It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
Unraveling the physics behind severe flash floods in Indonesia's new capital on March 15-16, 2022
Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
image:
(Left) Devastating flash flood in Indonesia's new capital, Nusantara (IKN), on March 16, 2022. (Right) Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) structure during the event, shown using brightness temperature data from the Himawari-8 satellite.
Since the establishment of Indonesia's new capital, Nusantara (IKN), hydroclimate extremes have emerged as a significant environmental concern. One of the most notable events was the devastating flash flood on March 15-16, 2022, which was triggered by 4-6 hours of prolonged heavy rainfall, causing severe damage and substantial economic loss.
An international research team from Indonesia, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia has identified mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) as the primary cause of this heavy rainfall. The study is published in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.
Using high-resolution GSMaP data, the team found that the rainfall peaked during the MCS's mature stage on the evening of March 15, 2022, and diminished as it entered the dissipation stage. The study, led by Prof. Eddy Hermawan from Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency, also examined various environmental factors that influenced the MCS event, including the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO, a major atmospheric phenomenon characterized by an eastward-moving pulse of cloud and rainfall near the equator that typically recurs every 30 to 60 days.), equatorial waves, and low-frequency variability.
"Our findings indicate that the MJO and equatorial waves play a crucial role in the early stages of MCS development by enhancing moisture convergence in the lower boundary layer, while local factors become more influential during the mature and later stages of the MCS evolution," said Prof. Hermawan. "These results are supported by the backward trajectory of moisture transport analyses."
The study revealed that the MJO and equatorial waves contributed significantly to lower-level meridional moisture flux convergence during the pre-MCS stage and initiation, with their contributions accounting for up to 80% during the growth phase. While La NiƱa and the Asian monsoon had negligible impacts on MCS moisture supply, a substantial contribution from the residual term of the water vapor budget during the maturation and decay phases of MCSs was observed.
“This suggests that local forcing, such as small-scale convection, local evaporation, land-surface feedback, and topography, also plays a crucial role in modulating the intensity and duration of the MCS.” Said Ainur Ridho, a scientist from the University of Reading, UK.
This study enhances our understanding of the potential causes of extreme rainfall in Nusantara and could aid in improving rainstorm forecasting and risk management in the region. Looking ahead, the team plans to apply deep learning techniques to simulate and predict extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, associated with the development of MCSs in IKN and its surrounding areas.
A new study published today in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research: Energy shows why new safeguards adopted by the U.S. Treasury Department are necessary to avoid substantial climate impacts and wasted taxpayer resources from a generous hydrogen production tax credit.
The new study illustrates how, absent safeguards, hydrogen producers could potentially claim the highest level of tax credits ($3 per kilogram) for producing "gray" hydrogen from fossil natural gas, by blending in small amounts of biomethane or waste methane. Allowing this blending could support about 35 million metric tonnes of “gray” hydrogen production per year, at a taxpayer cost of around $1 trillion over 10 years and excess emissions of around three billion tonnes CO2 versus scenarios assuming strict methane control.
On 3 January 2025, the US Treasury Department finalized regulations that align with several of the recommendations from the new study, a draft of which was submitted to the Treasury Department as a public comment earlier in the rulemaking process. The final regulations prohibit hydrogen producers from blending fossil and alternative methane feedstocks and set important technical safeguards for hydrogen produced from alternative methane feedstocks.
Researchers at the University of Notre Dame, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania have conducted a detailed analysis of the Clean Hydrogen Production Tax Credit (Section 45V) and the Clean Electricity Production Tax Credit (Section 45Y), both established under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Their work explores how these credits could be designed and the effect of these design choices on clean energy industries.
The analysis demonstrates the impacts of declaring certain feedstocks (methane, solid biomass, and waste) to be greenhouse gas neutral or negative in the context of US clean energy policies and tax credits. Some of these tax credits define what counts as “clean” by explicit reference to life cycle methods, but left the technical design of those methods up to the US Treasury Department.
