Land of the Rising Water: Extreme temperatures

Showing posts with label Extreme temperatures. Show all posts

Friday, May 6, 2016

The Benefits of Cyclones

It's been over a year since the World Water Forum in Korea, where one of the members of the typhoon committee argued the necessity of studying the benefits of cyclones, which I since then did. Preceding a presentation at the 7th International Conference on Water Resources and Environment Research in Kyoto, June 5-9, I here provide an overview of the literary findings of benefits of cyclones.

Cyclones often cause heavy damages and destruction to infrastructure and human lives, but the potential benefits of cyclones remain understudied. Several of these benefits could serve as an integral part of ecosystem based disaster risk reduction plans, when viewed as ecosystem services. For this purpose, we examined how the benefits of cyclones could be valued as ecosystem services. In phase one of this study, we scrutinized existing studies regarding potential benefits of cyclones.

The image shows a compilation of the 14 benefits of cyclones as described in the gathered studies on the topic, which we organized by approximate location (troposphere, biosphere, epipelagic zone) and order (cause and effect) of occurrence. More details follow after the break below.

Population preparedness in Europe

September's edition of Crisis Response featured an article on the disaster preparedness of the population in France, Belgium, UK, Portugal, the Netherlands, Greece). It proved what was generally known: people are mostly unprepared and expect the government to come save them.

Read more on how the study recommends to use social media to gather and distribute accurate disaster information at the Crisis Response journal.

Monday, March 16, 2015

WCDRR day 3

World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai - day 3

In the middle of this conference I was able to visit 5 events on this day. The first was a technical session on the methods used in the Global Assessment Report 2015 at Tohoku university. The second and third took place at the International Center and covered financial aspects of disaster risk reduction. Another session there covered land use planning, while the last, at Tohoku university, was a very special session about the formation of a Delta Alliance, initiated by the Dutch government and attended by one of the Dutch princesses.

WCDRR day 2

World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai - day 2

Today I visited 4 sessions, the first three at the Sendai international conference building and the last at Tohoku University, located on a beautiful hill side, at Hagi hall (presentations will follow). The hagi tree is the symbol of the university.

My main question during the presentation of the Global Assessment Report 2015 was how the work of the GAR differs from ICHARM's goal to make a risk index. The main points include ICHARM's focus on flood hazards, end point indicators of governance and resilience of communities, and the national level and cooperation with national governments in creating and applying the index data.

WCDRR day 1

World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai - day 1

Arriving in Sendai today, I only had time to visit two sessions after registration.The first session was held in the main conference building and concerned the Hyogo Framework for Action priority 2 where ICHARM member Sawano-san was a panel member; the second was a symposium held across town in the AEX tower where GRIPS students presented their finding. Below are the lessons learned from these sessions.

Ice sheets jamming up rivers

Having read on the historic situation of ice in river in the Netherlands, I decided to find out more on this topic. I was already familiar with historical pictures of this situation occurring on the river Rhine (see below, 1789):

I did not expect it, but this is still a matter of importance nowadays. The Manual De-icing Waterways from the Dutch public works institute (2010) tells the history of ice breaking in the Netherlands. It starts with a steamboat with ice breaker active as early as 1861. In the 1960's the government experimented with breaking ice by explosives. Bombs or rockets were found to be ineffective as the loosened ice would easily compact and form new ice walls. Given the current importance of transportation by ship (>30% of all goods transported in the Netherlands), rivers and canals are often kept open and there is no formation of such a high ice wall as in 1789.

In Japan however, while the river geomorphology in Hokkaido should lead to ice break-ups and river jams, due to heavy snow cover this rarely happens. In combination with the low reliance on river transportation, there is no special governmental procedure to break the ice. As observed in the paper

'Aspects of river ice hydrology in Japan' (2002):

"Rivers in northern Japan are subjected to ice formation each winter. They are typically very steep with rapid changes in channel slope. As a result, ice covers are usually discontinuous with open water sections. Winter discharges in Japanese rivers are usually very small. Water temperature and ice production in these streams are very sensitive to the change in air temperature. The open water sections enable the formation of frazil and anchor ice during the winter. Owing to the relatively stable winter weather and heavy snow cover, premature break-up and ice jams rarely occur, even though the channel geometry of these rivers is favourable for their occurrence. In this paper, hydrometeorological factors related to ice-cover formation, frazil and anchor-ice development, and ice-jam formation, as well as measurements of the undercover discharge in rivers in northern Japan are discussed."

What we do find are beautiful river shaped fractures in the lakes in Hokkaido:

Friday, December 26, 2014

News in Japan - December

GEJET:
Kindergarten to pay Y60 million over 3/11 tsunami deaths

Japan:
7 die, troops called in as heavy snow hits Japan

USA:
Desalination out of Desperation
Colorado River Delta greener after engineered pulse of water

Improving forecasts for rain-on-snow flooding (USA)

'Tipping points' for sea level rise-related flooding determined (USA)

Other:
Pakistan's women worst prepared in region for natural disasters - NGO
Typhoon-proof homes in Vietnam build hope for disaster-prone areas
Typhoon-hammered Philippines in 'fight for our survival'
Eat less meat, dairy to slow climate change, study says - TRFN
Eight challenges for science and society to shape a sustainable future
Thai, Myanmar villagers fear secretive Salween dam project
Philippine rescuers struggle to reach villages after typhoon "folded homes like paper"
"Whiplash" typhoon a cruel blow for already poverty-stricken central Philippines Nearly 13,000 houses were destroyed and more than 22,300 damaged on the eastern island of Samar after the storm hit on Saturday before making its slow journey across the country. The Red Cross said it had received reports of 35 deaths, but has confirmed only 22. "This house was destroyed during Yolanda," resident Pedro Mainiti told local TV, using the Philippine name for Typhoon Haiyan which struck last November, leaving more than 7,000 dead or missing. "I haven't recovered yet and here goes another storm." The government has so far only built 550 of the 205,000 promised permanent houses for Haiyan survivors, according to the rehabilitation agency.
French mayor Rene Marratier jailed for role in deadly flood The former mayor of a French seaside town has been sentenced to jail for four years for ignoring flood risks before a storm that killed 29 people. the court said that Marratier knew La Faute-sur-Mer, a west coast resort in the Pays de la Loire region, was at risk of flooding. However, he "deliberately hid" the risk so that he could benefit from the "cash-cow" of property development.
SPECIAL REPORT-In Jakarta, that sinking feeling is all too real
The Aftershocks Seven of Italy’s top scientists were convicted of manslaughter following a catastrophic quake. Has the country criminalized science? time-risk blindness
Aceh's unfinished recovery

Mudslides, flash floods kill at least 53 in Philippines

Dozens die as Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines battered by storms

Vulnerable people:
Poverty takes on a new look in today's Japan
Another low for Japan's gender gap, as only 15% of election candidates are female Only 169 of the 1,093 candidates from eight major parties were women - far short of the administration's stated goal of having 30 percent of public- and private-sector leadership positions filled with women by 2020. A 2014 report on the gender gap by the World Economic Forum said Japan has one of the worst levels of gender equality in the developed world, ranking it 104th of 142 countries assessed.

One in five develops mental disorder (Dutch)

More people live below the poverty line (Dutch)

Friday, July 11, 2014

Heatstroke in Japan

After typhoon No. 8 has passed, summer temperatures above 30 degrees have returned. The ministry of the environment warns against heat stroke using a principle called WBGT: Wet Bulb Globe Temperature. This is an empirical index representing the heat stress to which individuals are exposed.

A paper from the end of 2011 described how different ministries are involved in heatstroke warnings:
The Ministry of the Environment has developed and distributes guidelines to prevent heat-related diseases, with specific recommendations for prevention at the local and regional levels [26]. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MOHLW) also promotes preventive action on heat through health education activities and the distribution of health promotion materials. These and other national entities maintain websites on the prevention of heat disorders. Forecasts of Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT—a widely used heat stress index) and levels of heat disorder risk are provided by the National Institute of Environmental Studies (NIES) throughout the summer via the Internet.

The ministry of the environment has published a possible heat stroke calendar, by using combined temperatures from the cities Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Sendai and Kagoshima, with cumulative figures of the past five years in the left most column:

The number of days with high temperatures has been increasing the past years. This calendar also shows why October and May are the months which are considered to have the best seasons.