Georgia’s Spring Climate Outlook

Spring will likely be drier than normal for most of Georgia. March will have wide swings in temperature. A late freeze or even a snow or an ice storm isn’t out of the question. Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are common this time of year.

Through most of this winter, Georgia’s climate was primarily a response to a neutral climate pattern. The neutral pattern is one of three climate patterns that have major influences on Georgia’s climate. The other two and better-known patterns are El Niño and La Niña.

This past winter, Georgians have experienced a classic neutral winter with periods of very cold and very warm weather. Rainfall in neutral winters can be very dry, near normal or very wet. This winter has been a very dry one.

Since the beginning of the year, the climate pattern has gradually shifted to a weak La Niña. This change is expected to have a major influence on the state’s spring climate.

It is important to realize that knowing which climate pattern we are in gives us only the probabilities of what to expect. It can tell us how we might want to hedge our bets, so to speak. It isn’t a guarantee.

Because the climate pattern is now in a weak La Niña, there is a very high chance that the coastal plain will experience a very dry spring. The chances of a very dry spring decrease into the northern piedmont. In the piedmont north of a Carrollton-to-Elberton line, near normal rainfall is the most likely outcome.

In the mountains of north Georgia, there are no clear indications of what to expect rainfall wise over the next three months. If a consistent storm track occurs over the mountains, then the spring may be wet. However, if the storm track is just 50 to 100 miles north of Georgia, then the mountains will experience a dry spring. The good news is that typically under a weak La Niña – like we have now – the storm track has a tendency to be further south, which means the mountains might receive some beneficial rains.

As far as temperatures are concerned, we can expect a continuation of a wide range, especially through the middle of April.

The date of the last killing freeze, or 28 F or below, or the last frost has no relationship with the climate pattern. Knowing that Georgia is currently under the influence of a weak La Niña tells us nothing about when the last freeze will occur.

Just as important, a warm March does not tell us anything about the likelihood of a late freeze. The 2007 Easter freeze is a prime example. March 2007 had been very warm and most plants had broken their dormancy. Then a devastating freeze hit in early April.

Snow and ice storms are not unusual in Georgia during March. Additionally, March through May is a time when severe thunderstorms and tornadoes are common. Because tornadoes can occur at anytime, day or night, all Georgians are encouraged to have a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, weather radio at home. NOAA weather radios can be purchased at most electronic stores, large discount stores and many grocery stores.

By David Stooksbury
University of Georgia

_____
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page

U.N. Climate Change Conference Considers Ancient Soil Replenishment Technique in Battle against Global Warming

Former inhabitants of the Amazon Basin enriched their fields with charred organic materials-biochar-and transformed one of the earth's most infertile soils into one of the most productive. These early conservationists disappeared 500 years ago, but centuries later, their soil is still rich in organic matter and nutrients. Now, scientists, environmental groups and policymakers forging the next world climate agreement see biochar not only as an important tool for replenishing soils, but as a powerful tool for combating global warming.

Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering, was a major contributor to the biochar proposal that was submitted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification last week at the United Nations Climate Change Conference meeting in Poland. The new climate change agreement will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"The potential of biochar lies in its ability to sequester-capture and store-huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon impact," said Steiner, a soil scientist whose research in the Amazon Basin originally focused on the use of biochar as a soil amendment. At UGA's Biorefinery and Carbon Cycling Program, he now investigates the global potential of biochar to sequester carbon. He also serves as a consultant to the UNCCD, a sister program to the climate change convention.

Steiner explained that almost any kind of organic material-peanut shells, pine chips and even poultry litter-can be burned in air-tight conditions, a process called pyrolysis. The byproducts are biochar, a highly porous charcoal that helps soil retain nutrients and water, and gases and heat that can be used as energy.

But because the carbon in biochar so effectively resists degradation, it also can sequester carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years, effectively making it a permanent "sink"-a natural system that soaks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Soils containing biochar made by ancient Amazon people still contain up to 70 times more carbon than surrounding soils and have a higher nutrient content. Steiner said scientists estimate biochar from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester billions of tons of carbon in the world's soils.

