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January 13, 2010
· Prolonged freeze decimates Florida vegetable crops
· How plants react to temperature change – study
· Container shortage hampers Northwest export boom
· Broccoli triggers protein that protects human arteries
· Experts divided on implications of brutal cold spell
Prolonged freeze decimates Florida
(AP)
More than a week of frigid overnight temperatures has
devastated crops in south
And because the cold snap has lingered, growers have had to delay spring planting of some crops, which is expected to also affect availability and prices.
"This is the most devastating freeze we've had since
the Christmas of 1989," said J.M. Procacci, CEO
of Ag-Mart Produce, one of the state's top tomato growers. The result, he said,
has been the loss of most of the crops in the company's fields near Immokalee
in southwest
"We will go into the field and start salvaging in the next three or four weeks," Procacci said.
Terry McElroy, spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said it will be several days or more before anyone has a handle on the extent of the losses and what they'll mean to growers.
"I don't think there is an agricultural sector that wasn't affected, and I think there is going to be substantial damage in many of these," he said.
Most of Florida's 570,000 acres of citrus likely will have some freeze damage to fruit or leaves, but how much fruit is affected and whether the cold has damaged trees has yet to be determined, said Andrew Meadows, a spokesman for Florida Citrus Mutual, the state's largest citrus growers group.
The Indian River region, along the central part of
"The uniqueness of this is that it has been a week," Meadows said. "Nobody, none of our old-timers, none of our folks with institutional memory can remember a full week of freezing and subfreezing temperatures."
Not only produce was hurt.
How plants react to temperature change – study
(Wire Services) – Plants are incredibly temperature sensitive and can perceive changes of as little as one degree Celsius.
Now, a report in the January 8th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, shows how they not only 'feel' the temperature rise, but also coordinate an appropriate response -- activating hundreds of genes and deactivating others; it turns out it's all about the way that their DNA is packaged.
The findings may help to explain how plants will respond in the face of climate change and offer scientists new leads in the quest to create crop plants better able to withstand high temperature stress, the researchers say.
"We've uncovered a master regulator of the entire
temperature transcriptome," said Philip Wigge of John Innes Centre in the
Using the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana the researchers show that a key ingredient for plants' temperature sensing ability is a specialized histone protein, dubbed H2A.Z, that wraps DNA into a more tightly packed structure known as a nucleosome. Wigge likens nucleosomes to compact balls of string. As temperatures rise, H2A.Z histones allow DNA to progressively unwrap, leading nucleosomes to loosen up, they show.
"When it gets warmer, the DNA unwraps," he said, which allows some genes to switch on and others to switch off. They aren't yet sure exactly how all that happens, but Wigge suspects the altered nucleosome structure gives access to sites on the DNA where activators of some genes can bind along with repressors of other genes.
"In addition to H2A.Z containing nucleosomes having more tightly wrapped DNA, our results suggest that the degree of unwrapping may also be responsive to temperature," the researchers wrote. "This result suggests a direct mechanism by which temperature may influence gene expression, since it has been shown that RNA Pol II [the enzyme responsible for transcribing DNA into messenger RNA] does not actively invade nucleosomes, but waits for local unwrapping of DNA from nucleosomes before extending transcription. In this way, genes with a paused RNA Pol II will show increased transcription with greater temperature as local unwrapping is increased." The basic discovery could ultimately prove to have important implications for world food security, the researchers said.
As the number of people and affluence around the world continues to grow, "it is projected that world agriculture will have to increase yields by 70 to 100 percent in the next 100 years," Wigge said. "Under climate change it will be challenging simply to maintain present yields, let alone increase them." Crops such as wheat are particularly vulnerable to very hot and dry summers, he added, as evidenced by the fact that wheat reserves recently fell to their lowest level in 30 years.
He says the new understanding of plants' temperature sensitivity may prove to be critical for breeding more temperature-resistant crops. His team plans to explore this possibility by studying the role of these H2A.Z histones in a model plant that is more closely related to crops.
"We'd like to engineer a plant where we can control the histones in particular tissues such that it is selectively 'blind' to different temperatures," Wigge said. "Obviously you can't make a completely temperature-proof plant, but there is a lot of scope to develop crops that are more resilient to the high temperatures we are increasingly going to experience."
Container shortage hampers Northwest export boom
(OregonLive.com)
– Recession-weary Northwest farmers are landing big sales in
Yet the vessel was full. Longshoremen left the $400,000
worth of cargo on the dock, awaiting a ship about a week later. The delay
exposed Jansky's North Pacific Group Inc. to
postponed payments, rising shipping rates and the risk that buyers in
"We're getting bombed with rate increases, container shortages and space issues," said Jansky, who has traded and exported for 30 years. "It's one of the most difficult times I've seen in my whole trading career."
