Amazon Basin and CO2 Flows.

Last Friday I closed with a reference to the paper “Amazonia as a Carbon Source Linked to Deforestation and Climate Change”, by Luciana V. Gatti (from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research) and co-authors.

The research team divided the 7.25 million km² Amazon basin (containing between 100 billion and 146 billion metric tons of carbon) into four regions: TAB_TEF (northwest), SAN (northeast), ALF (southeast), and RBA (southwest).

Using aircraft to collect air samples at different altitudes over 5 sampling sites (two of them, TAB and TEF, on the northwest region; of the remaining 3 sampling sites, one for each region), it was found that:

Is the Artic Permafrost Thawing?

 

Source

Down Under is enjoying a comfortably cool winter. Because of La Niña, this year has been relatively rainy too, which means that crops were abundant. The bad news is that plenty water and food also means mice galore.

But the really terrible thing is that rain over the Murray-Darling Basin makes the rats go berserk.

Nothing New Under the Sun (Updated).

 

 
Maybe things are different elsewhere, but in Australia you can hardly read the news or watch TV news reports without hearing about how hard it is for local businesses to recruit staff. And you hear those tales of woe whether unemployment is high or low, in good or in bad times.

After a while, if one pays attention, one realises that kind of story seems to follow a template or a script.

Unfrequently Asked Questions: Is China Really Communist?

Courtesy of the ABC.

On a recent Q&A session on China and the 100th anniversary of the CCP, Bill Birtles (formerly ABC’s China correspondent), Bang Xiao (ABC’s bilingual journalist specialising in China), Stan Grant (ABC’s foreign affairs analyst) and Yun Jiang (Australian National University) answered questions from the public.

Clinton asked: “China’s system of governance seems totally at odds with any definition of communism. Or am I alone thinking this?”