Global Warming 2020

Global Warming News : Termite Insecticide Found To Be Potent Greenhouse Gas

An insecticide used to fumigate termite-infested buildings is a strong greenhouse gas that lives in the atmosphere nearly 10 times longer than previously thought, UC Irvine research has found.

Sulfuryl fluoride, UCI chemists discovered, stays in the atmosphere at least 30-40 years and perhaps as long as 100 years. Prior studies estimated its atmospheric lifetime at as low as five years, grossly underestimating the global warming potential.

The fact that sulfuryl fluoride exists for decades – coupled with evidence that levels have nearly doubled in the last six years – concerns study authors Mads Sulbaek Andersen, Donald Blake and Nobel Laureate F. Sherwood Rowland, who discovered that chlorofluorocarbons in aerosol cans and other products damage the ozone layer. That finding led to a worldwide ban on CFCs.

“Sulfuryl fluoride has a long enough lifetime in the atmosphere that we cannot just close our eyes,” said Sulbaek Andersen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Rowland-Blake laboratory and lead author of the study. “The level in the atmosphere is rising fast, and it doesn’t seem to disappear very quickly.”

This study appears online Jan. 21 in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Kilogram for kilogram, sulfuryl fluoride is about 4,000 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat, though much less of it exists in the atmosphere.

Its climate impact in California each year equals that of carbon dioxide emitted from about 1 million vehicles. About 60 percent of the world’s sulfuryl fluoride use occurs in California.

Sulfuryl fluoride blocks a wavelength of heat that otherwise could easily escape the Earth, the scientists said. Carbon dioxide blocks a different wavelength, trapping heat near the surface.

“The only place where the planet is able to emit heat that escapes the atmosphere is in the region that sulfuryl fluoride blocks,” said Blake, chemistry professor. “If we put something with this blocking effect in that area, then we’re in trouble – and we are putting something in there.”

The chemists worry that emissions will increase as new uses are found for sulfuryl fluoride – especially given the ban of methyl bromide, an ozone-depleting pesticide regulated under the Montreal Protocol. Sulfuryl fluoride emissions are not regulated, though officials do consider it a toxic contaminant.

The insecticide is pumped into a tent that covers a termite-infested structure. When the tent is removed, the compound escapes into the atmosphere. Sulbaek Andersen, Blake and Rowland believe a suitable replacement should be found, one with less global warming potential.

To measure sulfuryl fluoride’s atmospheric lifetime, the chemists put it inside a Pyrex chamber with compounds that are well understood in the atmosphere, such as ethane. They shined lamps on the chamber to simulate sunlight, which caused chemical reactions that eliminated the compounds from the air.

By monitoring sulfuryl fluoride changes compared with changes to the well-known compounds, they were able to estimate its atmospheric lifetime.

“This is a cautionary paper,” said Rowland, Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science. “It tells us that we need to be thinking globally – and acting locally.”

M.D. Hurley and T.J. Wallington of Ford Motor Co.’s Systems Analytics & Environmental Sciences Department also worked on this study, which was funded in part by the Comer Foundation.

Source: Global Warming News, Climate Change, Greenhouse Effect information at sciencedaily.com

Global Warming News : Massive Greenhouse Gases May Be Released As Destruction, Drying Of World Wetlands Worsen

Leading world scientists convene in Brazil July 21-25 amid growing concern that evaporation and ongoing destruction of world wetlands, which hold a volume of carbon similar to that in the atmosphere today, could cause them to exhale billows of greenhouse gases.

Meeting in the city of Cuiaba on the edge of South America’s vast Pantanal, the largest wetland of its kind, some 700 experts from 28 nations at the 8th INTECOL International Wetlands Conference will prescribe measures urgently needed to better understand and manage these vibrant ecosystems, ranked among the planet’s most threatened, and slow their decline and loss.

Warming world temperatures are speeding both rates of decomposition of trapped organic material and evaporation, while threatening critical sources of wetlands recharge by melting glaciers and reducing precipitation.

Covering just 6% of Earth’s land surface, wetlands (including marshes, peat bogs, swamps, river deltas, mangroves, tundra, lagoons and river floodplains) store 10-20% of its terrestrial carbon. Wetlands slow the decay of organic material trapped and locked away over the ages in low oxygen conditions.

These waterlogged (either seasonally or year-round) areas contain an estimated 771 gigatonnes (771 billion tonnes) of greenhouse gases — both CO₂ and more potent methane — an amount in CO₂ equivalent comparable to the carbon content of today’s atmosphere.

