Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #26
Today, we talk about building wind turbines from wood, a new satellite to track methane emissions, the record low ice cover on the USA's Great lakes, and Bengaluru's acute water shortage!
Welcome to another edition of Sunny climate, stormy climate, your climate focused newsletter, where we look at:
3 stormy stories that should be a cause for alarm
2 sunny stories that give us hope that all is not yet lost!
Sunny news
Building wind turbines from wood in stead of steel!
Modvion, a Swedish start-up has just built the world's tallest wooden turbine tower and believes using wood for wind power is the future.
About the tower:
The tower is 105 meters tall; with the turbine blades included, the whole structure reaches 150 meters.
The wooden modules that make up the tower are made from a type of wood called laminated veneer lumber. The towers are covered with thick, waterproof paint to make sure that they are watertight.
This is situated in Sweden, a short drive outside Gothenburg
The 2 megawatt generator on top has just started supplying electricity to the Swedish grid, providing power for about 400 homes.
Why does this matter?
Wind power is a fast growing source of energy
It’s projected to reach 1500 Gwh of annual global capacity by 2026
Wood can make wind power carbon negative
Traditionally, wind turbines have been made of steel and that increases the relative carbon footprint of wind power
Though wind power is cheaper and cleaner than almost all other forms of electricity generation, making steel involves extremely hot furnaces and almost always the burning of fossil fuels.
Modvion says using wood instead of steel eliminates the wind turbines' carbon footprint entirely, making them carbon negative.
Also, by using wood and glue, towers can be built in smaller, more easily transported modules, making it much easier to build really tall towers, and to take the pieces to challenging locations.
Potential challenges
1 wood turbine requires 200 trees, so doing this at scale will mean felling a significant number of trees
Dr Maximilian Schnippering, head of sustainability at Siemens Gamesa - one of the worlds largest turbine manufacturers - says more pieces are likely to mean more trucks, more people and more time to complete the installation.
Sources for further reading:
EDF and Google partner to map methane emissions from space
What is this about?
MethaneSat is a satellite launched by EDF that will provide “first truly detailed global picture of methane emissions”
Scheduled to be launched into orbit next month, it will circle the globe 15 times every day
It will detect how much methane is leaking from oil and gas wells, pumps, pipelines and storage tanks around the world — and companies, governments and nonprofit groups will be able to access all of its data via Google Maps.
Why is this important?
The United Nations has called for a 45 % cut in methane emissions by 2030, which would reduce climate warming by 0.3 degrees C by 2045.
Emissions from agriculture, livestock and landfills are expected to be more difficult to mitigate than those from the oil and gas industries, which either vent or flare fossil gas (mostly methane)
Targeting oil and gas industry methane emissions is “the fastest way that we can slow global warming right now”
Accurate data and measurements are critical to drive these cuts in emissions and meet the mandates
MethaneSat will bring new technology. Its sensors can detect methane at concentrations of 2 to 3 parts per billion, down to resolutions of about 100 meters by 400 meters. That’s a much tighter resolution than the methane detection currently provided by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel satellite
What role will Google play?
Google has been working with EDF and MethaneSat to develop a “dynamic methane map that we will make available to the public later this year”
It will analyze MethaneSat data to identify leaks and measure their intensity
Google is also using its machine-learning and artificial-intelligence capabilities developed for identifying buildings, trees and other landmarks from space to “build a comprehensive map of oil and gas infrastructure around the world based on visible satellite imagery”. It will allow Google to detect trends and understand correlations between human activity and its environmental impact.
Source to read further:
Stormy news
Ice cover on Great lakes reaches historic low in 2024
Lake Michigan just north of Muskegon on February 11, 2024. Although chunks of ice dot the sandy beach, there is little-to-no ice coverage on the lake. (Source: NOAA) Together, Great Lakes ice coverage was measured at 2.7 % on February 11, 2024.
Lake Superior 1.7 %
Lake Michigan 2.6 %
Lake Huron 5.9 %
Lake Erie 0.05 %
Lake Ontario 1.7 %
How bad is it?
This is a record low. Bryan Mroczka, a physical scientist. “We have never seen ice levels this low in Mid-February on the lakes since our records began in 1973.”
Lakes Erie and Ontario have lake ice that is tied with historic lows, while Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron (typically some of the coldest), are at record-low levels of ice.
The average ice cover on the great lakes is ~40% this time of the year (v/s 2.7% this year)
Source: Great Lakes Environment Research Lab What led to this?
Record warm winter: The combination of climate change and our super El Niño are combining to drive the warmest winter on record. 2024 Winter temperatures since Dec. 1 rank as the first or second warmest across the Great Lakes basin.
It’s a trend building up over the last few decades: Winters have been significantly warmer and ice coverage has been much lower since 1998.
Sources for further reading:
Bangalore facing an acute water shortage, even as peak summer is still a few weeks away!
A boy carrying a bucket of water from a nearby lake in Bengaluru; Source: India today What is happening?
Several areas in Bengaluru are facing disruption in water supply, with several societies not getting water multiple times a week.
The cost of a 12,000-litre tanker has touched as much as Rs 2,000, up from around Rs 1,200 just a month ago.
Several residential societies have announced measures to save water such as reduction in the frequency of cleaning common areas and washing cars
Why is this happening?
Dependence on borewells: Water from Cauvery only fulfils Bangalore’s water requirements, with the remaining 30% currently coming from groundwater. Currently this accounts for ~700 MLD (Million litres per day)
Groundwater levels are depleting: Groundwater levels are depleting and borewells are going dry. Of the 11,000 government-owned borewells in the city, 800 have been completely out of service and even in those functional, water levels are receding
Rapid unplanned urbanization: Studies by IISC have shown that the increase in Bangalore’s population has been accompanied by a decrease in its green cover and water bodies, while witnessing a substantial increase in
Is there a solution?
The long term solution lies in better urban planning that protects the water bodies as well as green zones.
One innovative idea has been ‘Recharge wells’. The ‘Million Wells for Bengaluru’ campaign was started by the Biome Environmental Trust in July 2015 and is expected to run for ten years, till 2025. The explicit objective of the intervention is to increase the groundwater table in the city while providing livelihoods to the local community of traditional well diggers (called Mannu Vaddars) in Karnataka.
Sources for further reading:
Heat waves in Western Australia
What is happening?
In January, a severe heatwave affected large swathes of Australia, with some inland areas experiencing the hottest days since the 2019-2020 black summer bushfires.
The heat has also prompted bushfire warnings along WA’s south-west coast.
Perth baked through a record-breaking seventh 40C-plus February day on Monday (19th Feb)
As WA heatwave continues, data shows almost five times more people hospitalised by hot weather than bushfires
What can this be attributed to?
The El Niño weather pattern, climate change and the Indian Ocean dipole all play a part in the heatwaves
Sources for further reading:
