Posts tagged 2011
Evidence of global climate in Southern Hemisphere
Aug 22nd
SOUTHERN SOUTH AMERICAN WILDFIRES
EXPECTED TO INCREASE, SAYS CU STUDY
A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates a major climate oscillation in the Southern Hemisphere that is expected to intensify in the coming decades will likely cause increased wildfire activity in the southern half of South America.
The research team used tree rings dating to 1506 to track past wildfire activity in the forests of Patagonia tied to the Southern Annular Mode, or SAM, a climate oscillation that creates low atmospheric pressure in the Antarctic that is tied to warmer and drier conditions in southern South America. The tree rings showed that when SAM was in its positive phase, there were widespread fires in both dry woodlands and rainforests in Patagonia, a region that straddles Argentina and Chile, said CU-Boulder Research Associate Andres Holz, lead study author.
“Our study shows for about the past 250 years, the Southern Annular Mode has been the main driver in creating droughts and fires in two very different ecosystems in southern South America,” said Holz. “Climate models suggest an increase in SAM beginning in the 1960s due to greenhouse gas increases and Antarctic ozone depletion probably will cause this region to be drought-prone and fire-prone for at least the next 100 years.”
A paper on the subject by Holz and CU-Boulder geography Professor Thomas Veblen was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Holz and Veblen compared past wildfire records for two ecologically distinct regions in Patagonia — the relatively dry region of southern Patagonia in Argentina and the temperate rainforest of Patagonia in northern Chile. While the tree ring historical record showed increased fires in both regions correlated with a positive SAM, the trend has been less pronounced in northern Patagonia in the past 50 years, likely because of fire-suppression efforts there, Holz said.
But the decades of fire suppression have caused the northern Patagonian woodlands to become denser and more prone towildfire during hot and dry years, Holz said.
“Even in areas of northern Patagonia where fire suppression previously had been effective, record surface areas of woodlands and forests have burned in recent years of extreme drought,” said Veblen. “And since this is in an area of rapid residential growth into wildland-urban interface areas, this climate-driven trend towards increasing fire risk is becoming a major problem for land managers and homeowners.”
The two CU-Boulder researchers studied reconstructions of tree rings going back more than 500 years from 432 trees at 42 sample sites in northern Argentina and southern Chile — the largest available data set of annual, readable tree ring records in the Southern Hemisphere. The tree rings, which indicate climate cycles and reveal the scars of old fires, showed that wildfires generally increased in both regions when SAM was in its strong, positive phase.
Although the Antarctic ozone hole stopped growing in about 2000 as a result of a ban on ozone-depleting gases and now appears to be slowly repairing itself, a 2011 paper by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder indicates ozone recovery and greenhouse gas influences essentially will cancel each other out, preventing SAM from returning to its pre-1960s levels.
“Before the Industrial Revolution, SAM intensified naturally at times to create drought situations in Patagonia,” Holz said. “But in the last 80 years or so, the natural variation has been overwhelmed by a bias toward a positive SAM phase because of ozone-depleting chemicals and greenhouse gases we have put in the atmosphere.”
The research effort was supported by the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation, the CU Beverly Sears Small Grants Program and the Council on Research and CreativeResearch of the CU Graduate School.
“As warming and drying trends continue, it is likely that wildfire activity will increase even in woodland areas where fire suppression has previously been effective,” Holz and Veblen wrote in Geophysical Research Letters.
Boulder City Council approves several ballot questions for voter consideration
Aug 16th
- · Creation of a local electric utility (municipalization) and the expansion and extension of the Utility Occupation Tax to raise interim funding;
- Issuance of bonds to fund capital improvement projects without raising taxes;
- Clean-up of Charter provisions; and
- Local resolution for an the amendment of the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood.
Municipalization
Council approved ballot language that will ask voters two separate questions related to the possible creation of a municipally run electric utility.
In general terms, one question asks voters to decide whether to authorize the creation of a locally run electric utility. Based on specific limitations in the ballot language and a related ordinance, council would not be permitted to issue bonds until all start-up costs are finalized, and only if customer rates would be no more than those charged by Xcel Energy at the time of acquisition.
Another question asks voters to consider extending and increasing the Utility Occupation Tax for a limited amount of time to fund the costs associated with determining those concrete start-up expenses and taking the interim steps to set up a local utility.
Capital Improvements
Council agreed to ask voters if the city should issue bonds of up to $49 million to catch up on significant deficiencies in its infrastructure. These capital improvement projects could include repairing and maintaining streets, structurally deficient bridges, repairing aging city facilities, and replacing outdated software systems.
If approved, the bonds would be paid for through existing revenues without any increase in any city tax.
Charter Changes
Council agreed to ask voters if they would approve updates to the Charter. The provisions would allow the clerk to rename city positions and departments to reflect the titles that are in use today; to change the fine from $100 to $1,000 for any violation of the Charter; to update election practices and terminology; and to amend the requirements for submitting initiative petitions to the city.
Corporate Personhood
Council agreed to ask voters if they will approve a measure that calls for the amendment of the U.S. Constitution to reflect that human beings, not corporations, are entitled to constitutional rights and that money (specifically in the form of political contributions) is not a form of speech.
Election Information
This year’s election is by mail-in ballot. Ballots will be mailed to active voters between Oct. 10 and Oct. 14. People will be able to return the ballots by mail or drop them off at Boulder County’s Election Division anytime after receiving them until 7 p.m. on Nov. 1.
CU Boulder FACULTY LEAD $7 MILLION INITIATIVE AIMED AT MILITARY VEHICLE SAFETY
Aug 11th
University of Colorado Boulder engineering faculty are leading a $7.2 million multidisciplinary research initiative on soil blast modeling and simulation for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The research, which starts this month, is aimed at creating a more accurate representation of the impact of buried landmines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on light-armored military vehicles so that the vehicles can be better designed to withstand such blasts.
The award is administered by the Office of Naval Research as part of the defense department’s competitive Multi-University Research Initiative or MURI program, which supports basic science and engineering research at U.S.universities related to long-term national security needs.
MURI awards are provided to accelerate progress in cutting-edge research areas by supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards than other DOD research programs.
The grant will provide $4.2 million to CU-Boulder and $3 million to co-investigators at four other institutions. The other schools involved are the University of California, Berkeley; University of Texas at Dallas; University of Tennessee Knoxville; and the University of Utah.
Richard Regueiro, assistant professor in CU-Boulder’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is the principal investigator. CU-Boulder professors Ronald Pak, John McCartney and Stein Sture of civil engineering, and Oleg Vasilyev of mechanical engineering, also areinvolved.
The research initiative will involve experiments using CU-Boulder’s large 400-g ton geotechnical centrifuge coupled with computational modeling. The objective is to develop and validate a model that accurately represents explosive blasts of varying charges, depths and soil types.
CU-Boulder’s proposal was one of 27 MURI awards made to academic institutions in different topical areas in 2011. The proposals, which are being funded with a total of $191 million over five years, were selected from a field of 332 proposals, including 17 on the topic of soil blast modeling and simulation.