A panel of laser physicists from seven European countries has put forward proposals for a new 735 million euro facility to study an alternative approach to nuclear fusion than that which will be tackled by the international thermonuclear experimental reactor (ITER).

The provisionally titled HiPER facility would be based on ‘fast ignition’ laser fusion technology, in which two separate lasers are used to compress and heat a small capsule of deuterium and tritium until the nuclei are hot enough to undergo nuclear fusion, producing helium and neutrons. The energy of the neutrons is then used to generate electricity without the production of greenhouse gases or nuclear waste. The panel of scientists says that the facility could also be used to support experiments in other areas of physics.

Read the complete article: European physicists propose new research facility for inertial fusion energy (CORDIS News)

Future generations of Australians will pay the price for today’s short-sighted decision by the Government of Australia’s Victoria province to extend the life of Australia’s most polluting power station, WWF, the global conservation organisation, says.

Analysis by WWF released in July found Victoria’s out-dated Hazelwood power plant to be the most polluting station of its scale not only in Australia but in the industrialised world.

“Future governments and future generations of Victorians will regret today’s short-sighted decision,” said Anna Reynolds, Climate Change Manager.

“Climate change is the biggest threat to our way of life and a smart and progressive State like Victoria should be trying to fix the problem not adding to it.”

Hazelwood produces more carbon per unit electricity than the dirtiest plants in the United States, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan.

Today’s decision by the Victorian Government to provide Hazelwood with new coal and extend the life of the plant to 2031 will add more than 400 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

“With this decision, the Victorian Government is adding fuel to the fire of global warming,” Ms Reynolds said.

“Only when government’s start the transition away from polluting power stations will we have a chance to minimise the damage and chaos of climate change.”

WWF says the decision to extend Hazelwood shows that the Victorian Government has not sufficiently understood the need to urgently start the transition to clean energy.

“We recognise the need for government’s to make practical decisions but in a warming world those decisions must also at least attempt to start reducing emissions - this decision does not do that,” Ms Reynolds said.

WWF released a report in 2004 documenting the clean energy resources available in Victoria.

The study, entitled Towards Victoria’s Clean Energy Future (PDF 435.65 KB), showed how Victoria could access by 2010 the same amount of power as provided by Hazelwood from using a combination of energy conservation, renewable energy and gas-fired power stations.

WWF said today’s decision by the Victorian Government would be a costly one - both in terms of the carbon liability now hanging over the State, as well as the costs that will inevitably come from climate change.

Original press release: Australia’s worst power station dodges shut down (WWF)

After leaving the Space Test Centre in Germany on 29 August, CryoSat has safely arrived at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow, Russia. CryoSat is scheduled for launch on 8 October 2005 at 15h02 UTC.

The convoy was initially transported by truck from IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn to Munich airport, where it was stored in a hangar over night before being loaded onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for the three and a half hour flight to Talagi Airport, Archangel in Russia.

The spacecraft, however, did not travel alone – it was accompanied by a whole host of vital support equipment resulting in the shipment weighing in at around 60 tonnes and valuing some 80 million euros. The CryoSat satellite was packed in its own nitrogen-pressurized container, while nine other containers housed items such as racks of electrical equipment to operate and test the spacecraft, and heavy mechanical equipment to lift and turn the satellite allowing engineers to gain overall access to the structure in the Integration Facility at the launch site.

An advance team was already in Archangel, and after they had ensured that everything was in order to receive the cargo on arrival, they gave the go-ahead for the flight from Munich to take-off. After a safe landing in Archangel in the evening of 30 August, the convoy was transported by truck to the local train station where it was lifted onto railcars. For reasons of safety and security the special train made its journey through the night, arriving in Plesetsk on 1 September. So that the cargo wasn’t at risk of being damaged the train had to travel extremely slowly. It therefore took most of the night to cover the 200 km journey southward to CryoSat’s final destination.

