THE DEFINITIVE BLOG FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT YOU LIVE IN, WITH REFERENCE TO LIFE, EARTH AND COSMIC SPACE SCIENCES, PRESENTED BY ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER DORU INDREI, ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY AND ENERGY SPACIALIST
"Life is not about what we know, but what we don't know, craving the unthinkable makes it so amazing, that is worth dying for."Doru Indrei
Women using birth control pills don't have to worry they may be contaminating the water and causing mutation in the sexual organs of frogs, alligators and other animals.
Birth control pills account for less than 1 percent of the estrogen found in rivers, lakes and other bodies of water, said researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.
Untreated animal manure is the real culprit, said Amber Wise, Kacie O'Brien and Tracey Woodruff in the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science and Technology journal.
Manure accounts for 90 percent of the estrogen contaminating the water according to their synthesis of research on estrogen pollution. Soy, dairy products and other natural sources account for a larger percentage than the pill as well.
To determine the sources of estrogen contaminating the environment, the researchers reviewed previous studies and synthesized their findings.
High levels of estrogen in the water have been linked to the feminization of amphibians, and reproductive problems for other animals such as alligators.
Coal-derived emissions pouring from smokestacks across Asia are--perhaps counterintuitively--responsible for a pause in global warming in the decade following 1998, but that’s no real reason to celebrate. The halt in rising temperatures is a result of the large amounts of sulfur in those emissions, which can have a cooling effect on the planet. But the huge spike in greenhouse gas emissions is still very real, and over time its delayed impacts will be realized when emerging countries rein in pollution.
At least, that’s the latest on the global warming front via a paper released Monday by researchers at several universities, including Boston and Harvard Universities in the States and Finland’s University of Turku. The halt in rising global temps from 1998 to 2008 is something of a mirage, the researchers say, and the effects of all that carbon that went into the air alongside the sulfur will become apparent in the long term.
The paper, if taken as truth, ties up a loose end for those who believe global warming is a man-made phenomenon. From 1998 to 2008, global temperatures were flat even as the developing world spewed tons upon tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, increasing global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels by at third. Some called this evidence that global temperatures and carbon emissions aren’t as directly linked as some might like to think.
But most of those carbon emissions came from coal fueling the explosive growth of Asian economies, and with coal emissions comes sulfur. Sulfur is a key ingredient in the formation of aerosols, which form hazy cloud layers that reflect heat from the sun back into space. These aerosols, the paper argues, are responsible for the halt in rising temperatures.
But the halt in rising temperatures isn’t likely to last, the researchers say. When emerging economies begin to take a harder line against pollution, those sulfur emissions will decline as well. And while sulfur can persist in the atmosphere for several years, eventually those aerosols will disperse and global temperatures will begin climbing again, this time with countless more tons of carbon already in the atmosphere.
The global marine environment is getting warmer, more acidic, and low on oxygen and all are consequences of human activity. Ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.
Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.
Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.
Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.
These symptoms, moreover, could be the harbinger of wider disruptions in the interlocking web of biological and chemical interactions that scientists now call the Earth system. All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment, they said.
"The results are shocking," said Alex Rogers, an Oxford professor who heads IPSO and co-authored the report. "We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."
Three main drivers are sickening the global marine environment, and all are a direct consequence of human activity: global warming, acidification and a dwindling oxygen level, a condition known as hypoxia.
Up to now, these and other impacts have been studied mainly in isolation. Only recently have scientists began to understand how these forces interact.
"We have underestimated the overall risks, and that the whole of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts," Rogers said. "That degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted."
Indeed, the pace of change is tracking or has surpassed the worst-case scenarios laid out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its landmark 2007 report, according to the new assessment. The chain reaction leading to increased acidification of the oceans begins with a massive influx of carbon into Earth's climate system.
Oceans act as a massive sponge, soaking up more than a quarter of the CO2 humans pump into the atmosphere. But when the sponge becomes too saturated, it can disrupt the delicately balanced ecosystems on which marine life -- and ultimately all life on Earth -- depends.
"The rate at which carbon is being absorbed is already far greater now than during the last globally significant extinction of marine species 55 million years ago," when some 50 percent of deep-sea life was wiped out, the report said.
That event, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, may be an ancient dress rehearsal for future climate change that could be even more abrupt and more damaging, some scientists fear.
Pollution has also taken a heavy toll, rendering the oceans less resilient to climate change.
Runoff from nitrogen-rich fertilizer, killer microbes, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, for example, have all contributed to the mass die-off of corals, crucial not just for marine ecosystems but a lifeline for hundreds of millions of people too.
The harvesting up to 90 percent of some species of big fish and sharks, meanwhile, has hugely disrupted food chains throughout the ocean, leading to explosive and imbalanced growth of algae, jellyfish and other "opportunistic" flora and fauna.