“Humanity in many parts of the world needs a wake-up call to fully appreciate the vital environmental, social and economic services wetlands provide — absorbing and holding carbon, moderating water levels, supporting biodiversity and countless others,” says conference co-chair Paulo Teixeira, Co-ordinator of the Cuiaba-based Pantanal Regional Environmental Programme, a joint effort of the United Nations University and Brazil’s Federal University of Mato Grasso (UFMT), which will host the event.

Says UN Under Secretary-General Konrad Osterwalder, Rector of UNU: “Too often in the past, people have unwittingly considered wetlands to be problems in need of a solution. Yet wetlands are essential to the planet’s health — and with hindsight, the problems in reality have turned out to be the draining of wetlands and other ’solutions’ we humans devised.”

If the decline of wetlands continues through human and climate change-related causes, scientists fear the release of carbon from these traditional sinks could compound the global warming problem significantly, says Prof. Paulo Speller, Rector of UFMT. Drained tropical swamp forests release an estimated 40 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. Drained peat bogs release some 2.5 to 10 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.

Adds Prof. Speller: “This landmark conference beside the Pantanal will gather an overview of the status of global wetlands, identify knowledge gaps, create greater collaboration and consistency in wetland science worldwide, and offer a plain-spoken policy prescription for decision makers with an appeal to adopt it with urgency.”

German expert Wolfgang Junk says the impact of climate change on wetlands is small so far compared to the damage caused by poor management at the local level.

“Lessening the stress on wetlands caused by pollution and other human assaults will improve their resiliency and represents an important climate change adaptation strategy,” he says. “Wetland rehabilitation, meanwhile, represents a viable alternative to artificial flood control and dredging efforts that may be needed to cope with the larger, more frequent floods predicted in a hotter world.”

Prof. Junk, of the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Biology, notes that maintenance of wetlands is much cheaper than rehabilitation and that poorer countries will have fewer means to rehabilitate their wetlands to cope with climate change. Wetland-friendly development alternatives must be elaborated in developing countries, therefore, to minimize losses of their many benefits, he says.

He notes too that while pressure on wetlands in poorer countries has risen dramatically in recent years, they have not suffered nearly as much damage as those in the developed world.

Some 60% of wetlands worldwide — and up to 90% in Europe — have been destroyed in the past 100 years, principally due to drainage for agriculture but also through pollution, dams, canals, groundwater pumping, urban development and peat extraction.

Notwithstanding recent efforts in such countries as Australia and the U.S. (which has lost 50 million of an estimated 90 million hectares of wetlands 500 years ago) to protect wetlands and reverse past damage, at a world scale they continue to shrink.

“Wetlands act as sponges and their role as sources, reservoirs and regulators of water is largely underappreciated by many farmers and others who rely on steady water supplies,” says Prof. Junk. “They also cleanse water of organic pollutants, prevent downstream flood inundations, protect riverbanks and seashores from erosion, recycle nutrients and capture sediment.”

Typically high in nutrients, wetlands also offer rich habitats for small organisms which feed fish and other water life, which in turn nourish mammals and birds. Many wetlands feature biodiversity comparable to that of rainforests or coral reefs.

Conference organizers say efficient protection of wetlands requires complex, long term management plans that cover their entire catchment areas, often involving agreements between states or countries. These agreements need to cover activities that affect wetlands both directly and indirectly, such as the use of water and soils, development, waste treatment and disposal, but also harmonization of environmental legislation for protection of wetlands and all that lives in them.

