Legion of Angels News Archive

The torrential rains of a single typhoon can bury tons of carbon in the ocean, two new studies suggest.

It’s Nature’s way of healing itself.

The findings help determine how much carbon that big storms have historically taken from the atmosphere and buried for thousands of years beneath the sea. And more carbon could be buried by these storms if global warming increases their intensity and frequency, as some scientists have predicted. Scientists have been looking at ways to store carbon to lower the levels of carbon dioxide building up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists have long suspected that hurricanes and typhoons (along with cyclones and tropical depressions, these are all versions of storm systems called tropical cyclones) can cleanse the environment of a lot of carbon, because their rains sweep soil and plant material into rivers and then out to sea. This effect is particularly significant for mountainous islands prone to frequent hits from tropical cyclones.

Two different groups of researchers took samples of the sediment in rushing river waters on Taiwan during Typhoon Mindulle, which hit the island in July 2004. One group, whose findings are detailed in the Oct. 19 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, took sediment samples from the LiWu River, while the other group, whose work is detailed in the June 2008 issue of the journal Geology, sampled the Chosui River.

The Nature Geoscience study, funded by The Cambridge Trusts and the UK National Environmental Research Council, found that 80 to 90 percent of the organic carbon (in the form of soil and plants) eroded by the storms around the LiWu were transported along the river to the ocean.

By dangling one-liter plastic bottles over the Chosui River during the typhoon, the researchers of the Geology study found that 61 million tons of sediment washed out to sea from the river. The amount of carbon contained in that sediment is about 95 percent as much as the river transports during normal rains over the entire year. That works out to more than 400 tons of carbon washing away during the storm for each square mile of the watershed, the researchers reported. Their work was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The carbon in the soil and plants came from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When the storm washes the sediment out to sea, it can sink down to the deep ocean, where it will eventually compact and form rocks that can store that carbon for millions of years.

And if typhoons and hurricanes do become more intense or frequent, as some models have indicated, the burial of carbon in the ocean from storm runoff could counteract some part of the warming, by locking the carbon away in the deep ocean, the researchers of the Nature Geoscience study said.

But typhoon runoff is not a cure-all for the carbon dioxide that’s been building up in the Earth’s atmosphere. Not enough carbon is washed down either as plant material and soil or by chemical weathering of rocks (where carbon dioxide and water disintegrate rock) to get rid of all the extra carbon dioxide that has built up in the atmosphere.

“You’d have to weather [and erode] all the volcanic rocks in the world to reduce the CO2 back to pre-industrial times,” said Anne Carey of Ohio State University and a member of the Geology study team.

Understanding how typhoon runoff fits into the Earth’s carbon cycle could help sharpen climate change models, though.

Source — MSNBC

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Raging floods and rivers swollen by Typhoon Sinlaku killed at least two people and left a further seven missing and presumed dead in central Taiwan, authorities said Monday as the storm barreled toward Japan.

Soldiers and rescuers in Taichung County searched for five people who remained missing after a section of a 2,000-foot-long bridge over the Tachia River collapsed on Sunday night.

CTI Cable News reported rescue workers as saying three cars plunged into the furious river after the water rose too high and washed part of the bridge away. Police recovered one body, identified as a 32-year-old engineer, the report said.

Pillars supporting the bridge gave way under pressure from the raging waters, the Apple Daily quoted highway official Chen Chin-yuan as saying.

The accident occurred just as highway maintenance workers were about to close the bridge to traffic, Transport Minister Mao Chih-kuo said Monday as he inspected the bridge.

Elsewhere in central Taiwan, a driver was killed when his car skidded in heavy rain and crashed into a road railing, and a utility company electrician and a farmer were washed away by rampaging flood waters, the Disaster Relief Center said.

Sinlaku slammed into the northeast coast of Taiwan on Sunday, bringing torrential rain and strong winds to the North Asian island. Mountainous regions recorded more than 40 inches of rain, and several large rivers overflowed their banks, forcing authorities to evacuate hundreds of people, the disaster center said.

Sinlaku was centered at sea 86 miles north of Keelung on the northern tip of Taiwan, moving northeast at a speed of 4 miles per hour as of 8.00 am local time (2000 EST Sunday), the Central Weather Bureau reported.

The bureau said Sinlaku would likely make landfall in southern Japan by Wednesday, and that it could be downgraded from typhoon status.

Source — Yahoo!

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – Soldiers and Buddhist volunteers helped Taiwanese villagers clean up their homes Tuesday after a powerful typhoon churned through, killing at least two people and leaving a trail of flooded buildings, damaged orchards and caved-in roads.

Typhoon Fung Wong hit Taiwan just before dawn Monday, packing winds of 167kph (105mph). It left the island, heading for the Chinese mainland, about nine hours later.

In the neighboring Philippines at least four people were killed and five were missing, including a 3-year-old girl and her mother, after Fung Wong skirted past the northern provinces on its way to Taiwan, officials said Tuesday. About 10,000 Filipinos were affected by the typhoon.

In Taiwan, soldiers used shovels to remove ankle-deep mud from homes in villages in eastern Hualien county, where the typhoon made landfall.

In a briefing to President Ma Ying-jeou, Hualien County Chief Hsieh Shen-shan said agricultural damage to the county amounted to more than 160 million New Taiwan dollars ($5.3 million).

Elsewhere in the county, he said, workers were repairing caved-in mountain roads that had blocked traffic in both directions.

The storm dumped more than 82cm (33 inches) of rain in Hualien, Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau said.

Television stations reported that authorities were closely monitoring several bridges where supports sustained damage from Fung Wong and tropical storm Kalmaegi, which killed 19 people when it struck Taiwan earlier this month.

Typhoons frequently hit Taiwan between July and September, often triggering flash floods and landslides in overly developed mountainous regions.

The typhoon had weakened into a tropical storm when it hit the Chinese mainland.

Source — CNN

(CNN) – A weakened Typhoon Fung-Wong neared the Taiwan Strait Monday afternoon after whipping the island with powerful winds and heavy rain, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center reported.

Torrential rains inundated parts of Taiwan, dropping up to 36 inches (900 mm) in some areas, but the island’s rugged landscape had taken much of the storm’s punch. Sustained winds from Fung-Wong eased to 80 mph after roaring in as a Category 2 at 95 mph.

The typhoon is expected to make a second landfall in southeastern China early Tuesday, coming ashore in China’s Fujian Province, south of the city of Fuzhou, as a Category 1 storm with winds of at least 75 mph.

Fujian authorities evacuated about 275,000 people on Sunday as the storm approached, Xinhua reported. More than 50,000 fishing boats returned to harbor.

Government offices and schools in Taiwan closed ahead of the storm’s landfall early Monday, authorities said, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. Local stock and foreign exchange markets also closed for the day.

Officials suspended ferry service linking Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, according to China’s Xinhua news service.

Fung-Wong delivered a glancing, but powerful blow to the northern Philippines as it passed on Sunday.

Two people were reported missing by authorities, the Philippines News Agency reported Monday. Officials said about 2,000 families were affected by storm-related flooding.

Source — CNN