Reducing damaging “ultra-emission” methane leaks could soon become much easier–thanks to a new, open-source tool that combines machine learning and orbital data from multiple satellites, including one attached to the International Space Station.

Methane emissions originate anywhere food and plant matter decompose without oxygen, such as marshes, landfills, fossil fuel plants—and yes, cow farms. They are also infamous for their dramatic effect on air quality. Although capable of lingering in the atmosphere for just 7 to 12 years compared to CO2’s centuries-long lifespan, the gas is still an estimated 80 times more effective at retaining heat. Immediately reducing its production is integral to stave off climate collapse’s most dire short-term consequences—cutting emissions by 45 percent by 2030, for example, could shave off around 0.3 degrees Celsius from the planet’s rising temperature average over the next twenty years.

[Related: Turkmenistan’s gas fields emit loads of methane.]

Unfortunately, it’s often difficult for aerial imaging to precisely map real time concentrations of methane emissions. For one thing, plumes from so-called “ultra-emission” events like oil rig and natural gas pipeline malfunctions (see: Turkmenistan) are invisible to human eyes, as well as most satellites’ multispectral near-infrared wavelength sensors. And what aerial data is collected is often thrown off by spectral noise, requiring manual parsing to accurately locate the methane leaks.

A University of Oxford team working alongside Trillium Technologies’ NIO.space has developed a new, open-source tool powered by machine learning that can identify methane clouds using much narrower hyperspectral bands of satellite imaging data. These bands, while more specific, produce much more vast quantities of data—which is where artificial intelligence training comes in handy.

The project is detailed in new research published in Nature Scientific Reports by a team at the University of Oxford, alongside a recent university profile. To train their model, engineers fed it a total of 167,825 hyperspectral image tiles—each roughly 0.66 square miles—generated by NASA’s Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) satellite while orbiting the Four Corners region of the US. The model was subsequently trained using additional orbital monitors, including NASA’s hyperspectral EMIT sensor currently aboard the International Space Station.

The team’s current model is roughly 21.5 percent more accurate at identifying methane plumes than the existing top tool, while simultaneously providing nearly 42 percent fewer false detection errors compared to the same industry standard. According to researchers, there’s no reason to believe those numbers won’t improve over time.

[Related: New satellites can pinpoint methane leaks to help us beat climate change.]

“What makes this research particularly exciting and relevant is the fact that many more hyperspectral satellites are due to be deployed in the coming years, including from ESA, NASA, and the private sector,” Vít Růžička, lead researcher and a University of Oxford doctoral candidate in the department of computer science, said during a recent university profile. As this satellite network expands, Růžička believes researchers and environmental watchdogs will soon gain an ability to automatically, accurately detect methane plume events anywhere in the world.

These new techniques could soon enable independent, globally-collaborated identification of greenhouse gas production and leakage issues—not just for methane, but many other major pollutants. The tool currently utilizes already collected geospatial data, and is not able to currently provide real-time analysis using orbital satellite sensors. In the University of Oxford’s recent announcement, however, research project supervisor Andrew Markham adds that the team’s long-term goal is to run their programs through satellites’ onboard computers, thus “making instant detection a reality.”

The post How AI could help scientists spot ‘ultra-emission’ methane plumes faster—from space appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

No one can entirely predict where the artificial intelligence industry is taking everyone, but at least the AI is poised to reliably tell you what the weather will be like when you get there. (Relatively.) According to a paper published on November 14 in Science, a new, AI-powered 10-day climate forecasting program called GraphCast is already outperforming existing prediction tools nearly every time. The open-source technology is even showing promise for identifying and charting potentially dangerous weather events—all while using a fraction of the “gold standard” system’s computing power.

“Weather prediction is one of the oldest and most challenging–scientific endeavors,” GraphCast team member Remi Lam said in a statement on Tuesday. “Medium range predictions are important to support key decision-making across sectors, from renewable energy to event logistics, but are difficult to do accurately and efficiently.”

[Related: Listen to ‘Now and Then’ by The Beatles, a ‘new’ song recorded using AI.]

Developed by Lam and colleagues at Google DeepMind, the tech company’s AI research division, GraphCast is trained on decades of historic weather information alongside roughly 40 years of satellite, weather station, and radar reanalysis. This stands in sharp contrast to what are known as numerical weather prediction (NWP) models, which traditionally utilize massive amounts of data concerning thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and other atmospheric sciences. All that data requires intense computing power, which itself requires intense, costly energy to crunch all those numbers. On top of all that, NWPs are slow—taking hours for hundreds of machines within a supercomputer to produce their 10-day forecasts.

GraphCast, meanwhile, offers highly accurate, medium range climatic predictions in less than a minute, all through just one of Google’s AI-powered machine learning tensor processing unit (TPU) machines.

During a comprehensive performance evaluation against the industry-standard NWP system—the High-Resolution Forecast (HRES)—GraphCast proved more accurate in over 90 percent of tests. When limiting the scope to only the Earth’s troposphere, the lowest portion of the atmosphere home to most noticeable weather events, GraphCast beat HRES in an astounding 99.7 percent of test variables. The Google DeepMind team was particularly impressed by the new program’s ability to spot dangerous weather events without receiving any training to look for them. By uploading a hurricane tracking algorithm and implementing it within GraphCast’s existing parameters, the AI-powered program was immediately able to more accurately identify and predict the storms’ path.

In September, GraphCast made its public debut through the organization behind HRES, the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). During that time, GraphCast accurately predicted Hurricane Lee’s trajectory nine days ahead of its Nova Scotia landfall. Existing forecast programs proved not only less accurate, but also only determined Lee’s Nova Scotia destination six days in advance.

[Related: Atlantic hurricanes are getting stronger faster than they did 40 years ago.]

“Pioneering the use of AI in weather forecasting will benefit billions of people in their everyday lives,” Lam wrote on Tuesday, who notes GraphCast’s potential vital importance amid increasingly devastating events stemming from climate collapse.

“[P]redicting extreme temperatures is of growing importance in our warming world,” Lam continued. “GraphCast can characterize when the heat is set to rise above the historical top temperatures for any given location on Earth. This is particularly useful in anticipating heat waves, disruptive and dangerous events that are becoming increasingly common.”

Google DeepMind’s GraphCast is already available via its open-source coding, and ECMWF plans to continue experimenting with integrating the AI-powered system into its future forecasting efforts.

The post Google DeepMind’s AI forecasting is outperforming the ‘gold standard’ model appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Americans consume billions of pounds of meat each year. And yet, there’s a plethora of research showing that copious amounts of meat can be unhealthy, both for the Earth and our bodies.  

The question of how to steer consumers toward healthier and more sustainable plant-based foods is a tricky one. Warning labels, similar to the ones found on cigarette packs, could be one way to raise awareness about the negative impacts of meat and perhaps sway consumer choices. But they’re still completely experimental.

In a new study published in the journal Appetite, psychologists in the UK created an online food-selection task where about 1,000 participants—all of whom ate meat—had to choose between a meat-based, fish-based, vegetarian, or vegan meal 20 times. A quarter of these participants based their decisions on images of each of the dishes. The remaining participants were randomly assigned to also see a warning label about the impact of meat on health, climate change, or the risk of future pandemics (researchers and organizations like the United Nations have linked high meat consumption with risk of infectious diseases). The team found that each warning label type reduced the subjects’ desire to eat meat: by 9 percent with health labels, 7 percent with climate labels, and 10 percent with pandemic labels. The individuals also viewed the climate label as the most credible of the three and the pandemic label the least, but potentially had a stronger emotional response to the latter.

One reason these warnings might work is because people see a negative outcome attached to meat, so they have a gut reaction and opt for a different food, says Jack Hughes, a psychology researcher at Durham University in England and lead author on the new paper. Another explanation could just be that the extra information gets people to think more consciously about their decisions, he explains. 

[Related: How to enjoy fake meat in a way that actually helps the planet]

The results of the study are “very in line with what we’ve seen with regards to labeling efforts and their effect on consumer behavior,” says Lindsey Smith Taillie. “They have a small to moderate effect on consumer choices.” Taillie, a nutrition epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina who studies how policies affect food choices, notes that the inclusion of pandemic-related labels is a first for this kind of research, at least to her knowledge. She would be especially interested to see how consumers in the US would react to that kind of messaging given the different political and cultural climate.

There are many factors that could influence the effectiveness of a warning label on a product. For example, as basic as it sounds, pictures make a difference. “We do know for tobacco in the UK that when images became mandatory alongside the text, labels got more effective,” Hughes explains. In two prior studies, Taillie and her collaborators found that text-only labels cautioning of health and environmental impacts of meat consumption only mildly reduced people’s carnivorous intentions, if at all. 

But not all images are the same. Take the case of high sugar content: A photo of teaspoons full of sugar is more factual and informative than a visual of a diseased heart, Taillie says. Regardless, “graphic labels are generally considered to be the most effective type,” she adds.

With warning labels, the goal is to grab people’s attention and get them thinking about their food’s footprint. But it ends up being counterproductive if the message makes the consumer feel angry or restricted, Taillie adds. One 2022 study out of Europe found that eliciting disgust by adding graphic images to packaging can both increase and decrease the likelihood of individuals choosing meat products, depending on whether they felt manipulated. Another recent European study found that meat-shaming messages on products can have paradoxical effects on buying habits.

The next step for this sort of research, says Taillie, would be to see how such labels affect choices in real-world settings—when factors like smells, prices, and peer pressure might influence consumer decisions. It’s also probably easier to choose the plant-based option when it’s a hypothetical online task and you don’t actually have to eat the food, she adds.

[Related: When faced with tough choices, your brain secretly tips the scales]

But choosing a meat-free diet can be an incredibly impactful way for individuals to reduce their carbon footprint, and this research can help nudge people in that direction. “In the UK, the Climate Change Committee says that meat consumption in the country needs to be reduced by 20 percent by 2030 [to meet carbon emission goals],” Hughes says. His team’s work shows that one simple and cheap action could change minds in a portion of the population. 

Would that be in the case in the US as well? Taillie sees a parallel with graphic tobacco warnings, which were adopted by European countries but have stalled in the state due to lawsuits. With meat labels, she says, “I think we’re looking at a timespan of decades.”

The post Graphic warning labels might convince people to eat less meat appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

In parts of Brazil, water levels are so low due to severe drought that previously submerged ancient rock carvings are visible for the first time since 2010. The petroglyphs including depictions of animals and other natural objects are located on the shores of Rio Negro, at an archeological site known as the Ponto das Lajes–Place of Slabs– near where the Rio Negro and the Solimões river flow into the Amazon River.

These carvings were previously seen during a drought 13 years ago, when the Rio Negro’s water levels dropped to what was then an all-time known low of 44.7 feet. As of October 23, the water levels in the Rio Negro are at 42.2 feet. Some experts predict that the drought could last until early 2024. 

[Related: The Amazon is on the brink of a climate change tipping point.]

According to the BBC, archaeologist Jaime Oliveira told local media that the markings were carved by people who lived in the area in pre-Columbian times. “This region is a pre-colonial site which has evidence of occupation dating back some 1,000 to 2,000 years. What we’re seeing here are representations of anthropomorphic figures.”

In addition to the faces and animals, grooves in one of the rocks were potentially used by Indigenous people in the area as a whetstone to sharpen their arrows. Carlos Augusto da Silva of the Federal University of Amazonas identified 25 groups of these carvings on a single rock.

Pieces of ceramics that archaeologists believe are thousands of years old have also been found at the site. The area was home to large Indigenous villages before European colonists arrived in the Seventeenth Century. 

[Related: Historic drought brings eerie objects and seawater to the surface of the Mississippi River.]

The carvings re-emerged earlier in October amid this unusually dry season. A similar situation arose in Europe in the summer of 2022, when one of the worst droughts in 500 years revealed “hunger stones,” in rivers across the continent. These stones covered in engraved markings show the water levels from previous dry times and some come with grim warnings. Near the town of Děčín in the northern Czech Republic, one haunting stone read “If you see me, then weep,” or “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine.”