CryoSat’s safe arrival in Plesetsk marks an important milestone in the project. The shipment was carried out with relative ease. Guy Ratier, CryoSat Project Manager commented, “Everything went according to plan. It is not the first time that ESA has used an Antonov, a fantastic plane indeed, to transport satellites to their launch site. Loading the plane was just a routine operation. The train transport between Archangel and Plesetsk was also uneventful, thanks to the wide experience gained by Eurockot and Khrunichev during previous campaigns. For sure, I consider this transportation step as a very good start towards a successful launch campaign.”

CryoSat is the first in the series of Earth Explorer missions to be launched. Earth Explorers are small, inexpensive missions designed to provide some fast answers to a specific aspect of the Earth’s environment. In this case, CryoSat is to determine rates of change in the thickness of marine and continental ice cover.

With speed and a limited budget in mind, the CryoSat project have found an elegant solution for launch, that being a Russian Rockot vehicle, which is actually a converted SS-19 ballistic missile launcher with an additional Breeze-KM upper stage. CryoSat will be the first ESA mission launched on Rockot followed by the Earth Explorers GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) in 2006 and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) in 2007.

Now that CryoSat has arrived, unloading and unpacking is underway and the launch campaign will begin. Members of the CryoSat team in Plesetsk will oversee the thorough final testing period before the satellite is eventually jointed to the fairing and prepared for launch on 8 October.

Original press release: CryoSat Arrives Safely at Launch Site in Russia (ESA)

Image source: ESA

After leaving the Space Test Centre in Germany on 29 August, CryoSat has safely arrived at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 800 km north of Moscow, Russia. CryoSat is scheduled for launch on 8 October 2005 at 15h02 UTC.

The convoy was initially transported by truck from IABG (Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH) in Ottobrunn to Munich airport, where it was stored in a hangar over night before being loaded onto an Antonov-124 cargo aircraft for the three and a half hour flight to Talagi Airport, Archangel in Russia.

The spacecraft, however, did not travel alone � it was accompanied by a whole host of vital support equipment resulting in the shipment weighing in at around 60 tonnes and valuing some 80 million euros. The CryoSat satellite was packed in its own nitrogen-pressurized container, while nine other containers housed items such as racks of electrical equipment to operate and test the spacecraft, and heavy mechanical equipment to lift and turn the satellite allowing engineers to gain overall access to the structure in the Integration Facility at the launch site.

An advance team was already in Archangel, and after they had ensured that everything was in order to receive the cargo on arrival, they gave the go-ahead for the flight from Munich to take-off. After a safe landing in Archangel in the evening of 30 August, the convoy was transported by truck to the local train station where it was lifted onto railcars. For reasons of safety and security the special train made its journey through the night, arriving in Plesetsk on 1 September. So that the cargo wasn’t at risk of being damaged the train had to travel extremely slowly. It therefore took most of the night to cover the 200 km journey southward to CryoSat’s final destination.

CryoSat’s safe arrival in Plesetsk marks an important milestone in the project. The shipment was carried out with relative ease. Guy Ratier, CryoSat Project Manager commented, “Everything went according to plan. It is not the first time that ESA has used an Antonov, a fantastic plane indeed, to transport satellites to their launch site. Loading the plane was just a routine operation. The train transport between Archangel and Plesetsk was also uneventful, thanks to the wide experience gained by Eurockot and Khrunichev during previous campaigns. For sure, I consider this transportation step as a very good start towards a successful launch campaign.”

CryoSat is the first in the series of Earth Explorer missions to be launched. Earth Explorers are small, inexpensive missions designed to provide some fast answers to a specific aspect of the Earth’s environment. In this case, CryoSat is to determine rates of change in the thickness of marine and continental ice cover.

With speed and a limited budget in mind, the CryoSat project have found an elegant solution for launch, that being a Russian Rockot vehicle, which is actually a converted SS-19 ballistic missile launcher with an additional Breeze-KM upper stage. CryoSat will be the first ESA mission launched on Rockot followed by the Earth Explorers GOCE (Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer) in 2006 and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity) in 2007.

Now that CryoSat has arrived, unloading and unpacking is underway and the launch campaign will begin. Members of the CryoSat team in Plesetsk will oversee the thorough final testing period before the satellite is eventually jointed to the fairing and prepared for launch on 8 October.

