Another Bucket List Painting

 Milford Sound / Piopiotahi
watercolour and crayon

©2024 Charlene Brown

This sound, on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand, is one of roughly 90 places to have been given a dual name as part a 1998 Treaty of Waitangi settlement recognizing the significance of the fiord to both Māori and non-indigenous (primarily European-descended) New Zealanders. This name consists of both the Māori and European names used together as a single name, instead of as interchangeable alternate names.

This view includes some of the same mountains (from almost the exact opposite direction) that were in the Streetview I painted  when the Virtual Paintout was in New Zealand 

North of Glenorchy, Otago
Watercolour, crayon and CP
©2011 Charlene Brown

South Pacific possibilities for the Bucket List chapter of my Paint Every Mountain book

Mount Otemanu

watercolour and crayon

©2024 Charlene Brown

This extinct volcano,  which rises to 727 metres, is the highest peak on Bora Bora, a small island northwest of Tahiti in French Polynesia.

I’d like to see some other mountainous islands in French Polynesia and I’ve found that most South Pacific cruises feature some combination of these and (conveniently) sail out of another Bucket List destination I'll talk about next week – New Zealand 

Also on my Bucket List is Easter Island. But this turns out to be one of those ‘can’t get there from here’ spots, and is described as one of the most isolated places in the world. 

It’s a long way from French Polynesia and in fact belongs to Chile. So now I’m trying to figure out how to combine it with places in Chile which are also on my Bucket List

Moai, Easter Island

watercolour and crayon

©2016 Charlene Brown

Springtime in the Rockies

Early crocus in the Bow Valley

watercolour and crayon

©2023 Charlene Brown

Although the crocus, and dozens of other bulbs are up and shrubs and trees are starting to blossom here in Victoria, this painting is not showing the current conditions at the Banff Springs Golf Course.

I painted it several weeks ago in the dead of winter simply because I needed some Springtime in the Rockies that day. In fact, crocus don’t usually get through the snow until late April, sometimes May, in Banff

Are we reaching a tipping point in global heating?

Alberta Wildfire
watercolour
©2023 Charlene Brown

The National Centers for Environmental Information in the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration provides environmental data, products, and services covering the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun.

NOAA Chief Scientist Dr. Sarah Kapnick said that the findings of their 2023 climate analysis were astounding. “Not only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA’s 174-year climate record — it was the warmest by far.”

The impacts of climate change are happening here and now, like extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and more severe. There were many extreme weather events in 2023, along with record-low sea ice coverage and catastrophic wildfires. In Canada, 45.7 million acres burned, 2.6 times the previous record.

One of the confounding factors making forecasting the future more difficult, which I wrote about three years ago is the phenomenon of tipping points.  These are actions of a complex system which has become unstable.

Are we reaching a tipping point in global heating?

Read Decimation doesn’t begin to describe what happened in Lytton. 

Or have we already tipped?

How climate change worsens heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods*

1. Hotter, longer heatwaves:   The intense heatwaves that hit southern Europe and the southern US and Mexico in July 2023 would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change.  And these events are no longer rare. If global warming reaches 2C above the pre-industrial period these events are expected to happen every two to five years.

As well as happening more frequently, heatwaves are becoming longer and more intense in many places.

This can happen as a result of heat domes, which are areas of high pressure where hot air is pushed down and trapped in place, causing temperatures to soar over large areas.  One theory suggests higher temperatures in the Arctic (which has warmed more than four times faster than the global average) are causing the jet stream to slow, increasing the likelihood of heat domes.

2. Longer droughts:  Longer and more intense heatwaves can worsen droughts by drying out soil. This makes the air above warm up more quickly, leading to more intense heat.  Increased demand for water from humans, especially farmers, in hot weather puts even more stress on the water supply.

Climate change has made droughts at least 100 times more likely.

3. More fuel for wildfires:  Climate change is making the weather conditions needed for wildfires to spread more likely. Extreme and long-lasting heat draws more and more moisture out of the ground and vegetation. These tinder-dry conditions provide fuel for fires, which can spread at an incredible speed, particularly if winds are strong.

Rising temperatures may also increase the likelihood of lightning in the world's northernmost forests, increasing the risk of fires. Canada experienced by far its  worst wildfire season on record in 2023, with around 18 million hectares (45 million acres) burned.

Climate change more than doubled the likelihood of the extreme "fire weather" conditions in eastern Canada that allowed the fires to spread, Extreme wildfires are projected to become more frequent and intense in future across the globe. This is due to the combined effects of shifting land use and climate change.

4. More extreme rain:  For every 1C rise in average temperature, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture. The heavy rainfall was made as much as 50 times more likely by climate change, Globally, the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events has increased over most land regions due to human activity. And heavy precipitation will generally become more frequent and intense with further warming,

*Outline of an article by Mark Poynting and Esme Stallard, BBC News Climate & Science

 

Impressionist version of Doughnut Economics in a Circular Economy

The Doughnut

watercolour and crayon

©2023 Charlene Brown

The circular economy represents a shift from a 'take-make-waste' linear economy to an economic system based on the reuse and regeneration of materials or products, especially as a means of continuing production in a sustainable or environmentally friendly way, minimizing waste.

Doughnut economics extends this transformation to encompass a double shift – from a linear economy to a regenerative and distributed economy that looks at sustainable development across a number of different vectors.

The Doughnut is the core concept at the heart of Doughnut Economics.  And here’s a more readable explanation of it.

First published in 2012 in an Oxfam report by Kate Raworth, The Doughnut is a guide for human prosperity in the 21st century, with the aim of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet.

The Doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, and an ecological ceiling, to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the planetary boundaries that protect Earth's life-supporting systems. Between these two sets of boundaries lies a doughnut-shaped space that is both ecologically safe and socially just: a space in which humanity can thrive.

Can tidal power replace diesel?

Blind Channel
watercolour and crayon
©2023 Charlene Brown

Blind Channel, on the ‘inside passage’ between Vancouver Island and the mainland of British Columbia is scenically spectacular, and may also be a prime location for tidal power production.  Initial testing of the potential for harnessing tidal currents at the Blind Channel off-grid tidal power demonstration project has shown promising results.

The University of Victoria’s Pacific Regional Institute for Marine Energy Discovery (PRIMED) research on tidal turbines and other clean energy sources like wind, solar, and low carbon hydrogen, is supported by the BC government’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund. 

PRIMED is also investigating ways to avoid or surmount the recognized problems associated with tidal energy  ̶  the high cost associated with building tidal power stations, and potentially negative environmental effects on marine life.

Capturing lost data (two or three hundred years) after the fact

 Combatant Col
(based on a Bastian Fleury photo in the Globe and Mail, November 22, 2023)

watercolour
Charlene Brown

The calculations in my last blog post were based on comprehensive high-altitude precipitation and temperature data collected in the Swiss Alps for over 150 years.

Unfortunately, with few exceptions (eg. Illecillewaet Glacier)  such consistent historic data is not available in North America.

However, early results from research in the Combatant Col, a ‘saddle’ of snow and ice between Mt. Waddington and Mt. Combatant in British Columbia, show it will likely be possible to obtain useful historic climate information going back two or three hundred years.

Glaciologists drilled down more than 200 metres from an elevation of 3000 metres, and shipped one-metre sections of the compacted ice core by helicopter and reefer truck to the Canadian Ice Core Laboratory at the University of Alberta.

Although the ice in these samples is not as old as that in cores obtained on Mt. Logan in the Yukon, coming from about 51 degrees N latitude, the Combatant data relates to the Anthropocene climate effects in more densely populated areas.