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)
Saturday, January 23, 2021
Improving long-term climate calculations
A new method reduces uncertainties in computer model estimations of climate change over thousands of years.
IMAGE: THE APPROACH OF BASTIANSEN ET AL. RESULTS IN MORE ACCURATE ESTIMATIONS OF LONG-TERM WARMING. view more
CREDIT: TIPES/HP
Climate researchers have found a simple but efficient way to improve estimations of ultimate global warming from complex climate models. The finding is relevant for the evaluation and comparison of climate models and thus for accurate projections of future climate change - especially beyond the year 2100. The study is published in Geophysical Research Letters by Dr. Robbin Bastiaansen and colleagues at the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. The work is part of the European TiPES project coordinated by the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Complex climate models are rarely used to simulate the effect of global warming for a given amount of CO2 beyond a couple of centuries into the future. The reason for this is twofold. First, even on a supercomputer, such a model must already run for months to obtain a 150-year projection; reaching the end of a long simulation is therefore not practical. Second, policymakers are mainly concerned about how much climate change a given amount of CO2 will cause within the coming decades.
Earth warms for more than 1000 years
In the real world, however, temperatures continue to go up for more than a thousand years after CO2 is added to the Earth system. A typical climate model simulation therefore estimates less than half of the summed global warming. That is a challenge because, in order to improve models, it is necessary to compare and evaluate models. The final global mean temperature from a given amount of CO2 is an important parameter in the evaluation of a model.
The traditional way of solving this problem is to take the two most predominant results (called observables) from the simulation of the first 150 years and use these to estimate at which global mean surface temperature a full simulation would have ended. The two observables most often used are the global mean surface temperature and the radiation imbalance at the top of the atmosphere. This leads to a rather good estimation but the approach introduces considerable uncertainty - mainly underestimating total global warming.
More accurate estimates
However, an advanced climate model produces a multitude of other data on, for example future ocean currents, weather patterns, sea ice extend, ground color, climate belts, precipitation, and many more.
"And what we did, was add another observable on top of the two traditional ones. That is the idea. If you use additional observables, you will improve estimates over longer time scales. And our work is proof that this is possible," explains Dr. Robbin Bastiaansen.
In the best-case scenario, the new method halved the uncertainty compared to traditional methods.
The work is expected to be useful in assessing tipping points in the Earth system, as studied in the TiPES project, funded by the EU Horizon 2020.
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Earth takes thousands of years to reach the final global mean temperature.
CREDIT
TiPES/HP
With a little help from their friends, older birds breed successfully
IMAGE: THIS IS A SEYCHELLES WITH A COLOUR-CODED RING. THESE RINGS MAKE IT POSSIBLE TO STUDY INDIVIDUAL ANIMALS ON THE ISLAND OF COUSIN. view more
CREDIT: MARTIJN HAMMERS, UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN
The offspring of older animals often have a lower chance of survival because the parents are unable to take care of their young as well as they should. The Seychelles warbler is a cooperatively breeding bird species, meaning that parents often receive help from other birds when raising their offspring. A study led by biologists from the University of Groningen shows that the offspring of older females have better prospects when they are surrounded by helpers. This impact of social behaviour on reproductive success is described in a paper that was published on 19 January in the journal Evolution Letters.
The Seychelles warbler lives on a tiny island called Cousin Island, which is part of the Republic of Seychelles, an island country in the Indian Ocean. On Cousin Island, there are just over 300 birds, nearly all of them ringed with colour rings so that each individual bird can be recognized. The population has been studied for several decades. Martijn Hammers, a biologist at the University of Groningen, has frequently visited the island and is studying the interaction between social behaviour and ageing among these birds.
