Watershed Info No 1123

Daniel Salzler                                                                                                          No. 1123

EnviroInsight.org                                   Six   Items                              November 5, 2021

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the distribution list, please let me know. Please note that all meetings listed are open.

Enhance your viewing by downloading the attached pdf file to view photos, etc.

The attached is all about improving life in the watershed.

Read this newsletter at EnviroInsight.org

  1. Life Span Of The Covid-19 Virus. Covid 19 is still around.  As of 8:12 a.m. November 10th there has been:
  • 1,199,277 number of cases statewide
  • 21,525 number of deaths statewide
  • 3,794 number of new cases reported on November 10th
  • 39 number of new deaths reported on November 10th 

Recent case numbers bear this out. After coming down steadily after a peak in mid-August, cases statewide have increased from 14,511 in the week of Oct. 10 to 17,299 so far reported for the week of Oct. 31. 


The number of cases reported in Arizona at 8:12 a.m. on November 10, was 3,794 with 39 deaths, for the day. The Covid-19 virus has a life span on common surfaces but it can change depending on sanitation efforts, sunlight and temperature.

Glass – 5 days

Wood – 4 days

Plastic and Stainless Steel – 3 days

Cardbord – 24 hours

Copper surfaces – 4 hours.

As we approach the holidays, sending/receiving gifts, cards, it is important to understand that handling the packages and cards will not give you Covid-019, but if you need greater assurance, let the cardboard boxes and envelopes sit untouched for a day or two.



Now that the Pfizer vaccine is approved for children, your child may exhibit some shot anxiety.  You may have witnessed it when they received their measles, mumps, chickenpox and possibly tetnus shots.

The Cleveland Clinic reported on a study that two-third’s of children demonstrate a fear of needles.  Ways to help y/our child not fear shots include the following:

  • Be honest
  • Take a comfort item from home to the doctors office or clinic
  • “Practice“ (pretend before your visit
  • Stay calm yourself.  An anxious parent/adult can make an anxious child
  • Hold little ones in your lap  
  • Have your child do a fake cough.  One cough before receiving the shot and the next cough when the syringe enters the child’s name.

Three behaviors you should avoid are:

            – Don’t lie to your child

            –  Don’t scare you children with words like “pain” and “shot”

            – Don’t threaten or scold them if they’re crying or screaming



Source: www.my.clevelandclinic.org





2. Major Atlantic Ocean Current System Might Be Approaching Critical Threshold. The major Atlantic ocean current, to which also the Gulf stream belongs, may have been losing stability in the course of the last century. This is shown in a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, transports warm water masses from the tropics northward at the ocean surface and cold water southward at the ocean bottom, which is most relevant for the relatively mild temperatures in Europe. Further, it influences weather systems worldwide. A potential collapse of this ocean current system could therefore have severe consequences.

“The Atlantic Meridional Overturning really is one of our planet’s key circulation systems,” says the author of the study, Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Freie Universität Berlin and Exeter University. “We already know from some computer simulations and from data from Earth’s past, so-called paleoclimate proxy records, that the AMOC can exhibit — in addition to the currently attained strong mode — an alternative, substantially weaker mode of operation. This bi-stability implies that abrupt transitions between the two circulation modes are in principle possible.”

Loss of dynamical stability could ultimately lead to collapse

It has been shown previously that the AMOC is currently at its weakest in more than a 1000 years. However, so far it has remained an open question whether the observed weakening corresponds to a change in the mean circulation state, or whether it is associated with an actual loss of dynamical stability. “The difference is crucial,” says Niklas Boers, “because the loss of dynamical stability would imply that the AMOC has approached its critical threshold, beyond which a substantial and in practice likely irreversible transition to the weak mode could occur.”

Long-term observational data of the strength of the AMOC does unfortunately not exist, but the AMOC leaves so-called fingerprints in sea-surface temperature and salinity patterns of the Atlantic ocean. “A detailed analysis of these fingerprints in eight independent indices now suggests that the AMOC weakening during the last century is indeed likely to be associated with a loss of stability,” says Boers. “The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse.”

In addition to global warming, freshwater inflow is a factor — which is also linked to climate change. A number of factors are likely important for the phenomenon — factors that add to the direct effect that the warming of the Atlantic ocean has on its circulation. These include freshwater inflow from the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, melting sea-ice, increasing precipitation and river run-off. Freshwater is lighter than saltwater and reduces the tendency of the water to sink from the surface to greater depths, which is one of the drivers of the overturning.

“I wouldn’t have expected that the excessive amounts of freshwater added in the course of the last century would already produce such a response in the overturning circulation,” says Boers. “We urgently need to reconcile our models with the presented observational evidence to assess how far from or how close to its critical threshold the AMOC really is.” While the respective relevance of the different factors has to be further investigated, they’re all linked to human-caused climate change. Source:Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).




3. Mathematician Reveals World’s Oldest Example Of Applied Geometry. A University of New South Wales has discovered revealed the origins of applied geometry on a 3700-year-old clay tablet that has been hiding in plain sight in a museum in Istanbul for over a century.

The tablet — known as Si.427 — was discovered in the late 19thcentury in what is now central Iraq, but its significance was unknown until the UNSW scientist’s detective work was revealed today.

Most excitingly, Si.427 is thought to be the oldest known example of applied geometry — and in the study released today in Foundations of Science, the research also reveals a compelling human story of land surveying.  To read more go to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210804123503.htm

4.     Wash Your Hands For 20 Seconds: Physics Shows Why.  Hand-washing model uses fluid mechanics to track harmful particle. By simulating hand-washing, they estimated the time scales on which particles, like viruses and bacteria, were removed from hands.

