BULLETIN BOARD

First Ozone and Pollution Monitoring Ground Station for West Asia in Qatar

• An advanced cutting-edge monitoring station, able to gather crucial data on pollution linked with damage to the Earth's ozone layer is to be established in the State of Qatar.

• The station, the first in West Asia, will plug serious and significant ground and satellite-data gaps in the regional and global atmosphere monitoring networks.

• Currently the nearest similar ozone monitoring stations are between 800km and 3,340km away in Esfahan (Iran) and Nairobi respectively.

• For halocarbon measurements the nearest stations are in central Europe (more than 4000 km away) and China (more than 6000 km away).

• Scientists believe the new, more advanced station will assist in understanding whether the ozone layer - the thin layer of gas that surrounds the planet and protects all life on Earth from the sun's harmful rays - is actually recovering after decades of chemical attack.

• Under the UN Environment Programme's (UNEP)Montreal Protocol, over 90 per cent of ozone damaging gases have already been phased out and it is predicted that the layer might have fully recovered by somewhere around the 2060s as a result of past, current and future actions.

• But, without direct scientific observations around the world governments cannot know whether improvements are genuinely taking place or whether there is a need to step up or re-focus the response.

• The decision to establish the new ground station follows discussions between the Government of Qatar, UNEP's ozone secretariat and the Qatar Foundation.

• The announcement on the station was made by the Government of Qatar, during the high level segment of the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Vienna Convention and 20th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol.

• NASA, the US space agency will be working with the Government of Qatar on the project too.

• The ground station will assist space agencies to validate Earth Observing satellites proofing the data they gather on behalf of researchers right around the globe.

Ozone and Climate Friendly Advanced Technology Centre

• Qatar also announced plans to establish a global centre of excellence for research and development of ozone and climate friendly technology, equipment and appliances.

• Last year governments agreed to accelerate the freeze and phase-out of replacement chemicals known as HCFCs in large part because of their global warming potential.

• Experts believe the maximum contribution of the phase out will come by introducing new, low or zero global warming gases backed by new, energy saving equipment - one of the issues which the new centre seeks to resolve.

• The Government of Qatar and its ministry of the environment are to hold discussions with UNEP including its West Asia office in Bahrain on how best to design the centre and its research programme, with a view to having the centre up and running in three to five years.

• Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said," Sound science underpins sound decision-making. Big data gaps exist for a range of key issues, from climate and ozone to particles and aerosols in the air and atmosphere, in several regions. These include Siberia and large parts of Africa including the Congo River Basin'.

• "However, the very welcome announcement by Qatar will help plug key data gaps relating to information gathering in West Asia and the Gulf to the benefit of the region and the world. In doing so, the Government is putting its commitment to boosting the globe's science-based firmly on the international radar," he added.

• The data collected and analysed at the new observatory in Qatar will be archived at various international data centres, such as the World Meteorological Organization's World Ozone and UV radiation Data Centre (Canada) and World Data Centre on Greenhouse Gases (Japan). The data will thereby be available for the global scientific community.

• Waleed Al-Emadi, a senior ozone expert at the Qatar Ministry of the Environment said," The government of Qatar is committed to developing a knowledge-based, scientifically advanced society and one that echoes to the national and international challenges of the 21st century.

• "Our commitment to atmospheric monitoring and to research on ozone and climate-friendly technologies is part of this evolution and diversification of the Qatari economy both of which should prove a milestone in our country's scientific, cultural and environmental transformation," he said.

Environmental impact of seawater use in industry discussed at conference

• The environmental impact of the use of seawater in industrial cooling as well as discharges from desalination and power plants to the Gulf waters were discussed at an international conference.

• The second international seawater conference, held under the patronage of the Ministry of Environment featured presentations by experts from Qatar, the UK, US, the Netherlands, India, World Bank and several GCC countries.

• Giving a presentation on discharges from desalination and power plants, Thomas Hoepner said, there is an urgent need for a standard of ecological impact assessments and a supra-national coordination of the water and electricity grids, which are currently lacking in the region.

• The total loads of the main chemical discharges in to the sea from desalination plants in the region per day amount to 66,000kg of antiscalants, 24,000 kg of chlorine, and 300kg of copper.

• "The localization of desalination and power plants so far seems be directed by the locations of the demand for energy and desalted water and not by the selection of minimal marine ecological damages," said the speaker.

• A joint presentation by experts from Qatar University and the Texas A&M University discussed the problem of residual chlorine in seawater cooling. In Qatar. huge volumes of sea water are used for cooling every day and discharged back to the Arabian Gulf waters. Chlorine is added to the seawater to control biofouling of the cooling system.

• The added chlorine reacts with bromide and other compounds in the water to produce a wide range of chemical oxidants. Some of these oxidants remain in the cooling water after it is discharged and poses a major environmental burden.

• New regulations have recently been established in Qatar which specify that the concentration of residual chlorine in the discharged cooling water should not exceed 0.05 mg/L. Industries in Qatar find it difficult to meet these new standards.

• Therefore, both regulators and industries in Qatar are looking for ways to minimise environmental pollution while achieving high performance of the cooling system with reasonable cost.