Monthly Archives: September 2018

Enormous iceberg bobbing like a giant cork after splitting from ice shelf

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A trillion-ton iceberg the size of the American state of Delaware has been on the move since breaking off Antarctica in July 2017.

The iceberg will probably bump around in its current location near the ice shelf that calved it for at least a few months, periodically getting stuck on shallow seamounts on the ocean floor, said Theodore Scambos, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. “There are lots of little pinnacles that can snag an iceberg,” Scambos told Live Science.

At around 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers) in surface area, the iceberg is among the largest iceberg observed since satellite tracking began.  “I think, right now, it would be the biggest floating object on the ocean,” said Scambos.

The iceberg was bumping around like a huge bobbing bath toy. It mashed into the side of the Larsen ice shelf a handful of times in the past year, splintering off several smaller bergs.

“Eventually, with snags and twists and bends and probably a little bit of inherent rotation … it will drift to the north,” Scambos said. The giant iceberg will get caught up in a current called the West Wind Drift, or Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which will pull the berg into warmer waters, where it will break up and melt, Scambos said.

[Scientific American]

Wind and solar farms could totally transform the Sahara Desert

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Installations of largescale wind and solar farms don’t just have the power to supply the world with an immense amount of energy, they have the power to actually change climates on massive scales, potentially for the better. A new climate-modeling study has found that wind and solar plants throughout the Sahara Desert could significantly increase precipitation across the region and increase vegetation, reports Phys.org.

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, and it’s growing. It covers a massive swathe of Northern Africa, making much of the terrain uninhabitable. So any increase in precipitation here would likely be a good thing, study authors speculated.

“We found that the large-scale installation of solar and wind farms can bring more rainfall and promote vegetation growth in these regions,” explained Eugenia Kalnay, co-author on the study. “The rainfall increase is a consequence of complex land-atmosphere interactions that occur because solar panels and wind turbines create rougher and darker land surfaces.”

If wind and solar installations covered this barren terrain it could supply about 3 terawatts and 79 terawatts of electricity respectively. That would meet global energy demands several times over. “In 2017, the global energy demand was only 18 terawatts, so this is obviously much more energy than is currently needed worldwide,” said lead author Yan Li.

Massive amounts of clean energy, plus a more habitable landscape (which means more viable agricultural and economic development), plus more greenery over a large area that could become a significant carbon sink.

It’s remarkable to think that instead of burning fossil fuels and creating catastrophic climate change, which involves increased desertification, that we could instead use clean energy to produce positive climate change and transform the world’s largest desert into a habitable oasis.

[MNN.com]

Humanitarian catastrophe feared as Syria war reaches final rebel stronghold

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As the Syrian government prepares to launch an offensive on Idlib province, humanitarians are on edge. Estimating the area may hold as many as three million people, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said he is “deeply concerned about the growing risks of a humanitarian catastrophe”, calling on Russia, Iran, and Turkey to seek a last-minute deal to avoid violence, while UN envoy Staffan de Mistura is offering to personally escort civilians out of the warzone.

With the border with Turkey sealed, hundreds of thousands of civilian may have nowhere to run if the tanks come rolling in. “The only thing people are talking about now is the coming battle,” said Rajaai Bourhan, a former business student who now ekes out a living as a freelance journalist in northwestern Syria. Speaking to IRIN from Idlib last week, he described a city hostage to circumstances outside its control.

For years, Sunni rebel groups have controlled Idlib. The surrounding area is mostly under al-Assad’s control. As one of few remaining opposition sanctuaries and an entry point for cross-border aid, Idlib has seen its population swell with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Syrians like Bourhan.

Two thirds of the estimated 3 million population of Idlib are said to be in need of some sort of humanitarian assistance, and “these people are extremely vulnerable”, said Linda Tom, a Damascus-based spokeswoman for OCHA, the UN’s emergency aid coordination body.

Pawel Krzysiek, head of communications for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria, said that fighting in Idlib “will put thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, on the move.”

Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees, according to UNHCR statistics, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is under pressure from the Turkish public and the EU to secure his borders.

[IRIN]