Original press release: CryoSat Arrives Safely at Launch Site in Russia (ESA)

China’s spectacular economic growth during the last decade has brought many benefits – and some challenges. Global atmospheric mapping of nitrogen dioxide pollution performed by ERS-2’s GOME and Envisat’s SCIAMACHY reveals the world’s largest amount of NO2 hanging above Beijing and northeast China, as reported in Nature this week.

As part of ESA’s Dragon Programme, European and Chinese researchers are using results returned from the Global Ozone Mapping Experiment (GOME) on ERS-2 and the Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography (SCIAMACHY) on Envisat to monitor and forecast Chinese air quality.

In this context, researchers at the University of Bremen, the Max-Planck Institute of Meteorology in Hamburg and France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have been studying the retrieval of nitrogen dioxide variability from space and modelling its global behaviour.

The team have published an article in the 1 September 2005 edition of the science journal Nature about the global changes in nitrogen dioxide observed in the last decade from space and highlighted the dramatic changes over China.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is associated with nitrogen oxide (NO2) in the atmosphere and the sum of the two is called NOX. This is released into the troposphere from power plants, heavy industry and road transport, along with biomass burning, lightning in the atmosphere and microbial activity in the soil. The emission of nitrogen oxides has increased about six-fold since pre-industrial times and in cities above a thousand times more NOX is present than in the pristine and remote marine boundary layer.

Exposure to nitrogen dioxide in large quantities is known to cause lung damage and respiratory problems, although little is known about the consequences of long term exposure to elevated atmospheric amounts. The presence of this gas is a significant driver of the production of low-level ozone, which, within the troposphere (the lowest part of the atmosphere, extending eight to 16 kilometres in height) is itself a harmful toxic pollutant, a major ingredient of photochemical smog.

“While nitrogen dioxide vertical column concentrations above central and eastern Europe and parts of the East Coast of the United States have been either static or exhibiting a small decrease, there is a clear and significant increase over China,” explains John Burrows of the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics, SCIAMACHY’s Principal Investigator.

“Before SCIAMACHY was flying we previously retrieved NO2 data from its precursor instrument, GOME on ESA’s ERS-2 mission. Although GOME had lower resolution, the article shows that China’s nitrogen dioxide retrievals from the two instruments overlap seamlessly.

“What the combined data show are that nitrogen dioxide levels have risen by around 50% since 1996, and this behaviour is continuing.”

Space-based sensors are the only way to carry out effective global and regional monitoring of the atmosphere. While GOME demonstrated the first satellite sensitivity to tropospheric nitrogen dioxide, SCIAMACHY possesses superior performance, with a spatial resolution of 60 x 30 kilometres compared to 320 x 40 km for its predecessor.

SCIAMACHY also observes the atmosphere in two different ways – downwards or nadir-sounding’ as well as ‘limb-sounding’ along the direction of flight – and with a larger spectral range than its predecessor.

The increase in nitrogen dioxide levels seen is an unfortunate side effect of economic success. China’s industrial boom has seen it become the world’s largest consumer of copper, aluminium and cement and the second bigger importer of oil. Car ownership within the country has been doubling every few years.

“China’s nitrogen dioxide concentration varies according to season,” Burrows adds. “There is more in the winter as a result of differing emission patterns and meteorology. For example more fuel is burned for heating and nitrogen dioxide persists longer in the atmosphere at that less sunny time of year – lasting around a day rather than hours, as in the summer.

“Meteorology also plays a role. There is a peak before Christmas: this is not because industrial activity, domestic heating or transportation is suddenly reduced after the holiday season but because there is an eastward outflow of air that was previously revolving around Asia. This is the same type of phenomenon that carries dust from the Gobi Desert across to the West Coast of the US.”

China is reliant on coal to meet 75% of its national energy needs, and that means high levels of another atmospheric pollutant called sulphur dioxide (SO2) also detectable by SCIAMACHY. Large SO2 sources over China that overlap with nitrogen dioxide plumes are linked to power plants. Further to the west there is also sulphur dioxide produced from smouldering underground coal seam fires.