Natural laboratory
Cousin Island resembles a natural laboratory, Hammers explains. 'It is isolated, so there is no influx of new birds and birds rarely migrate to other islands. Furthermore, from 1985 onwards, we have ringed almost all warblers on the island, which allows us to observe their behaviour, reproduction and survival.' The Seychelles warbler is a cooperative breeder: each territory is held by a dominant couple and they sometimes allow helpers to stay there. 'These helpers are usually their own young from earlier breeding attempts and they can assist in breeding and in feeding the chicks. In return, these helpers can use the resources that are available in the territory and female helpers are occasionally allowed to lay an egg in the dominant birds' nest.'
As the parent birds age, their ability to feed their young diminishes. In this new study, Hammers and his colleagues from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and the University of East Anglia (UK) wanted to find out whether social behaviour, in particular the care for offspring provided by helpers, affects the breeding success of older birds. To this end, Hammers analysed over 20 years of data on these birds. He specifically looked at the frequency of chick feeding and the survival of young birds.
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This picture shows two Seychelles warblers on the island of Cousin, feeding a young bird that has left the nest.
CREDIT
Charlie Davies
Humans
Our prediction was that having helpers would be beneficial for the survival of chicks from older birds. And this turned out to be true, but only for older females,' says Hammers. The males of this species contribute less to feeding the chicks than females and their behaviour may therefore be less important for offspring survival than the behaviour of the females. 'That may be because the males are not always sure that they are feeding their own offspring since 40 per cent of the young are not their own,' explains Hammers.
The data show that while helpers compensate for age-related declines in female reproductive performance, individual helpers do not work harder when the dominant female is older. 'It appears to be a more passive process, in that older birds recruit more helpers who collectively help more.' The implications of his findings are that it is beneficial for older female birds to display social behaviour - allowing helpers to live in their territory - since it increases their reproductive success. 'It would be interesting to see if this is a general principle that also applies to other animal species, or even to humans.'
In a previous study, Hammers showed that getting help with the kids also slows down the ageing of the parents. 'This effect was also most pronounced in older females. This new study provides additional evidence for an interplay between age and cooperative breeding.'
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This picture shows University of Groningen biologist Martijn Hammers during fieldwork on Cousin. He holds a Seychelles warbler.
CREDIT
Charlie Davies
Reference: Martijn Hammers, Sjouke A. Kingma, Lotte A. van Boheemen, Alexandra M. Sparks, Terry Burke, Hannah L. Dugdale, David S. Richardson and Jan Komdeur: Helpers compensate for age-related declines in parental care and offspring survival in a cooperatively breeding bird. Evolution Letters 19 January 2021
Tiny particles that seed clouds can form from trace gases over open sea
Understanding previously undocumented source of new particle formation will improve models of aerosols, clouds, and their impact on Earth's climate
IMAGE: BROOKHAVEN LAB ATMOSPHERIC SCIENTIST CHONGAI KUANG (CENTER) WITH ART SEDLACEK (LEFT) AND STEPHEN SPRINGSTON (RIGHT) ABOARD ARM'S GULFSTREAM-159 (G-1) AIRCRAFT DURING A 2010 ATMOSPHERIC SAMPLING MISSION THAT WAS NOT PART... view more
CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION MEASUREMENT (ARM) USER FACILITY.
UPTON, NY - New results from an atmospheric study over the Eastern North Atlantic reveal that tiny aerosol particles that seed the formation of clouds can form out of next to nothingness over the open ocean. This "new particle formation" occurs when sunlight reacts with molecules of trace gases in the marine boundary layer, the atmosphere within about the first kilometer above Earth's surface. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, will improve how aerosols and clouds are represented in models that describe Earth's climate so scientists can understand how the particles--and the processes that control them--might have affected the planet's past and present, and make better predictions about the future.
"When we say 'new particle formation,' we're talking about individual gas molecules, sometimes just a few atoms in size, reacting with sunlight," said study co-author Chongai Kuang, a member of the Environmental and Climate Sciences Department at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory. "It's interesting to think about how something of that scale can have such an impact on our climate--on how much energy gets reflected or trapped in our atmosphere," he said.
