Tel Aviv will flood again

Green Prophet: It’s warming up again this week in Israel, just after a series of storms last week that began with major flooding on the Mediterranean Coast and ended with Jerusalem of Gold turned to white after a serious snowstorm. Reports on the flooding of the Yarkon River, which shut down large sections of Tel Aviv for a day, including its major highway, have addressed the insufficient drainage system, but little has been made of the connection between climate change and severe weather events.

Professors Pinhas Alpert and Colin Price, lecturers at the Porter School of Environmental Studies’ International MA Program at Tel Aviv University, have predicted that increased flooding will result from global climate change. Alpert helped to pioneer the use of cellular phone networks for monitoring the amount and intensity of precipitation and water vapor – measurements which are virtually free of charge and can be used for studying global climate systems.

Prof. Colin Price, Head of the Department of Geophysical, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, researches the Earth’s changing climate and what impact it will have on global thunderstorms. He predicts that a relatively small change in global temperatures – a one degree rise – will result in a significant increase in lighting activity. He expects that in drier climates like Israel the storms may become fewer in number, but more intense with stronger and more rainfall and lightning.

This is precisely what happened last week in Israel, when the largest storm since 2003 hit the country and provided as much rain as certain cities see in an entire winter, according to the Israel Meteorological Service.

“Intense rainstorms in Israel can cause flash flooding, which causes increased runoff that doesn’t reach the aquifers,” says Price. “The water scarcity problem in this region is exacerbated when rainfall doesn’t recharge the groundwater supply and precious drinking water flows out to sea.”...

The harbor in Tel Aviv, shot by Daniel winter, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Seattle calculating, preparing for climate change

Insurance Journal: Seattle officials predict that parts of Washington’s largest city will be under water as the shoreline creeps higher due to global climate change. City agencies are calculating the local effects of climate change and how to respond and adapt to protect people and infrastructure, The Seattle Times reported.

Agencies were preparing for more intense heat, protecting the new downtown sea wall under construction and calculating the number of pump stations and outfalls that would be under water, as they anticipate sea-level rise caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by humans.

Calculations by the Washington Climate Impacts Group and the Washington Department of Ecology published in 2008 predict a sea-level rise in Seattle of six inches by 2050. Less-likely scenarios are sea-level rises of three inches on the low end and 22 inches on the high end, the Times reported.

A green ribbon commission has come up with recommendations to respond to climate changes. “We did this map to understand impacts on our infrastructure,” Paul Fleming, manager of climate and sustainability for Seattle Public Utilities, told the Times. “In the big picture, this isn’t just about sea-level rise. It’s about drinking water, urban flooding, and how we design new projects.”

Seattle’s water supply is in the central Cascade Mountains, so it won’t be infiltrated by seawater creeping toward groundwater. But as the sea creeps upward, water supply, drainage and wastewater infrastructure possibly could be affected by everything from flooding to corrosion.

Other effects of climate change, including drought and wildfires, also could diminish the water-supply quality and quantity in the far future....

Seattle's skyline at dusk, shot by Cacophony, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Bumblebees do best where there is less pavement and more floral diversity

Seed Daily via SPX: Landscapes with large amounts of paved roads and impervious construction have lower numbers of ground-nesting bumblebees, which are important native pollinators, a study from The University of Texas at Austin and the University of California, Berkeley shows.

The study suggests that management strategies that reduce the local use of pavement and increase natural habitat within the landscape could improve nesting opportunities for wild bees and help protect food supplies around the word.

The study also suggests that increasing the number of species-rich flowering patches in suburban and urban gardens, farms and restored habitats could provide pathways for bees to forage and improve pollination services over larger areas.

The findings have major implications for global pollinator conservation on a rapidly urbanizing planet. "We are potentially in a pollinator crisis," said Shalene Jha, lead author and assistant professor of biology at The University of Texas at Austin. "Honey bees are declining precipitously, and wild bees have also been exhibiting population declines across the globe. Native bees provide critical pollination services for fruit, nut, fiber and forage crops. Understanding how bees move around the landscape can help us both preserve biodiversity and improve crop yields."