Giant ocean carriers have lost billions during the
recession. They are anchoring newly built big ships, subbing smaller ones in
The effect amounts to a sneaker wave emanating from a
recession that has technically ended. It hits business especially hard in
smaller, more expensive ports such as
"It's squelching the advantage we could have from the fact that the dollar's going down," making U.S. products cheaper abroad, said Patti Iverson-Summer, president of Global Trading Resources Inc., a Portland freight forwarder.
At the
The deployment of smaller ships by carriers Hanjin and Hapag-Lloyd, which run
these routes, is paradoxical just as dredgers complete a five-year project to
deepen the
The
But hard-pressed steamship lines exacerbate the crisis,
freight forwarders say. Even when a container winds up empty in a big hub such
as the
"They probably could have shipped a lot more hazelnuts
earlier than they did this year, but for the availability of containers,"
said Brenda Barnes, customer-services director for Allports,
a
Steamship companies have parked many of the larger ships
they had expected, during prosperous times, to deploy worldwide. The
"ghost fleet" exceeds 580 idle container vessels anchored off
Hanjin, the South Korean line
whose vessels call on
In February, Hanjin will begin
sending ships to
Rates soar as container demand grows and supply diminishes.
Six months ago Jansky paid $1000 to ship a 20-foot container to
Late last week, yet another rate-increase bulletin flashed on Jansky's computer screen. "Good afternoon," wrote one of his freight forwarders. "Effective immediately, Orient Overseas Container Line will revise the new rates applicable on agri for cargo-receipt date January 15th - March 2010."
"This came as a shock to us," the freight forwarder wrote, "and also to the carrier themselves." Jansky chuckled. "Yeah, right," he said. "The carrier is the one who made it."
Jansky had already booked
containers at the old rates, for loading in
Freight forwarders are bracing for $800 rate hikes per
40-foot container in spring, although Greg Borossay,
Borossay foresees better times.
Once the river channel is deepened, the Port aims to attract more steamship lines.
"
Broccoli triggers protein that protects arteries
(Natural News.com) – The health benefits of broccoli and related vegetables may come in part from a chemical known as sulforaphane, which appears to activate a specific heart-protecting protein, according to a study conducted by researchers from Imperial College London and published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
"We know that vegetables are clearly good for you, but
surprisingly the molecular mechanisms of why they are good for you have remained
unknown for many years," said researcher Paul Evans of the
Researchers carried out their tests directly on the chemical sulforaphane, which occurs naturally in vegetables in the family Brassicaceae, also known as cruciferous vegetables. In addition to broccoli, the cruciferous vegetables include cabbage, cauliflower, rapeseed (canola), radish, turnip, mustard greens and watercress.
Sulforaphane was found to increase the activity of the protein Nrf2, which is known to be inactive in areas of the cardiovascular system that are predisposed to plaque buildup. In these areas, which include bends and branches in blood vessels, blood flow is slowed or even disrupted entirely.
"What our study showed was that sulforaphane can protect those regions by switching on the Nrf2," Evans said.
"These fascinating findings provide a possible mechanism by which eating vegetables protects against heart disease," said Peter Weissberg of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the study. "As well as adding evidence to support the importance of eating 'five-a-day', the biochemistry revealed in this research could lead to more targeted dietary or medical approaches to prevent or lessen disease that leads to heart attacks and strokes."
Because the study was carried out using pure sulforaphane, the researchers plan to repeat it in a way that closer approximates consumption of actual broccoli.
"We now need to go and test this with broccoli smoothies, as it were, and compare that with the effect of purified sulforaphane," Evans said.
Experts divided on implications of brutal cold spell
(redOrbit.com) – This year’s fierce winter in much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the beginning of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last decades, say some of the world’s most renowned climate scientists. However, other experts say the cold spell does not contradict an overall trend of global warming.
A report on Sunday by the British newspaper The Mail cited forecasts by eminent climate scientists that are a direct challenge to some of the most deeply held beliefs among those who say the world is experiencing global warming – including claims that the North Pole will be ice-free by the summer of 2013.
The climate scientists questioning such predictions of
global warming based their predictions of a "mini ice-age" on
analysis of natural water temperature cycles in the Pacific and
Indeed, according to the U.S. National Snow and
The scientists’ predictions also challenge standard climate computer models, which contend that the Earth’s warming since the year 1900 is due solely to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and will continue until CO2 levels taper off.
But the climate scientists say their research shows instead that much of the warming during the last century was caused by ‘warm mode’ oceanic cycles, as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.
This challenge to the theory of man-made global warming carries weight, given they come from prominent climate scientists that cannot be defined simply as global warming deniers.
Both of
Professor Mojib Latif, who leads a research team at the Leibniz Institute
at
Professor Latif has developed new techniques for measuring ocean temperatures far beneath the surface, where cooling and warming cycles begin. In a paper published last year, he and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend, and even warned of it again at a conference last September.
"A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 percent," he said during an interview with The Mail on Sunday.
"They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer," he said.
"The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling."
But amid bitter cold temperatures that froze much of Europe,
Asia and
But Professor Latif’s work and that of other scientists refutes that view.