As the researchers note, this implementation role required the Treasury Department to make significant policy choices: “Life cycle methods offer decision support frameworks for the implementation of complex environmental policies, but they are not objective quantitative calculators that provide the stable, predictable, and correct values that financial transactions like tax credits require.”
Because the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act required life cycle analysis but did not fully specify its implementation, the US Treasury Department could have adopted a range of outcomes for the hydrogen production tax credit under Section 45V of the tax code.
The new study analyzes the climate and fiscal risks of choosing life cycle accounting methods that would maximize the use of biomethane and other waste methane feedstocks. It also identifies three key policy choices that could mitigate these risks:
Prohibiting blending of feedstocks to maximize tax credits
Only allowing activities that actively remove carbon from the atmosphere to be assigned negative carbon intensity scores.
Requiring baseline scenarios that assume deep climate action, such as active methane management, from fossil, municipal and agricultural sources.
The final Treasury Department regulations for hydrogen align with the researchers’ first and third recommendations, and set important safeguards to limit potential distortions related to the second. Specifically, the final regulations prohibit blending of feedstocks (recommendation 1) and require hydrogen producers to assume that methane produced from wastewater, landfills, and coal mines would be captured and flared, rather than vented to the atmosphere (recommendation 3). For methane sourced from animal manure, the final rules require hydrogen producers to assume conservative levels of avoided methane emissions, which reduces the potential distortionary impacts of allowing negative carbon intensity scores in this instance (contrary to recommendation 2).
The new study’s analysis and recommendations also extend to the design of clean electricity tax credits under Section 45Y of the US tax code. As of this writing the US Treasury Department has not finalized those regulations, but it is expected to do so imminently.
The researchers stress that their findings don't mean life cycle analysis should be abandoned in policy design. Rather, policymakers need to carefully anticipate potential distortions and implement appropriate safeguards.
“Our point in raising concerns about the application of life cycle analysis in complex environmental policy design is not to object to it on a categorical basis, but to show that it is a mistake to assume it is an objective framework.”[DC1]
The study also highlights the risk of subsidising technologies that are only "clean" based on operational choices that are unlikely to continue after the tax credits expire. The authors suggest considering provisions to reclaim tax credits if subsidised facilities subsequently revert to more polluting practices.[DC2]
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About IOP Publishing IOP Publishing is a society-owned scientific publisher, delivering impact, recognition and value to the scientific community. Its purpose is to expand the world of physics, offering a portfolio of journals, ebooks, conference proceedings and science news resources globally.
IOPP is a member of Purpose-Led Publishing, a coalition of society publishers who pledge to put purpose above profit.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of the Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit society, IOP Publishing supports the Institute’s work to inspire people to develop their knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of physics. Visit ioppublishing.org to learn more.
About your institution
Emily Gurbert (egrubert@nd.edu) is Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. The Keough School is committed to serving human dignity through research and scholarship, teaching and learning, and policies and practices designed to advance the development of the whole person and of each person in their specific socio-cultural context.
Wilson Ricks (wricks@princeton.edu) is a postdoctoral researcher with the ZERO Lab at Princeton University. The ZERO Lab improves and applies optimization-based macro-energy systems models to evaluate low-carbon energy technologies, guide investment and research in innovative decarbonization solutions, and generate insights to improve energy and climate policy and planning.
Danny Cullenward (dcullenward@ghgpolicy.org) is a Senior Fellow with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. The mission of the Kleinman Center is to create the conditions for policy innovation that support a just and efficient transition to sustainable energy through research, education, and expert convening.
A pioneering study at Guildford town centre’s Sandfield Primary School highlights the benefits to schoolchildren’s health delivered by protective green infrastructure, demonstrating a nearly one-third reduction in harmful particle pollution levels – together with the added benefit of a 5-decibel reduction in disruptive and distracting traffic noise.
The RECLAIM Network Plus-funded CoGreen project, led by the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), involved a collaborative effort between the school, parents and residents’ groups, and researchers from Guildford Living Lab and Zero Carbon Guildford. Each party oversaw the installation of the UK’s first ‘living school gate’ consisting of 140 plants, along with a separate green screen made of ivy designed to filter high pollution levels from the busy crossroads of the A246 York Road with the A320 Stoke Road, on which the school is sited.