Scientists attribute this drought in South America to an El Niño weather pattern and warming in the North Atlantic linked to human-made climate change. 

Due to the low water levels, endangered pink river dolphins in Lake Tefé, Brazil are at risk of suffocation and a major hydropower plant near Porto Velho has also been shut down. Tens of thousands living in remote communities who can only travel by boat are also being isolated from the rest of the world.

These dry conditions are also accelerating the destruction of the most biodiverse rainforest on Earth. Parts of the Amazon rainforest have already begun to change from humid ecosystems that store large amounts of heat-trapping gasses into more dry forests that release these gasses into the atmosphere. Climate change, deforestation and fires have made it harder for the Amazon region as a whole to recover from severe droughts.

“This is a catastrophe of lasting consequences,” Luciana Vanni Gatti, a scientist at Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research, told The New York Times. “The more forest loss we have, the less resilience it has.”

The post Drought reveals ancient rock carvings of human faces in Brazil appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

If you’ve ever spent time on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean, there is a solid chance you stumbled across a slimy mass of stinky, sulfurous-smelling seaweed. The specific marine plant in question during those gross encounters is likely sargassum—while helpful for absorbing CO2, sargassum is also incredibly invasive, and can wreak havoc on both shoreline and ocean ecosystems. Cleanup efforts can cost tens of thousands of dollars while disrupting both tourist and fishing industries, but a recent aquatic robot project is showing immense promise in alleviating sargassum stress. In fact, AlgaRay’s recent successes have even earned it a spot on Time’s Best Inventions of 2023.

Co-designed by Seaweed Generation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to utilizing the versatile plant to help mitigate and remove carbon emissions, an AlgaRay prototype is currently patrolling off the coasts of Antigua. There, the roughly 9-foot-wide robot scoops up clumps of sargassum until its storage capacity is filled, at which point the autonomous bot dives 200m below the surface.

[Related: Rocks may be able to release carbon dioxide as well as store it.]

At this depth, the air pockets that make sargassum leaves so buoyant are so compressed by the water pressure that it simply can’t float anymore. Once released by AlgaRay, the seaweed then sinks to the ocean floor. According to a new writeup by Seaweed Generation’s partners at the University of Exeter, the robot can repeat this process between four and six times every hour. And thanks to a combination of solar panels, lithium batteries, and navigational tools connected to Starlink’s satellite internet constellation, AlgaRay will “ultimately be able to work almost non-stop,” reports the University of Exeter.

Of course, ocean ecosystems are complex and delicate balancing acts at any depth. AlgaRay’s designers are well aware of this, and assure its potential additional ocean floor CO2 deposits won’t be carried out recklessly. Additionally, they note sargassum blooms—exacerbated by human ecological disruption—are already causing major issues across the world.

“Sargassum inundations… cause environmental, social and economic disruption across the Caribbean, Central US and West African regions,” Seaweed Generation CEO Paddy Estridge and Chief of Staff Blythe Taylor, explain on the organization’s website. “Massive influxes of seaweed wash ashore and rot, releasing not just the absorbed CO2 but hydrogen sulfide gasses, decimating fragile coastal ecosystems including mangroves and seagrass meadows and killing countless marine animals.”

[Related: The US is investing more than $1 billion in carbon capture, but big oil is still involved.]

Estridge and Taylor write that humans “need to tread carefully” when it comes to depositing biomass within the deep ocean to ensure there are no “negative impacts or implications on the surrounding environment and organisms.” At the same time, researchers already know sargassum naturally dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

Still, “we can’t assume either a positive or negative impact to sinking sargassum, so a cautious pathway and detailed monitoring has been built into our approach,” Estridge and Taylor write. “The scale of our operations are such that we can measure any change to the ocean environment on the surface, mid or deep ocean. Right now, and for the next few years our operations are literally a drop in the ocean (or a teaspoon of Sargassum per m2).”

As the name might imply, the AlgaRay is inspired by manta rays, which glide through ocean waters while using their mouths to filter and eat algae. In time, future iterations of the robot could even rival manta rays’ massive sizes. A nearly 33-foot-wide version is in the works to collect upwards of 16 metric tons of seaweed at a time—equal to around two metric tons of CO2. With careful monitoring of deep sea repositories, fleets of AlgaRay robots could soon offer an efficient, creative means to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

“The [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]  has been very clear that we need to be able to remove (not offset, remove) 10 billion [metric tons] of carbon a year from the atmosphere by 2050 to have a hope of avoiding utter catastrophe for all people and all earth life,” write Estridge and Taylor. Knowing this, AlgaRay bots may be a key ally for helping meet that goal. If nothing else, perhaps some beaches will be a little less overrun with rotting seaweed every year. 

The post This seafaring robot ‘eats’ stinky seaweed and dumps it in deep water appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

There is about a month and a half left in the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane season, and it’s a season that has seen some rapidly intensifying storms. In less than 24 hours, Hurricane Idalia went from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 4 with winds near 130 MPH. The storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a high Category 3. Weeks later, Hurricane Lee grew from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 in only 24 hours.

[Related: The future of hurricanes is full of floods—a lot of them.]

According to a study published October 19 in the journal Scientific Reports, Atlantic hurricanes may be more than twice as likely to strengthen from a Category 1 storm to a major Category 3 hurricane or higher in a 24-hour period than they were between 1970 and 1990. They also are more likely to strengthen more rapidly along the east coast of the United States.

As ocean temperatures continue to reach record highs due to human-caused climate change, the trend is worrying. Tropical weather systems like hurricanes and tropical storms gain strength over unusually warm sea surface temperatures. Warm ocean water is like carbohydrates for hurricanes and gives the storms more energy. Faster storm intensification has already been linked to climate change, but the changes in the intensification rates of storms across the 41 million square mile wide Atlantic Ocean Basin have been less clear. 

“Our oceans have absorbed about 90 percent of the excess warming that has occurred in recent decades due to human-caused climate change,” study co-author and Rowan University climate scientist Andra Garner tells PopSci. “I wanted to see what kinds of changes might already have occurred to the overall rates at which Atlantic hurricanes have been strengthening.”

In the study, Garner looked at every Atlantic hurricane between 1970 and 2020 and analyzed how the wind speed changed over each hurricanes’ lifespan. The storms were split into three time periods–a historical era (1970 to 1990), an intermediate era (1986 to 2005), and a modern era (2001 to 2020). To establish the maximum intensification rate, Garner calculated the greatest increase in wind speed over any 24-hour period within the hurricane’s lifespan. 

She found that the chance of a hurricane’s maximum intensification rate being 23 miles per hour or more had increased from 42.3 percent in the historical era to 56.7 percent today. The probability of a weak hurricane strengthening to become a major hurricane in 24 hours also increased from 3.23 percent to 8.12 percent. 

“The storms we’ve seen this year, like Hurricane Idalia and Hurricane Lee, align with what my research findings would tell us to expect,” Garner says. “Hurricane Idalia and Hurricane Lee both occurred over exceptionally warm ocean waters, and strengthened quickly as a result of those warm ocean waters (and other favorable conditions). I think that this lines up very well with a trend that my research indicates that we could expect to continue if ocean waters continue to warm.”

[Related: Florida’s aquatic animals prepare early for storms like Hurricane Idalia.]

The locations within the Atlantic Basin where hurricanes were most likely to see their maximum intensification rate has also changed between these eras. Hurricanes were more likely to strengthen most quickly off the Atlantic coast of the US and in the Caribbean Sea, and less likely to strengthen most quickly in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Better understanding these locations and intensification rates could help create better action plans for communities at risk. Three of the five of the most economically damaging Atlantic hurricanes have all occurred since 2017 and these storms all had rapid growth. According to Garner, this is an “urgent warning for humanity,” and it should continue without major changes to our behavior and quickly transitioning away from fossil fuels. However, there is still time to act. 

“It’s really important to remember that there is absolutely still hope. We know that we are the cause of this problem, which means we can also be the solution—and we already have the tools at our disposal (green energy, etc.) to actually be the solution,” says Garner. “So there’s hope that we could secure a more sustainable future.”

The post Atlantic hurricanes are getting stronger faster than they did 40 years ago appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Trees are magicians with carbon, pulling it out of the air at remarkable rates to store it in their bodies. They are so good at removing this greenhouse gas that “planting trees” is often synonymous with doing environmental good. 

And lots of people are planting trees. The number of tree-planting organizations has grown by almost 300 percent in the past 30 years, according to a 2021 paper in the journal Biological Conservation. Those groups have planted nearly 1.4 billion trees across 74 countries since 1961. But while tree planting can capture a great amount of carbon, it is hardly a silver bullet for the climate crisis—experts estimate that even if we maximized our available lands for trees, this alone would not be enough to counteract anthropogenic carbon emissions. Plus, many plantations grow the same few species in monocultures, which can hurt local biodiversity. 

A planted tree will suck up carbon regardless of species or its planters’ motivation. But it’s difficult to make blanket statements about the efficacy of carbon capture forestry: Tree plantations are found all over the world, surrounded by different ecosystems with their own native species and local populations who live and rely on these lands—there will be no “one tree fits all” solution.

[Related: A beginner’s guide to selecting, planting, and protecting a new tree]

The minority of tree plantations are set up with carbon capture solely, or even primarily in mind, says Jacob Bukoski, a forestry scientist at Oregon State University. Most trees are planted with the goal of harvesting timber or wood pulp for paper. Tree-planting organizations are more likely to create plantations for agroforestry or commercial reasons, the authors of the 2021 paper also note, rather than for biodiversity or carbon capture. 

These groves sometimes support voluntary carbon markets, also known as carbon offset markets, where corporations pay for activities like planting trees as a way to offset their total emissions. People tend to like using carbon credits for tree plantation over other options because the goal is clear, Bukoski says. You can tangibly understand that your carbon offsets will result in planted trees that are ideally managed and monitored afterward. But only a small minority of trees are planted for these carbon markets, he says. 

In forestry, there’s a saying that you have to plant “the right tree in the right place, for the right reason.” But when many tree plantations are established for commercial purposes, the tree that is planted is often not the “right” tree, says Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez, an ecologist at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. 

In a paper published recently in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Aguirre-Gutiérrez and colleagues argue that focusing on the goal of carbon sequestration causes organizations to ignore the importance of restoring balanced ecosystems. Globally, tree plantations tend to plant the same species such as teak, eucalyptus, mahogany, and a few others valued by the timber, paper, and other industries, Aguirre-Gutiérrez says. The result is a swath of trees that do not support local organisms or promote biodiversity in the way native plant species would have. 

[Related: We need billions more baby trees to regrow US forests]

These problems are present in plantations all over the world, but Aguirre-Gutiérrez and his colleagues are particularly concerned about the tropics. Land there is vast, and conditions such as stable temperatures and high humidity promote tree growth—“that’s why there’s been a boom in plantations in these locations,” he says. At the same time, the tropics are host to an incredible variety of plants and animals found nowhere else. Ignoring them while planting trees is damaging. When plantations increased the woody cover of the Brazilian savannah by 40 percent, this “resulted in an about 30 percent reduction in the diversity of plants and ants,” Aguirre-Gutiérrez and his co-authors write in the new paper.

Aguirre-Gutiérrez doesn’t want to discourage people from growing more trees, he says. Rather, we need a better way to protect the natural ecosystems and species there, like encouraging the restoration of native forest tree species. Local plants will be “better adapted to the conditions” in these environments, he says, which means they, and nearby species, are more likely to thrive. “If we go in that direction, that will bring us the added value of capturing carbon, but also this sustainability.”

When assessing the utility or good of a tree plantation, “there’s a lot of nuance,” says Bukoski, and often cases need to be evaluated individually. For example, a plantation where the trees will be harvested for timber won’t provide long-term carbon capture benefits—does that make it not worthwhile? That’s not a conclusion you can necessarily draw without more information, he says.

