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SSV's Annual Water Event flows over two afternoons
Thursday & Friday November 12th & 13th. Hold those dates!

Dear Friend of SSV,

As we all struggle through Spare the Air Day #23 Month of wildfire smoke and high heat, we wanted to share some re-breaking “news you can use." You probably have PurpleAir.com on your desktop and phone and check it if you are lucky enough to time your ventures outside. In these smoky times, it is a very good idea.

The problem, however, is that the proliferation of widespread "low cost sensors" doesn't quite yield professional grade AQ data like the one (only one) Environmental Protection Agency site between San Jose and San Francisco. The workaround is to use correction factors, filters that help accommodate different types of pollution with different particle densities. It turns out wood smoke is a different animal than your run-of-the-mill polluted air. PurpleAir's default is 'none' (see blue arrow); to get a more accurate reading we had been recommending LRAPA but now EPA is advising AQandU (cute, huh?) as the better option when the regular numbers approach 150. The other news is that EPA will debut their very own factor real soon. Kudos to @EricaJoy for flagging this on Twitter. For those keeping score at home, more information here (a real good backgrounder) and here for maximum nerd cred (an EPA paper entitled “PurpleAir PM 2.5 U.S. Correction and Performance During Smoke Events"). 

Speaking of air, we recently held an AQ Talk with SSV’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Anthony Strawa, for the East Palo Alto (the other EPA) community on the practical aspects of installing Purple Air sensors. The map above (blue circle) is starting to show some progress with sensors in EPA.

Over the summer, SSV launched WET (Water, Environment, Technology) Talks kicked off by noted water diva, esteemed SSV water advisor and now Stanford William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow Felicia Marcus. We followed up with "Cry Me a River" featuring Dr. Sarah Diringer of the Pacific Institute and Peter Dreckmeier of the Tuolumne River Trust.

Lastly, we are pleased to share a taste of SSV's newest initiative, Sustainable Life, rolling out in the coming weeks. This is a different direction for us but one that we’ve come to recognize as vital, since it involves how well all live, breath, eat, etc. We hope you find these personal stories of SSV volunteers from both sides of the globe as inspiring and motivating as we did. 

Keep cool, wear a mask, viva la vida,

   Jennifer Thompson & Dennis Murphy

Linda and pony on vacation in Puncak, above Jakarta;
Beverley in a friend's garden in Shoreham-by-Sea, near Brighton.

You Too Can Become a
Climate Change Warrior!


By Linda Kastilani and Beverley Bird

Everyone who volunteers with Sustainable Silicon Valley is a passionate climate advocate, so it was no surprise that when we heard about Al Gore’s latest Climate Reality Training two of us decided to sign up. It was a fascinating opportunity to learn from a host of world-class climate leaders, journalists, actors and others who have been working hard to spread the word about what must change.

The training we attended included 10,000 participants from almost every country around the world and was held virtually due to Coronavirus. It took place over nine days with five live sessions from Al Gore and four minimum on-demand sessions to watch. In addition, we were assigned homework that included writing our own climate stories and partnering with another trainee to collaborate on action items. We also had table work groups (like seminars) during the days of live sessions and networking sessions in between the days so we could discuss and share what we were learning. 

READ MORE

  VIDEO
www78 under CC 
 

SSV's First AQ Webinar

Watch SSV’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Anthony Strawa, describe general air quality considerations, the SSV study of the impacts of East Palo Alto cut-through traffic and the practical aspects of installing Purple Air sensors.

YouTube Link
 

SSV WET Talk:
Cry Me a River

After just a bit of the Julie London torch song, Dr. Sarah Diringer of the Pacific Institute and Peter Dreckmeier of the Tuolumne River Trust get into the details and history of California water demand forecasting and its multiple impacts.

YouTube Link
 
  FIRE
Karl Mondon / SJ Mercury
 

California Fires:
Five reasons why this year is so bad

Fire experts say it’s not one thing causing the shocking series of infernos. “It’s a perfect storm of factors that have all come together,” said Jon Keeley, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey at Sequoia National Park.

Read more
Yalonda James / SF Chronicle
 

Bay Area awakes to foreboding, orange, smoke-choked skies

Strange and foreboding orange skies and a layer of falling ash greeted Bay Area residents as they woke on Wednesday, rubbing their eyes and wondering if they’d awoken on a different planet — and pondering just how long the daylight dimness would last.

Read more
 

Editorial: Wildfires and soaring temperatures — the hellscape scientists warned us about is here


Tweet Link

Read more
 

Please understand...

"Please understand what we're seeing now, with worsening storms, massive wildfires, unprecedented heat, is just the beginning of #climatechange. What's coming with rising seas, destruction of the Arctic, water crises... no human society has ever experienced. We must act faster."

Tweet Link

Chart Tweet Link


 
  OTHER NEWS
 NY Times
 

Central Park
Birder Turns Clash
Into Graphic Novel
About Racism

Christian Cooper became one of the nation’s most famous bird watchers when a video he filmed of his confrontation with a white woman in Central Park went viral. After Mr. Cooper asked her to leash her dog, she had warned him that she would falsely tell a 911 operator that “an African-American man is threatening my life.”

But before that Memorial Day encounter, Mr. Cooper was well-known in a different realm: as a pioneering comic book writer. 

Read more
The Morgan Hill Times / Valley Water
 

Valley Water
relocates threatened
steelhead for
upcoming dam retrofit

Though they are not native to the Anderson Reservoir, the steelhead population is in decline, making the local watershed particularly important to preservation efforts.

The species—classified as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act—needed to be relocated before Valley Water starts to drain Anderson Dam on Oct. 1 to allow for the construction of a new, larger outlet tunnel.

Read more
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Jennifer Thompson
Executive Director
jthompson@sustainablesv.org
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