RE: LARGE WATER BODY OXYGENATION
Some years ago when I was far more optimistic on the Kyoto Protocol being diligently pursued to resolve the climate crisis, I was writing papers and presentations. I produced together with the Finnish Councillor of State on Environment (Ymparistoneuvos) Matti Lappalainen a presentation for the World Water Week, Stockholm, August 2006 on large water body oxygenation like oceans, seas and large continental rivers like the Amazon. There is a second approach to address the rising temperatures that produce anoxic oceans, seas and rivers like the Amazon. Our paper was accepted for the presentation through very tough competition with only 144 out of 850 proposals were approved by the scientific committee. Our proposal suggested the use of Mixox Large Water Body Oxygenation systems to oxygenate the River Amazon during the hot drought season for 1,000 km from the down stream estuary upwards, with the flow rate estimated at 200,000 m3 per second. This method is currently being tested for oxygenation of the Bothnia of Finland with a 27 km2 test area near Tammisaari and another 3 km2 area off the coast of the City of Stockholm. Besides the Amazon, or the Baltic Sea we have looked at other trouble spots like the Pacific Ocean coast near Oregon and Washington states for oxygenation and the Black Sea but the system works for all anoxic seas and oceans. The Mixox systems benefit is its low energy consumption which makes it possible to set up units that can deliver difference to change the oxygen concentrations of the oceans and seas. If it is 365 day operation 365 x 200,000 m3 are oxygenated by small 2 kW unit but in the ocean larger economies must be used to make discernible impact. At PUP I suggested the people that we would like to bring our Mixox to pump oxygen to the Pacific Ocean and carry out study how much units and energy will be required to rehabilitate the anoxic seas there. However, not all of world's ocean surface can be practically oxygenated due to their size the entireties of the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean would overwhelm all world's resources which would not get chance of funding. But if the Baltic Sea oxygenation takes on well, we could see the Black Sea and perhaps the Mediterranean Sea brought into the Mixox scheme. Smaller areas within the larger water bodies can also be oxygenated like the Pacific costs off Oregon. It is a cost issue, but if someone is seriously looking at oxygenating oceans or other very large water bodies for research or applications, please contact. Generally, I am of view that more investment in research will not deliver desirable policy decisions. The US Republican Party has taken on theme to derail the climate and environmental sciences to maximise the profiteering of industry. Today all large fossil fuel companies employ computer hacking firms to get the latest news about science before it is even science press and the mitigation planning is in place months in advance of any publications to cushion any potential impact of new scientific findings. A surprisingly large number of climate scientists and geosciences are perfectly happy of having their mortgages paid off, or foreign pension fund set up. I am increasingly inclined that solutions come from this sector. I do whatever I can to prop up Geoengineering wherever I have possibilities it to be taken more seriously as one solution. But I am also backing Rio+20 motion which takes lots of my time as I perceive it as yet another possible game-changer to get the climate agenda moving once again. Kind regards, Albert Preparing the Amazon Ecosystems for the Changing Climate. Author:Mr. Veli Albert Kallio, Isthmuses' Protection Campaign of the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, UK Co-Author: Dr. Matti Lappalainen, Vesi-Eko Oy Water-Eco Ltd, Finland Keywords: Amazon, Atlantic Ocean, Climate Change, Global Warming, River Rehabilitation Presentation of the project / topicA catastrophic draught event was reported across much of the north of South America during August - December 2005. This resulted in extensive and irreversible damage in parts of the Amazon river network. The 2005 Amazon draught followed very unusual changes in the Atlantic Ocean’s circulatory system that altered typical wind and rain patterns. Many climatic models predict the future desiccation of the Amazon region. This paper discusses dangers of sudden swings in the Amazon’s climate and how these risks can be reduced and securing the future of the river system. Analysis of the issuesThe Amazon river network is huge, in some way one could call it as the ‘world river’. From August to December 2005, dry northerly winds prevailed and leading to constant sunshine and total loss of the rainfall. The rains normally deliver oxygen and clouds cool down the river temperature. Some tributaries suffered catastrophic oxygen losses that killed all the fish, effectively turning major tributaries into large sewers when the rains resumed. As the water in rivers turned toxic and pathogen-infested, the Brazilian government declared an emergency in the Amazon