Ozone hole has dried Australia, scientists find

The Antarctic ozone hole is about one-third to blame for Australia's recent series of droughts, scientists say.

Writing in the journal Science, they conclude that the hole has shifted wind and rainfall patterns right across the Southern Hemisphere, even the tropics.
Their climate models suggest the effect has been notably strong over Australia.
Many parts of the country have seen drought in recent years, with cities forced to invest in technologies such as desalination, and farms closing.
The scientists behind the new study - led from Columbia University in New York - added the ozone hole into standard climate models to investigate how it might have affected winds and rains.
"The ozone hole results in a southward shift of the high-latitude circulation - and the whole tropical circulation shifts southwards too," explained Columbia's Sarah Kang.
Of particular interest was the southward migration of the Southern Hemisphere jet stream.

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There is also the rising trend in carbon dioxide, and that is acting in the same direction as the ozone hole”

End Quote Dr Sarah Kang Columbia University

These high-altitude winds are key to determining weather patterns, in both hemispheres. Much of the cold weather felt in the UK over the last couple of winters, for example, was caused by blocking of the Northern Hemisphere stream.

The Columbia team found that overall, the ozone hole has resulted in rainfall moving south along with the winds.
But there are regional differences, particularly concerning Australia.
"In terms of the average for that zone, [the ozone hole drives] about a 10% change - but for Australia, it's about 35%," Dr Kang told BBC News.
Their modelling indicated that global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions was also a factor - although natural climate cycles are also thought to be important, as Australia suffered severe droughts in the era before ozone depletion and before the warming seen in the late 20th Century.
"This study does illustrate the important point that different mechanisms of global change are contributing to the climate impacts we're seeing around the world," observed Professor Myles Allen of Oxford University, a leading UK climate modeller.
"It's very important to unpack them all rather than assuming that any impact we see is down simply to greenhouse gas-mediated warming."
No reverse Ozone depletion is caused by chemical reactions in the stratosphere, the upper atmosphere.
The chemicals involved derive from substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and their relatives, which used to be staples in air-conditioning, refrigeration and aerosol cans.

Desalination is one of the approaches being used to combat Australia's dwindling supply of water

Although the UN Montreal Protocol has significantly curbed emissions of these substances, they endure for decades in the atmosphere, and so their effects are still being felt.
The ozone layer blocks the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer and other medical conditions.
Earlier this month, the World Meteorological Organization revealed that the Arctic was experiencing the worst ozone depletion on record - a consequence of unusual weather conditions.
But the forecast is that even the Antarctic ozone hole - which is more severe than its Arctic equivalent - should be repaired by 2045-60.
Sarah Kang cautions that this alone will not restore prior climate conditions to Australia or anywhere else in the Southern Hemisphere.
"As the ozone hole repairs, it is going to work to reverse this trend; but there is also the rising trend in carbon dioxide, and that is acting in the same direction as the ozone hole," she said.
Australia's persistently dry weather has caused major impacts on communities, farms and nature.
In recent years, the volume of water flowing into the reservoirs of Perth, the Western Australian capital, has been just one third of what it was during most of the 20th Century.
The Murray-Darling basin, which lies in the highly populated southeast, is the subject of a somewhat controversial plan aiming to distribute water fairly against a backdrop of over-extraction, prolonged drought, natural climate variability and greenhouse gas-mediated global warming.

At least 27 dead in Bangladesh ferry sinkingDispatch from the Oil Islands

The average gun nozzle is painted red, stretches about three feet long and is as round as a softball. Powered by propane, there's an explosion in the base that, by the time the rush of hot air leaves the nozzle, fills the air with a sound similar to cannon fire. Hundreds of guns guard Louisiana barrier islands like sentries, standing 50 feet apart, booming sporadically as though the islands are under constant attack by the weary fowl looking for a place to rest and hatch their young.
The explosions are designed to ward off the birds that nest in the marsh grasses. Sometimes the guns work.
But some birds, many of which fly from hundreds of miles away year after year, are stubborn in their ways, so hundreds of guns have to be used.