Biochar also avoids the disadvantages of other bioenergy technologies that deplete soil organic matter, said Steiner.

"Removing crop residues for bioenergy production reduces the organic matter accumulating on agricultural fields and thus the soil organic carbon pool, which depends on constant input of decomposing plant material. In contrast, pyrolysis with biochar carbon sequestration produces renewable energy, sequesters CO2 and cycles nutrients back into agricultural fields."

"This unique system ideally utilizes waste biomass, and thus does not compete with food production," said Steiner. Currently most waste biomass decomposes or is burned in the field. Both processes release carbon dioxide stored in the plant biomass-for no other use than getting rid of it. Biochar can capture up to 50 percent of the carbon stored in biomass and establishes a significant carbon sink, as long as renewable resources are used and biochar is used as a soil amendment.

To address our world's climate change dilemma, said Steiner, "We need a carbon sink in addition to greater energy efficiency and renewable energy. Acceptance of the UNCCD proposal in Poland is a first step to make carbon trading based on biochar a reality.

"This has not only consequences for mitigating climate change, but also for agricultural sustainability, and could provide a strong incentive to reduce deforestation, especially in the tropics."

-----
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page

Cleaner Coal Technology Key to the World’s Energy Future

(BUSINESS WIRE)--GE Energy and the University of Wyoming today announced an agreement to further cleaner coal technology, making coal-fired power generation more viable in America. Under the agreement, GE and the university will develop the High Plains Gasification Advanced Technology Center to accelerate the commercial use of cleaner coal technology.

In the United States, coal supplies more than 50 percent of the country’s current electricity generation and it plays an important role in meeting the nation’s energy needs. Coal is an abundant, low-cost, domestic, natural resource that continues to be a significant part of America’s energy mix.

Wyoming is uniquely positioned in the nation’s energy landscape and has vast coal resources capable of supporting a substantial portion of the nation’s energy needs. The state produces approximately 40 percent of all of the coal used in the United States to generate electricity.

The new center will include a small-scale gasification system that will enable researchers from GE and the university to develop advanced gasification solutions for Powder River Basin and other Wyoming coals. The research is expected to expand the range of coals that can be used with GE’s integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) technology for power plants. The facility is expected to be operational by 2012.

To create a path forward for coal, future climate change policy will be needed to incentivize the deployment of already-available low carbon technology and to foster further improvements that will bring down the cost of carbon capture and sequestration.

“This project underscores the commitment of both the University of Wyoming and GE to work toward U.S. energy independence and plan for future energy needs,” said Steve Bolze, president and CEO of GE Energy’s Power & Water business. “We believe that our country’s energy and environmental policies should promote a balance of available, reliable, cleaner and low-cost energy. The use of cleaner coal technology helps create jobs, support economic growth and positively impacts the environment.”

GE is a world leader in IGCC technology and has been at the forefront of IGCC technology since the Coolwater project, a 120 MW technical demonstration IGCC project started in 1984. GE's IGCC technology also has operated at the 250 MW TECO Polk I station in Florida for more than 12 years. Today, GE offers a 630 MW IGCC reference plant that produces 75 percent less SOx, 33 percent less NOx, 40 percent less particulate matter, uses 30 percent less water and offers 90 percent mercury capture, compared to a traditional pulverized coal plant.

In addition to providing a cleaner alternative for power generation, IGCC is well-suited for carbon capture. Carbon capture technology is in use in GE’s industrial gasification applications around the world today. IGCC technology will offer cost and efficiency advantages for carbon capture and storage, once clear policies and regulations are in place to support storage and an economically viable value is established for carbon.

Although IGCC technology is relatively new, gasification is more than a century old. The process uses pressure, heat and steam to convert carbon-based materials like coal into a synthesis gas (syngas) that has a variety of uses including the production of chemicals or fertilizers and power generation.

