Jul 13, 2021 03:55 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 13, 2021 08:49 PM by C C.)
Whatever Happened to Acid Rain?
https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/07/09/wha...rain-15651
EXCERPTS: Those of us who are non-millennials may remember back to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s when the hottest environmental issue was acid rain. In fact, acid rain generated as much controversy and international conflicts as the big environmental issue of today, climate change, with scientists, policymakers, and politicians engaging in heated battles over this issue.
[...] But the issue seems to have disappeared since that time. Is the reason for this that we actually solved a pressing environmental problem, or did acid rain simply get pushed down the priority list as new, more urgent environmental issues came to the forefront?
Acid rain is rain or any other type of precipitation, including snow or fog, that is unusually acidic. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide, or nitrogen dioxide emissions released into the air [...] Most sulfur or nitrogen dioxide comes from electrical power plants, with a smaller amount coming from cars and other vehicles and natural sources such as volcanoes and wildfires. Both emissions, move by circulating air and wind, can travel long distances so that acid rain may be found in areas far from its source.
[...] Most of the decrease was due to greater use of control technology in coal-fired plants and increased use of natural-gas-fired plants that emit very little sulfur dioxide. ... The acid rain issue has been called “the greatest green success story of the past decade” by The Economist in their article “The Invisible Green Hand.”
Two factors may explain why we heard so much about acid rains' harmful effects and so little about our successful mitigation. First, economic solutions often become baked in, integrated into our economy, creating an invisible fix not apparent to most people. Second, journalists just don’t like to cover good news stores – it doesn’t gather our attention and emotional responses the way bad news does... (MORE - details)
A 'wobble' in the moon's orbit could result in record flooding in the 2030s, new study finds
https://www.livescience.com/high-tide-fl...hange-2030
EXCERPTS: . . . The U.S. experienced more than 600 of these floods in 2019, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But now, a new study led by NASA warns that nuisance floods will become a much more frequent occurrence in the U.S. as soon as the 2030s, with a majority of the U.S. coastline expected to see three to four times as many high-tide flood days each year for at least a decade.
The study, published June 21 in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that these extra flood days won't be spread out evenly over the year, but are likely to cluster together over the span of just a few months; coastal areas that now face just two or three floods a month may soon face a dozen or more.
These prolonged coastal flood seasons will cause major disruptions to lives and livelihoods if communities don't start planning for them now, the researchers cautioned. [...] While rising sea levels alone will increase the frequency of high-tide floods, they will have a little help from the cosmos — specifically, the moon.
The moon influences the tides, but the power of the moon's pull isn't equal from year to year; the moon actually has a "wobble" in its orbit, slightly altering its position relative to Earth on a rhythmic 18.6-year cycle. For half of the cycle, the moon suppresses tides on Earth, resulting in lower high tides and higher low tides. For the other half of the cycle, tides are amplified, with higher high tides and lower low tides, according to NASA.
We are currently in the tide-amplifying part of the cycle; the next tide-amplifying cycle begins in the mid-2030s; — and, by then, global sea levels will have risen enough to make those higher-than-normal high tides particularly troublesome, the researchers found.
Through the combined effect of sea-level rise and the lunar cycle, high-tide flooding will increase rapidly across the entire U.S. coast, the team wrote.... (MORE - details)
https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/07/09/wha...rain-15651
EXCERPTS: Those of us who are non-millennials may remember back to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s when the hottest environmental issue was acid rain. In fact, acid rain generated as much controversy and international conflicts as the big environmental issue of today, climate change, with scientists, policymakers, and politicians engaging in heated battles over this issue.
[...] But the issue seems to have disappeared since that time. Is the reason for this that we actually solved a pressing environmental problem, or did acid rain simply get pushed down the priority list as new, more urgent environmental issues came to the forefront?
Acid rain is rain or any other type of precipitation, including snow or fog, that is unusually acidic. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide, or nitrogen dioxide emissions released into the air [...] Most sulfur or nitrogen dioxide comes from electrical power plants, with a smaller amount coming from cars and other vehicles and natural sources such as volcanoes and wildfires. Both emissions, move by circulating air and wind, can travel long distances so that acid rain may be found in areas far from its source.
[...] Most of the decrease was due to greater use of control technology in coal-fired plants and increased use of natural-gas-fired plants that emit very little sulfur dioxide. ... The acid rain issue has been called “the greatest green success story of the past decade” by The Economist in their article “The Invisible Green Hand.”
Two factors may explain why we heard so much about acid rains' harmful effects and so little about our successful mitigation. First, economic solutions often become baked in, integrated into our economy, creating an invisible fix not apparent to most people. Second, journalists just don’t like to cover good news stores – it doesn’t gather our attention and emotional responses the way bad news does... (MORE - details)
A 'wobble' in the moon's orbit could result in record flooding in the 2030s, new study finds
https://www.livescience.com/high-tide-fl...hange-2030
EXCERPTS: . . . The U.S. experienced more than 600 of these floods in 2019, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But now, a new study led by NASA warns that nuisance floods will become a much more frequent occurrence in the U.S. as soon as the 2030s, with a majority of the U.S. coastline expected to see three to four times as many high-tide flood days each year for at least a decade.
The study, published June 21 in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that these extra flood days won't be spread out evenly over the year, but are likely to cluster together over the span of just a few months; coastal areas that now face just two or three floods a month may soon face a dozen or more.
These prolonged coastal flood seasons will cause major disruptions to lives and livelihoods if communities don't start planning for them now, the researchers cautioned. [...] While rising sea levels alone will increase the frequency of high-tide floods, they will have a little help from the cosmos — specifically, the moon.
The moon influences the tides, but the power of the moon's pull isn't equal from year to year; the moon actually has a "wobble" in its orbit, slightly altering its position relative to Earth on a rhythmic 18.6-year cycle. For half of the cycle, the moon suppresses tides on Earth, resulting in lower high tides and higher low tides. For the other half of the cycle, tides are amplified, with higher high tides and lower low tides, according to NASA.
We are currently in the tide-amplifying part of the cycle; the next tide-amplifying cycle begins in the mid-2030s; — and, by then, global sea levels will have risen enough to make those higher-than-normal high tides particularly troublesome, the researchers found.
Through the combined effect of sea-level rise and the lunar cycle, high-tide flooding will increase rapidly across the entire U.S. coast, the team wrote.... (MORE - details)