But modeling the details of how aerosol particles form and grow, and how water molecules condense on them to become cloud droplets and clouds, while taking into consideration how different aerosol properties (e.g., their size, number, and spatial distribution) affect those processes is extremely complex--especially if you don't know where all the aerosols are coming from. So a team of scientists from Brookhaven and collaborators in atmospheric research around the world set out to collect data in a relatively pristine ocean environment. In that setting, they expected the concentration of trace gases to be low and the formation of clouds to be particularly sensitive to aerosol properties--an ideal "laboratory" for disentangling the complex interactions.
"This was an experiment that really leveraged broad and collaborative expertise at Brookhaven in aerosol observations and cloud observations," Kuang said. Three of the lead researchers--lead authors Guangjie Zheng and Yang Wang, and Jian Wang, principal investigator of the Aerosol and Cloud Experiments in the Eastern North Atlantic (ACE-ENA) campaign--began their involvement with the project while working at Brookhaven and have remained close collaborators with the Lab since moving to Washington University in St. Louis in 2018.
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Using an aircraft outfitted with 55 atmospheric instrument systems, scientists traversed horizontal tracks above and through clouds and spiraled down through atmospheric layers to provide detailed measurements of aerosols and cloud properties. The aircraft data were supplemented by measurements made by ground-based radars and other instruments.
CREDIT
Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility.
Land and sea
The study made use of a long-term ground-based sampling station on Graciosa Island in the Azores (an archipelago 850 miles west of continental Portugal) and a Gulfstream-1 aircraft outfitted with 55 atmospheric instrument systems to take measurements at different altitudes over the island and out at sea. Both the ground station and aircraft belong to the DOE Office of Science's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility, managed and operated by a consortium of nine DOE national laboratories.
The team flew the aircraft on "porpoise flights," ascending and descending through the boundary layer to get vertical profiles of the particles and precursor gas molecules present at different altitudes. And they coordinated these flights with measurements taken from the ground station.
The scientists hadn't expected new particle formation to be happening in the boundary layer in this environment because they expected the concentration of the critical precursor trace gases would be too low.
"But there were particles that we measured at the surface that were larger than newly formed particles, and we just didn't know where they came from," Kuang said.
The aircraft measurements gave them their answer.
"This aircraft had very specific flight patterns during the measurement campaign," Kuang said. "They saw evidence that new particle formation was happening aloft--not at the surface but in the upper boundary layer." The evidence included a combination of elevated concentrations of small particles, low concentrations of pre-existing aerosol surface area, and clear signs that reactive trace gases such as dimethyl sulfide were being transported vertically--along with atmospheric conditions favorable for those gases to react with sunlight.
"Then, once these aerosol particles form, they attract additional gas molecules, which condense and cause the particles to grow to around 80-90 nanometers in diameter. These larger particles then get transported downward--and that's what we're measuring at the surface," Kuang said.
"The surface measurements plus the aircraft measurements give us a really good spatial sense of the aerosol processes that are happening," he noted.
At a certain size, the particles grow large enough to attract water vapor, which condenses to form cloud droplets, and eventually clouds.
Both the individual aerosol particles suspended in the atmosphere and the clouds they ultimately form can reflect and/or absorb sunlight and affect Earth's temperature, Kuang explained.
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Results from a study of clouds and aerosols conducted in the Azores revealed that new particles can seed the formation of clouds in the marine boundary layer--the atmosphere up to about a kilometer above Earth's surface--even over the open ocean, where the concentration of precursor gases was expected to be low.
CREDIT
Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility.
Study implications
So now that the scientists know new aerosol particles are forming over the open ocean, what can they do with that information?
"We'll take this knowledge of what is happening and make sure this process is captured in simulations of Earth's climate system," Kuang said.
Another important question: "If this is such a clean environment, then where are all these precursor gases coming from?" Kuang asked. "There are some important precursor gases generated by biological activity in the ocean (e.g., dimethyl sulfide) that may also lead to new particle formation. That can be a nice follow-on study to this one--exploring those sources."
