Hawaiian Islands weather details & Aloha Paragraphs / December 28-29, 2008

Interesting: An ancient underground water basin the size of Libya holds the key to Australia avoiding a water crisis as climate change bites the drought-hit nation. Australia’s Great Artesian Basin is one of the largest artesian groundwater basins in the world, covering 656,370 sq miles and lying beneath one-fifth of Australia. The basin holds 65 million giga-liters of water, about 820 times the amount of surface water in Australia, and enough to cover the Earth’s land mass under half a meter of water, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee. And it is slowly topped up with 1 million mega-liters a year as rain filters through porous sandstone rock, becoming trapped in the underground basin. "There is probably enough water in there to last Australia’s needs for 1,500 years, if we wanted to use it all," says John Hillier, a hydro-geologist who has just completed the Great Artesian Basin Resource Study. But he and other experts warn that access to the basin’s water supply is under threat from declining artesian pressure, which forces the water to the surface via bores and springs.

If artesian pressure falls too far, due to excessive extraction of water, the ancient water source will be unreachable, except through costly pumping. Lying as much as 1.2 miles below ground, some parts of the basin are 1.8 miles from top to bottom. The basin was formed between 100 and 250 million years ago and consists of alternating layers of water bearing sandstone aquifers and non-water bearing siltstones and mudstones. Basin water is extracted through bores and is the only source of water for mining, tourism and grazing in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia states, and the Northern Territory. The underground water spawns $2.4 billion worth of production a year from farming, mining and tourism, says the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee.

Interesting2: A plan to build the United States’ first offshore wind farm took another step, after the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection approved its proposed undersea cables to transmit power to the mainland. The Cape Wind project, which would place 130 turbines about 4.7 miles off upscale Cape Cod, would provide "greater public benefit than detriment," the state review found. The proposed wind farm, opposed by beachfront homeowners who complain the 247-foot towers would spoil their views, would provide enough power for about 400,000 homes. Developers of the $1 billion project are still waiting on a composite state and local permit, as well as federal approvals by the U.S. Coast Guard, Department of the Interior and the Federal Aviation Administration, said Mark Rogers, a spokesman for privately held Cape Wind Associates LLC. Rogers said Cape Wind expects the permitting process to be complete by March.

Interesting5: Wildlife satellite studies could lead to a radical re-thinking about how the snowy owl fits into the Northern ecosystem.  "Six of the adult females that we followed in a satellite study spent most of last winter far out on the Arctic sea ice," said Université Laval doctoral student Jean-Francois Therrien, who is working with Professor Gilles Gauthier as part of an International Polar Year (IPY) research project to better understand key indicator species of Canadian northern ecosystems. The finding flabbergasted the biologists who are now curious to find out if Inuit seal hunters ever encounter the large white birds on the ice in winter darkness. "As for what the birds were doing there, they were possibly preying on seabirds," said Gauthier.

"Bird researchers at coastal field sites have observed snowy owls attacking eiders in winter. This hypothesis will be strengthened if we can match up the locations of our birds with the position of open water leads in the ice as recorded by other satellite data." The researchers find it intriguing that the top Arctic bird predator, like the top mammal – the polar bear, is also part of the marine ecosystem. The possible implications for the species will be discussed by Therrien this Wednesday in Quebec City at the Arctic Change Conference, one of the largest international research conferences ever held on the challenges facing the north. It was very surprising, said Therrien, how far the individual birds migrated from where they were banded on their nesting grounds on Bylot Island, north of Baffin Island.

Interesting6: Gabriela Escalante stalks the rumbling streets alongside newspaper, peanut and candy vendors, wading deep into traffic at red lights across town. Her eyes are fixed on tailpipes. A member of Mexico City’s "ecoguarda," or environmental police, she and some 50 colleagues are on the lookout for white clouds of toxic exhaust, stopping hundreds of offending motorists each day, issuing $100 fines and confiscating license plates — a small but urgent army fighting the capital’s infamous air pollution. "We detect, we detain and we fine," said Escalante, 27. "This is the air we all breathe." Not long ago, air in this throbbing capital was so bad that cyclists wore surgical masks. Birds fell dead in mid-flight, and children used brown crayons to draw the sky. Ozone exceeded safe levels on 97 percent of days in the year. But the metropolis ranked the world’s most polluted by a 1992 U.N. report has since slashed some of its worst emissions by more than three-quarters and has become a model for improving urban air quality.

Capitals such as Beijing, Cairo, New Delhi and Lima are now more contaminated, according to the World Bank, while air in at least 30 other cities contains more toxic particles, including Barcelona and Prague. When Latin American leaders met here last month to discuss the environment, many looked to Mexico as an example of progress, said Sergio Jellinek, a World Bank spokesman who attended the forum. Still, a nagging cloud of ozone has been harder to reduce — a sign of the secondary air pollution problems that cities can expect even after cutting their most visible contaminants. With the onset of winter, the worst time of year for pollution, Mexico City has said it plans to spend $3 billion by 2012 to expand public transit and further slash emissions. "There has been a large improvement, and it’s important to show it could be done," said Mario Molina, a Nobel Prize-winning Mexican chemist now advising President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team on environmental issues. "But there’s still a long way to go to get really satisfactory air." Ringed by volcanoes and nearly a half-mile higher than Denver, the city’s geography and population make it a "perfect factory" for pollution, said Adrian Fernandez, head of the National Institute of Ecology, Mexico’s version of the EPA.

Interesting7: Scientists said an earthquake felt by some New Hampshire towns during this last weekend was likely an aftershock from a tremor 281 years ago. Dr. John Ebel of the Weston Observatory in Massachusetts said the quake reported by some New Hampshire residents at about 4:35 p.m. Sunday was likely an aftershock from a 1727 earthquake in the Merrimack, N.H., area, WMUR-TV, Manchester, N.H., reported Tuesday. Ebel said the original 5.6 magnitude quake caused numerous aftershocks in the area that have continued for nearly three centuries. He said the most recent confirmed aftershock took place in October 2007 and measured a 1.3 magnitude on the Richter scale.