Barataria Bay's barrier islands are accessible only by boat. Many of these small patches of land that rise and fade from the bay lack proper names. But most share common characteristics:
- The shorelines are black with oil.
- They are loud from the sound of the propane guns.
- Stubby, brown pencil-thick roots stick up from the oily ground to serve as a reminder that grass once grew there.
- Between these roots are puddles of thick tar with pink and purple sheens circling the top, much like bubbles.
- There are trails of plywood placed along the shore so people can walk.
And they all smell like the dirty part of a Jiffy Lube.
"It's a very strong scent of oil," says Todd Baker, a state biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. The state organized this trip for media members, and Baker is the point man. There are about a dozen people dragging cables and cameras and recorders, trying to capture the perfect picture while navigating the plywood trail.

Todd Baker, biologist with Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries.

Baker has been answering questions for two hours, but every time he appears to tire, he catches a second wind, and powers through with new words for the old answer. He seems to relish each opportunity to get news of the "oil islands" out to the public through multiple media outlets.
"I mean, there's certainly restoration that could be going on right now!" Baker tells a reporter. "We know we have impacts, you can see them here. So there should be restoration ongoing as soon as possible."
Someone asks, "Isn't that a conversation you should have with BP?"
Baker shrugs.
After the BP oil spill, these islands turned black. It will be years, Baker says, before the ecological damage is assessed.
"Look around you, we still have oil here," says Baker, "...so to take an assessment, a snapshot right now, and call it done, we can't do that. ... This has to be cleaned up."
On the boat ride out to this link in the island chain, there are several cleanup workers carrying shovels and rakes and trash cans. They wear yellow boots and white T-shirts, which makes for quite the contrast with any black oil splatter their uniform may absorb. Baker says he can't remember the last time he saw one of those crews.
"You know I really don't know," Baker says. "They've been here. ... However, the fact they're not working here (at this particular island) may lead you to believe that they're not coming back."
While Baker is talking, on the other end of the plywood trail, two grown men are chasing a thumb-sized crab the way young boys chase lightning bugs. One is a state biologist, the other a photographer.
They search for the crab in the green part of the grasses. They are persistent in their search and quite thrilled when they finally capture a picture of the critter in the grass above a deep oil puddle.

The exoskeleton of a dead crab is a common site here. Living crabs are much harder to find.

"We have a live animal here," says the state biologist, Harry Blanchet. "A live animal in a situation that looks as desolate as this is just something that's noteworthy. This particular crab is not anything that has any economic value itself, but it's going to be food for a lot of marsh-dwelling birds."
Well, not if the guns are doing their jobs. The boatload of reporters sets out for another island. Unlike the previous island, this one is untouched by cleanup crews. It looks exactly the same.
A woman who works for the Audubon Society, Melanie Driscoll, pulls out her iPhone and it begins emitting loud chirps and clicks. "It's a bird call app," Driscoll explains. "I'm trying to see what birds may be here."
She points to the thick grasses inland, away from the shore. Searching for birds, Driscoll says many of the other barrier islands around Louisiana look similar.
She goes on to tell me strange things are happening on these islands. For example, she says, there were these very odd tar balls found a couple of weeks ago during a routine beach comb.
"We were seeing perfectly cylindrical holes all the way through the tar. And then we broke up the tar ball and found the worm, and we thought, 'Oh my gosh, what's that going to do to the Wilson's Plover?'
"There are only 6,000 Wilson's Plovers in the world. And then we recognized there is this direct threat where the worms are eating the oil and the birds are eating the worms. It's just sickening, and it made me very sad and very angry."
A small brown bird with a triangle beak hid in the tall inland grasses. Then a gun went off and it flew away.

A standing pool of oil on a Barataria Bay barrier island.

BP issued a statement saying it is committed to cleaning up these islands. They didn't elaborate on the specifics of any particular island.
There are some independent scientists who say things actually could be worse. More grass could have died. The grass roots keep the island dirt from eroding right back into Barataria Bay and sinking like Atlantis. These scientists say it could be 10 years before anybody has an idea of what damage has been done.
In the meantime, on the "oil islands" there is a new ecological reality: Small crabs are celebrated because they are alive, and worms eat oil.
On the way back in to port, the boat captain gets a call. They found an oiled bird. We turn back around to get pictures as it's transported. It is a large bird with a white head and brown body covered in black oil. The TV crew is interviewing Baker about the downed bird. The reporter asks him how common it is to find oiled birds.

"It's not unusual," Baker tells them with the same energy he had four hours prior. "It has de-escalated a lot lately. But we're still picking up dead birds now ... with traces and spots and light oil on them. But it's not rare by any stretch, but it's not common either."