Aguirre-Gutiérrez says we need more research quantifying the impacts tree plantations are having on their local ecologies, and the populations of people living in those areas, beyond carbon. “Because at the end of the day, the impacts of these plantations are going to be first felt by these local communities.”

The post Tree plantations try to offset our carbon pollution. Here’s the problem. appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

If you’ve been wondering what climate change means for your neighborhood, you’re in luck. The most detailed interactive map yet of the United States’ vulnerability to dangers such as fire, flooding, and pollution was released on Monday by the Environmental Defense Fund and Texas A&M University.

The fine-grained analysis spans more than 70,000 census tracts, which roughly resemble neighborhoods, mapping out environmental risks alongside factors that make it harder for people to deal with hazards. Clicking on a report for a census tract yields details on heat, wildfire smoke, and drought, in addition to what drives vulnerability to extreme weather, such as income levels and access to health care and transportation.

The “Climate Vulnerability Index” tool is intended to help communities secure funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law President Joe Biden signed last summer. An executive order from Biden’s early months in office promised that “disadvantaged communities” would receive at least 40 percent of the federal investments in climate and clean energy programs. As a result of the infrastructure law signed in 2021, more than $1 billion has gone toward replacing lead pipes and more than $2 billion has been spent on updating the electric grid to be more reliable.

“The Biden Administration has made a historic level of funding available to build toward climate justice and equity, but the right investments need to flow to the right places for the biggest impact,” Grace Tee Lewis, a health scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement.

According to the data, all 10 of the country’s most vulnerable counties are in the South, many along the Gulf Coast, where there are high rates of poverty and health problems. Half are in Louisiana, which faces dangers from flooding, hurricanes, and industrial pollution. St. John the Baptist Parish, just up the Mississippi River from New Orleans, ranks as the most vulnerable county, a result of costly floods, poor child and maternal health, a list of toxic air pollutants, and the highest rate of disaster-related deaths in Louisiana.

“We know that our community is not prepared at all for emergencies, the federal government is not prepared, the local parish is not prepared,” Jo Banner, a community activist in St. John the Baptist, told Capital B News.

Even in cities where climate risk is comparatively low, like Seattle, the data shows a sharp divide. North Seattle is relatively insulated from environmental dangers, whereas South Seattle — home to a more racially diverse population, the result of a history of housing covenants that excluded people on the basis of race or ethnicity — suffers from air pollution, flood risk, and poorer infrastructure.

Similar maps of local climate impacts have been released before, including by the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality, but the new tool is considered the most comprehensive assessment to date. While it includes Alaska and Hawai‘i, it doesn’t cover U.S. territories like Puerto Rico or Guam. The map is available here, and tutorials on how to use the tool, for general interest or for community advocates, are here.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/extreme-weather/new-map-climate-change-risks-neighborhood-vulnerability-index/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post This climate crisis map shows how vulnerable your neighborhood is appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

We all know the line: For more than 150 million years, dinosaurs ruled the Earth. We imagine bloodthirsty tyrannosaurs ripping into screaming duckbills, gigantic sauropods shaking the ground with their thunderous footfalls, and spiky stegosaurs swinging their tails in a reign of reptiles so magnificent, it took the unexpected strike of a six-mile-wide asteroid to end it. The ensuing catastrophe handed the world to the mammals, our ancestors and relatives, so that 66 million years later we can claim to have taken over what the terrible lizards left behind. It’s a dramatic retelling of history that is fundamentally wrong on several counts. Let’s talk about some of the worst rumors and what really happened in the so-called “Age of Dinosaurs.”

Myth: Dinosaurs dominated the planet from their origin.

Fact: Dinosaurs started as cute pipsqueaks.

The oldest dinosaurs we know about are around 235 million years old, from the middle part of the Triassic Period. Those reptiles didn’t rule anything. From recent finds in Africa, South America, and Europe, we know that they were no bigger than a medium-sized dog and were lanky, omnivorous creatures that munched on leaves and beetles. Ancient relatives of crocodiles, by contrast, were much more abundant and diverse. Among the Triassic crocodile cousins were sharp-toothed carnivores that chased after large prey on two legs, “armadillodiles” covered in bony scutes and spikes, and beaked, almost ostrich-like creatures that gobbled up ferns.

Even as early dinosaurs began to evolve into the main lineages that would thrive during the rest of the Mesozoic, most were small and rare compared to the crocodile cousins. The first big herbivorous dinosaurs, which reached about 27 feet in length, didn’t evolve until near the end of the Triassic, around 214 million years ago. But everything changed at the end of the Triassic. Intense volcanic eruptions in the middle of Pangaea altered the global climate; the gases released into the air caused the world to swing between hot and cold phases. By then, dinosaurs had evolved warm-blooded metabolisms and insulating coats of feathers, leaving them relatively unfazed through the crisis, while many other forms of reptiles perished. Had this mass extinction not transpired, we might have had more of an “Age of Crocodiles”—or at least a very different history with a much broader cast of reptilian characters. The only reason the so-called Age of Dinosaurs came to be is because they got lucky in the face of global extinction.

Myth: Dinosaurs spanned the entire planet.

Fact: Dinosaurs never evolved to live at sea.

Of course, these ecosystems were built on a foundation of plankton. Without disc-shaped algae called coccoliths, the rest of the charismatic swimmers of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous wouldn’t have thrived. It’s the abundant, small forms of life that let charismatic creatures like marine reptiles prosper—a further reminder that the animals that impress us on land or sea wouldn’t exist without various tiny organisms that set the foundations of food webs. What we might see as dominance, in any ecosystem, is really a consequence of many relationships and interactions that often go unnoticed.

Myth: Dinosaurs suppressed the evolution of mammals.

Fact: Mammals thrived throughout the Age of Dinosaurs.

The classic example of dinosaur dominance is a twitchy little mammal chasing an insect through the Cretaceous night. Dinosaurs would gobble up any beast that got too big or was foolish enough to wander out in the daylight, the argument went, so mammals evolved to be small and nocturnal until the asteroid allowed our ancestors and relatives to emerge from the shadows. The small size and insect-hunting adaptations of some Mesozoic mammals were taken as indicators that mammals were constrained by the success of the dinosaurs, preventing them from becoming larger or opening new niches.

In the past 20 years, however, paleontologists have rewritten the classic story to show that mammals and their relatives thrived alongside the dinosaurs. Throughout the Mesozoic there were furry beasts that swam, dug, glided between the trees, and even ate little dinosaurs. Ancient equivalents of squirrels, raccoons, otters, beavers, sugar gliders, aardvarks, and more evolved through the Jurassic and Cretaceous, including early primates that scampered through the trees over the heads of T. rexes. While it’s true that all the Mesozoic mammals we presently know of were small—the largest was about the size of an American badger— researchers have realized that the way our ancient ancestors interacted with each other was much more important to shaping their evolution than the dinosaurs were. In fact, even with the dinosaurs gone, most new mammal species stuck to being small. We get so hung up on size that we’ve missed the real story, closer to the ground.

Myth: Dinosaurs dominated the planet for millions of years.

Fact: No single species can dominate a planet.

The post 4 reasons dinosaurs never really ruled the Earth appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Glaciers are melting faster than ever, and while that might spell disaster for the planet, it has opened up a new field of research called glacial archaeology. Artifacts, bodies, and viruses frozen deep in ice for millions of years are now thawing out and washing to the surface; the warmer climate is also allowing archaeologists to navigate areas that were once too dangerous to excavate.

The 1991 discovery of Ötzi—a prehistoric human who is estimated to have lived in the 4th millennium BCE—in a melting glacier in the Italian Alps currently remains the greatest discovery for glacial archaeology. But it’s not the only noteworthy find we’ve seen in the last two decades.

Treasure trove of arrows

Earlier in September, Pilø and his team were searching through the Jotunheimen mountains in eastern Norway and uncovered a wooden arrow with a quartzite arrowhead and three feathers. Ancient people used feathers to stabilize the arrow and guide it to its target. These accents usually decay over time, but the ice kept them intact. The arrow is estimated to be 3,000 years old and may have belonged to a reindeer hunter from the early Bronze Age. It’s one of several arrows that have been surfaced from Norway’s melting ice in recent years.

In 2014, Pilø and his colleagues uncovered a prehistoric ski in a melting ice patch in Norway. The ski is thought to be 1,300 years old, and had the bindings still intact. In 2021, they came across the second ski, making it one of the most well-preserved prehistoric skis to date. Because the skis were very well-preserved, Pilø says they were able to make replicas and race down slopes with iron-age skis. “That was a lot of fun.”

Prehistoric animals

In August 2010, a partially preserved carcass of a baby wooly mammoth was found in Siberia’s permafrost. Nicknamed Yuka, the frozen animal is estimated to be around 30,000 years old, which puts it back in the last ice age. Based on where the specimen was discovered, it’s likely that the mammoth wandered away from its herd in the grasslands and got stuck in mud. Given that the lower body was well-preserved in ice, it gave researchers an opportunity to analyze the extinct species in-depth and extract its frozen blood.

The melting snow in Antarctica has also led to some interesting evolutionary findings. During a 2016 research expedition, Steven Emslie uncovered the preserved remains of 800-year-old Adelie penguins, along with some less well-preserved remains of the aquatic birds estimated to be around 5,000 years old. According to a study he published in 2020, the penguins were likely moving because of changing sea-ice conditions and were covered up by increasing snowfall, which prevented their remains from decaying.

Organic artifacts

A muddy future

While the warming climate is paving the way to more discoveries of the ancient past, there are some hiccups. Ross MacPhee, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, says that though it’s easier to access places that were once inhospitable, melting snow can be a poor substrate for research. “Everything is a mudhole,” which makes it much more complicated to look for fossils, he explains.  

There is also the issue of ancient artifacts washing away: Pilø estimates 60 to 80 percent of mountain ice in Norway is in danger of melting by the end of this century. He describes it as a race against time. “If we are not ready to search for these finds, they will get lost, and so will the stories they could have told us.” 

A combination of resources from aerial photography of mountains, digital models of terrain, and satellite imagery has helped glacial archaeologists melting glaciers and any areas where  artifacts may have thawed out. However, their efforts can only go so far as ice around the poles continues to melt at unprecedented speeds. If temperatures continue to rise—July 2023, for example, was the hottest month ever recorded in human history—Pilø warns that 90 percent of mountain ice in Norway might disappear by 2100.

Still, archaeologists like Pilø are taking advantage of this fleeting opportunity to dig through the soft ice while they can. While the chances are tiny, he still holds out hope that the melting glaciers will help him find the next ice mummy.

The post ‘Dark’ archaeologists scour melting ice for ancient artifacts appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The Pacific Ocean is a juggernaut. It’s the largest ocean on our planet, almost double the size of the Atlantic. Its vast expanse, exposure to trade winds, and range of temperatures makes it incredibly dynamic. All these factors contribute to create the El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern that affects seasonal precipitation, heat, storms, and more around the world. 

ENSO is made up of three stages: El Niño and La Niña, which can both increase the likelihood of extreme weather from the Philippines to Hawaii to Peru—and the neutral phase that we are typically in. El Niño is currently underway and is predicted to go strong until winter. With it come a slew of weather patterns like exacerbated heat waves in the northern US and Canada, increased risk of flooding in the south and southeast US, delayed rainy seasons, and even droughts in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. And this is for an El Niño period that is predicted to be strong, but not particularly extreme. But as the Pacific warms due to human-driven climate change and temperature gradients across the ocean widen, scientists warn that El Niño and La Niña periods are becoming longer, more extreme, and more frequent.

[Related: Climate change is making the ocean lose its memory]

In one recent study published in the journal Nature Reviews, researchers looked at different climate models to see how ENSO has changed through the past century, and how it may shift in coming years. While El Niño and La Niña ordinarily last nine to 12 months, the vast majority of models predict that we will see them stretch out over multiple years. “In the 20th century you got about one extreme El Niño per 20 years,” says Wenju Cai, chief research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia and lead author of the Nature Reviews paper. “But in the future, and in the 21st century on average, we will get something like one extreme event per 10 years—so it’s doubling.”

