Dual Harvest: Agrivoltaics Boost Food and Energy Production in Asia WRI May 23, 2024 By Jose Gabriel Silan, Shengnian Xu and Marlon Joseph Apanada 
Every autumn morning at an aquaculture site near the mouth of the Yellow River in China's Dongying City, Shandong Province, farmers begin packaging shrimp for their customers. Their harvest is increasingly more bountiful thanks to an innovative way of farming that integrates renewable energy into agriculture.
Here, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels were installed several meters above the water, helping to generate an annual 260 gigawatts-hours of energy — enough to power 113,000 households in China. Since its completion and grid connection in 2021, the farmers have also gained many benefits. Beyond providing clean energy to the fishery, the solar panels keep water temperatures consistently 2 to 3 degrees C (3.6 to 5.4 degrees F) cooler than outdoor ponds without panels, boosting shrimp and sea cucumber yields by 50%. The solar power company that installed the panels leases the space, helping to reduce farming costs while also paying for improvements and modernization to aquaculture site, such as better pond embankments and irrigation systems.  These developments are crucial for the future growth of the fishery industry in Shandong Province. In 2019, the total economic output of the fishery sector of Shandong Province reached $62.3 billion, representing 15.6% of China’s total fishery output. 

Agrivoltaics Boosts Clean Energy and Food Production.......The concept of aquaculture-photovoltaic integration is a form of what’s known as agrivoltaics, which typically integrates traditional agricultural practices such as crop cultivation, livestock farming and fisheries with solar PV installations, maximizing the use of available space. This dual-layered system supports the normal production of both food and electricity, thereby allowing income to stream in from both sources. In a world where global energy demand is soaring and the use of agricultural land for food production is increasingly displaced by renewable energy projects (such as for solar and wind farms, or growing crops such as corn and soy for biofuels), agrivoltaics has emerged as a win-win solution for sustainable energy and agriculture.   This concept has already been applied throughout the world, including Europe, the United States and parts of Asia.China’s pioneering efforts since 2011 with more than 500 agrivoltaics projects — including crop cultivation, livestock grazing, aquafarming, greenhouses and tea plantations — according to a forthcoming WRI report, provide significant insights for further expansion across the region.  For example, countries like Indonesia and the Philippines in Southeast Asia could potentially benefit from agrivoltaics but have yet to implement many significant projects. The region's abundant sunlight and vast agricultural landscapes can harness solar energy while maintaining crop production. There’s also an outsized need in the region to balance its land resources for both clean energy and food production in the face of a growing population and urgency to reduce emissions. 

The Symbiotic Benefits for Food and Energy Production......In the land-scarce central and eastern regions of China, agrivoltaics emerged after government policies encouraged the development of PV projects, but the same land was needed for food production. So, companies integrated these projects together. People soon realized that the solar panels could do more than just produce electricity. The panels can offer plants and animals protection from extreme heat and drought by providing partial shade. Studies also indicate agrivoltaics can reduce water evaporation by 30%. Accompanying upgrades to agricultural infrastructure, which can often contribute to the automation and mechanization of the farm, may also help to increase crop yields, especially in areas with excessive sunlight and high temperatures. The benefits extend to the solar panels as well. Studies show that solar panels mounted over vegetation exhibit considerably lower surface temperatures than those mounted over bare ground. This cooling effect has a direct impact on the solar panels’ efficiency, as modules typically experience efficiency losses ranging from 0.1% to 0.5% for every degree Celsius increase above 25 degrees C (77 degrees F).  Agrivoltaics can also offer farmers an additional income stream either by leasing the land to solar PV companies or, if the land-agreement is reversed, through cultivating the land at much lower costs, mitigating the impact of fluctuating crop yields and market prices.......Fascinating!...read on     https://www.wri.org/?apcid=0065aea2164a6d4199768d01&utm_campaign=wridigest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wridigest-2024-03-07
  

