Die Klimaseniorinnen, die vor kurzem vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte Recht bekommen haben, beklagen ein erhöhtes Sterberisiko wegen der Erderwärmung. Würden sie richtig liegen, müssten ältere Frauen an wärmeren Orten der Welt sterben wie die Fliegen. Das ist aber offensichtlich nicht der Fall, wie Alex Reichmuth im Nebelspalter (https://www.nebelspalter.ch/themen/2024/05/an-waermeren-orten-muessten-aeltere-frauen-sterben-wie-die-fliegen) ausführt.
Argumente der Klimaseniorinnen
An wärmeren Orten müssten ältere Frauen sterben wie die FliegenMitarbeit: Walter Rüegg
Die Fakten: Die Klimaseniorinnen haben vorgebracht, dass sie wegen der angeblich mangelhaften Klimapolitik der Schweiz unter Hitze leiden würden und einem erhöhten Todesrisiko ausgesetzt seien. Wäre ihre Argumentation richtig, müssten an heissen Orten der Welt viele alte Menschen vorzeitig sterben. Doch dafür gibt es keine Anzeichen.
Warum das wichtig ist: Der Europäische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte hat den Klimaseniorinnen recht gegeben und ihre Klage gutgeheissen. Das Gericht ist also auch der Meinung, dass ältere Frauen wegen Hitze tödlich bedroht sind. Das Urteil hat Signalwirkung für ganz Europa.
Mehr dazu gibt es im Nebelspalter (https://www.nebelspalter.ch/themen/2024/05/an-waermeren-orten-muessten-aeltere-frauen-sterben-wie-die-fliegen). Der Beitrag kann nach 20 Sekunden Werbung freigeschaltet werden.
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Der Skitourismusforscher Günther Aigner hat an einer turbulenten Diskussion zur Zukunft des Skifahrens beim Talk im Hangar 7 teilgenommen. Gäste beim „Sport & Talk im Hangar 7“ waren u.a. der langjährige ÖSV-Präsident Peter Schröcksnadel, der Skifahrer und Klimaschützer Julian Schütter und die bayerische Skilegende Markus Wasmeier.
Muss man sich für das Skifahren schämen? Kann man 2050 noch Skifahren? Und wird das Skifahren zum Luxussport? Zu diesen Fragen wurde er live im ORF interviewt.
Wussten Sie eigentlich, dass es vor nicht allzu langer Zeit einen Sommer gab, der fast so kalt waren wie heutzutage unsere Winter? Das „Jahr ohne Sommer“ 1816 ist legendär, es führte zu entsetzlichen Hungersnöten und zur Geburt von Frankensteins Monster. Aus heutiger Sicht erlebte Europa eine unvorstellbare Wetter-Anomalie. Schauen Sie rein und frösteln!
Falls Sie noch nicht für den Newsletter von Günther Aigner eingeschrieben sind und künftig Infos von ZUKUNFT SKISPORT erhalten möchten, dann klicken Sie hier, um sich für den Newsletter anzumelden.
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Researchers report on recent drought in the eastern Hungarian plains
Intensive agricultural cultivation and the resulting changes in soil structure cause low humidity in the near-surface air during heat waves in really dry years. As a result, summer cold fronts roar across the Great Hungarian Plain without the usual thunderstorms and precipitation.
Researchers at the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at Eötvös Loránd University explain this weather in a review of articles on topics ranging from the geodynamics to the soil science to the meteorology that made the summer of 2022 so severe in the eastern part of the country.
In 2022, the 7-week period starting in mid-June was disastrous for eastern Hungary. Almost no rain fell for weeks, and in the eastern part of the country, the economic loss of autumn crops was almost total. The cold fronts, which had brought showers and rain to the western part of the country, dried up as they reached the Great Plain, passing through without precipitation and with only strong winds, making the drought situation even worse. Rumors had already started that some mysterious experiment influencing the weather had caused the almost complete drying out and destruction of the maize and sunflower crops in the lowlands that year.
Gábor Timár and Balázs Székely of the Department of Geophysics and Space Science, and Gusztáv Jakab of the Department of Environment and Landscape Geography show in their review article published in journal Land that this is not the case. Rather, the atmosphere was missing one of the most natural things: water.
Because of the unusually severe drought, one of the conditions for the formation of thunderstorms—a layer of humid air near the surface—was missing. As a result, the thunderstorms that provided the bulk of the summer rainfall were absent, exacerbating the situation and precluding the possibility of further storms over a period of several weeks.
The researchers conclude that the main reason for this is that the landscape water storage capacity has been significantly reduced due to intensive agricultural cultivation, following the water regulation measures.
In many places, large-scale cultivation and heavy machinery have created a secondary and almost impermeable layer in the soil, which prevents autumn-winter, early spring and early summer precipitation from being stored in the deeper layers of the soil.
The upper 20-30 cm of the soil, however, dries out very quickly in the summer heat, and the chances of the remaining evaporation of moisture in the lower layers of the air and the formation of thunderstorms are then greatly reduced. The moisture in the higher air layers therefore does not reach the ground.
Their proposal is therefore to restore wetlands, meadows and pastures in a part of the lowland landscape, estimated to be at least one county in total, and even to divert excess water from elsewhere during the winter and snowmelt floods. Here, in addition to natural or accelerated restoration of soil structure, the re-establishment of vegetation that is highly evaporative during the summer period should be allowed or encouraged.
This can guarantee that rainfall can return in drought years, which will also bring rainwater to agricultural areas. These „evapotranspiration areas“ could be created in the lowest areas of the lowlands, on the lowest-value agricultural land with a lower „golden crown“ value, where the soil is not optimal for arable farming anyway.
Paper: Gábor Timár et al, A Step from Vulnerability to Resilience: Restoring the Landscape Water-Storage Capacity of the Great Hungarian Plain—An Assessment and a Proposal, Land (2024). DOI: 10.3390/land13020146
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Hannah Bird , Phys.org:
Pollen diaries: Polar ice records preserve climate vs. human impact following Little Ice Age
Pollen can help scientists track changes in vegetation through time, as they respond to moderations of the climate, be that glaciation or deglaciation with transitions into and out of ice ages. Furthermore, it can help elucidate the interplay between climate and the impact early human settlement exploitation of the natural world had on forests.
Dispersal of pollen has evolved diverse mechanisms over millennia and can be carried over distances of hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Indeed, modeling shows that ice cores taken from southern Greenland preserve boreal and mixed-conifer forest pollen derived from >3,500 km away in eastern Canada at a resolution of five to 20 years.
New research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, has generated an 850-year pollen record (including the Medieval Warm Period, ~950–1350 CE, and Little Ice Age, ~1350–1750 CE) from Greenland to determine the role of climate and humans in modifying boreal ecosystems, particularly high-latitude regions most susceptible to warming.
Weiterlesen auf Phys.org.
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Bob Yirka auf Phys.org:
Link found between cold snaps during Roman Empire era and pandemics
A team of geoscientists, Earth scientists and environmental scientists affiliated with several institutions in Germany, the U.S. and the Netherlands has found a link between cold snaps and pandemics during the Roman Empire.
In their project, reported in the journal Science Advances, the group studied core samples taken from the seabed in the Gulf of Taranto and compared them with historical records.
Researchers learn about climatic conditions in the distant past by analyzing sediment built up from river deposits. Tiny organisms that are sensitive to temperature, for example, respond differently to warm temperatures than to cold temperatures and often wind up in such sediment. Thus, the study of organic remains in sediment layers can reveal details of temperatures over a period of time.
Weiterlesen auf Phys.org