Animal pollination is estimated to be worth over $200 billion in global crop yields....

Tacuina sanitatis (XIV century). Public domain

Creating resilient cities for a safer future

Kristen Avis in Designbuildsource: While the apocalypse predicted by the Mayans unsurprisingly failed to come true, the fact remains that disasters often strike unannounced and cities must be prepared for the worst.

Since over half the world’s population lives in cities, it is integral that those who plan, run and live in these cities are equipped with the knowledge, communication networks and tools they need to continue to function in the event of an emergency such as a natural disaster, a power grid failure, or a social uprising.

The UNISDR launched the Making Cities Resilient: My City is Getting Ready! campaign in May, 2010 to address issues of local governance and urban risk management, and local governments across the globe are taking part.

The threat of disasters is a regular occurrence for local government officials. The UNISDR says officials need better access to tools and policies to effectively deal with disasters that may occur. The campaign calls for commitments on the part of local governments to create resilient cities and increase support by federal governments to cities for strengthening local training and capabilities.

Better Cities Now lists five factors that make a city resilient. The first factor is establishing feedback loops. Public utility providers need feedback loops so different areas can help keep one another prepared when an emergency is imminent. Technical, economic, political and social links all create a more resilient city that can better withstand disruption....

A lightshow in of the Rotterdam, in commemoration of the May 1940 bombardement by Nazi Germany. Shot by Trebaxus, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New planning tool for climate adaptation in cities

The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute: A changing climate places great pressure on society, and creates many new challenges. To make city planning easier, a planning tool has been developed to support climate adaptation of cities and regions in Europe. The European research project SUDPLAN, co-ordinated by SMHI, has developed a planning tool for climate adaptation of European cities and regions for intensive precipitation, hydrological conditions and the air environment.

“Already today we are beginning to notice climate-related problems in cities, such as flooding. As the climate changes even more, these difficulties will increase. This is why a tool is needed to facilitate planning ahead of decisions regarding investments in infrastructure, for instance, and to ensure that projects are adapted to the altered conditions we will be facing in the future,” says Lars Gidhagen, researcher in air quality at SMHI and co-ordinator of SUDPLAN.

The planning tool SUDPLAN makes information available for the period 1961-2100, from a number of climate scenarios scaled down across Europe, complete with hydrological simulations and results from an air pollution model.

“An altered climate means that cities will be exposed to new strains such as higher temperatures, more torrential rain and altered air pollution levels which affect our health. By taking into account the climate impact when planning development in relation to waterways, dimensioning surface water networks and planning traffic routes, we can already to some extent plan for good health, comfort, safety and quality of life,” Gidhagen explains.

Using the tool, city planners anywhere in Europe can themselves generate more detailed future information by entering local precipitation data, flow data from watercourses or emissions of air pollutants. The projections can use several different climate scenarios to run the same future simulation. Similarities and differences in the various scenario results produce information about the uncertainty in the conditions we can expect to face in the future. The planning tool also contains functionality for advanced visualisation, and for linking downscaled data to users’ own local models....

High water in Koblenz, shot by Holger Weinandt, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license

Too big to flood? Megacities face a future of major storm risks

Bruce Stutz in the Guardian Environment Network (via Yale Environment 360): By the middle of the century, the scores of billions it cost to compensate the greater New York City area for being unprepared for superstorm Sandy may seem like a bargain. Without major adaptation measures to increase the level of storm protection beyond a 1-in-100-year event, the value of the city's buildings, transportation, and utilities utility infrastructures currently at risk from storm surges and flooding — an estimated $320 billion — will be worth $2 trillion by 2070, according to continuing studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

...Some of those cities with the most at-risk assets now — Tokyo, New Orleans, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Nagoya — will, over the next 50 years, be surpassed by Calcutta, Shanghai, Mumbai, Tianjin, Bangkok, Ningbo, and Ho Chi Minh City, booming Asian coastal metropolitan areas where trillions of dollars in economic assets will be vulnerable. So will many millions of these cities' residents, most of them poor and living in low-lying areas.

