A Fire Creates Big "Volcanic" Stormclouds

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/08/100816-fires-thunderstorms-thunder-clouds-volcanoes-science-weather-russia/

Intense fires have the power to generate dirty thunderclouds that may be influencing the climate, scientists have discovered.

Like volcanoes, the dirty, fire-induced thunderstorms, or pyrocumulonimbus storms (pyroCbs), can funnel smoke and particulates high into the stratosphere, experts announced Friday at an American Geophysical Union meeting in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

The high-flying smoke palls created by the so-called pyrocumulonimbus storms (pyroCbs) may be having unknown effects on Earth's climate, such as warming or cooling the atmosphere, the scientists added.

And the fire-started storms aren't just figments of a climate model. Recent satellite images, for instance, show that the forest fires currently raging in Russia (pictures) are generating several pyrocumulonimbus storms of unprecedented size, according to Michael Fromm, a meteorologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

(Also see "Planes Create Weird Clouds—And Snow, Rain Fall Out.")

Dirty Clouds Long Mistaken for Volcanic Ash

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds had long been mistaken for volcanic ash clouds, but Fromm and colleagues' new survey of satellite images dating back to 1979 has definitively linked them to especially intense forest fires called crown fires, the team says.

"It's when the fire sweeps from treetop to treetop without necessarily working its way down the trunks," said Nathaniel Livesey, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, who worked on the survey.

The intense, rising smoke and heat of a crown fire can cause storm clouds to form—clouds that are typically bigger, taller, and darker than normal thunderstorm clouds.

Like natural smokestacks, the pyrocumulonimbus clouds absorb the fire's smoke and aerosol particles and funnel the pollutants as high as 11 miles (17 kilometers) into the upper atmosphere, where they exit the clouds and drift far and wide.

"An entire hemisphere can be polluted by an individual pyroCb ... and the smoke and pollutants can linger for several months," the Naval Research Laboratory's Fromm told National Geographic News.

The fire-started clouds are abnormal in other ways too. For example, while they can produce thunder and lightning and even tornadoes, pyroCbs rarely, if ever, create rain.

"That's because of the unique ingestion of so many smoke particles into the thunderstorm," From said.

By preventing water molecules from coming together, "the smoke essentially cuts off the precipitation process, so you get very violent storms without much rain," he said.

Furthermore, unlike normal thunderclouds, the fire-born clouds don't drift. They remain tethered to the blazes from which they were born.

Cancun Climate Summit Yeilds Deals

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11975470

UN talks in Cancun have reached a deal to curb climate change, including a fund to help developing countries.

Nations endorsed compromise texts drawn up by the Mexican hosts, despite objections from Bolivia.

The draft documents say deeper cuts in carbon emissions are needed, but do not establish a mechanism for achieving the pledges countries have made.

Some countries' resistance to the Kyoto Protocol had been a stumbling block during the final week of negotiations.

However, diplomats were able to find a compromise.

Delegates cheered speeches from governments that had caused the most friction during negotiations - Japan, China, even the US - as one by one they endorsed the draft.

BBC environment correspondent Richard Black said the meeting did not achieve the comprehensive, all-encompassing deal that many activists and governments want.

But he said it was being "touted as a platform on which that comprehensive agreement can be built".

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European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the deal was substantial and covered several issues

Mexico's President Felipe Calderon said the summit had allowed leaders to "glimpse new horizons" where countries had the "shared task to keep the planet healthy and keep it safe from [humans]".

Hungarian Towns Begin Cleanup of Nightmarish Red Sludge

A wave of caustic red sludge had just poured in over the back fence and was descending rapidly over the backyard, smothering chickens and hares as well as a garden of flowers, peppers, grapes and tomatoes. It rose up until it covered the tiled front porch and leached in through the front door, dyeing the pristine white lace curtains red. Mr. Holczer, 34, escaped with burns on his feet from the dangerous muck.

The origin of the liquid was a nearby sludge reservoir holding the leftovers of the process that converts bauxite to aluminum. For more than 25 years, residents say, a Hungarian manufacturer, MAL Rt., the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Company, has stored such waste at several artificial storage ponds in the region. Once a state-owned company, it was privatized in the 1990s like much of Communist-era industry in Eastern Europe.

Just after noon on Monday, a corner of the sludge reservoir broke, sending the goo into the surrounding countryside, turning four prosperous, picturesque villages into red-tinged towns out of science-fiction horror films.

The mud drowned at least four people and sent more than 100 to hospitals with burns, caused by a highly alkaline caustic substance. Sixteen square miles are covered in the muck, hundreds of residents suffered mild burns or lung irritations, and many animals were killed.

Residents here are still waiting for officials to release their analysis of the sludge’s chemical content. A dangerous pollutant at best because of its corrosive nature, red mud from the aluminum production process can contain heavy metals and low-level radioactivity, ingredients that can cause health problems like cancer, and in the long term it can contaminate the environment.

The sludge poured into local streams, which now all appear to be tinted with henna, and is moving downstream at about a mile an hour. It is headed for the Raba River, which empties into the Danube. It has already killed all the river life in the local rivers and streams but now threatens a broad international environmental disaster if high concentrations of the sludge get downstream.

So far the damage is limited to Hungary, which has not asked the European Union for assistance in responding to the catastrophe, but Joe Hennon, the European Commission’s spokesman for environmental issues, said that the organization was concerned about the sludge or its elements moving where it could affect other countries.

“There is potential for widespread environmental damage,” Mr. Hennon said. “Right now, they’re trying to contain it, to stop it from reaching the Danube.”

The mud is normally regulated as a pollutant in Europe but can be classified as a hazardous substance if levels of toxic elements are high, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/europe/07hungary.html?ref=earth