Understanding the fate of biogenic gases such as dimethyl sulfide, which is a very important source of sulfur in the atmosphere, is key to improving scientists' ability to predict how changes in ocean productivity will affect aerosol formation and, by extension, climate.
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The research was funded by the DOE Office of Science, DOE's Atmospheric System Research, and by NASA. In addition to the researchers from Brookhaven Lab and Washington University, the collaboration included scientists from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Missouri University of Science and Technology; the University of Washington, Seattle; NASA Langley Research Center; Science Systems and Applications Inc. in Hampton, Virginia; the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany; and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
Rediscovery of the 'extinct' Pinatubo volcano mouse A small mouse rediscovered on a volcano that erupted 30 years ago provides hope for wildlife conservation in the Philippines
IMAGE: THE REDISCOVERED VOLCANO MOUSE, THOUGHT TO BE EXTINCT. view more CREDIT: (C) DANNY BALETE, FIELD MUSEUM
In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo, a volcanic peak on the Philippine Island of Luzon, literally blew its top. It was the second-most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century, ten times stronger than Mount Saint Helens, and its effects were devastating. Lava and ash spewed into the surrounding environment in the Zambales Mountains, pooling in layers up to 600 feet thick in the valleys. Following the eruption, powerful typhoons and monsoon rains triggered landslides and ash flows that continued for many months. Eight hundred people lost their lives, and the lush forests that covered the mountain prior to the eruption were destroyed or severely damaged. In recent years, scientists returned to the region to survey the surviving mammal populations, and in a new paper in the Philippine Journal of Science, the team announced the rediscovery of a species of mouse that had long been feared to be extinct.
"When Pinatubo blew up, probably the last thing on anyone's mind was that a little species of mouse was thought to live only on that one mountain, and might well have become extinct as a result. What we've learned subsequently really blew us away", says Larry Heaney, the Negaunee Curator of Mammals at Chicago's Field Museum and one of the paper's authors.
In early 2011 and again in 2012, twenty years after the eruption, Field Museum researcher Danilo (Danny) Balete went to Mt. Pinatubo to study its mammal fauna. Over the course of several months, Balete and his team of field assistants (including local men from the Aeta tribe) surveyed the mammals on the mountain, from the bottom to near the top where the forest had been devastated by the eruption.
"Most of our field work on Luzon and elsewhere in the Philippines has been in natural forested habitats where mammals are most common" says Eric Rickart, Curator of Vertebrates at the Natural History Museum of Utah and lead author on the paper, "but Danny couldn't pass up an opportunity to see how mammals were faring on Mt. Pinatubo."
There were no surveys of the mammals on Mt. Pinatubo prior to the eruption. However, specimens housed in the US National Museum of Natural History provided some records from lower elevations around the mountain. "Most of these early records were for common species of bats collected in the 1950s," says Heaney, "but one specimen was particularly intriguing-a small rodent that became the type specimen, and only example, of a new species described in 1962 as Apomys sacobianus, the Pinatubo volcano mouse."
Conditions on Mt. Pinatubo were very harsh, and the survey work by Balete's team was both grueling and dangerous. Even after 20 years, evidence of the eruption was everywhere. The landscape was very unstable due to the constantly eroding ash and lahar deposits that made working in the steep terrain hazardous. It also greatly slowed the process of plant succession. Vegetation was a sparse mix of native and non-native plants, dense stands of grass (including bamboo), shrubs, low-growing vines, and few trees-all the characteristic of early stage second-growth habitat. It was a far cry from the old-growth tropical forest that covered the mountain before the eruption.
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Ecosystem surrounding Mount Pinatubo, recovering after the eruption in 1990.
CREDIT
(c) Danny Balete, Field Museum
Field surveys of small non-flying mammals elsewhere on Luzon have revealed that old-growth forests contain a great variety of native species and few, if any, non-native "pest" species of rats. But in heavily disturbed second-growth habitats, particularly areas near croplands, the reverse is the case-non-native rats are most abundant, and there are only a few hardy native species. "We thought the work on Pinatubo would confirm this general pattern, so we expected to see few if any of the native species," says Rickart.