Burrows is the scientist who – supported by an international team – proposed both GOME and SCIAMACHY to national space agencies and ESA in the first place. He explained that the two instruments were originally chosen to fly because of their ability to measure stratospheric ozone, but were also selected in order to investigate the amount of useful information that could be retrieved from the troposphere.

“The instruments are now being used to monitor a significant number of key tropospheric trace gases including formaldehyde, methane, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide and dioxide,” Burrows remembers. “Back when we were starting out, many people thought it would be impossible to get any useful results out of the troposphere. There are many important issues to deal with, such as cloud cover and the highly variable reflectivity of the surface, as well as having the absorption or emission of stratospheric and upper atmospheric species situated between the troposphere and the instrument.

“First with GOME and now much better with SCIAMACHY we are demonstrating it can be done. The success so far is an important step on the way to establishing an operational global observing system for the Earth’s atmosphere. This is something we need as we enter the geological age of the Anthropocene, where the activities of mankind and its interactions with natural phenomena are the driving force in global climate change.

“Next we are hoping for follow-up satellite missions, in particular from geostationary orbit to monitor atmospheric pollution, which has a strong diurnal variation and thereby determine objectively the changing atmospheric composition.”

SCIAMACHY: surveying the world in six days

SCIAMACHY is a spectrometer, and it works by measuring sunlight – either transmitted, reflected or scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere or surface in the ultraviolet, visible and near infrared regions. Mathematical inversion of these data yields the amounts and distribution of trace gases, ozone and related chemicals, clouds and dust particles throughout the atmosphere. With a 960-km swath and alternate limb and nadir observations, SCIAMACHY covers the entire world every six days at the equator and more often at high latitudes.

This versatile instrument represents a national contribution to ESA’s Envisat mission. It was funded by the German government through the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Dutch government through the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes (NIVR) and also the Belgian government through the Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB).

SCIAMACHY is part of a family of atmospheric sounders that also includes GOME on ERS-2 and also the forthcoming GOME-2 instrument due to launch next year aboard ESA’s and EUMETSAT’s first MetOp spacecraft.

About Dragon

The Dragon Programme is a joint undertaking between ESA, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China and the National Remote Sensing Centre of China (NRSCC). Its purpose is to encourage increased exploitation of ESA space resources within China as well as stimulate increased scientific co-operation in the field of Earth Observation science and applications between China and Europe.

Original press release: Breath of the dragon: ERS-2 and Envisat Reveal Impact of Economic Growth on China’s Air Quality (ESA)

As the European Commission is preparing a new EU Directive on flood risk management, WWF asks that lessons be learnt from the repeated catastrophic flood events across Europe.

While only 20 per cent of Europe’s natural floodplains are estimated to be still functional and thus able to store water, the global conservation organization says that the only sustainable solution to reduce the risk of further devastating floods is to work with nature, rather than against it.

Parts of Europe were flooded once more this summer and WWF deeply regrets the suffering this has caused, in particular in the Alps and the lower Danube region. Floods are a natural phenomenon that cannot be avoided, but their frequency and intensity is growing due to global warming and climate change. Still, the damage they inflict can be limited, but traditional old-fashioned, engineering solutions for flood protection have proven not to work without additional measures.

“The latest events clearly demonstrate that we cannot control floods of such magnitude with technical means alone,” said Tatjana Brombach, ecoregional leader with WWF’s European Alpine Programme.

“Building in areas at flood risk just increases the danger of future flooding as even recent flood defence engineering works, such as the Pflach dam in the Austrian Alps that broke this summer, have been shown to be alarmingly vulnerable. The only long-term solution is to reconsider the value of nature to help dealing with torrential rains.”

Land and water have a “natural” role to play in flood risk management via, for example, water retention by floodplains and wetlands. These can act as sponges, absorbing and retaining floodwaters to slowly release them afterwards. However, having been disconnected from their rivers, drained and in many cases used intensively by humans, floodplains and wetlands do not play this role anymore. Broad riverbeds can absorb high water flows, but rivers are now narrower because they have been turned into canals. Consequently, flooding impacts are exacerbated, as floodwaters have nowhere to go and rise above the level of artificial riverbanks and/or break through dykes, causing enormous damage.