Just as banks grew "too big to fail," over the next half-century these coastal megacities may grow "too big to flood." But flood they will unless they dramatically revise their growth strategies and undertake major infrastructure projects designed to protect them from the dual threat of rising sea levels and intensifying storms, experts say.

Based on the conservative assumption that sea levels will rise by only 18 inches by 2070, the OECD finds that total assets vulnerable to flooding and storm surges of just 10 of these cities could account for some 9 percent of the world's GDP. But many climate scientists and coastal experts note that sea level rise forecasts by groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change did not factor in the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. When they are taken into account, these experts say that global sea levels could well rise 3 to 6 feet this century, leaving scores of cities and massive amounts of economic infrastructure dangerously exposed....

Employees from MTA New York City Transit worked to restore the South Ferry subway station after it was flooded by seawater during Hurricane Sandy. Photo: Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Patrick Cashin. Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Climate change serious for India

Newstrack India via IANS: Terming the current global climate change scenario as "serious times", a US environmental law expert Wednesday cautioned that the rise in sea level in the Indian Ocean could make cities like Kolkata and Mumbai vulnerable.

"There might be particular problems due to the sea level rise in the Indian Ocean. Cities like Kolkata and Mumbai are the vulnerable cities," said Rob Verchick, who holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Environmental Law at Loyola University, New Orleans, US. He is also the faculty director of the Center for Environmental Law and Land Use at the university.

Verchick added: "Surat and Ahmedabad are responding well to adapt to the climate change. Surat has a climate change board and they are monitoring the situation quite well." He was addressing students at the School of Oceanography and Environmental Studies, Jadavpur University...

Verchick, who recently served US president Barack Obama's administration as deputy associate administrator for policy at the Environmental Protection Agency, said: "For adapting to climate change we have to adopt smarter ways. The first thing we must do is that government and other agencies should look in to assess vulnerability of a place to climate change like temperature, sea level rise etc."

"Then we have to ask, how will those changes affect the area and then in a democratic process decide what we can do with the area," he said...

Hope Bridge in Surat, shot by Shishir Desai, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

New report warns developing cities to act now against a perfect storm of environmental risks

A press release from Atkins, the engineering consulting firm: A major new report ‘Future Proofing Cities’ published today by Atkins in a unique partnership with the Department for International Development (DFID) and University College London (UCL) assesses the risks to cities from climate hazards, resource scarcities, and damage to ecosystems and how they can act now to future proof themselves. Covering 129 cities totalling 350 million people in 20 countries, this report identifies practical measures that cities can take to manage these future risks.

Around 75% of the world’s population will live in cities within 40 years. Almost all of this population growth will happen in the developing world, with 4.6 billion people projected to live in already rapidly growing cities.How will these cities in the developing world cope socially, environmentally and economically with such accelerated urbanisation?

Future Proofing Cities assesses the risks from mega cities like Bangkok to smaller cities such as Zaria in Africa. It looks at their risk profile from climate hazards, resource scarcities, and damage to ecosystems and urges action now to future proof against these risks.

This report provides a fresh approach to the urgent issues arising from rapid urbanisation. It assesses the environmental risks facing cities in an integrated way and identifies more than 100 practical policy options that are most relevant and will be of most benefit to people living in different types of cities. It builds on the collective work on urbanisation by DFID, Atkins and UCL with forewords by the World Bank and Rockefeller Foundation.

The report is set against a growing awareness of the need for increased funding for infrastructure development in developing countries at the city level.This report provides an early warning for people living and working in these cities, while providing market intelligence for investors....

A slum in East Cipinang, near Jakarta, shot by by Jonathan McIntosh, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Big city slowly returns to bright lights after Sandy

Jonathan Allen in Reuters: Few thought it would take quite so long to fully restore the dimmed lights of the famed skyline of New York City's Financial District. At last, however, firms displaced by the flooding and power outages brought on by Superstorm Sandy seem ready to return downtown, if a little warier of the rivers and sea that surrounds them.