A specific motivation for the Pinatubo survey was to discover the fate of Apomys sacobianus, the Pinatubo volcano mouse. "After the eruption of Pinatubo, we looked for this mouse on other peaks in the Zambales Mountains but failed to find it," notes Heaney, "suggesting a very limited geographic distribution for the species. We thought the volcano might be the only place this mouse lived." And based on expectations from islands elsewhere, at the time it seemed possible that the species might have been lost because of the eruption.
However, the survey of Pinatubo produced some very surprising results-a total of 17 species were documented, including eight bats, seven rodents (five native and two non-native species), and even two large mammals (wild pig and deer). Contrary to expectations, non-native rats were not at all common and were restricted to areas near Aeta croplands where such agricultural pests are often most abundant. Despite the fact that all areas surveyed supported sparse, scrubby second-growth vegetation rather than forest, native rodents were abundant everywhere.
Most surprising of all, the most abundant species, overwhelmingly, was the volcano mouse Apomys sacobianus. Far from being wiped out by the eruption, this species was thriving in this greatly disturbed landscape along with other native species that also have a high tolerance for disturbance. "For some time, we've known that many of the small mammals of the Philippines can tolerate habitat disturbance, both natural and human-caused," Rickart says, "but most of them are geographically widespread, not locally endemic species which usually are viewed by conservation biologists as highly vulnerable."
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Danny Balete, the researcher who led the fieldwork for this study, now deceased.
CREDIT
(c) Field Museum
As Mt. Pinatubo recovers from the damage done by the eruption, the forests will return and other species of mammals will move in. "Mt. Pinatubo could be a wonderful place to establish a long-term project to monitor habitat recovery and community re-assembly following the eruption," says Rickart, "such information would be helpful in efforts to regenerate the many areas that have been deforested by people."
After completing the Mt. Pinatubo mammal survey, Danny Balete returned to the Field Museum where he organized specimens and data from the survey, made some early notes for an eventual publication, and then set them aside to finish later. After he suddenly died in 2017 at age 56, Rickart and Heaney say that they picked up and completed the study as a tribute to Balete, who is now recognized as one of the most important figures in Philippine biodiversity science for his extensive research contributions, mentoring of younger colleagues, and promoting enjoyment of nature throughout the Philippines.
"Knowing that a species once thought to be vulnerable, even feared to be extinct, is actually thriving is the finest tribute to Danny that we can imagine," adds Heaney.
Wet and wild: There's lots of water in the world's most explosive volcano
IMAGE: SHIVELUCH VOLCANO HAS HAD MORE THAN 40 VIOLENT ERUPTIONS OVER THE LAST 10,000 YEARS. THE LAST GIGANTIC BLAST OCCURRED IN 1964, CREATING A NEW CRATER AND COVERING AN AREA OF... view more
CREDIT: MICHAEL KRAWCZYNSKI, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
There isn't much in Kamchatka, a remote peninsula in northeastern Russia just across the Bering Sea from Alaska, besides an impressive population of brown bears and the most explosive volcano in the world.
Kamchatka's Shiveluch volcano has had more than 40 violent eruptions over the last 10,000 years. The last gigantic blast occurred in 1964, creating a new crater and covering an area of nearly 100 square kilometers with pyroclastic flows. But Shiveluch is actually currently erupting, as it has been for over 20 years. So why would anyone risk venturing too close?
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, including Michael Krawczynski, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and graduate student Andrea Goltz, brave the harsh conditions on Kamchatka because understanding what makes Shiveluch tick could help scientists understand the global water cycle and gain insights into the plumbing systems of other volcanoes.
In a recent study published in the journal Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, researchers from the Krawczynski lab looked at small nodules of primitive magma that were erupted and preserved amid other materials.