The mathematical model acts in two dimensions, with one wavy surface moving past another wavy surface, and a thin film of liquid between the two. Wavy surfaces represent hands because they are rough on small spatial scales.

Particles are trapped on the rough surfaces of the hand in potential wells. In other words, they are at the bottom of a valley, and in order for them to escape, the energy from the water flow must be high enough to get them up and out of the valley.

The strength of the flowing liquid depends on the speed of the moving hands. A stronger flow removes particles more easily.

“Basically, the flow tells you about the forces on the particles,” said author Paul Hammond. “Then you can work out how the particles move and figure out if they get removed.”  To read more, go to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210817111442.htm


5.     Extreme Sea Levels To Become Much More Common Worldwide As Earth Warms.The news has been packed in recent months with severe climate and weather events — record-high temperatures from the Pacific Northwest to Sicily, flooding in Germany and the eastern United States, wildfires from Sacramento to Siberia to Greece. Events that seemed rare just a few decades ago are now commonplace.

A new study, appearing in the journal Nature Climate Change August 30, looks specifically at extreme sea levels — the occurrence of exceptionally high seas due to the combination of tide, waves and storm surge. The study predicts that because of rising temperatures, extreme sea levels along coastlines the world over will become 100 times more frequent by the end of the century in about half of the 7,283 locations studied. That means, because of rising temperatures, an extreme sea level event that would have been expected to occur once every 100 years currently is expected to occur, on average, every year by the end of this century.


While the researchers say there is uncertainty — as always — about future climate, the most likely path is that these increased instances of sea level rise will occur even with a global temperature increase of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial temperatures. Scientists consider these temperatures the lower end of possible global warming. And the changes are likely to come sooner than the end of the century, with many locations experiencing a 100-fold increase in extreme sea level events by 2070.


Mapping effects, location by location

Claudia Tebaldi, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, led an international team of researchers in the analysis. She brought together scientists who have led previous large studies of extreme sea levels and the effects of temperatures on sea level rise. The team pooled its data and introduced a novel synthesis method, treating the alternative estimates as expert voters, to map out likely effects of temperature increases ranging from 1.5 C to 5 C compared to preindustrial times.



The scientists found, not unexpectedly, that the effects of rising seas on extreme sea level frequency would be felt most acutely in the tropics and generally at lower latitudes compared to northern locations. Locations likely to be affected most include the Southern Hemisphere, areas along the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula, the southern half of North America’s Pacific coast, and areas including Hawaii, the Caribbean, the Philippines and Indonesia. In many of these regions, sea level is expected to rise faster than at higher latitudes.

Regions that will be less affected include the higher latitudes, the northern Pacific coast of North America, and the Pacific coast of Asia.

“One of our central questions driving this study was this: How much warming will it take to make what has been known as a 100-year event an annual event? Our answer is, not much more than what has already been documented,” said Tebaldi, who notes that the globe has already warmed about 1 C compared to preindustrial times.

The new study mirrors the assertion of the 2019 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which stated that extreme sea level events would become much more common worldwide by the end of the century due to global warming.

“It’s not huge news that sea level rise will be dramatic even at 1.5 degrees and will have substantial effects on extreme sea level frequencies and magnitude” said Tebaldi. “This study gives a more complete picture around the globe. We were able to look at a wider range of warming levels in very fine spatial detail.”

The best- and worst-case scenarios put forth by the study vary, due to uncertainties that the study authors represented in remarkable detail. In one scenario, at the pessimistic end, 99 percent of locations studied will experience a 100-fold increase in extreme events by 2100 at 1.5 C of warming. In another, at the optimistic end, about 70 percent of locations don’t see much of a change even with a temperature increase of 5 C.

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210831111939.htm

 

 

6. How Do I Get My Family to Reduce Our Food Waste?  Here are some easy, practical steps to keep your family sustainable

Reducing food waste is one of the most important lifestyle changes you can make to support the planet. But I get it: Convincing kids of that fact can be easier said than done. 

Stories are the most powerful way to inspire people to try something new. Instead of tossing food waste at the end of a meal, create characters out of compostables! Track their stories with your kids, from farm to table and from there to the compost bin, where they can be turned into soil that produces more amazing tales of compostables over and over again (instead of going to the landfill, where they produce toxic methane). 

Next, shop your kitchen before shopping at the store to see if you already have the ingredients you need. Try Mealime, a free meal-planning and grocery-list app to help you keep track. Or make your own grocery list and estimate portions accurately using SaveTheFood.com’s Guest-imator or Meal Prep Mate.     

Go on a scavenger hunt for cheaper, “ugly” produce at the store. If your local community-supported-agriculture farm delivers without using plastic and reuses boxes, sign up. CSAs minimize food waste by growing food for the number of members who preorder. If you can’t shop at a CSA, co-op, or farmers’ market (localharvest.org), try big grocers that have a high score from the Center for Biological Diversity (grocerywaste.com) and commit to zero food waste.  

Other practical tips: Put food that needs to be eaten first (such as leftovers) on the top shelf of your fridge. Avoid washing produce until you’re ready to eat it so it doesn’t get moldy. Include children when making school lunches, and ask them to bring home their leftovers so you can figure out the right food and portions to pack. 

Oh yes, and compost all peelings, scrapings and uneaten vegetables.

Source: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2020-5-september-october/ask-ms-green/how-do-i-get-my-family-reduce-our-food-qwaste?utm_source=insider&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter and editor.

EnviroInsight.org 2021




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