ECMWF- Providing a huge range of current daily status and forecasts of worldwide weather, floods, droughts, heat, etc  for all planetary regions/countries. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by 35 states. ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, producing and disseminating numerical weather predictions to its Member States. This data is fully available to the national meteorological services in the Member States. The Centre also offers a catalogue of forecast data that can be purchased by businesses worldwide and other commercial customers, and a growing range of open data and charts. The supercomputer facility (and associated data archive) at ECMWF is one of the largest of its type in Europe and Member States can use 25% of its capacity for their own purposes.The organisation was established in 1975 and now employs around 450 staff from more than 35 countries. ECMWF is one of the six members of the Co-ordinated Organisations, which also include the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Council of Europe (CoE), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). ECMWF is headquartered in Reading, UK, with additional sites in Bologna, Italy, and Bonn, Germany.      How we work......Simulated Forecast Image products (SIM) are based on the sensor characteristics of the Meteosat-10 satellite. They are generated from the model forecast fields using the same radiative transfer algorithm (RTTOV) as in the ECMWF operational data assimilation. The forecast brightness temperature is used to produce pictures equivalent to the infra-red images available from geostationary satellites.High resolution forecast Mean sea level pressure contours are overlaid to aid the interpretation.                                                                                                    Advancing global NWP through international collaboration.......Simulated Forecast Image products (SIM) are based on the sensor characteristics of the Meteosat-10 satellite. They are generated from the model forecast fields using the same radiative transfer algorithm (RTTOV) as in the ECMWF operational data assimilation. The forecast brightness temperature is used to produce pictures equivalent to the infra-red images available from geostationary satellites. High resolution forecast Mean sea level pressure contours are overlaid to aid the interpretation. Forecast Image products (SIM) are based on the sensor characteristics of the Meteosat-10 satellite. They are generated from the model forecast fields using the same radiative transfer algorithm (RTTOV) as in the ECMWF operational data assimilation. The forecast brightness temperature is used to produce pictures equivalent to the infra-red images available from geostationary satellites. High resolution forecast Mean sea level pressure contours are overlaid to aid the interpretation.                                                                                                                                                                  Accessing forecasts-  Datasets, Forecasts, analyses, climate re-analyses, reforecasts and multi-model data are available from our archive (MARS) or via dedicated data servers or via point-to-point dissemination. Researchers, WMO members, commercial users and satellite data providers can gain access to ECMWF forecast products under one of our variouslicense agreement types. Data-driven regional modelling  With colleagues from MET Norway, we describe our collaboration on regional modelling and outline Anemoi, our work towards an ML framework for data-driven weather forecasts.      https://www.ecmwf.int/                                  Go to FLOODLIST for all reports and forecasts....... https://floodlist.com/

Explainer: What Is Doughnut Economics? Doughnut Economics is a theory proposing a change of economic model as a response to humanity’s major challenge of eradicating global poverty within the means of the planet’s limited natural resources.   JORDAN CHEUN GLOBAL COMMONS OCT 25TH 2021 In a typical introductory economics lesson, you will be taught that the definition of economics is to study the allocation of scarce resources. The focus on scarce resources has led many people to see endless growth as a positive, or “more is better”. However, in reality, economic growth is measured only by an increasing GDP, completely ignoring the finite nature of Earth’s resources and the consequences of our actions. What would economics look like when increasing the abundance of resources is no longer the solution to the problem of scarcity but creates intractable problems of its own instead? In today’s world, millions of people still lack life’s essentials; living daily with hunger, illiteracy, insecurity, and voicelessness. At the same time, humanity’s collective pressure on the planet has already overshot at least four planetary boundaries – climate change, land conversion, fertiliser use, and biodiversity loss. The global economy is also deeply divisive, rife with acute gender and income inequalities. To ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials, while safeguarding we collectively do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems we fundamentally depend on, English economist Kate Raworth introduced the concept of Doughnut Economics in 2012, an economic model designed to fit in the 21st century.  Doughnut Economics is a new vision for an economy. By rethinking our systems, the goal of national and global economies can be changed from simply increasing GDP to creating a society that can provide enough materials and services for everyone while utilising resources in a way that does not threaten our future security and prosperity.                                                                                                                            