Professor Prashant Kumar, founding Director of the University of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) and RECLAIM project Principal Investigator for this work, said:
“Air pollution poses a significant threat to children’s health, particularly with so many UK schools situated near busy roads. Our findings showcase the transformative potential of nature-based infrastructure in addressing this growing concern, providing protection for not only pupils and staff but also local biodiversity.
“Co-creation lies at the heart of this project’s success. The school’s leaders, parents, University of Surrey researchers and local stakeholders collaborated closely to conceive and deliver this project. Healthier, greener school environments for future generations can be delivered across the UK and around the globe where co-creation, active participation and community engagement are harnessed to deliver innovative and sustainable solutions.”
While Green Infrastructure (GI) is already recognised for its ability to reduce harmful air pollution exposure, the study shines new light on the associated multifaceted benefits of implementing sustainable eco-solutions around schools, offering valuable insights that could drive wider adoption across the country.
Results from the living gate and surrounding green screen showed particle pollution levels dropped by nearly one-third compared to scenarios without GI. Additionally, the living gate reduced traffic-related noise from the main road by 5 decibels. The findings also revealed that wind direction plays a key role in the infrastructure’s efficiency, with pollution cut by 44% when blowing away from the living gate and 42% when it flowed parallel to the green screen.
The school’s headteacher and co-author of the study, Kate Collins, said:
“This has been a long-standing ambition of Sandfield Primary, and we’re thrilled it has finally come to fruition – marking a significant milestone in protecting our environment and the health and wellbeing of everyone who learns and works at our school. This achievement was made possible through a strong partnership with the University of Surrey’s world-leading air pollution research lab, the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), alongside the dedicated involvement of Sandfield parents and local charity Zero Carbon Guildford.”
A survey that followed the GI installation at the school revealed optimism among parents, with more than 75% providing positive responses regarding the reduction in air and noise pollution. Kate Alger, local resident and freelance artist-educator, said:
“As a former Sanfield parent and long-time local resident, I’ve been very worried about air pollution for years. I’m pleased to have been part of this collaborative project and to see the vision we had brought to life. I sincerely hope this will help other schools and communities work together to create greener, cleaner and safer environments.”
UKRI’s RECLAIM Network Plus – which focuses on turning the UK’s ‘forgotten cities’ from vulnerable spaces to healthy places – funded the project, paving the way for the wider-scale application of innovative strategies involving local communities, stakeholders, and policymakers in implementing GI projects to ensure their sustainability and effectiveness.
Reference
Abhijith, KV., Rawat, N., Emygdio, A.P.M., Le Den, C., Collins, K., Cartwright, P., Alger, K., McCallen, B., Kumar, P.*, 2024. Demonstrating multi-benefits of green infrastructure to Schools through collaborative approach. Science of the Total Environment, 177959. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724081166
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Notes to editors
Professor Prashant Kumar is available for interview, please contact mediarelations@surrey.ac.uk to arrange.
Credit: ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology
A revolutionary new biological pest control method that targets the lifespan of female insects could significantly reduce the threat of insect pests such as disease-carrying mosquitoes by offering faster and more effective results than current methods.
Described today in Nature Communications, the technique developed by researchers in Applied BioSciences and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology at Macquarie University is a new approach called the Toxic Male Technique (TMT).
It works by genetically engineering male insects to produce insect-specific venom proteins in their semen. When these males mate with females, the proteins are transferred, significantly reducing female lifespan and their ability to spread disease.
Insect pests pose a growing threat to global health and agriculture, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of infections, and costing billions in healthcare and crop damage annually.
In mosquitoes like Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae, only the females bite and transmit diseases such as malaria, dengue, Zika, chikungunya disease and yellow fever.
Pesticides face declining effectiveness due to resistance and have caused harm to non-target species and ecosystems. Genetic biocontrol has emerged as a promising alternative.