Longer and more intense periods of El Niño and La Niña mean that the risks of extreme weather—hurricanes, cyclones, flooding, drought—are heightened for most countries lying in the Pacific or flanking it. For example, El Niño pulls warm water farther east, so if tropical cycles (storms that tend to move westward) develop, they’ll have more time and distance to cover until they reach land. “While they’re traveling in the ocean, these tropical cyclones are energized by the heat and moisture from the ocean,” says Cai. By the time they reach countries to the west like North Korea, South Korea, Japan, or China, they could be more catastrophic than the tropical storms those places experience today.

Since “global warming is already making extreme events more extreme” like intensifying storms and weather patterns, Cai says, it’s a “double whammy.” 

But even the less dramatic effects of ENSO could still amount to damage. The fluctuations in ocean temperatures that ENSO brings, for example, can be dramatic and too quick for marine life like corals to adapt, says John Burns, a marine and data scientist at the University of Hawaii. “All that can exacerbate coral bleaching,” which has already been documented in Hawaiian reefs. 

And because creatures and systems are so intrinsically interconnected, this has resounding implications for a number of species and industries. Burns has created technologies that can reconstruct water habitats, and he’s used those models to study the implications of coral loss. “We’ve actually mathematically connected how these habitats influence the abundance of reef fish,” he says, “which are one of the primary sources of protein for the global economy, especially in Southeast Asia.” So not only will climate change and ENSO harm fish and fisheries, but that could also have ripple effects on tourism, as well as the local and global economies. 

In a recent report in the journal Science, climate researchers from Dartmouth College estimated that extreme El Niño events from 1982 and 1997 alone cost the global economy about $4 trillion to $6 trillion, respectively, in the following years. The authors also estimated that this current El Niño period could rack up $3 trillion in losses over the next five years. The damages aren’t just limited to buildings and infrastructure, Cai says: They include social pillars people may not even consider, like jobs, farmland, food stocks, and individual health. As a result, some countries and organizations are taking a proactive approach against El Niño. Peru, for instance, is dedicating more than $1 billion to prevent and contain the carnage it might bring.

[Related: The Pacific heat blob’s aftereffects are still warping ocean ecosystems]

But there is time to bring ENSO and the Pacific Ocean back into balance, bit by bit. While it can be useful at times to consider these global changes on a large scale, it’s important to “recognize that solutions will be very locally based,” says Burns. Even if we project the overall trends, he explains, understanding how specific habitats will be affected and what solutions are feasible requires local and native wisdom and knowledge. 

“It’s a shame if we get dismayed by these larger-scale changes and come to a conclusion of ‘there’s nothing we can do,’” Burns says. “It’s definitely not that simple … and we need strategies that are place-based to protect these systems.”

The post When climate change throws the Pacific off balance, the world’s weather follows appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on High Country News.

Marin Hambley was working as a groundskeeper in Chico, California, when the first plumes of what would become the deadliest fire in the state’s history appeared on the horizon. It was Nov. 8, 2018.

Initially, all Hambley could see of the Camp Fire was a “little puff of cloud”—a sight not uncommon in the northeastern reaches of the Sacramento Valley, where summer temperatures routinely surpass 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But by midafternoon, “the sky was totally black and just dropping chunks of ash,” said Hambley. 

Many residents evacuated; Hambley chose to stay. This area had been heavily impacted by the opioid crisis, and Hambley’s experience with harm reduction, a practice centered on minimizing the negative outcomes of drug use, made them acutely aware of the need to help people with substance abuse disorders. Additionally, their perspective as a queer and trans person led them to believe that they could be especially helpful to the marginalized populations that are often overlooked during disasters. 

Since 2006, Butte County, where Paradise and Chico are located, has consistently been among the top three counties in the state for hospitalizations from opioid-related overdoses, with an annual rate between 2.75 and 5 times the state’s average. 

In the hours after the plumes first appeared, Hambley heard about a pop-up encampment in an empty lot wedged between a busy throughway and the local Walmart. Hundreds of mostly low-income people had flocked there, fleeing the fire, and community organizers were distributing food, water and clothing. Meanwhile, those with means stayed in hotel rooms and Airbnbs or left the area entirely. 

At the time, the county lacked official harm reduction infrastructure. Hambley and other organizers had to locate and distribute supplies on their own. Without the required certification, their activities weren’t technically legal, but Hambley said that was a risk they were willing to take. While the group had received a grant for purchasing Narcan—the overdose-preventing nasal spray approved for over-the-counter use last March—they had to obtain syringes, needles, cotton swabs and fentanyl test strips from groups elsewhere in the state. “We were all kind of underground,” Hambley said, noting that they smuggled backpacks stuffed with Narcan into Red Cross-operated shelters, where drug use was prohibited, though widely practiced. 

At the Walmart encampment and other shelters, Hambley witnessed a disturbing rise in overdoses following the colossal Camp Fire, which ultimately killed at least 85 people and devoured nearly 240 square miles. A local paramedic noted that in the weeks following the fire, overdoses went from being a weekly occurrence to a daily one. And with a rate of 17 deaths per 100,000 residents, for the first time the Paradise area experienced a higher rate of opioid-related overdose deaths in 2018 than any other zip code in Butte County. Hambley said that’s because disasters cause both acute stress and chronic uncertainty, which can lead to more reactive and less managed drug use. “The chaos around you often precedes more chaotic (drug) use,” they said.

Across the Western U.S., climate disasters compound the devastation already caused by the deepening addiction crisis. Wildfires and floods breed anxiety, despair and isolation, all of which can exacerbate substance use. “Your house burns down, your community burns down, your school burns down—of course, you look for an escape,” said Sarah Windels, a co-founder of Bridge, a California-based program that promotes access to substance-use disorder treatment.

Beyond that, climate disasters halt addiction treatment programs and derail critical medication supply chains—all factors that heighten the risk of overdose, including for people who legally use opioids. This is especially true in rural areas, where fewer health-care providers are available, and patients often need to travel substantial distances to receive care. After a massive fire or flood, when local pharmacies and clinics may be closed, a person who is prescribed opioids for chronic pain or who is undergoing medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to curb their addiction may be forced to acquire a substitute illegally. If that supply has a higher potency than they are used to or, as is increasingly common, is laced with fentanyl, that individual is at a high risk of overdosing. 

“Your house burns down, your community burns down, your school burns down — of course, you look for an escape.”

The data suggests that the connection between climate-induced disasters and overdoses is neither occasional nor individual, but seasonal and increasingly predictable. For instance, overdose rates are increasing every year across the nation, but in California, at least, they peak at the height of fire season. According to the California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard, emergency department visits for opioid-related overdoses have topped out during the third quarter of every year since 2018. And in 2020, the counties most affected by the vast August Complex Fire saw a surge in overdose deaths while the wildfire burned. 

From the foothills of the California Sierras, to the floodplains of New Mexico, to the high Rockies in Colorado, these events are also forcing harm reduction workers to adapt their approaches to match their specific surroundings. 

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example, extreme weather during the summer months accelerates overdose rates, said Ashley Charzuk, the executive director of the New Mexico Harm Reduction Collaborative, although the reasons differ from those in regions affected by wildfires. In Charzuk’s experience, people who use intravenous drugs can find veins more easily when it’s hot, owing to vasodilation, and this can lead to more frequent and potent use. What’s more, those who use stimulants are at greater risk of overamping, which is different from overdosing. “Your body temperature goes up when you’re using methamphetamine,” said Charzuk. When paired with high environmental temperatures, Charzuk said, overamping can lead to heart attack, stroke or other complications.

As heat waves get more extreme, Charzuk and her colleagues prioritize educating people about the risks of drug use when it’s hot out. 

“We remind people … that heat plays into so many different metabolic factors,” said Charzuk. “If you’ve been out in the heat all day and you’ve been sweating, then you are going to be dehydrated, and anything that impacts your body like that is going to give you less of a defense.” 

In 2020, overdose-related emergency room visits in New Mexico peaked in July at 255, and in 2021, they peaked in June at 260.

As someone who uses drugs and has experienced homelessness in the past, Charzuk has “met some of the same challenges that (program) participants meet on a daily basis,” she said. 

Harm reduction workers are also at risk. In the summer of 2021, while handing out water in a local park, Charzuk was overcome by symptoms of heat stroke that kept her out of the field for days. “I feel like I learned a little bit more on how to take care of the people that are on my team as well as myself,” she said. 

For Hambley, such incidents speak to how important it is for harm reduction workers to think about their own physical and mental health during crises, “or else everyone will burn out,” they said. 

That tension came to a head for Arianna Campbell in the summer of 2021, when the Caldor Fire threatened to raze her community in Placerville, California, 90 miles southeast of Chico. As the flames approached, Campbell’s husband, a retired firefighter, suggested Campbell pack a go box. It was the first time he had ever done so. 

“He had some indications that this was going to be a very big one,” said Campbell; in fact, the fire would go on to burn over 200,000 acres and more than 1,000 buildings. 

But Campbell, a physician assistant, knew that she would be needed at the local hospital. Crises like wildfires strain emergency departments, Campbell explained, which are flooded by people with injuries, respiratory problems or other medical issues. This is especially likely for those who lack stable housing or have a substance use disorder. “If you’re someone who uses drugs, you may not necessarily have a lot of options,” Campbell said. 

In Placerville, Campbell helped her hospital become one of the country’s first rural sites to offer buprenorphine, a medication that helps curb opioid addiction. “If someone is being treated on buprenorphine and there is a lapse in treatment, they are at close to three times the risk of dying,” she said, “because it puts them at such high risk of return to use and overdose.”

Maggie Seldeen, who describes herself as a practicing drug user, founded High Rockies Harm Reduction to address the dearth of safe injection supplies in the region surrounding Aspen, Colorado. Overdoses from opioids, most notably fentanyl, have skyrocketed in the state since the start of the pandemic. For Seldeen—who used cocaine and heroin intravenously for years, starting as a freshman in high school, and who has seen numerous friends contract hepatitis—practicing harm reduction through the use of clean needles and fresh syringes is critically important. But more frequent wildfires and landslides affected the area’s already strained supply chain. 

“A lot of people of color, a lot of queer and trans folks, a lot of poor folks already understand the ways the system fails them.” 

That puts the lives of people who use drugs at risk, she said. In 2020, for instance, the Grizzly Creek Fire meant that I-70 in Glenwood Canyon—45 miles north of Aspen, and a critical juncture on the route from Aspen to Denver, more than a three-hour drive away—was closed for two weeks.  

“It gets really scary,” said Seldeen, who spoke about how the anxiety provoked by wildfires can push her and others to use substances as coping mechanisms. 

Now, Seldeen always has a go bag in her car when she is in the field in the summer months. It holds important personal documents, water, Narcan and first aid supplies, in case she encounters people who need help using drugs safely or reversing an overdose during an evacuation. Her hope is to create a network of people in the Rockies who are knowledgeable about—and prepared for—reducing the risks of drug use. Those connections, she says, will become increasingly important in a future that involves more climate events.

Seldeen isn’t alone in seeing the importance of community in facing the dueling crises of addiction and climate change. Back in Chico, Hambley now chairs the Northern Valley Harm Reduction Coalition, which Hambley helped grow in the wake of the Camp Fire, determined to continue the collective approach to harm reduction that came out of that disaster. “This is a community response,” they said. “The networks that we have are strong.” 

The embers of the Camp Fire had barely cooled in March 2020, when the Chico network had to mobilize once again to prevent overdoses during the statewide COVID-19 lockdown.

“This is a marathon,” Hambley said, explaining how their queer identity and personal experience living on the margins have given them the tools to build a community that will rise to the challenge. 

“A lot of people of color, a lot of queer and trans folks, a lot of poor folks already understand the ways the system fails them,” Hambley said. “As a queer trans person, I’ve already learned how to create family and community and networks outside of my home. Those are skills I live with every day, so in moments of crisis, our skill sets actually become incredibly valuable.”   