This model consists of a dashboard of indicators that define its boundaries. Imagine looking at a doughnut top down. You would see a healthy green region that is the circular doughnut. The outer region represents the ecological ceiling, while the inner region reflects the social foundation. The hole at the doughnut’s centre reveals how people are falling short on life’s essentials such as food, water, healthcare, and freedom of expression. If we undershoot or use our planetary resources incorrectly, the model would indicate that we are unable to ensure the necessary social foundations are met across citizens. In real terms, this means people living without access to plentiful food, clean water, and essential healthcare. Thus, a huge part of humanity’s challenge is to get everyone out of that hole. At the same time, overshooting on our resource budget would lead to catastrophic consequences such as freshwater withdrawals, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, and ultimately climate change. In our current systems, aspects such as the rise in healthcare costs resulting from increasing air pollution are “externalities” that are not included in the costs of production and consumption, whereas in an embedded economy that allows us to see the economy as embedded within the larger social and ecological fabric, these costs are taken into account. At its core, Doughnut Economics is based on an economy that is both regenerative and distributive by design. It has huge implications for any group negotiating the balance between economic growth and powerful social change.              https://earth.org/what-is-doughnut-economics/?psafe_param=1&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA8sauBhB3EiwAruTRJpcxxgxN87zAoXbxn6muLwQTSzK7H_IlMHEMK2EVC03C2MOMPXJOqhoCzNcQAvD_BwE            You might also like: What Is a Circular Economy?     

•  Everybody has a breaking point: how the climate crisis affects our brains......climatological neuroepidemiology a new developing field of research. Guardian- Clayton Aldern 27 March 2024Are growing rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, Alzheimer’s and motor neurone disease related to rising temperatures and other extreme environmental changes?  Nomura, who teaches in the psychology department at Queens College, CUNY, as well as in the psychiatry department of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai , and her colleagues’ research offers a representative page in a new story of the climate crisis: a story that says a changing climate doesn’t just shape the environment in which we live. Rather, the climate crisis spurs visceral and tangible transformations in our very brains. As the world undergoes dramatic environmental shifts, so too does our neurological landscape. Fossil-fuel-induced changes – from rising temperatures to extreme weather to heightened levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide – are altering our brain health, influencing everything from memory and executive function to language, the formation of identity, and even the structure of the brain. The weight of nature is heavy, and it presses inward. The conclusions of her research reveal a startling disparity: children who were in utero during Hurricane Sandy bear an inordinately high risk of psychiatric conditions today. For example, girls who were exposed to Sandy prenatally experienced a 20-fold increase in anxiety and a 30-fold increase in depression later in life compared with girls who were not exposed. Boys had 60-fold and 20-fold increased risks of ADHD and conduct disorder, respectively. Children expressed symptoms of the conditions as early as preschool. “Our findings are extremely alarming,” the researchers wrote in a 2022 study summarising their initial results. It is not the type of sentence one usually finds in the otherwise measured discussion sections of academic papers. 

• Evidence comes from a variety of fields. Psychologists and behavioural economists have illustrated the ways in which temperature spikes drive surges in everything from domestic violence to online hate speech. Cognitive neuroscientists have charted the routes by which extreme heat and surging CO2 levels impair decision-making, diminish problem-solving abilities, and short-circuit our capacity to learn. Vectors of brain disease, such as ticks and mosquitoes, are seeing their habitable ranges expand as the world warms. And as researchers like Nomura have shown, you don’t need to go to war to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder: the violence of a hurricane or wildfire is enough. It appears that, due to epigenetic inheritance, you don’t even need to have been born yet. When it comes to the health effects of the climate crisis, says Burcin Ikiz, a neuroscientist at the mental-health philanthropy organisation the Baszucki Group, “we know what happens in the cardiovascular system; we know what happens in the respiratory system; we know what happens in the immune system. But there’s almost nothing on neurology and brain health.” Ikiz, like Nomura, is one of a growing cadre of neuroscientists seeking to connect the dots between environmental and neurological wellness.

• As a cohesive effort, the field – which we might call climatological neuroepidemiology – is in its infancy. But many of the effects catalogued by such researchers feel intuitive. During a summer 2016 heatwave in Boston, Harvard epidemiologists showed that college students living in dorms without air conditioning performed standard cognitive tests more slowly than those living with it. In January of this year, Chinese economists noted that students who took mathematics tests on days above 32C looked as if they had lost the equivalent of a quarter of a year of education, relative to test days in the range 22–24C. Cognitive performance is the tip of the melting iceberg. You may have also noticed, for example, your own feelings of aggression on hotter days. You and everyone else – and animals, too.....and there's much, much more......https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/27/everybody-has-a-breaking-point-how-the-climate-crisis-affects-our-brains