Peruvin Fog Catching

Fog Catchers Bring Water to Parched Villages
Helen Fields
for National Geographic magazine
July 9, 2009
When people from rural Peru move to Lima, the capital, they're looking for a better life. But things can be tough.
It's hard to find a job in the city. The jobs they can get—bus driver, street vendor, construction worker—don't pay well.
And the cheapest area to live is high on steep hills on the edge of the city, where landslides are common and water is scarce.
German conservationists and biologists Kai Tiedemann and Anne Lummerich, who run Alimón, a small nonprofit that supports Latin American development, are trying to help with the last of those problems. Since 2006 they've been working with new settlements on the outskirts of Lima to set up special nets that scoop water directly from the air.
Rain rarely falls on these dry hills. The annual precipitation in Lima is about half an inch (1.5 centimeters), and the city gets its water from far-off Andean lakes.
But every winter, from June to November, dense fog sweeps in from the Pacific Ocean.
With a few thousand dollars and some volunteer labor, a village can set up fog-collecting nets that gather hundreds of gallons of water a day—without a single drop of rain falling.
Ancient Technique, Modern Salvation?
As far back as 2,000 years ago, desert villages and other rain-starved communities around the world may have started harvesting fog that collected as water and dripped from trees, said Robert Schemenauer, executive director of FogQuest, a Canadian nonprofit organization that helps communities set up simple collection devices.
Serious work on collecting fog started about a hundred years ago. Since then, fog catchers have been used successfully—though on a small scale—all over the world.
Fog collection will never be practical on a large scale. "You aren't going to put up thousands of fog collectors and try to provide water to Los Angeles," Schemenauer said.
But in small communities that can't get water from wells, rain, or a river, the technique can be a lifesaver, freeing poor people from exorbitant water prices.
That's exactly what's starting to happen in Peru.
Lummerich and Tiedemann, the German conservationists, based their fog collectors on a design Schemenauer developed with Chilean researchers for villages in Chile in the 1980s.
Peru's capital was a natural place to try the technique: "Every summer the [Peruvian] newspapers are full of warnings that Lima will be without water someday," explained Lummerich.
Glaciers are shrinking in the Andes, Lima's source for water, and climate models predict that the trend will continue. An engineer with the Lima water company told Lummerich and Tiedemann he thinks the city could start experiencing serious water shortages within a decade.
In the meantime, Lummerich said, "we just can't waste this water [from fog]. It's a huge waste."
Harvesting Fog in Bellavista
Lummerich and Tiedemann searched for the right place to carry out their project, which received support from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration and the Bayer AG company. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)
The researchers found that place on the steep slopes around Lima.
The newcomers who settle there build plywood shacks on unclaimed land. If the residents stay long enough, they can obtain the title to the land from the government.
One of the requirements for getting the title is to plant trees upslope. Earthquakes are common around Lima, and trees help stabilize the land and guard against landslides.
But trees have needs. "It's not really a problem for them to plant a tree," Tiedemann said. "The problem is the irrigation." And that's what he and Lummerich aimed to help with.
The village of Bellavista (population about 200), was founded seven years ago in the hills 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of downtown Lima. Tiedemann and Lummerich were won over by the community leader, Noe Neira Tocto, who made it clear that his village was motivated to do the hard work needed to make the project a success.
Since its founding, Bellavista has attracted people from all over the country.
Most come from farms, so they have the skills to grow their own food, but the fertile soil in Bellavista has gone to waste, since there's not enough water for irrigation.
Villagers have to buy water for everything—cooking, cleaning, drinking—from trucks that drive up the steep hill every week. The residents pay ten times as much as people farther downhill, who are connected to the municipal supply. For a family of four, water can come to the equivalent of U.S. $7 to $10 a week—a huge sum in a village where family income might average about $40 a week.
When the Bellavista fog-catching project began in 2006, people from the village did all the heavy lifting and digging. They had to lug 94-pound (43-kilogram) bags of sand about 800 feet (250 meters) up the steep hill—about 15 minutes a trip—to stabilize the nets and build pools to gather water collected by the fog catchers.
Even as they worked, though, the villagers thought the fog-catching idea sounded a little crazy. "They listened to us politely, but they didn't really believe that it worked," Lummerich said.
When water started appearing, it seemed too good to be true. "At the beginning," Lummerich said, "the people from the village thought Kai carried the water uphill during the night to fill the tanks, because they couldn't believe there was so much water."
"Like Opening a Tap"
Fog collection works not by condensation, which is what happens when water vapor hits a cold surface and transforms into a liquid. In fact, the water in fog is already in liquid form—it's just in very, very small drops.
The collectors Lummerich and Tiedemann started with look like giant volleyball nets, 13 feet (4 meters) tall and 26 feet (8 meters) wide. The nets, perpendicular to the prevailing wind, stretch between pairs of wooden poles. The top of each net is 18 feet (5.5 meters) above the ground.
As wind blows the heavy fog through, tiny droplets stick to the coarse woven mesh, made of a kind of plastic netting that is designed to shade young fruit trees. The netting is easy to find—any hardware store in Peru carries it—and relatively inexpensive.
As more and more tiny droplets stick to the net, they clump together and form drops, and eventually gravity pulls the drops down into a gutter. From there, the water flows through tubes into two brick tanks and a pool—all built by villagers—which together hold more than 25,000 gallons (94,635 liters) of water.
On a good day, a single net in Bellavista can collect an impressive amount of water—more than 150 gallons (568 liters).
"It's amazing when you're up there and it's foggy and the wind comes in. Then you hear all the water start running into the reservoir," Lummerich said. "It's like opening a tap."
She and Tiedemann also designed another fog collector, with multiple layers of netting to better catch a shifting wind, which they erected in 2007. The new design has collected more than 600 gallons (2,271 liters) in a day without taking up any more space than the original nets.
Bringing the Natural Water Cycle Back
Two other villages near Bellavista now have the fog collectors as well, and Lummerich and Tiedemann hope to bring more someday to other dry communities in Peru.
In the meantime, the people of Bellavista are using water from their seven fog catchers to plant trees higher up on the hill, in hopes of eventually getting the title to the land they live on.
They are growing tara trees, which bear a valuable fruit whose tannins are used for treating furniture leather. The money they'll earn from selling the fruit will help pay for maintaining the fog-catching installations.
Eventually the trees should be able to collect their own water, as the leaves act like fog collectors themselves, accumulating the water, which should drip down and replenish groundwater.
Even after the trees are taken care of, there's enough excess water now to feed gardens below the fog collectors.
Tiedemann's dream is to bring the natural water cycle back to the hills around Lima.
Some of the city's oldest residents remember when the hills were covered in trees. Those trees would have taken their moisture from the air, too, and the excess would have added to groundwater.
Tiedemann thinks it could happen again. For him and Bellavista's villagers, the 700 young tara trees now growing on the hillside mark the start of a dream coming true.