"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation," said Daniel Laffoley, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, and co-author of the report.
"And we are also probably the last generation that has enough time to deal with the problems," he told AFP by phone.
Heat increases tropospheric ozone level has heat added to usual traffic in Madrid and a half of the pollution measurement stations in Madrid beyond the level of health protection by ozone. No rain and no wind, but many cars and no political will to reverse the situation. Gallardón Mayor was reelected in office for four years.
That, I hope I’m wrong, mean four more years of increasing pollution in the capital of Spain.
The so-called bad or tropospheric ozone is produced as a result of a photochemical reaction that increases when the nitrogen oxide pollution is high and the solar incidence increases, explained the organization Ecologists in Action.
On Tuesday May 24, 2011, at eleven at night, a total of 16 of the 23 stations of the capital there were over 100 micrograms per cubic meter of nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Weather forecasts predict more heat. Forecasts predict political stagnation.
It is not a new situation, if at all. It occurs every year from April to late August. Ozone production increases and decreases each day as the solar intensity. By becoming more oblique incidence of sunlight on the surface in late August when the summer draws to a close, low ozone production significantly.
In the rest of the Community of Madrid is also the phenomenon. Alcalá stations, Fuenlabrada, Torrejón, Alcorcón, Colmenar Viejo, Majadahonda, Arganda, San Martin de Valdeiglesias Guadalix Algete Orusco Atazar and have reached levels above 120 micrograms per cubic meter. The same has happened at five stations in the capital’s heavy traffic away from downtown: Barajas, Vallecas Eixample, El Pardo, Juan Carlos I and Three Olives.
The current regulations can not overcome those 120 micrograms per cubic meter on average in eight hours and more than 25 days a year. The European Union already has a very serious warning about the Madrid City Council, notice that they seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
The threshold at which authorities are obliged to inform the population, by contrast, stood at 180 per cubic meter micrograms for one hour. This threshold has not been surpassed so far this year and the peaceful citizens breathe polluted air.
One of the electoral promises of the mayor of Madrid has been to give priority to this problem. Hopefully, this time, they deliver what it promises. Meanwhile, it discourages physical activity, the athletic work in the middle of the day.
To improve air quality, it is important to know what contributes to polluting the air. Haze comes from a variety of sources. Your skies may be hazy from local traffic, or industry such as for example coal burning power plants, or the pollution may be coming in from somewhere else farther away. Satellite images help identify large areas of pollution caused by fires, dust or sand storms, volcanic eruptions, large industrial sources, or the transport of man-made pollution from other regions. Smaller sources, such as small industries or local roads won’t be visible in satellite images.
Photo-like, true color images provide a very simple way to see if smoke, dust, or haze is being transported into your region.
Identifying Pollution in Photo-Like Satellite Images
To access daily true color images of much of the world, go to the MODIS Rapid Response System.
MODIS stands for the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer. It is an instrument that flies on two NASA satellites, Terra and Aqua. Both satellites orbit the Earth from pole to pole, so that each MODIS instrument sees the entire Earth every day. Terra MODIS passes overhead in the mid-morning local time, while Aqua captures images from the early afternoon. The MODIS Rapid Response System typically provides images within 4-6 hours after the satellite acquires them.
The page will show a series of clickable maps and a list of subset areas. Click on the map to select your area of interest.
This will bring up the most recent images of the region. Click on previous to browse back to earlier days.
Click on the photo-like image (true color) on the left. A full-screen image will load.
Under vector options (above the image), select fires + borders from the drop-down menu and click “select.”
Interpreting the Image
Copy the image URL and paste it into the data sheet to make it easier to return to the image later.
In the comments field, note whether you see some kind of pollution in the image.
Haze is usually gray-white and very uniform in texture. Dust tends to be tan, though the color varies depending on the type of soil that is being picked up by the wind. Smoke ranges from brown to gray-white. It is not always possible to identify what kind of pollution you are seeing, since smoke haze and dust can look alike, but you can look for potential sources in the satellite image.
Smoke
MODIS records the location of fires on the ground by observing unusual hot spots. The instrument doesn’t see every fire, but it will see large fires that may be contributing to air pollution. In these images, fires are represented with red dots. Red dots mark the locations of fires burning in the southern United States on October 15, 2005. Because there are several fires scattered across a wide region, they are likely agricultural fires, set to manage vegetation. Some of the fires produced white-gray plumes of smoke. Even though the fires are small, widespread burning can seriously impact regional air quality.