Although the current freezing temperatures are indeed a
result of the ‘Arctic oscillation’ – an anomaly that consists of a vast
high-pressure system over Greenland that drives polar winds far to the south –
meteorologists say it is the strongest for at least six decades. This has
caused the jetstream that typically runs over the
English Channel to run instead over the
Professor Latif says this, in turn, results in much longer-term shifts known as the Pacific and Atlantic ‘multi-decadal oscillations’ (MDOs).
These effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere,
according to Professor Anastasios Tsonis,
who leads the
Professor Tsonis has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronized fashion throughout the world, causing abrupt changes in the world’s climate from a ‘warm mode’ to a ‘cold mode’ and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles.
"They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather," he told The Mail yesterday.
"And their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries."
"We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures."
A strong warm mode occurred during the period from 1915 to 1940, reflected in rising temperatures, Professor Tsonis added. However, the world cooled from 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, despite rising levels of atmospheric CO2.
Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also
observed 90 years ago, The Mail reported, citing a 1922 Washington Post report
that described Greenland’s disappearing glaciers and Arctic seals that found
‘the water too hot’. Indeed, warm
In contrast, last week 56 percent of the surface of the
"That hasn’t happened for several decades."
"It just isn’t true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while," he said, adding that towards the end of the last cold mode the world’s media were consumed by fears of freezing.
The Mail cited a 1974 a Time magazine cover entitled "Another Ice Age".
"Man may be somewhat responsible – as a result of farming and fuel burning [which is] blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the Earth," the story read.
"Perhaps we will see talk of an ice age again by the early 2030s, just as the MDOs shift once more and temperatures begin to rise," Tsonis told The Mail.
However, he is not a climate change ‘denier’, and attributes a small amount of ‘background’ warming to human activity and greenhouse gases. But he questions the dire predictions others have put forth.
"I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount."
"These models cannot be trusted to predict the weather for a week, yet they are running them to give readings for 100 years."
Professor Tsonis said he was flooded with ‘hate emails’ after publishing his work in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
"People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I’m interested in is the truth," he said.
He also received complaints from climate change skeptics, may of whom said he had not gone far enough in debunking the theory of man-made global warming.
The work of Professors Latif and Tsonis raised a critical issue: How much of the late 20th Century warming was caused not by carbon dioxide, but by MDOs?
While Tsonis did not give a figure, Latif suggested it could be somewhere between 10 and 50 percent.
Meanwhile, other critics of man-made global warming attribute an even greater role played by MDOs.
William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at
These models, he said, distort the way the atmosphere works.
"Most of the rise in temperature from the Seventies to the Nineties was natural," Professor Gray told The Mail.
"Very little was down to CO2 – in my view, as little as five to ten percent," he said.
Nevertheless, many passionate advocates of man-made global warming dismiss the ideas that MDOs were having any impact on the world’s climate.
In March 2000, Dr. David Viner, at
the time a member of the
The
Dr. Viner, who now heads a British Council program that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, said last week he still stands by his prediction.
"We’ve had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn’t change anything. This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event."
Other scientists agree with Dr. Viner, saying the frigid weather that has engulfed enormous swathes of the northern hemisphere is unusual, but does not contradict an overall global trend of warming.
They, too, say the recent brutal snowstorms and freezing temperatures in North America, Northern Europe and parts of Asia are attributable to Arctic Oscillation, also known as Northern Hemisphere Annular Mode or the North Atlantic Oscillation.
"It's a relatively abnormal pattern but it's not
unprecedented at all, it's something that happens every 10 years or so,"
said Barry Gromett of
"It's like a great big boulder in the stream. It cuts
off
These bitter cold air streams are also deflected around the
"boulder" into North America, he said, and strengthen the grip of the
Siberian high-pressure system, which intensifies cold weather in parts of
Gromett noted that while some parts of the world are experiencing extreme low temperatures, others are having unusual highs as a result of warmer winds directed to different areas.
Indeed, parts of
"In fact, in the first week of January,
Michel Daloz with the French national weathercaster Meteo France said this year’s northern hemisphere's cold spell was relatively mild by historical comparison.
"The natural variability of the climate means that there are troughs of cold from time to time," he told the AFP.
"There were temperatures of between -25 and -15 C (-13
F to 5 F) across
Nor did it challenge data indicating persistent warming, he said.
"In fact, in early December, our main focus was on the clement weather."
Indeed, the Met Office said that 2009 was provisionally the
fifth warmest on record, with 2010 potentially being the warmest ever, due to
man-made greenhouse gas emissions and a return to El Nino -- a natural warming
phenomenon triggered by warmer waters in the western
El Nino reappeared in June 2009, and according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will likely persist through early 2010.
WMO expert Omar Baddour said the present Arctic Oscillation was likely most severe in 30 to 50 years.
"Generally it lasts a few weeks or a month, a month and
a half. It started in December, so we are nearing the end of the episode,"
Baddour said in
End Transmission