years ago? Because the mercenaries involved belonged to the Wagner Group, led by the now-exiled Yevgeniy Prigozhin. Their operations then, as they do now, reflected the outsize, shadowy role Wagner played in the Kremlin’s foreign policy — as a proxy actor that furthered Moscow’s interests in hot spots in Ukraine, Syria and various conflicts in Africa with both ruthlessness and a degree of plausible deniability for the Russian government.

And the incident also offered an early indication of the tensions to come between Prigozhin and Russia’s military leadership. The apparent loss of dozens of Wagner fighters in a single night in Syria allegedly infuriated Prigozhin, who earlier this month put out his account of the 2018 events on the social media platform Telegram. In his telling, the Wagner expedition was supposed to be the advance force of an “anti-ISIS” operation that would secure control over the plant and its environs with air support from the Russian military. But that support never came, and Prigozhin was left fuming at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov for allowing his fighters to become U.S. cannon fodder.

According to U.S. officials in 2018, their Russian counterparts denied involvement in the battle and, during emergency discussions as the fighting raged, assented to the use of American air power on the scene. A U.S. official told my colleagues five years ago that it was “striking how the Russians themselves have been quick to distance themselves” from what he described as an operation “under Syrian command and in response to Syrian directive.”

“The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told senators in testimony in April 2018. He said he directed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “for the [attacking] force, then, to be annihilated.”

A few weeks after the battle, my colleagues reported on how, despite Russian denials, Prigozhin did have close contact with the Kremlin and appeared to be coordinating operations with its officials. It was an initial peek into the vast influence network he once operated, spanning Russian disinformation operations online to boots on the ground in wars in countries like Libya and the Central African Republic.

Russia’s new commander in Ukraine was decorated after brutality in Syria

Prigozhin’s feud with Shoigu and Gerasimov flared in the last half year, as he raged at their perceived incompetence in the handling of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This past weekend, he launched Wagner’s short-lived rebellion against Russia’s military leadership, prompting a crisis for Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Kremlin is still struggling to resolve. Shoigu and Gerasimov, Putin allies, remain in their posts.

Prigozhin was allowed to leave for exile in Belarus, but it appears the Kremlin may be moving to defang the mercenary company it allowed to thrive. On Thursday, Russian reports suggested that Russian authorities had arrested Air Force commander Gen. Sergei Surovikin, who had, for a time, led operations in Ukraine as well as the earlier Russian war effort in Syria, for alleged links to Wagner and Prigozhin and abetting the mutiny.

Russian elite brace for sweeping Kremlin investigation into Wagner rebellion

The reason for Wagner’s ill-fated 2018 operation in Syria was likely born out of greed. The company has built a stream of revenue from guarding lucrative sites like oil fields and gold mines. For now, as Moscow figures out what to do with the mercenaries’ footprint, a kind of tacit status quo remains in place in Syria.

“Wagner is still deployed in resource-rich areas where [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad’s forces are nominally in control but rely on help from Russian military and police units,” noted Anna Borshchevskaya, Ben Fishman and Andrew Tabler of Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in a memo published Thursday. “These include Syria’s largest natural gas and oil fields (Shaer, al-Mahr, Jazar, and Jihar), where some reports indicate that Wagner has used a shell company called Evro Polis to receive up to a quarter of the production profits. The Assad regime apparently granted Wagner this cut because the group recaptured the fields from the Islamic State and has continued to guard them against opposition raids. Any changes in this arrangement would reveal much about the balance of Russian control in Syria.”

By Ishaan Tharoor is a foreign affairs columnist at The Washington Post, where he authors the Today's WorldView newsletter and column. In 2021, he won the Arthur Ross Media Award in Commentary from the American Academy of Diplomacy. He previously was a senior editor and correspondent at Time magazine, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York. Twitter