Robin Buller is a freelance journalist based in Oakland, California. She writes about health, equity and climate. Email her at robinmbuller@gmail.com.

The post Communities struggling with opioid addiction have a new complication: climate disasters appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

On August 31, the Air Force announced that a California company called Oklo would design, construct, own, and operate a micro nuclear reactor at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. The contract will potentially run for 30 years, with the reactor intended to go online in 2027 and produce energy through the duration of the contract. Should the reactor prove successful, the hope is that it will allow other Air Force bases to rely on modular miniature reactors to augment their existing power supply, lessening reliance on civilian energy grids and increasing the resiliency of air bases.

Located less than two degrees south of the Arctic Circle, Eielson may appear remote on maps centered on the continental United States, but its northern location allows it to loom over the Pacific Ocean. A full operational squadron of F-35A stealth jet fighters are based at Eielson, alongside KC-135 jet tankers that offer air refueling. As the Department of Defense orients towards readiness for any conflict with what it describes as the “pacing challenge” of China, the ability to reliably get aircraft into the sky quickly and reliably extends to ensuring that bases can have electrical power at all times.

“If you look at what installations provide, they deliver sorties. At Eielson Air Force base they deliver sorties for F-35 aircraft that are stationed there,” Ravi I. Chaudhary, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy, Installations, and Environment, tells Popular Science via Zoom. “But if you think about all that goes with that, you’ve got ground equipment that needs powering. You’ve got fuel systems that run on power. You’ve got base operations that run on power. You’ve got maintenance facilities that run on power, and that all increases draw.”

And it’s not just maintenance facilities that need power, Chaudhary points out; the base also houses communities that live there, go to school there, and shop at places like the commissary.

While the commissary may not be the most immediately necessary part of base operations, ensuring that there’s backup power to send the planes into the air, and take care of families while the fighters are away, is an important part of base functioning. 

But in the event that the base needs more power, or an independent backup source, bases often turn to diesel generators. Those are reliable, but come with their own logistical obligations, for supplying and maintaining diesel generators, to say nothing of the carbon impact. As a promotional video for the Eielson micro-reactor project notes, the military is “the nation’s largest single energy consumer,” which understates the outsized role the US military has as a producer of greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions. 

This need is where the idea of a small nuclear reactor comes into play.

“When you have a core micro reactor source that can provide independent clean energy to the installation, that’s a huge force multiplier for you because then you don’t have to rely on more vulnerable commercial grids,” says Chaudhary. These reactors would facilitate a strategy Chaudhary called “islanding,” where “you take that insulation, you sequester it from the local power grid, and you execute operations, get your sorties out of town and deploy.”

The quest for a modular, base-scale nuclear reactor is almost as old as the Air Force itself. In the 1950s, the US Army explored the idea of powering bases with Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One, or SL-1. In January 1961, SL-1 tragically and fatally exploded, killing three operators. The Navy, meanwhile, successfully continues to use nuclear reactor power plants on board some of its ships and submarines.

In this case, for its Eielson reactor, the Air Force and Oklo are drawing on decades of innovation, improvement, and refined safety processes since then, to create a liquid-metal cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor that’s designed to be self-cooling when or if it fails.

And importantly, the Air Force is starting small. The announced program is to design just a five megawatt reactor, and then scale up the technology once that works. It’s a far cry from the base’s existing coal and oil power plant, which generates over 33 megawatts. Adding five megawatts to that grid is at present an augmentation of what already exists, but one that could make the islanding strategy possible.

If a base can function as an island, that means attacks on an associated civilian grid can’t prevent the base from operating. This works for attacks with conventional weapons, like bombs and missiles, and it should work too for attempts to sabotage the grid through the internet, like with a cyber attack. Nuclear attack could still disrupt a grid, to say nothing of the resulting concurrent deaths, but Chaudhary sees base resilience as its own kind of further deterrent action against such threats.

“We’ve recognized in our national defense strategy that strong resilient infrastructure can be a critical deterrent,” says Chaudhary. “Our energy is gonna be the margin of victory.”

The post A remote Air Force base in Alaska is getting its own nuclear reactor appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. This story was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

About 22 million Americans live in mobile homes or manufactured housing, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and as the housing crisis continues to worsen in places like Arizona, California, and New York, that number could go up.

But for some, mobile homes conjure up an image of rusting metal units in weed-choked lots, an unfair stereotype that has real consequences—advocates argue that mobile homes are not only a housing fix but could also help with the climate crisis.

According to Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, mobile homes are a good solution with a bad reputation. 

It’s unfair, he said, because the residents of mobile homes are often hampered by restrictive zoning laws that make it hard to upgrade maintenance and care of the structures. These zoning laws also have put communities at risk for climate-related disasters, which explains why so many mobile home parks are in floodplains.

“It’s not the home itself that often makes mobile homes vulnerable,” said Rumbach. “It’s actually the fact that we sort of stuck the poor away in these places that makes them vulnerable.” 

A report by the Niskanen Center, a nonprofit public policy organization, echoes Rumbach’s research. The report found that mobile homes have consistently been an affordable and underutilized solution that meets the housing needs of low- and moderate-income people.

Newer models can also be a low-carbon solution as these prefabricated homes, which are built in large pieces for easy assembly, can include things like heat pumps and solar panels, in contrast to older models that relied on propane or natural gas. Older models can also be eligible for retrofits to make them more energy efficient and climate-friendly. 

“They’re a pretty terrific solution,” said Rumbach. “Unfortunately, by law, in many places in the country [mobile homes] are not allowed to be placed anymore because there is such a cultural stigma.”

The Eastern Coachella Valley in California is one place where mobile home parks and residents have been consistently overlooked by public officials. People in the majority Latino area grapple with getting access to necessities like electricity and clean water. Arsenic was found in the water supply and is a persistent issue.

But despite that, there is also an incredible sense of community among the residents of informal mobile home parks in the area, according to Jovana Morales-Tilgren, a housing policy coordinator at Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, a California nonprofit focusing on underserved rural communities. 

The parks were originally built for migrant farmworkers and today they operate without a permit, which means federal agencies and local governments don’t have official recognition that they exist. So if there’s a disaster, that makes it harder to get federal relief, and if there is a municipal upgrade, it doesn’t happen in those communities.

“They do have a lot more issues than regular mobile home parks,” said Morales-Tilgren. “Many of them don’t have weatherization, insulation. Many were built more than 20, 30, 40 years ago. And so they do have a lot of issues.” 

Mobile homes can be roughly categorized into two sections: older homes that predate the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rules in 1976, and newer, prefabricated homes that often are greener, more efficient, and better functioning than some traditional homes. 

When Tropical Storm Hilary hit Southern California last month, residents in the unpermitted mobile home parks were trapped, because a power outage meant that residents had to sleep in their cars to get access to air conditioning. 

“[Mobile homes] are not equipped to handle those extreme weather events,” said Morales-Tilgren. 

This is especially an issue because a large portion of people that live in the area are low-income people of color who are undocumented, according to Morales-Tilgren. Consequently, people lack access to resources needed to recover from large flooding events like the kind that Hilary brought.

Another key issue: Mobile home parks, both permitted and unpermitted, are reliant on their own infrastructure. In other types of housing, such as apartments or single family homes, a municipality is usually in charge of providing electricity, water, sewage, and tree maintenance. But in mobile home parks, residents are reliant on owners to provide those services.

In addition, once extreme weather happens, residents are often caught in the grip of the confusing bureaucracy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. While mobile home parks can vary wildly, the main distinction that the agency makes is whether or not people own or rent the land underneath the home. 

A 2021 study published in the journal Frontiers found that there are numerous barriers to accessing resources, such as money from FEMA, for vulnerable populations in the wake of a flood-related disaster. Affordable housing units were affected more, and often the number of units did not bounce back to pre-disaster levels.

Additionally, mobile home residents are often at risk of being evicted in the aftermath of disasters that might displace them from their homes. This can fuel housing instability because mobile homes tend to be located in climate-vulnerable areas like floodplains, according to Rumbach. 

“Around the country, you see a disproportionate amount of mobile homes located in hazardous areas,” said Rumbach. “The demand is being driven by a segment of the housing market that’s looking for lower costs. And as a result, you see a lot of manufactured housing being placed into relatively climate-vulnerable places, because that land tends to be a little bit less valuable.”

On the other side of the country, though, mobile home owners in Ithaca, New York, have been the beneficiaries of a pilot project aimed at retrofitting mobile homes in the area to be more climate-friendly. 

This first-of-its-kind project is giving owners funding for heat pumps to replace the polluting natural gas or propane furnaces needed to heat mobile homes. The program also provides money to cover the cost of insulation needed to keep the heating and cooling provided by electric appliances in the home and reduce electric bills. 

Gay Nicholson, president of Sustainable Finger Lakes, a nonprofit focused on climate solutions in upstate New York, says that while their program, which is ongoing, has so far been successful in helping people access funding, they still are limited in their reach. The program would need more money as well as guidance from state and federal authorities to be able to meet the needs of everyone who applied.

Nicholson said that currently, the program is trying to help people transition off of natural gas, which is available cheaply despite its destructive climate impacts. This often puts the onus on consumers to be able to invest in climate-friendly technology, if no additional funding is available.

Cost is a vital aspect of upgrading mobile homes: “It affects how people make decisions,” said Nicholson. “Whether or not they’re going to stay on gas and stick to another cheap gas furnace.” 

Stigma surrounding mobile home parks is a huge reason for issues regarding resource allocation and zoning issues. Additionally, some of the most pressing issues come from a common problem for almost all mobile home residents: They’re just not considered. 

In Ithaca, that means many transmission lines that service mobile home parks are capped at a certain wattage that is far below what it would take to electrify them, which provides challenges for Nicholson. 

“There are no incentives set up by the state or the feds to help to pay a mobile home park owner to upgrade the electrical capacity of his park,” said Nicholson. “We’re way behind schedule for electrification.”

Back in California, in the Eastern Coachella Valley, this means that not only did Tropical Storm Hilary flood mobile home parks but that the roads were closed — further isolating residents. In this case, as in others such as in Texas in 2021, large-scale efforts to avoid the impacts of a disaster such as a hurricane or a cold snap do not consider mobile home residents and owners. 

This is a problem, according to Zachary Lamb, a professor at the college of environmental design at the University of California, Berkeley, because not being considered makes it difficult to be resilient to climate change. 

“Mobile home parks are disproportionately located in parts of landscapes that are vulnerable to climate risks,” said Lamb. “So they’re disproportionately located in floodplains. They’re disproportionately located in places that are exposed to extreme heat. …They’re also disproportionately located in places that are close to other environmental harms.” 

Despite those vulnerabilities, past research shows that in areas where marginalized communities live, people can and do come together to solve issues collaboratively. This makes one of the most misunderstood forms of housing a good place to invest in, according to Lamb.

“Making investments in climate resilience, that is such a no-brainer,” said Lamb. “In terms of both improving the infrastructure quality, and also in terms of giving residents more agency and more control over their communities.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/mobile-homes-could-be-a-climate-solution/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Mobile homes could be a surprising climate solution appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Studies increasingly show that changing weather patterns, extreme heat, and unpredictable storms are likely to pop up pretty much everywhere on the globe. According to recent research, it turns out that 98 percent of the world’s population has been exposed to higher-than-normal temperatures made twice more likely by carbon dioxide pollution.

The new findings come from a report from US-based climate research group Climate Central and follow reports that this summer has been the hottest three-month period recorded, and July alone was the hottest month on record. 

The latest report utilizes Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), which reveals how much climate change influences the temperature on any given day on the globe—so a level of 5 would mean this event was five times more likely to occur because of climate change. According to their findings, nearly half of the world’s population experienced at least 30 days between June and August with a CSI of at least 3. This means that the 30 or more days of extreme weather were made three times more likely due to climate change. 