Inside Japan's nuclear 'hot zone'

The scene of sheer devastation left by powerful tsunami waves looked sadly familiar: trucks slammed into houses, uprooted trees and downed power lines soaked in muddy water, while time stood still inside abandoned homes with unmade beds and scattered stuffed toys.
It was the eerie combination of sounds that stood out as I surveyed a deserted village on this chilly Wednesday morning: Rustling of dangling tin sheets in gusty wind, my own breathing behind a face mask and the constant beeping of my Geiger counter.
My colleagues and I had just entered the 20-kilometer exclusion zone, a radius Japanese authorities drew around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant and ordered some 78,000 residents evacuated in the early days of the crisis, now the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
The March 11 twin disasters of a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the ensuing tsunami in northeastern Japan have resulted in the plant belching radioactive particles into the surrounding environment.

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Driving for two hours on winding highways from the Fukushima train station, we had passed through rural Japan's alternating scenes of snow-covered mountains and green valleys in full bloom -- until we reached a checkpoint with a big "no-entry" sign and flashing red lights.
A friendly police officer, however, waved us through, after emphasizing the need to don face masks despite the relatively low reading on radiation.
Our shoes tightly wrapped in paper booties, we finally stepped onto the soil inside the so-called hot zone, some 18 kilometers north of the stricken nuclear plant. With parts of the ground still wet from days of rain, we avoided murky puddles to minimize the risk of cross-contamination.
The numbers on our Geiger counters fluctuated while the alarms -- with base level set low -- kept going off. Still, we faced no danger of being exposed to anything that would harm human health.
Cars zipped by occasionally as residents were allowed in to check on homes and businesses, but the only other sign of life appeared to be farm animals -- a few cows, horses and chickens -- left behind that have grown gaunt.
We noticed a lone young man in a blue jacket and jeans standing by a large pool of muddy water. Declining to reveal his name, the 34-year-old farmer told us, before the tsunami hit, the pool was a fertile rice field that his family had tilled for 150 years.
"I have lost my work and my home," he said, adding he had come back to retrieve some personal belongings. "And I am scared about my health."
He said he doesn't trust government officials who say risks from radiation are low for local residents. His father wants to return, but he has other plans for the future.
"I may have to face the prospect of leaving my father behind and live faraway from here to start a family," he said.
We wished the young farmer good luck and didn't linger long inside the exclusion zone as it started drizzling from the gloomy sky. As we exited the checkpoint, a news headline flashed on my phone: "Japan to enforce nuclear evacuation zone."
After removing face masks and paper booties, we drove past a line of shuttered storefronts and stopped at the centuries-old Senryu temple just outside the 20-kilometer perimeter.
Sweeping its immaculately kept ground -- complete with a sand garden and a fish pond -- was Shinkoh Ishikawa, a 58-year-old Buddhist monk who offers a rare sanctuary to a community ravaged by a succession of disasters.
The government had advised residents between the 20- and 30-kilometer zones to move away or remain indoors.
"Religion is not something distant, it stays next to you," Ishikawa explained his decision to stay after seeing hundreds of bodies of tsunami victims cremated at the local funeral home without a proper Buddhist ritual. "I hope people understand that death is not the end of one's life, but a revolving step where lives meet again."
Lighting a candle in the temple's main hall where eight boxes of cremated remains lay on a table, Ishikawa chanted prayers for the dead. But it's the tough and cheerful nature of the locals, he said, that has given him the best hope even as the nuclear fallout continues to unfold.

"We will rebuild," he said. "I'm confident about that because we had done the same after the second world war."