Summer Hurricane Reading

I have recommended numerous popular books on hurricanes over the year, and usually read one every hurricane season. It is amazing how intertwined American history is with hurricanes, if you think of the Great Galveston storm, it's aftermath on the newly founded weather service, and other events like Andrew and Katrina. I just finished a book called the "Island and a Storm". This has been my favorite since "Isaac's Storm", and the fatastic "The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Phantom". I recommend this amazing story of the complete destruction of Isle Derniere (Last Island), which was a rapidly growing sea-side vacation spot in antebellum Louisiana. Happy reading, especially since there will be no hurriances this year! - HLG

NASA 2008 Hurricane Video

You must have Real Audio/Player to view this (why don't they offer other formats? Call your congressman!), but it is very cool composite of the entire 2008 Hurricane Season. - HLG

NASA Debuts the Entire 2008 Hurricane Season in New On-Line Video
June 29, 2009

Imagine watching all of the tropical depressions, storms and hurricanes of 2008 as they formed in the Atlantic Ocean Basin and either faded at sea or made landfall. Thanks to NASA technology and satellite data coupled with data from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operated satellite, you can see the tracks of storms from Arthur to Paloma from birth to death.

There were 17 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Hurricane Season, which includes the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Sixteen of the storms were strong enough to be named, and only one stayed a tropical depression.

The movie displays the infrared cloud imagery from the geosynchronous weather satellites, principally NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-12. The original cloud imagery was remapped and enhanced to display cloudtop texture. The GOES cloud images were overlaid on a true-color background map previously created from the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite.

The movie, which can be found on NASA's Hurricane Web page (www.nasa.gov/hurricane), or on the NASA GOES web page, is television production-quality. "These are large, high-resolution, colorful animations, made for use or editing by professional documentary producers or for anyone interested in hurricanes," said Dr. Dennis Chesters, GOES Project Scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheres at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The movie depicts the entire 2008 hurricane season based on six months of GOES imagery at 30 minute intervals from May 1 to November 18, 2008. Each "frame" has a date and time stamp with the times in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). There are 2 versions of the movie available: a 720p and 1080p HD-TV digital animation.