[Related: July 2023 was likely the hottest month in 120,000 years.]

At least 1.5 billion people (or around one in every five people) saw at least this level of climate-change induced heat every single day during this time period. 

“In every country we could [analyze], including the southern hemisphere, where this is the coolest time of year, we saw temperatures that would be difficult—and in some cases nearly impossible—without human-caused climate change,” Andrew Pershing, Climate Central’s vice president for science, told Reuters.

Of course, not all locations saw the same amount of impact—79 countries in particular experienced at least half of their summer days at CSI level 3 or higher. Over half of these were UN-designated least developed (based on income thresholds, health and education indices, as well as economic and environmental vulnerabilities) countries and small island developing states. These countries typically contribute very little to climate change itself, in this case, culminating around 7 percent of total GHG emissions, according to the report. They also are at higher risk of climate-related disasters and still struggle to access funding to take mitigating measures. 

“In every place, if you start to push it beyond the temperatures that people experience on a regular basis, that’s dangerous heat because you’re not prepared for it physiologically. You’re not prepared for it in terms of your infrastructure,” Pershing told Scientific American.

[Related: US climate efforts look promising, but there’s more to do.]

Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise year after year, and major fossil fuel companies and emitters have made minimal progress or backtracked on climate goals. As fossil fuel use continues to rise, so do their climate-warming emissions. 

“Breaking heat records has become the norm in 2023,” Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “Global warming continues because we have not stopped burning fossil fuels. It is that simple.” 

The post Almost every place on Earth was affected by extreme temperatures this summer appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

A new report from the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) found that Earth just experienced its hottest series of three months in a row on record. The data from the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) found that global sea surface temperatures remained at “unprecedented highs” for the third month in a row.

[Related: July 2023 was likely the hottest month in 120,000 years.]

“Our planet has just endured a season of simmering—the hottest summer on record. Climate breakdown has begun. Scientists have long warned what our fossil fuel addiction will unleash,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. “Surging temperatures demand a surge in action. Leaders must turn up the heat now for climate solutions. We can still avoid the worst of climate chaos – and we don’t have a moment to lose.”

So far, 2023 is the second warmest year on record behind 2016,—a powerful El Niño year. The planet officially began an El Niño pattern in June, which can bring extreme temperatures and flooding worldwide. A report issued in May from the WMO warned that the warming pattern could temporarily heat the planet by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

August 2023 was the hottest month on record and the second hottest month after July 2023, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service ERA 5 dataset. As a whole, the month of August is estimated to have been around 2.7 degrees warmer than the preindustrial average for 1850-1900. 

Global monthly average sea surface temperatures were also the highest on record in August at 69.7 degrees. These temperatures exceeded the previous record set in March 2016 for every single day in August.

In Antarctica, sea ice extent (or coverage) is also at a record low level for this time of year, when the continent is experiencing its winter months. It is 12 percent below average, making for  the largest negative anomaly for August since satellite observations began in the late 1970s according to the WMO. This lack of sea ice can have devastating effects on Emperor penguins and other animals who live and breed in the region. 

On the opposite side of the planet in the Arctic, sea ice coverage was 10 percent below average, but still well above the record minimum set in August 2012.

[Related: July’s extreme heat waves ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change.]

“Eight months into 2023, so far we are experiencing the second warmest year to date, only fractionally cooler than 2016, and August was estimated to be around 1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels,” Carlo Buontempo, Director of the C3S’s  European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement. “What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system.”

Summer 2023 will likely be one for the history books, with massive heat domes breaking temperature records throughout the southern United States, devastating flooding in Vermont and other parts of the Northeast, extreme temperatures fueling hurricanes in the exceedingly warm Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, and a record wildfire season in Canada. Europe has also seen record breaking heat waves as the planet continues to see the effects of climate change.

“It is worth noting that this is happening BEFORE we see the full warming impact of the El Niño event, which typically plays out in the second year after it develops,”  WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. 

The post A ‘season of simmering’: This summer’s 3-month streak was hottest ever recorded appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article is republished from The Conversation.

Not only people need to stay cool, especially in a summer of record-breaking heat waves. Many machines, including cellphones, data centers, cars and airplanes, become less efficient and degrade more quickly in extreme heat. Machines generate their own heat, too, which can make hot temperatures around them even hotter.

We are engineering researchers who study how machines manage heat and ways to effectively recover and reuse heat that is otherwise wasted. There are several ways extreme heat affects machines.

No machine is perfectly efficient – all machines face some internal friction during operation. This friction causes machines to dissipate some heat, so the hotter it is outside, the hotter the machine will be.

Cellphones and similar devices with lithium ion batteries stop working as well when operating in climates above 95 degrees Farenheit (35 degrees Celsius) – this is to avoid overheating and increased stress on the electronics.

Cooling designs that use innovative phase-changing fluids can help keep machines cool, but in most cases heat is still ultimately dissipated into the air. So, the hotter the air, the harder it is to keep a machine cool enough to function efficiently.

Plus, the closer together machines are, the more dissipated heat there will be in the surrounding area.

Deforming materials

Higher temperatures, either from the weather or the excess heat radiated from machinery, can cause materials in machinery to deform. To understand this, consider what temperature means at the molecular level.

At the molecular scale, temperature is a measure of how much molecules are vibrating. So the hotter it is, the more the molecules that make up everything from the air to the ground to materials in machinery vibrate.

As the temperature increases and the molecules vibrate more, the average space between them grows, causing most materials to expand as they heat up. Roads are one place to see this – hot concrete expands, gets constricted and eventually cracks. This phenomenon can happen to machinery, too, and thermal stresses are just the beginning of the problem.

Travel delays and safety risks

High temperatures can also change the way oils in your car’s engine behave, leading to potential engine failures. For example, if a heat wave makes it 30 degrees F (16.7 degrees C) hotter than normal, the viscosity – or thickness – of typical car engine oils can change by a factor of three.

Fluids like engine oils become thinner as they heat up, so if it gets too hot, the oil may not be thick enough to properly lubricate and protect engine parts from increased wear and tear.

Additionally, a hot day will cause the air inside your tires to expand and increases the tire pressure, which could increase wear and the risk of skidding.

Airplanes are also not designed to take off at extreme temperatures. As it gets hotter outside, air starts to expand and takes up more space than before, making it thinner or less dense. This reduction in air density decreases the amount of weight the plane can support during flight, which can cause significant travel delays or flight cancellations.

Battery degradation

In general, the electronics contained in devices like cellphones, personal computers and data centers consist of many kinds of materials that all respond differently to temperature changes. These materials are all located next to each other in tight spaces. So as the temperature increases, different kinds of materials deform differently, potentially leading to premature wear and failure.

Lithium ion batteries in cars and general electronics degrade faster at higher operating temperatures. This is because higher temperatures increase the rate of reactions within the battery, including corrosion reactions that deplete the lithium in the battery. This process wears down its storage capacity. Recent research shows that electric vehicles can lose about 20 percent of their range when exposed to sustained 90-degree Farenheit weather.

Data centers, which are buildings full of servers that store data, dissipate significant amounts of heat to keep their components cool. On very hot days, fans must work harder to ensure chips do not overheat. In some cases, powerful fans are not enough to cool the electronics.

To keep the centers cool, incoming dry air from the outside is often first sent through a moist pad. The water from the pad evaporates into the air and absorbs heat, which cools the air. This technique, called evaporative cooling, is usually an economical and effective way to keep chips at a reasonable operating temperature.

However, evaporative cooling can require a significant amount of water. This issue is problematic in regions where water is scarce. Water for cooling can add to the already intense resource footprint associated with data centers.

Struggling air conditioners

Air conditioners struggle to perform effectively as it gets hotter outside – just when they’re needed the most. On hot days, air conditioner compressors have to work harder to send the heat from homes outside, which in turn disproportionally increases electricity consumption and overall electricity demand.

For example, in Texas, every increase of 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) creates a rise of about 4 percent in electricity demand.

Heat leads to a staggering 50 percent increase in electricity demand during the summer in hotter countries, posing serious threats of electricity shortages or blackouts, coupled with higher greenhouse gas emissions.

How to prevent heat damage

Heat waves and warming temperatures around the globe pose significant short- and long-term problems for people and machines alike. Fortunately, there are things you can do to minimize the damage.

First, ensure that your machines are kept in an air-conditioned, well-insulated space or out of direct sunlight.

Second, consider using high-energy devices like air conditioners or charging your electric vehicle during off-peak hours when fewer people are using electricity. This can help avoid local electricity shortages.

Reusing heat

Scientists and engineers are developing ways to use and recycle the vast amounts of heat dissipated from machines. One simple example is using the waste heat from data centers to heat water.

Waste heat could also drive other kinds of air-conditioning systems, such as absorption chillers, which can actually use heat as energy to support coolers through a series of chemical- and heat-transferring processes.

In either case, the energy needed to heat or cool something comes from heat that is otherwise wasted. In fact, waste heat from power plants could hypothetically support 27 percent of residential air-conditioning needs, which would reduce overall energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Extreme heat can affect every aspect of modern life, and heat waves aren’t going away in the coming years. However, there are opportunities to harness extreme heat and make it work for us.

Srinivas Garimella is a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Matthew T. Hughes is a postdoctoral associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Why machines don’t work as well in extreme heat appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

For the second year in a row, the Atlantic puffins living on the rocky islands off Maine’s coast had a rebound year for fledgling chicks, all in the face of record warm waters due to climate change. This second consecutive rebound year is welcome news, after 90 percent of nesting puffins failed to raise a single chick in 2021 while the climate change in New England has put this species, and others like humpback whales and the zooplankton at the base of the Gulfs food web, in jeopardy.

[Related: Cyclones can be fatal for seabirds, but not in the way you think.]

The Gulf of Maine and its bays are among the world’s fastest-warming bodies of water. Since the early 1980s, it has warmed about four degrees Fahrenheit, while the global ocean has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the same period of time. The rising heat has affected the fish stocks in the area that puffins and other species rely on. Haddock used to make up a large portion of puffin diets, but populations have fluctuated in recent years, first increasing in 2017 due to federal management to this year showing signs of a decrease. 

However, a small eel-like fish called the sand lance has been abundant this year. The fish are only about four to eight inches long, but are high in fats and make them a great forage fish for seabirds. A 2020 study found that 72 Atlantic Ocean animal species from whales to bluefish to gannets eat sand lances in the waters from Greenland to North Carolina. 

According to the Maine Monitor, the sand lance were less abundant in the region by mid-July, but the puffins were found feasting on a mixture of haddock, hake, and redfish depending upon where they were. Don Lyons, the director of conservation science at National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute, told the Maine Monitor, “I can’t offhand recall such a seamless transition from one fish to another. It tells you a lot about the resourcefulness of puffins and at the same time, it’s a reminder of how much we still don’t know of when and where food is for seabirds, and how fast that all can change.”

Lyons estimated that there are now as many as 3,000 puffins in Maine, what he calls a stable population. In 2022, about two-thirds of the puffins fledged—or developed wing feathers that are large enough for flight. While they didn’t reach that number this year, they had a better season than the catastrophic 2021 season despite a rainy and hot summer. The Audubon Society’s Project Puffin has been monitoring the population for 50 years and uses decoys, mirrors, and recordings to attract the birds to suitable nesting sites to raise the next generation of birds.

Maine’s puffin population was once as low as 70 pairs on Matinicus Rock 25 miles off the coast. They were hunted for their feathers and meat in the early 20th Century, but by the 1970’s Audubon conservationists worked to grow puffin colonies in the state, by bringing chicks from Canada to Maine’s Eastern Egg Rock. Puffins still call that tiny rock home, in addition to Seal Island and Petit Manan Island. Live cams keep an eye on them and volunteers and scientists monitor their progress every year.

Currently, Maine’s population are the only breeding Atlantic puffins in the United States. The species lives in areas of the North Atlantic from Maine and Canada eastward to Europe. Iceland, a country well known for its puffins, has seen the puffin populations decline by 70 percent in 30 years largely due to lack of food due to warming oceans.

