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BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpYour accountNotificationsHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeMore menuMore menuSearch BBCHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeCBBCCBeebiesFoodClose menuBBC NewsMenuHomeIsrael-Gaza warCost of LivingWar in UkraineClimateUKWorldBusinessPoliticsCultureMoreTechScienceHealthFamily & EducationIn PicturesNewsbeatBBC VerifyDisabilityWorldAfricaAsiaAustraliaEuropeLatin AmericaMiddle EastUS & CanadaRAF takes part in largest airdrop of aid to GazaPublished8 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingRelated TopicsIsrael-Gaza warImage caption, The Gaza airdrop was organised at an airbase near the Jordanian capital, AmmanBy James LandaleDiplomatic correspondent, over GazaIt is all over in seconds. The aircraft slows, lifts its nose and 12, perfectly wrapped pallets of humanitarian assistance slide off the open ramp at the back. One minute ago, 10 tonnes of food and water was there, the next it was floating gently by parachute in the southwesterly breeze, touching down on the northern shores of Gaza. This was the largest coalition airdrop of the war: 14 aircraft from nine nations delivering 10 tonnes of aid. The scale of the delivery was timed to mark the end of Ramadan. At a military airbase to the east of Amman, the capital of Jordan, we watched as aircrew from the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Egypt, Indonesia, UAE and France were briefed by their Jordanian counterparts. They need to know who is doing what and where, the airspace over Gaza is small. Each country has its own drop zone, its own way of delivering aid. The whole operation is organised by the Jordanians but everything has to be signed off by the Israelis. If the IDF says no, then the planes do not take off. The Turks were planning to join the coalition today but were vetoed at the last minute. The aid is stacked in vast open hangars: piles of flour, sugar, rice, beans, pulses, oil, and water. The UK has its own corner where British servicemen and women – both from the RAF and the 47 Air Dispatch squadron of the Royal Logistics Corps – carefully pack their own pallets. Everything is carefully weighed – each bundle cannot be too light or too heavy. Everything is packed deliberately to avoid damage on impact. Ropes and straps are measured precisely into place. Few gifts have been so carefully wrapped. The whole thing sits atop a thick slab of plywood. Image caption, The RAF is using one of it’s largest transport planes, the A400MFork-lift trucks load the pallets on to A400M, one of the RAF’s biggest transport planes – the successor to the much-missed Hercules C130s. Each container slides along a rolling track on the deck of the plane. Repeated checks are made to ensure they will not jam. We take off and 40 minutes later we are over the drop zone. And here is the next complication.The RAF normally drops aid as low as 400ft, but the Israelis have stipulated they must do so no lower than 2,000ft. That means the parachutes have a long time to get blown off course by the wind. That is why some airdrops in recent weeks have landed in the sea. On our flight the pilots warned us they would drop the containers over the sea, but the southwesterly breeze would drift them back inshore. Which is exactly what happens. Job done and we return home. Erez and Ashdod: How will new Gaza aid routes work?Israel’s Gaza withdrawal hints at what comes nextNetanyahu sets Rafah attack date as pressure growsSo none of this easy. The potential for error is huge. It is also not a very good way of delivering aid. The RAF flight was carrying about 10 tonnes of aid. That is less than a single truck can carry across a border on the ground. So there is huge effort and expense, but marginal impact. The British military know this. But squadron leader Lucy Playle, the detachment commander in Amman, said the cumulative impact was beginning to tell, with around 1,500 tonnes of aid delivered in the past month. “This is a sustained effort,” she said. “We’ve been here for three weeks now, and we are continually delivering aid. “The people of Gaza are very grateful for the efforts that we are going to. And we will keep delivering and delivering, until we can’t give them any more.”Some international aid charities say these flights are for show – to present an illusion that some countries are contributing to the humanitarian effort. They say the airdrops are a symbol of the failure to get aid in by other means, a distraction from that effort. They argue, correctly, that the airdrops will simply not meet the need on the ground. There are also risks.There is no way of organising the distribution on the ground. Some Gazans have been crushed stampeding for the pallets. Others have drowned trying to grab those landing in the sea. Some were even injured when containers dropped on buildings. But the aircrews here in Jordan insist they are making a difference, that they are filling a gap – not least while there is simply not enough aid getting through by road or sea. Warrant Officer Adrian Dibbs said: “It’s not that much – but it is the effort that counts, as in every little helps. 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[ad_1] At a military airbase to the east of Amman, the capital of Jordan, we watched as aircrew from the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Egypt, Indonesia, UAE and…
![BBC HomepageSkip to contentAccessibility HelpYour accountLiveNotificationsHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeMore menuMore menuSearch BBCHomeNewsSportWeatheriPlayerSoundsBitesizeCBBCCBeebiesFoodClose menuBBC NewsMenuHomeIsrael-Gaza warCost of LivingWar in UkraineClimateUKWorldBusinessPoliticsCultureMoreTechScienceHealthFamily & EducationIn PicturesNewsbeatBBC VerifyDisabilityScience & EnvironmentClimate change: The ‘insane’ plan to save the Arctic’s sea-icePublished37 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingRelated TopicsClimateImage source, Real IceImage caption, Saving the ice – a daring experiment or a dangerous distraction?By Mark PoyntingBBC News climate reporterPerched on sea-ice off Canada’s northern coast, parka-clad scientists watch saltwater pump out over the frozen ocean.Their goal? To slow global warming.As sea-ice vanishes, the dark ocean surface can absorb more of the Sun’s energy, which accelerates warming. So the researchers want to thicken it to stop it melting away.Welcome to the wackier side of geoengineering – deliberately intervening in the Earth’s climate system to try to counteract the damage we have done to it.Polar bears face starvation as ice meltsMore snow and rain is