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2013年2月27日水曜日

気になった一文集(English ver. No. 10)

When Landsat 5 fell silent on 6 January, scientists across the globe mourned its passing but gave thanks for its fortitude.

“Landsat really is a global resource.”

“I do not think it hyperbole to suggest that all seven billion of us will benefit from the Landsat continuity mission.”


Landsat 8 to the rescue
地球の環境変動などのモニタリングに活躍する人工衛星ランドサット・シリーズ

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If CO2 emissions continue as projected over the rest of this century, the resulting changes in the marine carbonate system would mean that many coral reef systems in the Pacific would no longer be able to sustain a sufficiently high rate of calcification to maintain the viability of these ecosystems as a whole, and these changes perhaps could seriously impact the thousands of marine species that depend on them for survival.
もし今世紀の残りにおいてCO2排出が予想通り継続すると、結果として生じる海洋炭酸系の変化は、太平洋の多くのサンゴ礁システムが生態系全体としての機能を維持するための高い石灰化速度を十分に維持できなくなることを意味する。そしてそうした変化はサンゴ礁に生活を依存する幾多の海洋生物にも重大な影響を与える可能性がある。

Decadal changes in the aragonite and calcite saturation state of the Pacific Ocean
Feely et al. (2012, GBC)
太平洋全体での近年の海洋酸性化

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The manufacture of portland cement accounts for roughly 5% of all human-generated greenhouse-gas emissions.
ポートランド・セメントの製造はすべての人為起源の温室効果ガス排出のおおよそ5%を担っている。

There is reason enough to get going. In the eight minutes or so that it took to read this article, cement-makers dumped another 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
急ぐに足る理由がある。この記事を読むために要する8分間の間に、セメント製造者は3万トンの二酸化炭素を大気へと捨てているのである。

Green cement: Concrete solutions」Nature News
セメント生産もCO2排出の原因の一つ

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Since the 1980s, the use of nitrogen fertilizers and the number of livestock have doubled, whereas coal consumption has increased more than 3-fold and the number of motor vehicles more than 20-fold.
1980年代以来、窒素肥料と家畜の数は2倍になった。その一方で石炭消費量は3倍以上になり、自動車の数は20倍以上になった。

Chinese farmers use an average of around 600 kilograms of nitrogen fertilizers per hectare per year, but that could be cut by up to two-thirds without affecting crop yields.
中国の農家は1年間に1ヘクタールの農地に平均600kgもの窒素肥料を用いているが、作物生産量に影響を与えずに肥料の3分の2は削減可能である。

Higher consumption of meat and diary products, especially in developed countries, has substantially increased global nitrogen pollution.
特に先進国における肉や乳製品の高い消費量が全球の窒素汚染を大きく増加させた。

Nitrogen pollution soars in China」Nature News
中国の急速な発展と農業における過剰な窒素系肥料の使用が環境汚染だけでなく気候変動の原因ともなっている。

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While the majority of the economic losses from weather-related disasters are in developed world, the overwhelming majority of deaths are in developing countries.
天気に関連した災害によって起きる経済的な損失の多くは先進国におけるものである一方、人々の死の大多数は途上国で起きる。
気候変動の結果起きる気象災害

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mountain species can experience lower rates of extinction during climatic changes because they need to move considerably shorter distances to track their optimal temperature range as compared with lowland species.

From its formation about 10.5 million years ago, the Amazon River opened up entirely new habitats both on land and at sea.

Geological and biological sciences must be integrated to understand the distribution and evolution of biodiversity across the globe, on different spatial, temporal and taxonomic scales.

We must now work out which geological processes are most relevant, and how geology and climate together influence the evolutionary process.

Biodiversity from mountain building」Nature Geoscience 6, 154 (2013)
山脈形成が生物多様性に大きく寄与している

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Much of the Earth system is arranged in layers. It is often at the interface between these layers that geoscience becomes interesting.

A human ‘fingerprint’ in the stratosphere is nothing new. The discovery of the ozone hole in 1985 firmly demonstrated that human-made substances that are released at the Earth’s surface can make their way up into the stratosphere, and wreak havoc with fundamental processes of the planet.

Already, rising carbon dioxide concentrations — ultimately attributable to emissions on the ground — have been detected in the thermosphere, two atmospheric layers above the stratosphere, at an altitude of about 100 km.

A change in atmospheric composition so high up may seem of little consequence, except perhaps for uppermost air density, and hence the lifespan of satellites. From today’s point of view, this may be true. But influences from above can take time to discover.

But we now know that the ozone hole and climate warming are also closely intertwined, as are the relevant atmospheric layers.

Up and down」Nature Geoscience 6, 153 (2013)
成層圏における化学反応・循環が地表面やはるか海洋深層循環にまで影響を与えている。

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Unfortunately, the real world is more complicated still: rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are expected to fertilize tropical ecosystems, therefore offsetting potential carbon losses, and other factors (such as aerosols and non-CO greenhouse gases) also play a role.

Tropical carbon constraint」Nature Geoscience 6, 163 (2013)
温暖化によって熱帯雨林からどれだけの炭素が放出されるかの予測は難しい

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Although plenty of open questions remain, clearly this work has important lessons for the science community. We need to do a much better job of considering the full range of biodiversity in natural populations of marine species than we have done in the past, with our too-narrow focus on a few model culture isolates. 

The unexpected diversity of plastic responses to ocean acidification within this single species suggests the possibility that, in many phytoplankton populations, there may be enough existing genetic variation to allow them to cope with the profound environmental challenges they will be faced with in the future.

Plastic plankton prosper」Nature Climate Change 3, 183-184 (2013)
ピコプランクトンは海洋酸性化にもかなり適応できるかもしれない。

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Heavier pollutant loads reaching Himalayan peaks and the Tibetan Plateau beyond “could increase glacier melt,  pollute  streams, and change monsoon patterns,” threatening  the  livelihoods  of 
millions of people, warns Arnico Panday
ヒマラヤの頂とチベット高原に到達する大量の汚染物質は”氷河の融解を増加させ、河川を汚染し、モンスーンのパターンを変える可能性があり”、数百万人もの人々の生活を脅かしている、とArnico Pandayは警告する。

South Asia is a black-carbon hotspot; more than half of the estimated 8 million tons of black carbon  released  into  the air each year across the globe originates in the Indo-Gangetic Plain mostly from the burning of wood, dung, and crop residues. 
南アジアはブラック・カーボンのホットスポットである。推定800万トンのブラックカーボンのうち、半分以上が木・糞・作物の残りを燃やすことが主たる原因でヒンドスタン平野から大気へと毎年放出され、全球にまき散らされている。

At higher altitudes, greenhouse gases and particulates play an outsized role in climate, Bonasoni says. “The air is very thin and clean,” he says, “so the pollutants have a much longer  lifetime and can accumulate.” That, in turn, could influence climate by decreasing solar radiation reaching the surface and by interfering with cloud formation and precipitation, Marinoni  says.

They tell us what happened, but cannot tell us why or what will happen  in  the future.
それらは私たちに過去に起きたことを教えてくれるが、未来に起きることは教えてくれない。

Pollutants Capture the High Ground in the Himalayas」Science 339, 1030-1031 (2013)
ヒマラヤ周辺の高地にも汚染物質が届いていることが分かり、科学者を驚かせている。