[Related: Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears.]

While this ability to reproduce despite huge environmental changes does speak to their resiliency as a species, puffins are still at risk of long term dangers from marine heat waves, sea level rise threatening nesting sites, and a loss of food.  

“The problem with climate change is these breeding failures and low breeding productivity years are now becoming chronic,” Bill Sydeman, president and chief scientist of the California-based Farallon Institute, told the AP. “There will be fewer young birds in the population that are able to recruit into the breeding population.”

Some of the ways to help Maine puffin population and other coastal birds in the face of this constant uncertainty include Audubon’s adopt-a-puffin program and advocating for your local seabirds by contacting regional elected officials.

The post Maine’s puffins show another year of remarkable resiliency appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Hurricane Idalia made landfall this morning near Keaton Beach in northern Florida’s Big Bend region. The Category 3 storm hit with maximum sustained winds of 125 miles per hour with the potential for higher gusts. Idalia is the strongest storm to make landfall in Big Bend, the link between the peninsula and panhandle, in more than 125 years.

[Related: What hurricane categories mean, and why we use them.]

Idalia was downgraded to a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds of 110 MPH, as of the National Hurricane Centers’ 9 AM update. The storm is moving northeast and the National Hurricane Center is warning of “catastrophic impacts” from storm surge. Parts of the Big Bend region could see up to 16 feet of storm surge. Heavy rainfall is expected, with up to six inches of rain expected in the St. Marks/Apalachee Bay area. Flooding began hours before landfall on Treasure Island, a barrier island on the Gulf Coast, where a high tide at 11:30 AM EDT could create even more storm surge and flooding. 

Clearwater Beach is seeing a storm surge between five and six feet while nearby Cedar Key is experiencing between eight and nine feet of storm surge. The water is rising rapidly even during a normal low tide period.

A significant surge between four and five feet into Tampa Bay and it set a new record for water levels in the bay before landfall. At 5:30 AM EDT, water levels were at 3.91 feet over and still rising, even as the tide should be lowering. The previous high water mark was 3.79 feet during Tropical Storm Eta in 2020. The I-275 traffic cams showed abandoned streets and water coming up onto the streets

The hurricane is expected to retain some strength after landfall, as it moves into northern Florida through Wednesday and then into southeastern Georgia by Wednesday afternoon. Damaging winds are also expected beyond the center of the hurricane. 

Overnight, Idalia intensified into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 mph. Despite the downgrade to a Category 3, Idalia is still very dangerous. “Radar and Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft data indicate that an eyewall replacement cycle has begun,” the National Hurricane Center wrote. “Idalia’s maximum sustained winds are now estimated near 125 mph (205 km/h) with higher gusts. This change in wind speed does not diminish the threat of catastrophic storm surge and damaging winds.”

[Related: The future of hurricanes is full of floods—a lot of them.]

These recent storms have fed on the increasingly warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico that fuel more intense hurricanes, and scientists have been sounding the alarm on the repercussions of this for decades. In September 1995, Popular Science magazine featured a warning of a possible wave of killer hurricanes from hurricane forecaster William Gray from Colorado State University. “We’ve gone 25 years with relatively little activity–a long cycle by historical standards. Inevitably, long stretches of destruction will return. Florida and the East Coast will see hurricane devastation such as they’ve never experienced before,” Gray said. 

As Hurricane Idalia moved over the Gulf of Mexico, the storm was able to feed on the energy from this year’s record warm temperatures, which could only add to its devastation.  “It’s 88, 89 degrees [Fahrenheit] over where the storm’s going to be tracking, so that’s effectively rocket fuel for the storm,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach told the AP. “It’s basically all systems go for the storm to intensify.”

Idalia is the third hurricane to make landfall in Florida in the last 12 months. Hurricane Ian slammed the Gulf Coast in September 2022 as a Category 5 storm, killing at least 161 people and causing roughly $113 billion dollars in damage. Only about two months later Hurricane Nicole hit as a late season Category 1 storm.  Hurricanes that begin with the letter “I” are also the most retired names due to their destructive nature and Idalia could be the next storm added to that list. 

The post Category 3 Hurricane Idalia makes landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

In late 2013, a mass of warm water now known as the Blob appeared in the northeast Pacific—a massive marine heatwave that cooked coastal ecosystems from Alaska to California. Later, bolstered by an El Niño, the vast and potent heatwave wreaked havoc on marine ecosystems: thousands of seabirds died, while blooms of harmful algae poisoned marine mammals and shellfish. The suddenly warmed water also brought an influx of new animals to the northeast Pacific: ocean sunfish appeared in Alaska, while yellow-bellied sea snakes popped up in Southern California.

By 2017, the Blob had waned and many of these more tropical species had retreated. Yet not all. Some of the species that colonized new habitats during the heatwave have stuck around. And now, says Joshua Smith, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California who documented in new research how the Blob triggered a range of subtle yet persistent shifts in the spread of marine species, “I’m starting to sort of question whether those communities will ever look the way they did.”

Historically, it’s common enough that a handful of individuals from warm-water species will make their way north during warmer years, but there wouldn’t be enough of them to sustain a long-term population, says Jenn Caselle, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and coauthor of the new paper. But because the Blob was so intense and lasted so long, sizable populations made the move into these normally cooler habitats—populations that were potentially large enough to establish more permanent footholds.

Señorita fish, for example—a bright-orange wrasse that showed up in huge numbers in central California during the heatwave—are still there, Smith says. Ocean whitefish, while historically common around Southern California’s Channel Islands, are now dominant, Caselle says, while California sheephead, a bulbous red-and-black fish, are now also much more abundant near Santa Barbara.

These changes in coastal communities, Caselle says, can have knock-on effects on how these ecosystems function. Sometimes, when one species is extirpated from a community—like a predatory fish that keeps a population of smaller fish in check or a seaweed species that provides a home for invertebrates—the ecosystem loses some kind of important function. But if that lost species is replaced by a new species that does the same thing, that new species could provide some resilience to the ecosystem, Caselle says, even if the community doesn’t look the same as it always did.

People can also adjust to new ecological realities, she says, pointing to fishers’ recently acquired fondness for the now-abundant ocean whitefish.

The Blob was one of the most intense marine heatwaves in recorded history, so it makes sense that it had a big effect on marine ecosystems. But big marine heatwaves have affected the northeast Pacific every year since 2019, including this year. Meanwhile, the current El Niño is further heating the northeast Pacific, and climate change means marine heatwaves will likely continue to be even more frequent.

As oceans continue to warm and the heatwave hits keep coming, William Cheung, a marine ecologist at the University of British Columbia who was not involved in the new research, says fish populations could be in trouble. In his own research, Cheung previously showed how warming and marine heatwaves will stress fish populations in the northeast Pacific. Usually, he says, fish populations can bounce back after a heatwave. But if heatwaves start occurring more frequently, populations will have less time to replenish themselves.

These changes are unlikely to go unnoticed. “The place where humans interact with the ocean the most is right at the coast. It’s where most of the biodiversity lives, and it’s where a lot of the productivity is,” Caselle says. “As these systems change, it can affect our everyday lives.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

The post The Pacific heat blob’s aftereffects are still warping ocean ecosystems appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The Earth’s South Pole is at a climate change crossroads, with Antarctica’s quickly melting ice and expected consistent ocean heat waves. Now, one of its signature species is in trouble. A study published August 24 in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found that some Emperor penguin colonies saw an unprecedented breeding failure in a region of the continent that experienced a total loss of sea ice in 2022.

[Related: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet could raise sea levels 16 feet by 2500.]

Four out of five Emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea on the western side Antarctica did not see any chicks survive to successfully fledge in the spring of 2022. Emperor penguin chicks typically fledge at four months old, when they’ve developed their first set of waterproof feathers. 

All of the colonies in this study have been discovered in the last 14 years using satellite imagery, and there has only been one previous instance of breeding failure among these penguin populations. 

“We have seen the occasional colony have bad sea ice and early break up, but this most unusual thing in this study is that a whole region has had extremely poor sea ice,” Peter Fretwell, a remote sensing expert and environmental scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and co-author of the study, tells PopSci. 

Similarly, the Halley Bay penguin colony, which was not included in this study and lives in a different part of Antarctica, failed to raise any chicks between 2016 and 2019. That failure was also attributed to sea ice loss. 

From April to January, Emperor penguins depend on stable sea ice that is firmly attached to the shore or ‘land-fast’ ice. Once they arrive at their chosen breeding site, penguins will lay eggs during the Antarctic winter (May to June) in the ice. Eggs will hatch after 65 days, but the chicks do not fledge until December to January during Antarctic summer. 

“This year the ice in the Bellingshausen Sea did not form until late June–when the birds should already be on their eggs. It may be that in future this region could be one of the first to become unsuitable breeding habitat,” says Fretwell.

Between 2018 and 2022, 30 percent of the 62 known Emperor penguin colonies living in Antarctica were affected by partial or total sea ice loss. The British Antarctic Survey said that it is difficult to immediately link specific extreme seasons to climate change, but a longer-term drop in sea ice extent is expected based on current climate models.  

[Related: The march of the penguins has a new star: an autonomous robot.]

By early December 2022, the Antarctic sea ice matched the previous all-time low set in 2021. The central and eastern Bellingshausen Sea region saw the worst of it, with 100 percent sea ice loss.

“Right now, in August 2023, the sea ice extent in Antarctica is still far below all previous records for this time of year,” Caroline Holmes, a British Antarctic Survey polar climate scientist who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. “In this period where oceans are freezing up, we’re seeing areas that are still, remarkably, largely ice-free.”

Previously, Emperor penguins have responded to this sea ice loss by moving to a more stable site the next year. However, this strategy won’t work if the loss of sea ice habitat extends to an entire region. 

These populations have also not been subject to large scale hunting or overfishing and other direct interactions with humans, and climate change is considered to be the only major influence on their long-term population changes. More recent efforts to predict Emperor penguin population changes paint a bleak picture, showing that if the present rate of warming persists, more than 90 percent of colonies will be quasi-extinct by the end of this century.

Daniel P. Zitterbart, a physicist by training and an Emperor penguin remote sensing expert from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who was not involved in the study called it a very important and timely investigation. 

“The sad part is we had all been expecting this, but we expected this later. It happened for so many colonies in just one year, just because of changing weather patterns,” Zitterbart tells PopSci. “Peter points out that this is likely due to La Niña and change in wind patterns, but the study can show us how increased extremes can have an immediate impact on those colonies that are further up north.”

As their habitat is expected to shrink over the next century, scientists are unsure if the areas that they are moving to will have enough resources to host all of the penguins coming in. Studies like this one continue to ring the alarm that Antarctica and its wildlife remain vulnerable to extremes.

“Hopefully, this is a one year thing for now and with the weather pattern changing back to El Niño, the sea ice in this location this year and next year will grow back to what it normally is,” says Zitterbart. “But we all know that this year we had the first 6.4 Sigma event, which means that the sea ice in Antarctica is very low.”

The post Emperor penguins suffer ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure as sea ice disappears appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Ocean temperatures are surging worldwide largely due to human-made climate change and natural El Niño driven patterns. The rise is wreaking havoc on the planet’s coral reefs, however a study published August 22 in the journal Nature Communications found that the coral reefs in one part of the Pacific Ocean can likely adjust to some rises in temperature. This adaptation has the potential to reduce future coral bleaching as the climate continues to change. 

[Related: The heroic effort to save Florida’s coral reef from a historic heatwave.]

“We know that coral reefs can increase their overall thermal tolerance over time by acclimatization, genetic adaptation or shifts in community structure, however we know very little about the rates at which this is occurring,” study co-author and Newcastle University coral reef ecologist James Guest said in a statement. 

The rate at which coral reefs can naturally increase thermal tolerance, and if it can match pace with warming, is largely unknown. So the team started their work by investigating historic mass bleaching events that have occurred since the late 1980s in a remote Pacific coral reef system. 