"The minerals in these nodules retain the signatures of what was happening early in the magma's evolution, deep in Earth's crust," said Goltz, the lead author of the paper.
The researchers found that the conditions inside Shiveluch include roughly 10%-14% water by weight (wt%). Most volcanoes have less than 1% water. For subduction zone volcanoes, the average is usually 4%, rarely exceeding 8 wt%, which is considered superhydrous.
Of particular interest is a mineral called amphibole, which acts as a proxy or fingerprint for high water content at known temperature and pressure. The unique chemistry of the mineral tells researchers how much water is present deep underneath Shiveluch.
"When you convert the chemistry of these two minerals, amphibole and olivine, into temperatures and water contents as we do in this paper, the results are remarkable both in terms of how much water and how low a temperature we're recording," Krawczynski said.
"The only way to get primitive, pristine materials at low temperatures is to add lots and lots of water," he said. "Adding water to rock has the same effect as adding salt to ice; you're lowering the melting point. In this case, there is so much water that the temperature is reduced to a point where amphiboles can crystallize."
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Read more on the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences' websi
After another Museveni ‘victory’, Uganda is at a tipping point
Despite his recent disputed election win, the tactics that kept the rebel-turned politician in power for decades may be starting to lose their efficiency.
Rosebell Kagumire is a feminist writer, award-winning blogger and social-political commentator. 22 Jan 2021
Elections billboards for Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, and opposition leader and presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, also known as Bobi Wine, are seen on a street in Kampala, Uganda January 12, 2021 [Baz Ratner/Reuters]
In Uganda, history is once again repeating itself – a strongman is stubbornly and violently clinging to power in the face of growing demands for a peaceful transition, and shamelessly warning the nation that his exit would bring nothing but chaos and bloodshed.
Indeed, Uganda’s January 14 presidential election, which saw incumbent Yoweri Kaguta Museveni re-elected, was an election held at gunpoint in the cover of darkness.
Days before the polls, Museveni not only ordered a full shutdown of the country’s internet but also demonstrated the military might of his dictatorial regime by filling Kampala’s streets with tanks and skies with helicopters. His message to the voters was clear: “it is either me, or war”.
The rebel-turned-politician, who has been in power since 1986, was even more determined to not allow Ugandans to vote freely in this election, as for the first time in decades his main challenger was not his old comrade and former personal doctor, Kizza Besigye.
This year, Museveni was running against a dynamic, much younger opponent named Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu who has the support of millions of young Ugandans desperate for change. Known by his stage name Bobi Wine, the former singer entered Uganda’s political scene in 2017 and has since become the most significant threat to Museveni fulfilling his apparent desire to remain president for the rest of his life.
So, as the country geared up for the 2021 elections, Museveni had to come up with new ways to deter millions of young Ugandans armed with their mobile phones from tallying results or exposing in real-time the expected repeat of widespread electoral malpractices that have marred previous elections.
During the last election, he had ordered a social media shutdown. This time, he went all in and ordered a total internet blackout to allow his state machinery to work in complete darkness, with no information about the election reaching Ugandan citizens.
Museveni’s attempts to secure a victory at any cost started long before the polls actually opened. During the entire campaign period, he used state powers in his service to try and intimidate Bobi Wine, other leading opposition figures like Forum for Democratic Change’s Patrick Oboi Amuriat, and their supporters into submission. His regime also used restrictions put in place to stem the spread of COVID-19 to target opposition rallies and prevent his rivals from connecting with voters across the country.
Bobi Wine has been arrested and detained under trumped-up charges three times in the months leading up to the election. His second arrest in mid-November, for allegedly breaking COVID-19 gathering restrictions, led to widespread protests across the country. As Bobi Wine’s supporters took to the streets in urban centres to demand free and fair elections, security forces responded with bullets and tear gas. According to Museveni himself, at least 54 people lost their lives in these state-sponsored episodes of violence.