and flew in bottled water and food into the communities along the afflicted rivers. The disappearance of rain in August was very sudden and severe, although it is known that during this time of year the Amazon rainfall is normally somewhat lighter than during the rest of year. As the event is very recent, we have not yet received all the minutiae on what was the final cause of death of the fish in the rivers. We can confirm it being associated with the cessation of the rains and also the extent and totality of damages occurred. Presentation of the results / findingsThe sudden and complete cut-off the Amazon rainfall effectively turned a ‘rain forest’ into a ‘dry forest’. Keeping this in mind, we contacted Greenpeace who subsequently placed the Amazon’s fire risk as their top campaign priority. We hope that by August 2006 there is a greatly increased forest fire flight monitoring with sufficient standby equipment and manpower to prevent a risk of replicating the 2005 Portuguese fires. Having addressed one main risk in the future of Amazon led us next to look at what could be done to the river itself to prevent it dying again, remembering that climate models predict a long-term trend of desiccation. The accelerating pace of the climate change is starting to be now felt more acutely, even leading many senior scientists or commentators to declare the climate change situation as ‘dangerous’, ‘irreversible’, or ‘catastrophic’. Could we link the Amazon event into a broad climatic shift? What are the elements of the global warming process that seem to influence the Amazon river and might have brought upon the unfolding of the 2005 draught event? We noticed a unique level of event-connectedness between the Amazon draught and the various highly unusual weather patterns simultaneously seen across the entire Atlantic Ocean: The south Atlantic Ocean had hurricanes the second year running. (There were never before any hurricanes in the Southern Atlantic.) The Middle Atlantic and the Caribbean section conjured up also a record-intensive hurricane season with 26 major storms. In the Caribbean, the storm-forming blanket of warm surface water thickened due to poor northward outflows. In the northern Atlantic Ocean the Gulf Steam’s north branch had a weak flow and the Labrador sub-branch remained stalled. In the northern end of the Atlantic Ocean, the edge of the floating polar ice cap melted to all-time minimum. Its edge retreated to a point where the polar ice cap will soon loose all its land connectivity. We see the above ‘coagulation’ of the Atlantic climate system as the cause of the Amazon desiccation, an event that will be repetitive, rather than an one-off ‘freak of nature’, something for us to worry about. ConclusionsOur findings established that the extremely dry and persistent northern winds observed during the Amazon draught originated within the storm-generating regions in the ‘overheated’ mid-Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean where there was a simultaneous record-breaking storm and flash flood incidence. The rain processes separate water vapour from the rest of air. So, the intensified Atlantic storms cause more flash floods in some places, and more severe draughts in other places, mainly amplifying the regional, and seasonal water distribution differences in the future. RecommendationsThe Amazon river systems’ inability to adapt to the new seasonal climate patterns in 2005, which led to a complete destruction of some river ecosystems, suggested us to look at water engineering solutions to prevent the risks of more tributaries of such dying. We made a case study to oxygenate the Amazon river to raise its draught-stress threshold during the likely future draughts that may be even worse than today if the Atlantic weather system generates more storms as the world’s temperature rises. We studied a 100 kilometre wide section near the Amazon’s mouth. We assumed temperature +30C (when 100% oxygenated water contains 7,6 mg O2 / litre). The addition of 2,5 mg O2 / l represents 1/3 of the total, i.e. raising from 70% to 100%. This requires 4 million kg O2 / day. 2,000 units consume 80 MW / 100 km of river. 1,000 km demand is at 800 MW (1 power station), costing ~500 million euros p.a. As a result of our calculations it is obvious that several new power stations are required along the rivers. It also follows that as such a new infrastructure is required, and when the capacity constraints the supply of oxygenating units, the planning must be conceived early to ensure that the risk of permanent destruction can be mitigated in time due to many years’ delivery time. Because of the global nature of the causes of this desiccation, it is not our recommendation that Brazil should pay for all its upkeep.http://www.worldwaterweek.org/documents/Resources/Synthesis/2006_Abstract_volume.pdf From: [email protected] Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2012 13:03:50 -0700 Subject: Re: [geo] Re: SRM, Avoiding ocean anoxia To: [email protected] CC: [email protected] We addressed the CO2 issue, but not the O2 issue in the attached paper: GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 36, L10706, 5 PP., 2009 doi:10.1029/2009GL037488Sensitivity of ocean acidification to geoengineered climate stabilization H. Damon Matthews Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Long CaoDepartment of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California, USA Ken Caldeira Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Stanford, California, USA Climate engineering has been proposed as a possible response to anthropogenic climate change. While climate engineering may be able to stabilize temperatures, it is generally assumed that this will not prevent continued ocean acidification. However, due to the strong coupling between climate and the carbon cycle, climate engineering could indirectly affect ocean chemistry. We used a global Earth-system model to investigate how climate engineering may affect surface ocean pH and the degree of aragonite saturation. Climate engineering could significantly re-distribute carbon emissions among atmosphere, land and ocean reservoirs. This could slow pH decreases somewhat relative to the non-engineered case, but would not affect the level of aragonite saturation due to opposing responses of pH and aragonite saturation to temperature change. However, these effects are dependent on enhanced carbon accumulation in the land biosphere; without this, climate engineering has little effect on pH, and leads to accelerated declines in aragonite saturation. _______________ Ken Caldeira Carnegie Institution for Science Dept of Global Ecology 260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305 USA +1 650 704 7212 [email protected]http://dge.stanford.edu/labs/caldeiralab @kencaldeira Our YouTube videos:Climate change and the transition from coal to low-carbon electricity: Ken Caldeira Crop yields in a geoengineered climate: Dr. Julia Pongratz More videos On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 10:16 AM, Tim Maher <[email protected]> wrote: Andrew, Thank you for posting this. My take on the relevant conclusions of that article as they pertain to SRM: "Anoxia is closely tied to temperature, so, if we can control temp than we can control anoxia." My response: This may be the case, however, this is a narrow view of SRM's impact on the ocean. If SRM is initiated without concurrent reductions in CO2 emissions, than the ocean will increase its uptake of CO2 beyond that which would have occured without SRM. With this logic, one could argue that SRM may increase ocean acidification, which could also lead to a mass extinction event. Neither this paper nor the recent GeoMIP paper that you posted on August 4th discuss acidification, and the GeoMIP paper explicitly states that their research insufficiently accounts for complex interactions within the ocean system. I am no expert on this material, and, if the experts have concluded that ocean acidification no longer poses a large threat of marine/Earth extinction, then I retract my statement. However, everything that I have read up to this point confirms these thoughts. And, as an aside, there are many global catastrophes that could result in human extinction, anoxia perhaps being one. Thanks again, Tim On Wednesday, August 1, 2012 11:56:35 AM UTC-4, andrewjlockley wrote: The paper below could imply that SRM would help avoid ocean anoxia. I personally believe that anoxia in a high carbon future could pose a serious risk of human extinction. I know of no comparable threat to species survival. I think some specific modelling in this regard would be very helpful. It's a threshold we can't afford to cross, and therefore seems to offer a strong argument for geoengineering. A www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.36.031207.124256 Oceanic Euxinia in Earth History: Causes and Consequences Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences DOI: 10.1146/annurev.earth.36.031207.124256 Katja M. Meyer and Lee R. Kump Euxinic ocean conditions accompanied significant events in Earth history, including several Phanerozoic biotic crises. By critically examining modern and ancient euxinic environments and the range of hypotheses for these sulfidic episodes, we elucidate the primary factors that influenced the generation of euxinia. We conclude that periods of global warmth promoted anoxia because of reduced solubility of oxygen, not because of ocean stagnation. Anoxia led to phosphate release from sediments, and continental configurations with expansive nutrient-trapping regions focused nutrient recycling and increased regional nutrient buildup. This great nutrient supply would have fueled high biological productivity and oxygen demand, enhancing oxygen depletion and sulfide buildup via sulfate reduction. As long as warm conditions prevailed, these positive feedbacks sustained euxinic conditions. In rare, extreme cases, euxinia led to biotic crises, a hypothesis best supported by evidence from the end-Permian mass extinction. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/geoengineering/-/mXuA7TZq5HoJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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