falling in the ArcticHottest February marks ninth new monthly record in a rowGeoengineering includes more established efforts to lock up planet-warming gases, such as planting more trees and burying carbon underground.But more experimental measures aim to go a step further, seeking to reduce the energy absorbed by the Earth.Many scientists are strongly opposed, warning that such attempts distract from the critical step of cutting carbon emissions and risk doing more harm than good.But a small number of advocates claim their approaches could give the planet a helping hand while humanity cleans up its act.The ultimate goal of the Arctic experiment is to thicken enough sea-ice to slow or even reverse the melting already seen, says Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, whose team at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Climate Repair is behind the project.Will it work or is it, as one scientist put it, “quite insane”?”We don’t actually know enough to determine whether this is a good idea or bad idea,” admits Dr Fitzgerald.Image source, Real IceImage caption, “It’s quite cold,” the researchers say. Wind chill in Cambridge Bay can make it feel like -45CThe researchers have been braving bitter conditions in Cambridge Bay, a tiny Canadian village in the Arctic Circle.”It’s quite cold,” Andrea Ceccolini of Real Ice, a British company leading the trip, tells me via a patchy Zoom connection from inside a flapping white tent.”It’s about -30C with a strong wind, which brings the temperature to -45C with wind chill factor.”They are drilling a hole in the sea-ice that naturally forms in winter, and pumping around 1,000 litres of seawater per minute across the surface. Exposed to the cold winter air, this seawater quickly freezes, helping to thicken the ice on top. The water also compacts the snow. As fresh snow acts as a good insulating layer, now ice can also form more easily on the underside in contact with the ocean.”The idea is that the thicker the ice [at the end of winter], the longer it will survive when we go into the melt season,” Mr Ceccolini explains.Image source, Real IceImage caption, A pump is used to flood the sea-ice surface with seawater, which will then freezeSpeaking to me towards the end of their trip, they’ve already seen the ice thicken by a few tens of centimetres across their small study area. The ice will be monitored by locals in the months ahead.But it’s still far too early to say whether their approach can actually make a difference to the rapid decline in Arctic sea-ice.”The vast majority of polar scientists think this is never going to work out,” cautions Martin Siegert, an experienced glaciologist at the University of Exeter, who is not involved in the project.One issue is that the saltier ice may melt more quickly in the summer. And then there’s the huge logistical challenge of scaling the project up to a meaningful level – one estimate suggests that you could need about 10 million wind-powered pumps to thicken sea-ice across just a tenth of the Arctic. “It is quite insane in my opinion that this could be done at scale for the entire Arctic Ocean,” says Julienne Stroeve, a professor of polar observation and modelling at University College London.Some of the more experimental geoengineering suggestions include trying to make clouds more reflective by generating extra sea spray, and mimicking volcanic eruptions to reflect more of the Sun’s energy back into space.A number of scientists – including the UN’s climate and weather bodies – have warned that these approaches could pose grave risks, including disrupting global weather patterns. Many researchers want to see them banned altogether. “Geoengineering technologies come with enormous uncertainties and create novel risks for ecosystems and people,” explains Lili Fuhr, director of the Fossil Economy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law.”The Arctic is essential to sustaining our planetary systems: pumping sea water onto sea-ice on a large scale could change ocean chemistry and threatens the fragile web of life.”And there’s a more fundamental, widespread concern with these types of projects.”The real danger is it provides a distraction, and people with vested interests will use it as an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels,” Prof Siegert warns.”Frankly, it’s insane and needs to be stopped. The way to solve this crisis is to decarbonise: it’s our best and only way forward.”A simple guide to climate changeWhat is net zero, and how are the UK and other countries doing?The Arctic researchers are acutely aware of these concerns. They stress that they are simply testing the technology, and wouldn’t unleash it more widely until the risks are better known.”We’re not here promoting this as the solution to climate change in the Arctic,” Dr Fitzgerald stresses. “We’re saying that it could be [part of it], but we’ve got to go and find out a lot more before society can then decide whether it’s a sensible thing or not.”They agree that geoengineering is no silver bullet to tackling climate change, and that steep cuts to fossil fuels and carbon emissions are most important to avoid the worst consequences of warming.But they point out that even with rapid action, the world still faces a difficult future.The Arctic Ocean is likely to be effectively free of sea-ice by the end of summer at least once by 2050, and possibly even sooner. As the graph below shows, it’s already experienced steep declines since the 1980s.”We need other solutions,” argues PhD student Jacob Pantling, a researcher at the Centre for Climate Repair who braved the icy winds in Cambridge Bay. “We have to reduce emissions, but even if we do them as quickly as possible, the Arctic is still going to melt.”Map by Erwan RivaultRelated TopicsArcticClimateMore on this storyPolar bears face starvation threat as ice meltsPublished13 FebruaryMore snow and rain is falling in the ArcticPublished14 December 2022Hottest February marks ninth new monthly recordPublished7 MarchWhy is the world getting warmer?Published8 FebruaryTop StoriesAid reaches shore in Gaza after first sea deliveryPublished3 hours agoAll 35 bodies in Hull funeral inquiry identifiedPublished7 hours agoRussian arrests as ballot boxes targeted in Putin votePublished7 hours agoFeatures’Tory PM ousting plot’ and ‘Gran’s death row wait’Trying to stay alive in a town tormented by drugs, alcohol and suicideFive Champions League match-ups to look forward toAttributionSportWeekly quiz: Which exclusive Oscars club did Emma Stone join?Battle between West Bank farmers divides Israel and US Listen: Putin’s Russia: An election without democracy? 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