Dust
Not all dust storms are visible, but very large storms that last for several hours or days can be seen. The most common source of dust globally is the Sahara Desert. These giant storms sweep off West Africa and occasionally reach Florida and the Caribbean. By the time the dust reaches Florida, it is diffuse enough that it is difficult to see. If you live in Florida or the Caribbean, and you suspect that Saharan Dust may be clouding your skies, click on the images of northwest Africa and look back through the previous week to see if dense plumes of dust are coming off the continent. If you see a storm moving towards Florida, you can suggest that dust may be a contributing factor to the air quality.
Other dust storms may have a local source. Often dust storms come from a small area of exposed soil. Click on 250m to see the most detail possible in the image and look at the point from which the plume is originating. You may be able to identify the source of the dust. Look for a compact plume rising from exposed land. If you can identify the source, note it on the data sheet.
Haze
Haze from cars and power plants is gray-white in true color images. It is difficult to pin-point a single source, but you can see where the haze is. A band of haze hung over the southeastern United States on August 5, 2002. The haze is gray compared to the bright white clouds to the north. Haze blurs the ground beneath it. Ground features are distinct where skies were clearer (lower right).
Measuring pollution from space
Satellites measure the concentration of particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere by observing how much light reaches the surface of the Earth and how much is reflected off the aerosols. The measurement is called aerosol optical depth or aerosol optical thickness. It is the same measurement that may have made from the ground using a sun photometer. Using the following procedures, you can compare the satellite measurement of aerosol optical depth to the ground measurement from the sun photometer. You can also compare the satellite measurements with visibility or ozone concentrations to see the correlation.
NASA Earth Observations (NEO)
NEO was designed to provide easy access to global satellite images for teachers, students, museums and other public organizations, and citizen scientists. The system generates images based on data from various satellite instruments. For aerosol optical depth, a color is assigned to a range of aerosol optical depth values. NEO’s analysis tool allows you to click on the image to get the data value assigned to the color at the point you selected.
To measure aerosol optical depth using NEO, go to the NEO web page.
Click on the atmosphere tab under the map
Select “aerosol optical thickness (MODIS)” from the drop-down menu. Aerosol optical thickness is the same measurement as aerosol optical depth.
The most recent month will load on the screen. To compare the data to the daily values that you are tracking, you will want a daily image. Aerosol optical thickness images reveal how much pollution particles blocked light. In this image, from the month of April 2009, dense aerosols (probably dust) extended west from Africa and hung over Asia (haze). The measurement can't be made over bright surfaces like ice, deserts, or clouds, so these "no data" regions are covered with a black mask. 5. Under “matching data sets” on the right side of the screen, select Aerosol Optical Thickness (1 day Terra MODIS or 1 day Aqua MODIS). If you made your measurement in the morning, choose Terra. If you made your ground measurements in the afternoon, choose Aqua. 6. The most recent daily data will load. If you want to see a different date, scroll down the page and select another date from the list of search result. The previous and next buttons at the end of the list allow you to scroll backwards and forwards to see additional dates.
7. Under search results, identify the date you are interested in. Click on Analyze this image under the date. This will put the data in the “analysis” shopping cart on the right side of the page. You can select up to three dates to analyze at once.
8. Click “configure/launch analysis” under the analysis tab on the right.
9. Click on the “select area” tab.
10. Enter the latitude and longitude of your observation location. You will need to identify a small box around your area of interest. You can also click on the map and draw a box, but this method is less precise and harder to duplicate from day to day.
Type the latitude and longitude that defines your area of interest. “North” is the line bounding the northern edge of the areas, “south,” the southern edge, and so forth. Note that positive numbers are degrees North and degrees East. Negative numbers are degrees South and degrees West. So, for 40 degrees North, you would enter 40, but for 40 degrees South, you would enter -40.
On May 16, the entire region was cloudy, so there were no aerosol optical thickness measurements, as indicated by the black mask.
Click select.
Click “launch analysis” at the bottom of the select area box.
Select Probe
Move the cursor over the screen until you find your latitude and longitude. Record the aerosol optical depth value for that location.
Over time you can compare your ground measurements, the EPA air quality index for ozone and particles, and the satellite measurement of aerosol optical depth. You can also do these long-range comparisons using GIOVANNI.
Going Further: GIOVANNI
Using NEO, you charted the aerosol optical depth for your observation location. Another powerful tool for accessing, visualizing, and analyzing NASA satellite data is Giovanni. With Giovanni, you can correlate aerosol optical depth measurements for your region with EPA ground measurements of particles to find out if the aerosols the satellite measured were high in the atmosphere or close to the ground where they affect the air we breathe. You can also use data from another satellite, CALIPSO, to find out where aerosols are in the atmosphere.
For instructions, please see Pollution in the United States and China.
www.nasa.gov
Manure accounts for 90 percent of the estrogen contaminating the water according to their synthesis of research on estrogen pollution. Soy, dairy products and other natural sources account for a larger percentage than the pill as well.
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