Background information

• Wetlands along the flood-prone Mississippi once stored 60 days of the river’s floodwater; today they can store only 12 days’ worth.
• Around Africa’s Lake Victoria, wetlands are so degraded they can no longer filter nitrate and phosphate runoff from surrounding land. The result: eutrophication and an explosive growth of lake-clogging water hyacinth.
• In Malaysia, 90 percent of freshwater swamps have been drained for rice cultivation.
• A study of a large wetland in arid northern Nigeria found it yielded an economic benefit in fish, firewood, cattle grazing lands and natural crop irrigation 30 times greater than the yield of water being diverted from the wetland into a costly irrigation project.
• At US$15 000 per hectare per year, the economic value of flood prevention and other ecological services provided by wetlands is greater than any other ecosystem — seven times that of the next most valuable, tropical rainforests, according to a recent study.
• The peat bogs of Siberia, North America and Scandinavia contain a third of all carbon in the world’s soils. Those in Scotland contain more than 90 percent of the carbon in British soils and forests.
• The US will spend $700 million over two decades to revive the Florida Everglades. It will include six artificial wetlands (“storm water treatment areas”), to receive and cleanse excess nutrients from neighbouring farm districts.
• The world’s most threatened wetlands include those around the Mediterranean, where for two millennia the population has been draining wetlands and floodplains for agriculture — and more recently for urban areas, tourist developments, and to eradicate malarial mosquitoes.
• Both Spain and Greece drained 60 percent of their wetlands in the last century. Pumping of groundwater for agricultural irrigation is drying Spanish wetlands such as the Doñana reserve, one of Europe’s top sanctuaries for wintering birds, where the water table is falling one meter every two years.
• Wetlands constitute an estimated 20% of South America but they are poorly mapped or classified by characteristics.
• The vast, remote and relatively pristine Pantanal, spanning 160,000 square km, is confronted by increasing development pressure. Its catchment area straddles Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, while Uruguay and Argentina are downstream.

Source: Global Warming News at ScienceDaily.com

Global Warming Causes : Greenhouse Gas Inventories

A greenhouse gas inventory is an accounting of the amount of greenhouse gases emitted to or removed from the atmosphere over a specific period of time (e.g., one year). A greenhouse gas inventory also provides information on the activities that cause emissions and removals, as well as background on the methods used to make the calculations. Policy makers use greenhouse gas inventories to track emission trends, develop strategies and policies and assess progress. Scientists use greenhouse gas inventories as inputs to atmospheric and economic models.

To track the national trend in emissions and removals since 1990, EPA develops the official U.S. greenhouse gas inventory each year. The national greenhouse gas inventory is submitted to the United Nations in accordance with the Framework Convention on Climate Change .

In addition to the U.S. inventory, greenhouse gas emissions can be tracked at the global, state and local levels as well as by companies and individuals:

• Many other countries also develop national greenhouse gas inventories, which can be compiled into global inventories. EPA works with developing and transition countries to improve the accuracy and sustainability of their greenhouse gas inventories. EPA has developed Greenhouse Gas Inventory Capacity Building templates and software tools targeting key sources, emissions factors, good practices, institutional infrastructure and use of the latest IPCC guidelines on greenhouse gas inventories.
• Many states prepare greenhouse gas inventories, and EPA provides guidance and tools to assist them in their efforts.
• Corporate greenhouse gas inventories provide information on the emissions associated with the operations of a company.
• Individuals produce greenhouse gas emissions through everyday activities such as driving and using air conditioning or heating. EPA provides an online calculator for estimating personal emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes internationally accepted inventory methodologies that serve as a basis for all greenhouse gas inventories, ensuring that they are comparable and understandable. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines were completed and accepted by the IPCC in May 2006.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.html#ggo

Global Warming  Causes : Greenhouse Gas Overview

Gases that trap heat in the atmosphere are often called greenhouse gases. This section of the EPA Climate Change Site provides information and data on emissions of greenhouse gases to Earth’s atmosphere, and also the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. For more information on the science of climate change, please visit EPA’s climate change science home page.

Some greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide occur naturally and are emitted to the atmosphere through natural processes and human activities. Other greenhouse gases (e.g., fluorinated gases) are created and emitted solely through human activities. The principal greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere because of human activities are:

• Carbon Dioxide (CO2): Carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal), solid waste, trees and wood products, and also as a result of other chemical reactions (e.g., manufacture of cement). Carbon dioxide is also removed from the atmosphere (or “sequestered”) when it is absorbed by plants as part of the biological carbon cycle.
• Methane (CH4): Methane is emitted during the production and transport of coal, natural gas, and oil. Methane emissions also result from livestock and other agricultural practices and by the decay of organic waste in municipal solid waste landfills.
• Nitrous Oxide (N2O): Nitrous oxide is emitted during agricultural and industrial activities, as well as during combustion of fossil fuels and solid waste.
• Fluorinated Gases: Hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride are synthetic, powerful greenhouse gases that are emitted from a variety of industrial processes. Fluorinated gases are sometimes used as substitutes for ozone-depleting substances (i.e., CFCs, HCFCs, and halons). These gases are typically emitted in smaller quantities, but because they are potent greenhouse gases, they are sometimes referred to as High Global Warming Potential gases (“High GWP gases”).

Source: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/index.html#ggo