Japan bans entry into Fukushima evacuation zone

 People were urged to leave the area shortly after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami, but the order was not enforced by law.
Cooling systems were knocked out by the twin disasters and radiation has been leaking from the plant.
Meanwhile a strong earthquake hit eastern Japan. The magnitude 6.1 quake shook buildings in Tokyo.
The epicentre of Thursday's tremor was in Chiba prefecture, east of the capital.
Screening It is not clear how many people are still living in the evacuation zone, but reports said police had counted at least 60 families.
After the disaster the government also declared a wider 10km zone around the 20km evacuation area where people should either stay indoors or leave.
It later recommended that people also evacuate parts of that area as well. "The plant has not been stable," said chief government spokesman Yukio Edano.
"We have been asking residents not to enter the area as there is a huge risk to their safety," he said. "Unfortunately, there are still some people in the areas."
"Today... we have decided to designate the area an emergency area based on disaster law."
He said brief visits would be arranged, with one member of each family allowed back into each house for a two-hour period to pick up belongings, which would then be screened for contamination.
Those who entered illegally could face fines of up to JPY100,000 ($1,200, £730) or possible detention of up to 30 days.
Long wait Most of the evacuees are living in sports hall and gymnasiums as they wait to return home.
It could be a long wait, says the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo, as the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), has said it aims to bring the reactors to a cold shutdown within nine months.
The evacuation zone will be reassessed then, adds our correspondent.
On Thursday Prime Minister Naoto Kan visited evacuees in Fukushima prefecture. As he left, he was reportedly heckled by some.
"Are you leaving already?" one man reportedly asked, with another evacuee calling on Mr Kan to "exercise much more leadership".
Mr Kan apologised, adding: "The government as a whole is doing our best to implement the timetable without delay, or speed it up."

 

Robots measure radiation levels (footage courtesy of Tepco)

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are attempting to remove highly radioactive water from a reactor building to allow repair work to the cooling systems knocked out on 11 March.
Emergency workers have been unable to enter any of the damaged reactor buildings at the plant since then.
Robots sent inside the buildings found levels of radiation that would make it impossible for workers to remain there for long periods.
Speaking in Tokyo ahead of a meeting with Mr Kan, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard promised a secure and reliable supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Japan to help it meet shortages caused by the damaged plant.
"Japan will rebuild and Australia will help as a friend," she said. "We have great admiration for Japan's people and great confidence in Japan's future."
Nearly 14,000 people have been confirmed to have died in the earthquake and tsunami, and more than 13,000 people are missing.

Pakistan: Acquittals in Mukhtaran Mai gang rape case

Five of six men charged over a village council-sanctioned gang rape in Pakistan have been acquitted by the Supreme Court.

The court upheld the decision of a lower court, which included commuting the death penalty of the sixth man to life imprisonment.
The victim, Mukhataran Mai, hit world headlines after speaking out about her ordeal in 2002. She has since become an icon for women's rights in Pakistan.
She said she now feared for her life.
Mukhtaran Mai was her clear and unambiguous self when she spoke minutes after the verdict, the BBC's Shoaib Hasan in Pakistan said.
"The police never even recorded my own statements correctly," she said.
"I don't have any more faith in the courts. I have put my faith in God's judgement now. I don't know what the legal procedure is, but my faith [in the system] is gone.
"Yes, there is a threat to me and my family. There is a threat of death, and even of the same thing happening again. Anything can happen."
Ali Dayan Hasan of the US-based Human Rights Watch said the verdict sent a "very bad signal" across Pakistani society.
"It suggests women can be abused and even raped with impunity and those perpetrating such crimes can walk," he told the BBC.

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"Life and death are in the hands of Allah... I will not shut my school and other projects”

End Quote Mukhataran Mai.

• Profile: Mukhtaran Mai

The Supreme Court ordered the five men's immediate release - but it is not clear if they have been freed yet.

The court has yet to issue a detailed judgment. But the Lahore High Court - whose decision was upheld - had put the blame on a lack of evidence.
Our correspondent says many people say another review of the case is needed as it has had such a key impact on the rights of women in Pakistan

Nato air raid kills 7 civilians in Tripoli

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TRIPOLI: Seven civilians were killed and 18 wounded in a NATO air raid that targeted the southwestern Tripoli suburb of Khellat Al-Ferjan late Wednesday, official news agency reported.

An earlier report by the state television said the Khellat Al-Ferjan area where three explosions could be heard was the "target of barbarian crusaders' raids that left martyrs and wounded among the residents and destroyed their homes".

NATO warplanes also carried out air raids earlier Wednesday at Bir Al-Ghanam, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) southwest of the Libyan capital, that left four people dead among the civilian population, according to Jana.

France and Italy joined Britain on Wednesday in sending military advisers to insurgent-held eastern Libya, as Tripoli warned that a foreign troop deployment would only prolong the conflict.

Quoting a military official Jana said "seven civilians were killed and 18 wounded by the colonialist crusading aggressor" in the attack in the Khellat Al-Ferjan region.

The raids destroyed "a number of houses and terrorised women and children".

An international coalition launched air raids against the regime of strongman Moamer Kadhafi on March 19 to force him from power after a 42-year rule.

NATO took over command in the military intervention on March 31