As national newspapers chronicled stories of those who lost their lives, it became clear that the military had indiscriminately fired bullets on civilian crowds. The youngest victim of the violence was a 15-year-old boy named Amos Segawa.
Things did not get any better on election day. Security forces arrested more than 30 Ugandan election observers, and as a result, the nation did not have the opportunity to receive impartial, reliable information on the vote count. Coupled with an excessive military presence on the streets, polling stations, and data centres, most Ugandans lost any remaining hope they had for a free and fair election.
As authorities in Kampala started to announce preliminary results without offering any explanation as to how they gathered them, Bobi Wine declared the electoral process a rigged “sham” and announced his intention to contest the results legally. This led to Museveni’s security forces raiding his compound, arresting his security guards, and effectively imprisoning him in his own house alongside his wife and young child. Hundreds of Bobi Wine supporters have also been illegally detained across the country.
In the end, ignoring growing concerns about the legitimacy of the election, the Electoral Commission of Uganda announced in a televised news conference that Museveni had won the race with 58.64 percent of the vote.
With Bobi Wine still besieged in his home and tanks still rolling in Kampala’s streets, the commission’s announcement failed to convince many Ugandans of the legitimacy of Museveni’s victory.
Nevertheless, the incumbent welcomed the results in a televised address to the nation and defiantly claimed that the 2021 presidential polls may eventually turn out to be Uganda’s “most cheating-free election” since independence.
Museveni has a long history of strong-arming the Ugandan people, the opposition, and the international community into looking past allegations of election fraud and rigging. In 2016, for example, he succeeded in convincing the country of his electoral victory’s legitimacy by besieging his then-rival Besigye’s house for more than 40 days.
However, the tactics that kept him in power for decades may be starting to lose their efficiency.
Sure, he “won” the election. Sure, Bobi Wine’s supporters are currently somewhat subdued, as they have no way of communicating with the imprisoned opposition leader save for occasional videos and photos from his house posted online since the partial restoration of the internet on January 18. But the president should not confuse this helpless silence with acceptance.
Museveni may have secured another term as president in an election designed to keep him in power, but his party still suffered significant loses in the very same polls. About 30 MPs, including many cabinet ministers and the vice president, lost their seats, largely to candidates from Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP). Moreover, Bobi Wine’s party trounced the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in the Buganda region, including in the Luwero triangle where Museveni started his guerrilla war that propelled him to power 35 years ago.
Despite all the violence and intimidation, young Ugandans still went to the polls wherever they could and demonstrated that they are not willing to give up on their fight to unseat the old guard to pave the way for a better future.
Museveni’s military prowess secured him a sixth term as president, but did not prove sufficient to make the Ugandan people see him the way they did three decades ago: someone who can inject new hope into a country in desperate need of change.
Museveni and his government are clearly aware that despite their so-called electoral victory, they no longer have the support of a clear majority of the Ugandan people. And they know this lack of legitimate public support could easily turn the international community against them.
This is why they accused Washington of trying to “subvert” the election when the US ambassador to Uganda attempted to visit Bobi Wine at his home.
The Museveni regime is now cornered, irritated and clearly struggling to discern who is a friend and who is a foe. The regime can continue to co-opt all structures at home in Museveni’s favour to ensure he is never subjected to a free and fair election, however, it cannot stay in power if the world turns its back to the longtime Ugandan leader.
My people have a saying that goes “even the best dancer on the stage must retire sometime”. Museveni clearly sees himself as the best dancer, but he is unwilling to listen to other people’s opinions and accept that the time has come for him to retire.
The fact that he does not have enough confidence in himself to stand against young opponents in free and fair elections alone is proof that his departure is long overdue.
Today, as they literally look down the barrel of a gun, young Ugandans are more determined than ever to build a new Uganda. Those who have long been reluctant to back the opposition in fear of what might happen in Museveni’s absence are now not in the majority, as the changing demographics of the country has tilted the balance in favour of the youth. The regime’s ever more blatant human rights abuses, militarism and lies are not going to help Museveni much longer.
