Coal-fired power plants disrupt rainfall and threaten human health, study shows

Coal-fired power plants can pose a bigger threat to human health and the environment than cars, a groundbreaking long-term global study has revealed.

Barnaby Joyce has called for the Morrison government
to bankroll a new coal plant, despite health and
environmental concerns.

Modern coal-fired power stations emit higher levels of dangerous pollutants known as “ultrafine dust particles” than urban road traffic, and can even redistribute rainfall patterns, researchers from Australia and Germany have found.

While road traffic has long been considered the main source of ultrafine particles (UFP) in urban areas, the 15-year study showed that coal-fired power stations clearly emit larger amounts of UFPs through filtering technology of exhaust gas.

Read the story from The New Daily by Isabelle Lane - “Coal-fired power plants disrupt rainfall and threaten human health, study shows.”

The Long Dry: Global water supplies are shrinking

A global study has found a paradox: our water supplies are shrinking at the same time as climate change is generating more intense rain. And the culprit is the drying of soils, say researchers, pointing to a world where drought-like conditions will become the new normal, especially in regions that are already dry.

A dried up Lake Hume on the border
between New South Wales and Victoria.

The study – the most exhaustive global analysis of rainfall and rivers – was conducted by a team led by Professor Ashish Sharma at Australia’s UNSW (University of New South Wales) in Sydney. It relied on actual data from 43,000 rainfall stations and 5300 river monitoring sites in 160 countries, instead of basing its findings on model simulations of a future climate, which can be uncertain and at times questionable. 

Large rivers drying out

“This is something that has been missed,” said Sharma, an ARC Future Fellow at UNSW’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We expected rainfall to increase, since warmer air stores more moisture – and that is what climate models predicted too. What we did not expect is that, despite all the extra rain everywhere in the world, the large rivers are drying out. 

Read the story from the University of New South Wales Newsroom - “The Long Dry: Global water supplies are shrinking.”