Current techniques like the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) or insects carrying lethal genes (RIDL) work by releasing massive numbers of sterilised or genetically modified males to mate with the wild females.
While these mated females produce no offspring or only male offspring, they continue to blood feed and spread disease until they die naturally - meaning populations of biting females only decrease when the next generation emerges.
By immediately reducing the biting female population, TMT offers significant advantages over competing genetic biocontrol methods.
“As we’ve learned from COVID-19, reducing the spread of these diseases as quickly as possible is important to prevent epidemics,” says lead author Sam Beach.
“By targeting the female mosquitoes themselves rather than their offspring, TMT is the first biocontrol technology that could work as quickly as pesticides without also harming beneficial species.”
Laboratory tests using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) demonstrated that females mated with TMT males had lifespans shortened by 37–64 per cent compared to those mated with unmodified males.
Computer models predict that applying TMT to Aedes aegypti, a highly aggressive mosquito species primarily responsible for transmitting Dengue and Zika, could reduce blood-feeding rates—a key factor in disease transmission—by 40 to 60 per cent compared to established methods.
Rigorous safety testing
Safety and environmental safety are central to the TMT approach. Venoms naturally contain a mixture of many proteins, and those used in TMT are very carefully selected. Their targets are only present within invertebrates, so they aren’t toxic in any way to mammals, and they are not likely to cause harm when consumed by beneficial insects since their oral toxicity is very low.
The current study was performed in Associate Professor Maciej Maselko’s lab and provides the proof of concept for this breakthrough approach for suppressing the populations of pest species.
‘We still need to implement it in mosquitoes and conduct rigorous safety testing to ensure there are no risks to humans or other non-target species,” says Associate Professor Maselko.
“This innovative solution could transform how we manage pests, offering hope for healthier communities and a more sustainable future,” says Beach.
Competing interests: M.M. and S.J.B. have submitted a patent application (AU2023903662A0) to the Australian patent ofļ¬ce pertaining to the enablement of the Toxic Male Technique.
No one can see inside the Earth. Nor can anyone drill deep enough to take rock samples from the mantle, the layer between Earth’s core and outermost, rigid layer the lithosphere, or measure temperature and pressure there. That's why geophysicists use indirect methods to see what's going on deep beneath our feet.
For example, they use seismograms, or earthquake recordings, to determine the speed at which earthquake waves propagate. They then use this information to calculate the internal structure of the Earth. This is very similar to how doctors use ultrasound to image organs, muscles or veins inside the body without opening it up.
Seismic waves provide information
Here's how it works: when the Earth trembles, seismic waves spread out from the epicentre in all directions. On their way through the Earth, they are refracted, diffracted or reflected. The speed at which the waves spread depends on the type of wave, but also on the density and elasticity of the material through which the waves pass. Seismographic stations record these different waves, and on the basis of these recordings, geophysicists can draw conclusions about the structure and composition of the Earth and examine the processes that take place inside it.
Using seismic recordings, Earth scientists determined the position of submerged tectonic plates throughout the Earth's mantle. They always found them where they expected them to be: in an area known as subduction zones, where two plates meet and one subducts beneath the other into the Earth's interior. This has helped scientists investigate the plate tectonic cycle, i.e., the emergence and destruction of plates at Earth’s surface, through our planet’s history.
Plate remnants where there shouldn't be any
Now, however, a team of geophysicists from ETH Zurich and the California Institute of Technology has made a surprising discovery: using a new high-resolution model, they have discovered further areas in the Earth's interior that look like the remains of submerged plates. Yet, these are not located where they were expected; instead, they are under large oceans or in the interior of continents – far away from plate boundaries. There is also no geological evidence of past subduction there. This study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.
What is new about their modelling approach is that the ETH researchers are not just using one type of earthquake wave to study the structure of the Earth's interior, but all of them. Experts call the procedure full-waveform inversion. This makes the model very computationally intensive, which is why the researchers used the Piz Daint supercomputer at the CSCS in Lugano. Is there a lost world beneath the Pacific Ocean?