For years now, WWF has called on the EU and its Member States to change their strategy for flood risk management and work with nature. The EU already has laws that could promote natural flood risk reduction, in particular the 2000 Water Framework Directive. Its implementation requires the joint management of all land and waters making up a river basin, including in cross-border regions, to improve upon its ecological condition.

This would demand improved land-use and forest management, providing more space for riverbeds and making upland wetlands and lowland floodplains functional again, thus reducing flooding.

The European Commission is now developing a Directive dealing specifically with the risks of flooding.

“But natural flood control will not be promoted unless new flood risk reduction measures are part of the Water Framework Directive river basin management plans,” said WWF European Water Policy Officer Eva Royo Gelabert.

“Unfortunately, preparatory documents indicate that this level of integration between the two Directives is not foreseen, there is not even compatibility in their implementation timetables.”

WWF is asking the Commission to reconsider this in order to ensure legal consistency between these Directives, avoid doubling administrative efforts, save money, and then effectively protect people.

Furthermore, WWF calls for EU financial support to the affected regions through, for example, the EU Solidarity and Rural Development Funds to also ensure long-term solutions to resolve the inadequate land-use and water management policies that have contributed to these terrible flood events.

Original press release: Work With Nature, Not Against it to Reduce Risk of Floods in Europe (WWF)

Climate change will wreak havoc on the United Kingdom’s marine environment, deepening the decline of cod, threatening the future survival of some sea bird colonies, and causing wide-scale coastal disruption, a new WWF report has found.

The report — Climate change: Plunging our Seas into Deeper Crisis — notes that an increase in sea surface temperature will be a major factor in further disrupting the breeding, feeding, and growing cycles of fish, and in turn sea birds. This will be spurred by impacts on plankton, the major food source of many fish and the foundation of the entire marine environment.

The report also found that major storm surges — temporary increases in sea level caused by atmospheric pressures and strong winds — will have destructive impacts on coastal areas as they become more frequent. Storm surges could cause flooding events in the east of England and in the London area. Sea level rise is also likely to reduce coastal habitats of sea birds through erosion and damage to nesting sites. Sandeels, a major food source for birds and fish, which breed in shallow sand banks, may also be affected.

“Our seas are already under severe pressure from a number of activities such as fishing, oil and gas exploration, and coastal development,” said Andrew Lee, Director of Campaigns at WWF-UK.

“This report shows that climate change has the power to deepen this crisis and to completely turn our marine world upside down, disrupting and changing the entire ecosystem.”

The North Sea, where plankton is reported to have already changed dramatically, is likely to be hit the hardest by climate change. This will have direct impacts on cod stocks, in addition to the existing pressures from fisheries, according to the report.

“This heightens the urgency for government action to both significantly reduce the UK’s CO2 emissions and to bring forward a new Marine Bill, which will protect our marine wildlife and reform the way our seas are planned and managed to ensure they are economically productive and sustainable for future generations,” Lee added.

The group of scientists who contributed to the report also highlighted ocean acidification as a major concern. The acidity (pH) of the sea has already reduced from 8.3 to 8.2 and is predicted to decline to 7.6 by the end of the century. This would be beyond any level of acidity experienced by current marine wildlife and is likely to impact corals, sea urchins and shell fish as well as breeding success of fish, such as cod.

Harbour porpoises and fin whales are most likely to be affected by climate change through the combined impacts of pollution and reduced food supply. This will threaten their breeding success, and in the case of harbour porpoises, this is likely to accelerate their decline.

“Climate change will cause dramatic disruption to our seas over the coming years,” said Emily Lewis-Brown, WWF-UK’s Marine Research Officer.

“Future planning of our marine environment must take into account the effects of climate change to help our seas adapt to the challenges that will come.”

Original press release: Climate Change to Cause Chaos in UK Seas (WWF)