Uganda is at a tipping point – and anyone who does not want to see the country engulfed in yet another violent power struggle should start supporting non-violent efforts to demilitarise Ugandan politics, and pressuring Museveni to deliver the peaceful transition of power the country has been waiting for since its declaration of independence in 1962.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect
Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Rosebell Kagumire She is the curator and editor of African Feminism- AF,
a platform that documents experiences of African women.
OPINION It's already clear Brexit deal isn't sustainable for UK
A rethink is already needed over the government's free trade agreement.
It is already becoming obvious, less than a month in, that the current free trade agreement is not sustainable. As one example, Northern Ireland is severely disadvantaged in terms of goods imported from the rest of the UK and a number of hauliers and exporters are declining to go there at all. Yet the checks on GB exports to NI are an integral part of the whole deal and unlikely to be renegotiated substantially.
There is an absence of a constructive alternative to this shambles in the present political debate. Unfortunately Labour decided to commit themselves by voting for this unworkable agreement rather than abstaining. Even the Liberals have backed away from any proactive policy on Europe. It is not realistic to expect that we can rejoin the EU in less than 15 to 20 years at best. It would require the commitment of the main opposition party, which won’t happen before the next general election. Then there would have to be another divisive referendum and the public might not have the appetite for this.
Finally there would be prolonged and very difficult negotiations for which the EU itself would have little appetite.
There is however a strong alternative which still respects the outcome of the 2016 referendum while giving Europhiles like myself something important to aim for.
This is to simply ask the EU if we can rejoin both the customs union and the single market while remaining a non-member. It would at a stroke repair much of the huge economic disadvantages of our present arrangement. The EU would jump at this for their own exporters’ and importers’ sake.
It is hardly an option that the majority of the public would embrace now just after our exit. But matters might look different after three or four years of serious pain with unemployment and bankruptcies etc etc.
With much of the population still conflicted, we need a new goal now. This is one suggestion. David Daniel Petts Wood
Full Brexit (the UK outside the single market and customs union) is only a few weeks old but already, some of its most ardent cheerleaders are whining. From shortages in Belfast supermarkets to the collapse of fish prices at Peterhead and even the binning of ham sandwiches at EU ports of entry, social media have been awash not with the adult admission that some actions have consequences (we predicted many of them) but with complaints about a heavy-handed, bullying EU. In Brexit La-La-Land, the UK, it seems, is both victor over the Continentals but also their victim.
The blame-shifting was inevitable and isn’t new. But what is striking is the speed with which certain key Brexiters – without self-awareness or shame – seek to disown the real-world consequences of their project, whose implementation they have long insisted on. Worse, certain members of the Commons and Lords now actively seek renegotiation of certain provisions in international accords which parliament itself has endorsed. Either these legislators knew what they were voting for, in which case they have no case for complaint. Or they didn’t, in which case they are incompetent. Either way, they own Brexit. Dominic Brett Harrow on the Hill
The leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, in response to concerns that Brexit red tape was causing harm to Scottish fishermen told parliament that “The key is that we’ve got our fish back. They’re British fish and they’re better and happier fish for it”.
With so many fishermen having supported Brexit, I’m sure that they were pleased that he could treat their concerns about their livelihoods with such frivolity. I guess it has always been the case that the ruling classes know how to boost morale in difficult times with a little well-judged humour.
Given his view that being British makes things better and happier, one wonders how he could be so callous as to deny this to the new investment funds his company has been setting up in Ireland. Nick Roberts Selly Oak, Birmingham
As the first ferry left the port of Dover early Friday, truckers rolling into Calais had to deal for the first time with the new rules for transporting goods to and from mainland Europe.
The Road Haulage Association, an industry body, estimates that some 220 million new forms will now need to be filled in every year to allow trade to flow with EU countries, including permits to even drive on the roads leading to ports like Dover.
"This is a revolutionary change," Rod McKenzie, managing director of public policy at the RHA, told the Times newspaper this week.