-----
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page

UGA Study Helps Clarify Role of Soil Microbes in Global Warming

Current models of global climate change predict warmer temperatures will increase the rate that bacteria and other microbes decompose soil organic matter, a scenario that pumps even more heat-trapping carbon into the atmosphere. But a new study led by a University of Georgia researcher shows that while the rate of decomposition increases for a brief period in response to warmer temperatures, elevated levels of decomposition don’t persist.

“There is about two and a half times more carbon in the soil than there is in the atmosphere, and the concern right now is that a lot of that carbon is going to end up in the atmosphere,” said lead author Mark Bradford, assistant professor in the UGA Odum School of Ecology. “What our finding suggests is that a positive feedback between warming and a loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere is likely to occur but will be less than currently predicted.”

Bradford, whose results appear in the early online edition of the journal Ecology Letters, said the finding helps resolve a long-standing debate about how unseen soil microbes respond to and influence global climate change. Other scientists have noted that the respiration of soil microbes returns to normal after a number of years under heated conditions, but offered competing explanations. Some argued that the microbes consumed so much of the available food under heated conditions that future levels of decomposition were reduced because of food scarcity. Others argued that soil microbes adapted to the changed environment and reduced their respiration accordingly.

Bradford and his team, which included researchers from the University of New Hampshire, the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Duke University and Colorado State University, found evidence to support both hypotheses and revealed a third, previously unaccounted for explanation: The abundance of soil microbes decreased under warm conditions.

“It is often said that in a handful of dirt, there are somewhere around 10,000 species and millions of individual bacteria and fungi,” said study co-author Matthew Wallenstein, a research scientist at Colorado State University. “Our findings add to the understanding of how complex these systems are and the role they play in feedbacks associated with climate change.”

The researchers studied soil microbes at Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, the site of a soil warming experiment that began in 1991. Scientists took soil samples from two plots, one in which buried cables heat the soil to five degrees Celsius above the ambient soil temperature (a condition that is expected to occur around 2100) and a control condition in which cables are buried but not producing heat.

In the first set of experiments, the scientists compared microbial respiration in the two groups and found lower rates of decomposition in the heated plots. This finding supported the idea that respiration decreases after a few years of warming, but didn’t explain whether the cause was substrate depletion in the warmer soils or adaptation by the microbes.

In the next set of experiments, they added the simple sugar sucrose to both sets of soils to alleviate any food limitation for the microbes. They found that microbes from both conditions increased their respiration, but that the increase was greater in the unheated control soils than in the heated soils. “That finding told us that substrate depletion played a role,” Bradford said, “but it also told us that there were other factors involved.”

The researchers then measured microbial biomass and found that there were fewer microbes in the heated soils. To test whether thermal adaptation occurred, they measured respiration while keeping temperature constant. They found that respiration rates were indeed lower in the heated versus the control soils, even when adjusting for microbial biomass.

Wallenstein pointed out that the study is among the first to demonstrate that microbes, like many plants and animals, can adapt relatively quickly to changes in climate. “This research presents a new challenge to scientists trying to predict effects of climate change on forest ecosystems because it shows that these soil microbial communities are very dynamic,” Wallenstein said. “We cannot simply extrapolate from the short-term responses of soil microbes to climate change, since they may adapt over the longer-term.”

Bradford notes that there is still much to be learned about how soil microbes respond to global warming. His team is currently working to understand whether the reduced microbial respiration in heated soils is caused by the adaptation of individual microbes, by shifts in species composition or a combination of the two factors. He warns against minimizing the role of soil microbes in global warming, even though his findings suggest that current models overstate their contribution.

“Although our results suggest that the impact of soil microbes on global warming will be less than is currently predicted,” Bradford said, “even a small change in atmospheric carbon is going to alter the way our world works and how our ecosystems function.”

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

By Sam Fahmy
University of Georgia

-----
www.georgiafrontpage.com
Georgia Front Page
www.fayettefrontpage.com
Fayette Front Page