“Apparently, such zones in the Earth's mantle are much more widespread than previously thought,” says Thomas Schouten, first author and doctoral student at the Geological Institute of ETH Zurich.
One of the newly discovered zones is under the western Pacific. However, according to current plate tectonic theories and knowledge, there should be no material from subducted plates there, because it is impossible that there were subduction zones nearby in the recent geological history. The researchers do not know for certain what material is involved instead, and what that would mean for Earth’s internal dynamics. “That's our dilemma. With the new high-resolution model, we can see such anomalies everywhere in the Earth's mantle. But we don't know exactly what they are or what material is creating the patterns we have uncovered.”
It's like a doctor who has been examining blood circulation with ultrasound for decades and finds arteries exactly where he expects them, says ETH professor Andreas Fichtner. “Then if you give him a new, better examination tool, he suddenly sees an artery in the buttock that doesn't really belong there. That's exactly how we feel about the new findings,” explains the wave physicist. He developed the model in his group and wrote the code.
Extracting more information from waves
So far, the researchers can only speculate. “We think that the anomalies in the lower mantle have a variety of origins,” says Schouten. He believes it is possible that they are not just cold plate material that has subducted in the last 200 million years, as previously assumed. “It could be either ancient, silica-rich material that has been there since the formation of the mantle about 4 billion years ago and has survived despite the convective movements in the mantle, or zones where iron-rich rocks accumulate as a consequence of these mantle movements over billions of years” he notes.
For the doctoral student, this means above all that more research with even better models is needed to see further details of Earth’s interior. “The waves we use for the model essentially only represent one property, namely the speed at which they travel through the Earth's interior,” says the Earth scientist. However, this does not do justice to the Earth's complex interior. “We have to calculate the different material parameters that could generate the observed speeds of the different wave types. Essentially, we have to dive deeper into the material properties behind the wave speed,” says Schouten.
James Churchward (27 February 1851 – 4 January 1936) was a British occult writer, inventor, engineer, and fisherman. Churchward is most notable for proposing the existence of a lost continent, called "Mu," in the Pacific Ocean. His writings on Mu are considered to be pseudoscience.
www.bahaistudies.net/.../Col-James-Churchward-The-Sacred-Symbol… · PDF file
COLONEL JAMES CHURCHWARD AUTHOR OF "THE LOST CONTINENT OF MU" "THE CHILDREN OF MU" ILLUSTRATED IVES WASHBURN; NEW YORK Scanned at sacred-texts.com, December, 2003.
Posted onJune 19, 2021|Comments Offon 3 Beards Podcast: Is the Lost Continent of Mu Real?
Author Jack Churchward joins the show to talk about his books that cover The Lost Continent of Mu, a subject brought to life by the works of his great grandfather Col. James Churchward.
The mythical idea of the “Land of Mu” first appeared in the works of the British-American antiquarian Augustus Le Plongeon (1825–1908), after his investigations of the Maya ruins in YucatĆ”n. He claimed that he had translated the first copies of the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the K’iche’ from the ancient Mayan using Spanish. He claimed the civilization of YucatĆ”n was older than those of Greece and Egypt, and told the story of an even older continent.
Col. James Churchward claimed that the landmass of Mu was located in the Pacific Ocean, and stretched east–west from the Marianas to Easter Island, and north–south from Hawaii to Mangaia. According to Churchward the continent was supposedly 5,000 miles from east to west and over 3,000 miles from north to south, which is larger than South America. The continent was believed to be flat with massive plains, vast rivers, rolling hills, large bays, and estuaries. He claimed that according to the creation myth he read in the Indian tablets, Mu had been lifted above sea level by the expansion of underground volcanic gases. Eventually Mu “was completely obliterated in almost a single night” after a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, “the broken land fell into that great abyss of fire” and was covered by “fifty millions of square miles of water.” Churchward claimed the reasoning for the continent’s destruction in one night was because the main mineral on the island was granite and was honeycombed to create huge shallow chambers and cavities filled with highly explosive gases. Once the chambers were empty after the explosion, they collapsed on themselves, causing the island to crumble and sink.