There's also a "highlights" movie that features the middle of the hurricane season from July 2 to September 14. The shortened "Highlights" movie from Bertha to Ike, July 2-Sept. 14 can be found here -- > Highlights

"Most versions are overlaid with hurricane names and storm tracks, with the tracks represented by dots whose size and color represent NOAA's hurricane Category 1 to 5 (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale)," Dr. Chesters said. "Some movies have captions summarizing each storm in a sidebar. Movies without named tracks are useful for forecasters and researchers who want to see the regional meteorology without visual distractions."

All of the movies in various formats labeled or unlabeled, large or small, are also on-line and downloadable at the GOES page for "Hurricane Alley 2008"
> Hurricane Alley

The NASA GOES Project office plans to make a movie of the 2009 season.

Related Links:

> Entire 2008 Hurricane Season, High Resolution
> Entire 2008 Hurricane Season, Low Resolution


http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=39114

5 Things About Hurricanes

Very interesting post from NASA-JPL's "Earth Observatory" - HLG

Five Things About Hurricanes
July 1, 2009
JPL scientist Bjorn Lambrigtsen goes on hurricane watch every June. He is part of a large effort to track hurricanes and understand what powers them. Lambrigtsen specializes in the field of microwave instruments, which fly aboard research planes and spacecraft, penetrating through thick clouds to see the heart of a hurricane. While scientists are adept at predicting where these powerful storms will hit land, there are crucial aspects they still need to wrench from these potentially killer storms.

Here are thoughts and factoids from Lambrigtsen in the field of hurricane research.

1. Pinpointing the moment of birth
Most Atlantic hurricanes start as a collection of thunderstorms off the coast of Africa. These storm clusters move across the Atlantic, ending up in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico or Central America. While only one in 10 of these clusters evolve into hurricanes, scientists do not yet know what triggers this powerful transformation. Pinpointing a hurricane's origin will be a major goal of a joint field campaign in 2010 between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

2. Predicting intensity
Another focus of next year's research campaign will be learning how to better predict a storm's intensity. It is difficult for emergency personnel and the public to gauge storm preparations when they don't know if the storm will be mild or one with tremendous force. NASA's uncrewed Global Hawk will be added to the 2010 research armada. This drone airplane, which can fly for 30 straight hours, will provide an unprecedented long-duration view of hurricanes in action, giving a window into what fuels storm intensity.

3. Deadly force raining down
Think about a hurricane. You imagine high, gusting winds and pounding waves. However, one of the deadliest hurricanes in recent history was one that parked itself over Central America in October 1998 and dumped torrential rain. Even with diminished winds, rain from Hurricane Mitch reached a rate of more than 4 inches per hour. This caused catastrophic floods and landslides throughout the region.

4. Replenishing "spring"
Even though hurricanes can wreak havoc, they also carry out the important task of replenishing the freshwater supply along the Florida and southeastern U.S. coast and Gulf of Mexico. The freshwater deposited is good for the fish and the ecological environment.

One size doesn't fit all
Hurricanes come in a huge a variety of sizes. Massive ones can cover the entire Gulf of Mexico (about 1,000 miles across), while others are just as deadly at only 100 miles across. This is a mystery scientists are still trying to unravel.

NASA and NOAA conduct joint field campaigns to study hurricanes. The agencies use research planes to fly through and above hurricanes, and scientists collect data from NASA spacecraft that fly overhead. NOAA, along with its National Hurricane Center, is the U.S. government agency tasked with hurricane forecasting.

Autumn in DC

Truly unreal weather today. Due points in 40s! We are in a California summer pattern! The sky is cerulean/cobalt blue. (Can't decide) - HLG

1 PM (17) Jul 08 77 (25) 48 (9) 29.97 (1014) Calm
Noon (16) Jul 08 75 (24) 48 (9) 29.97 (1014) Calm
11 AM (15) Jul 08 75 (24) 50 (10) 29.97 (1014) NNE 5
10 AM (14) Jul 08 73 (23) 50 (10) 29.95 (1014) NE 6

Open Source and Oceanography

Useful website on open-source web resources and oceanography. Happens to be an Aggie thing, all the better! - HLG

http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/soap.html

TRMM and Asian Rains

Nice TRMM map showing high rainfall anomoliies in southern China, Vietnam, etc.

- HLG