Water Street was more water than street when Sandy hit. Nearly three weeks later, many of the flooded office towers that line the street as it skirts the East River toward the harbor at Manhattan's southernmost tip remain closed.

Yellow caution tape still decks the doors to darkened, mucky lobbies. The usual crowds of suited office workers have vanished from the sidewalks, replaced by a handful of clean-up workers and security officers.

"It's definitely a hiccup in our revenue and a disruption of our ongoing business operations," said Lou Colasuonno, a senior managing director of FTI Strategic Communications, a PR firm specializing in crisis management...

New York City and the dangling crane on 57th Street, shot by JordanBalderas, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Cities of Dhaka, Manila, Bangkok, Yangon and Jakarta face highest climate change risks – Maplecroft Risk Atlas

Maplecroft News: Multinational companies operating in the Asian growth economies will be exposed to spiralling environmental risks over the coming decades, according to Maplecroft’s 5th annual Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas , which identifies Dhaka, Manila, Bangkok, Yangon, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Kolkata as the cities facing the most risk from the onset of climate change.

Maplecroft’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI), which forms a central pillar of the Atlas, classifies seven cities as ‘extreme risk,’ out of a list of 50 that were chosen for their current and future importance to global business. Dhaka, Bangladesh, (ranked 1st), Manila, the Philippines (2), Bangkok, Thailand (3), Yangon, Myanmar (4), Jakarta, Indonesia (5), Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam (6) and Kolkata, India (7) emerged as the most at risk from the changing temperatures and weather systems that are forecast to take hold in the coming years.

The CCVI has been developed by Maplecroft to identify risks to populations, company operations, supply chains and investments in 197countries down to a level of 25km2. It evaluates exposure to climate related natural hazards; the sensitivity of populations; development; natural resources; agricultural dependency; research and development; government effectiveness and education levels.

With strong economic growth of above 5% forecast for countries such as the Philippines, Viet Nam, Indonesia and India in the next few years, the relevance of climate change to populations and business in the major commercial centres should not be underplayed, states Maplecroft in its analysis.
“As global corporations expand into the emerging growth markets, their operations and supply chains will become exposed to a complex set of climate risks that have the potential to disrupt business continuity,” states Maplecroft’s Head of Maps and Indices, Helen Hodge. “It is essential for companies to identify where suppliers, assets and personnel are most at risk and plan for the long term.”...

Manila Bay at night, shot by Waiting for serendipity, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Climate change poses grave threat to Indian cities

Chinmayi Shalya in the Times of India: Climate change and reckless development are leaving Mumbai increasingly vulnerable to the elements. A news report on an ongoing climate study places India's financial capital sixth in a list of 20 port cities worldwide at risk from severe storm-surge flooding, damage from high storm winds and rising seas. By 2070, according to the study, an estimated 11.4 million people and assets worth $1.3 trillion would be at peril in Mumbai due to climatic extremes.

The in-progress study, by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), reveals that many of the susceptible port cities are in Asia. In the news report's list-ranked by assets at risk-eight among the top 10 fall in the world's most populous continent.

Kolkata comes in the fourth spot while Guangzhou takes in second. In the City of Joy, 14 million citizens and assets worth $2 trillion will be at peril by 2070, the study predicts.

Experts studying climate change assert that rampant concretization in global cities is not only leading to fluctuations in temperatures worldwide but also causing shifts in microclimates. These changes together, they say, are likely to build up into disastrous scenarios by 2070, effecting excessive rainfall. In cities like Mumbai, where poor urban planning has left little space for water to get absorbed into the ground, the impact may be severe.

"A big portion of Mumbai is concretized and this is increasing. Solar radiation is absorbed by concrete, triggering urban heat island effect, where temperature within the city rises. The circulation of the warm air from the city with cooler air currents from less urbanized areas can cause extreme weather conditions," says Subimal Ghosh, an associate professor in the civil engineering department of IIT-Bombay....

Imperial Towers in Mumbai, shot by Satish Krishnamurthy, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license