[GWSG] Tracing ground water; new EV chargers; low to zero; Arctic speeds up; storm trends; flaring fudged; hazard map etc.

[Tilley, Al]

1. Tracing the path of rainfall through soil and rock to a stream flow means determining the permeability of the subsurface. Direct measurement is too expensive and difficult to be practical. Deep neural networks, however, can figure out permeability from water data and subsurface models. That should be of great benefit to determining the hydrodynamics, and thus flooding risks, in coastal areas, among related applications such as modelling watersheds. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-deep-stream-discharge-watershed-subsurface.html

2. We are getting 500,000 new EV chargers. They will be in all states, and provide a station every 50 miles along interstates. Batteries promise longer ranges—we may even find ourselves oversupplied with chargers at some point. A problem being mentioned by some states is fear that they will not be able to supply enough power for the new use. That should spur them to develop renewables. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/28/us-plan-to-add-500000-ev-chargers-in-all-50-states-gets-final-approval/

3. The difficulty of getting from low emissions to no emissions is often remarked with a glib assertion that new technologies will be needed. This essay from Yale 360 says much the same, but with the weight of careful thinking and detailed suggestion. We are going to need government-spurred and supported industrial innovation. “Climate change shouldn’t be conceived of as a giant global commons problem — where the right incentives, at the margin, must be created in every economy around the world. Rather, it should be viewed as a problem whose global solution will emerge from clusters of early movers — governments and companies — that create industrial revolutions sector-by-sector.” The article draws on a new book, Fixing the Climate: Strategies for an Uncertain World, by Charles Sabel and David Victor (Princeton UP). https://e360.yale.edu/features/biden-climate-bill-industrial-policy

4. Driven by the loss of sea ice, acidification of the western Arctic Ocean is proceeding at 3-4 times the pace of oceans generally. Warming is proceeding at about the same pace. The implications for sea life are unknown but suspected to be grave. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/29/arctic-ocean-acidifying-up-to-four-times-as-fast-as-other-oceans-study-finds

5. Hurricane Ian was unusually powerful. That is a trend driven by the destabilization of the climate as we continue to burn fossil fuels. Every rise in ocean surface temperature of 1C results in 18 mph more windspeed of major hurricanes, meaning 44% more destructive potential. Storms are also getting bigger and wetter.  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/30/hurricane-ian-climate-crisis-no-anomaly-storms-more-powerful

6. Oil and gas producers regularly dispose of waste methane by venting and burning it—flaring. Like the official leakage rate, the efficiency of flaring has been unrealistically estimated. Actual measurements show that it releases five times more methane than supposed. What is more, methane is regularly vented without burning. We should require the industry to do better as it dies. In fact, it needs to die even more quickly than we had thought.  https://phys.org/news/2022-09-flaring-methane-atmosphere-thought.html

7. The US government’s Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation furnishes interactive maps of which areas have experienced climate hazards in the last 30 days and basic tools for communities to rough out the beginnings of vulnerability studies. https://resilience.climate.gov/

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