They focused on a reef system Palau, an island country in the western Pacific Ocean, and found that increases in the heat tolerance of reefs is possible. Reefs here are known as a bevy of biodiversity and provide a barrier from storms. The team used decades of data to create models of multiple future coral bleaching trajectories for Palauan reefs. Each model had a different simulated rate of thermal tolerance enhancement. The team found that if coral heat tolerance continues to rise throughout this century at the most-likely high rate, significant reductions in bleaching impacts are actually possible.

The results affirm the general scientific consensus that the severity of future coral bleaching will depend on reducing carbon emissions. For example, if the commitments of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit future warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, high-frequency bleaching can be fully mitigated at some reefs under low-to-middle emissions scenarios. These bleaching impacts are unavoidable under high emissions scenarios where society continues to rely on fossil fuels.  

Coral communities will need to persist under constant climate change and will likely need to endure progressively more intense and frequent marine heatwaves. The team believes that the observed increase in tolerance suggests that some natural mechanisms, such as genetic adaptation or acclimatization of corals or their symbiotic microalgae, may contribute to the increased heat tolerance. 

[Related: To save coral reefs, color the larvae.]

While this is some positive news for Pacific coral, the resilience comes at a high cost. Adaptations like these can reduce reef diversity and growth, and without cutting future greenhouse gas, the Pacific’s reefs won’t be able to provide the habitat resources and protection from waves that residents depend on.

“Our study indicates the presence of an ecological resilience to climate change, yet also highlights the need to fulfill Paris Agreement commitments to effectively preserve coral reefs,” study co-author and Newcastle University coral reef ecologist Liam Lachs said in a statement. “We quantified a natural increase in coral thermal tolerance over decadal time scales which can be directly compared to the rate of ocean warming. While our work offers a glimmer of hope, it also emphasizes the need for continued action on reducing carbon emissions to mitigate climate change and secure a future for these vital ecosystems.”

The post Some Pacific coral reefs can keep pace with a warming ocean appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article is republished from The Conversation.

Armed with scrub brushes, young scuba divers took to the waters of Florida’s Alligator Reef in late July to try to help corals struggling to survive 2023’s extraordinary marine heat wave. They carefully scraped away harmful algae and predators impinging on staghorn fragments, under the supervision and training of interns from Islamorada Conservation and Restoration Education, or I.CARE.

Normally, I.CARE’s volunteer divers would be transplanting corals to waters off the Florida Keys this time of year, as part of a national effort to restore the Florida Reef. But this year, everything is going in reverse.

As water temperatures spiked in the Florida Keys, scientists from universities, coral reef restoration groups and government agencies launched a heroic effort to save the corals. Divers have been in the water every day, collecting thousands of corals from ocean nurseries along the Florida Keys reef tract and moving them to cooler water and into giant tanks on land.

Marine scientist Ken Nedimyer and his team at Reef Renewal USA began moving an entire coral tree nursery from shallow waters off Tavernier to an area 60 feet deep and 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) cooler. Even there, temperatures were running about 85 to 86 F (30 C).

Their efforts are part of an emergency response on a scale never before seen in Florida.

The Florida Reef – a nearly 350-mile arc along the Florida Keys that is crucial to fish habitat, coastal storm protection and the local economy – began experiencing record-hot ocean temperatures in June 2023, weeks earlier than expected. The continuing heat has triggered widespread coral bleaching.

While corals can recover from mass bleaching events like this, long periods of high heat can leave them weak and vulnerable to disease that can ultimately kill them.

That’s what scientists and volunteers have been scrambling to avoid.

The heartbeat of the reef

The Florida Reef has struggled for years under the pressure of overfishing, disease, storms and global warming that have decimated its live corals.

A massive coral restoration effort – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mission: Iconic Reef – has been underway since 2019 to restore the reef with transplanted corals, particularly those most resilient to the rising temperatures. But even the hardiest coral transplants are now at risk.

Reef-building corals are the foundation species of shallow tropical waters due to their unique symbiotic relationship with microscopic algae in their tissues.

During the day, these algae photosynthesize, producing both food and oxygen for the coral animal. At night, coral polyps feed on plankton, providing nutrients for their algae. The result of this symbiotic relationship is the coral’s ability to build a calcium carbonate skeleton and reefs that support nearly 25% of all marine life.

Unfortunately, corals are very temperature sensitive, and the extreme ocean heat off South Florida, with some reef areas reaching temperatures in the 90s, has put them under extraordinary stress.

When corals get too hot, they expel their symbiotic algae. The corals appear white – bleached – because their carbonate skeleton shows through their clear tissue that lack any colorful algal cells.

Corals can recover new algal symbionts if water conditions return to normal within a few weeks. However, the increase in global temperatures due to the effects of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities is causing longer and more frequent periods of coral bleaching worldwide, leading to concerns for the future of coral reefs.

A MASH unit for corals

This year, the Florida Keys reached an alert level 2, indicating extreme risk of bleaching, about six weeks earlier than normal.

The early warnings and forecasts from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Network gave scientists time to begin preparing labs and equipment, track the locations and intensity of the growing marine heat and, importantly, recruit volunteers.

At the Keys Marine Laboratory, scientists and trained volunteers have dropped off thousands of coral fragments collected from heat-threatened offshore nurseries. Director Cindy Lewis described the lab’s giant tanks as looking like “a MASH unit for corals.”

Volunteers there and at other labs across Florida will hand-feed the tiny creatures to keep them alive until the Florida waters cool again and they can be returned to the ocean and eventually transplanted onto the reef.

Protecting corals still in the ocean

I.CARE launched another type of emergency response.

I.CARE co-founder Kylie Smith, a coral reef ecologist and a former student of mine in marine sciences, discovered a few years ago that coral transplants with large amounts of fleshy algae around them were more likely to bleach during times of elevated temperature. Removing that algae may give corals a better chance of survival.

Smith’s group typically works with local dive operators to train recreational divers to assist in transplanting and maintaining coral fragments in an effort to restore the reefs of Islamorada. In summer 2023, I.CARE has been training volunteers, like the young divers from Diving with a Purpose, to remove algae and coral predators, such as coral-eating snails and fireworms, to help boost the corals’ chances of survival.

Monitoring for corals at risk

To help spot corals in trouble, volunteer divers are also being trained as reef observers through Mote Marine Lab’s BleachWatch program.

Scuba divers have long been attracted to the reefs of the Florida Keys for their beauty and accessibility. The lab is training them to recognize bleached, diseased and dead corals of different species and then use an online portal to submit bleach reports across the entire Florida Reef.

The more eyes on the reef, the more accurate the maps showing the areas of greatest bleaching concern.

Rebuilding the reef

While the marine heat wave in the Keys will inevitably kill some corals, many more will survive.

Through careful analysis of the species, genotypes and reef locations experiencing bleaching, scientists and practitioners are learn valuable information as they work to protect and rebuild a more resilient coral reef for the future.

That is what gives hope to Smith, Lewis, Nedimyer and hundreds of others who believe this coral reef is worth saving. Volunteers are crucial to the effort, whether they’re helping with coral reef maintenance, reporting bleaching or raising the awareness of what is at stake if humanity fails to stop warming the planet.

Michael Childress is an associate professor of biological sciences and environmental conservation at Clemson University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post The heroic effort to save Florida’s coral reef from a historic heatwave appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article is republished from The Conversation.

Wildfire smoke from Canada’s extreme fire season has left a lot of people thinking about air quality and wondering what to expect in the days ahead.

All air contains gaseous compounds and small particles. But as air quality gets worse, these gases and particles can trigger asthma and exacerbate heart and respiratory problems as they enter the nose, throat and lungs and even circulate in the bloodstream. When wildfire smoke turned New York City’s skies orange in early June 2023, emergency room visits for asthma doubled.

In most cities, it’s easy to find a daily air quality index score that tells you when the air is considered unhealthy or even hazardous. However, predicting air quality in the days ahead isn’t so simple.

I work on air quality forecasting as a professor of civil and environmental engineering. Artificial intelligence has improved these forecasts, but research shows it’s much more useful when paired with traditional techniques. Here’s why:

How scientists predict air quality

To predict air quality in the near future – a few days ahead or longer – scientists generally rely on two main methods: a chemical transport model or a machine-learning model. These two models generate results in totally different ways.

Chemical transport models use lots of known chemical and physical formulas to calculate the presence and production of air pollutants. They use data from emissions inventories reported by local agencies that list pollutants from known sources, such as wildfires, traffic or factories, and data from meteorology that provides atmospheric information, such as wind, precipitation, temperature and solar radiation.

These models simulate the flow and chemical reactions of the air pollutants. However, their simulations involve multiple variables with huge uncertainties. Cloudiness, for example, changes the incoming solar radiation and thus the photochemistry. This can make the results less accurate.

Machine-learning models instead learn patterns over time from historical data to predict future air quality for any given region, and then apply that knowledge to current conditions to predict the future.

The downside of machine-learning models is that they do not consider any chemical and physical mechanisms, as chemical transport models do. Also, the accuracy of machine-learning projections under extreme conditions, such as heat waves or wildfire events, can be off if the models weren’t trained on such data. So, while machine-learning models can show where and when high pollution levels are most likely, such as during rush hour near freeways, they generally cannot deal with more random events, like wildfire smoke blowing in from Canada.

Which is better?

Scientists have determined that neither model is accurate enough on its own, but using the best attributes of both models together can help better predict the quality of the air we breathe.

This combined method, known as the machine-learning – measurement model fusion, or ML-MMF, has the ability to provide science-based predictions with more than 90% accuracy. It is based on known physical and chemical mechanisms and can simulate the whole process, from the air pollution source to your nose. Adding satellite data can help them inform the public on both air quality safety levels and the direction pollutants are traveling with greater accuracy.

We recently compared predictions from all three models with actual pollution measurements. The results were striking: The combined model was 66% more accurate than the chemical transport model and 12% more accurate than the machine-learning model alone.

The chemical transport model is still the most common method used today to predict air quality, but applications with machine-learning models are becoming more popular. The regular forecasting method used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov relies on machine learning. The site also compiles air quality forecast results from state and local agencies, most of which use chemical transport models.

As information sources become more reliable, the combined models will become more accurate ways to forecast hazardous air quality, particularly during unpredictable events like wildfire smoke.

Joshua S. Fu is the Chancellor’s Professor in Engineering, Climate Change and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee. Fu received funding from U. S. EPA for wildfire and human health studies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post Combining AI and traditional methods can help us predict air quality appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

This story is part of the Grist arts and culture series Remember When, a weeklong exploration of what happened to the climate solutions that once clogged our social feeds.

The camera pans slowly across a close-up of crispy, golden McDonald’s fries, standing tall like ears of corn. “We used to think this was the best thing a plant could grow into,” a deep voice proclaims during the commercial. “And then we made this.” Into view emerges a glistening cheeseburger topped with lettuce, tomatoes, and pickles. “Introducing the new McPlant,” the narrator continues, “made with the first plant-based patty worthy of being called a McDonald’s burger.”

The ad, from early 2022, seemed like a sign that plant burgers had made it big. Six years after they arrived on the market, America’s biggest restaurant chain had endorsed them. The news garnered cautious praise from some environmental advocates: Not only could meatless meat patties reduce animal cruelty, but they also promised to ease climate change. They looked, tasted, and bled like beef but had none of the drawbacks — no cows that burp methane, no butchered animals, and barely any cholesterol. 

By most metrics, plant-based meat has been a resounding success. Brands like Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Gardein are sold in thousands of grocery stores and restaurants across the country. Dollar sales in the U.S. have tripled over the past decade. Ten years ago, you couldn’t buy fake-blood burgers anywhere. Today, they’re on the grill at Burger King, Carl’s Jr., and other restaurants all over the world. When Beyond Meat went public in 2019, its stock climbed more than 700 percent. The buzz was compared to that of Bitcoin.

Yet a tour of recent headlines suggests that something has gone awry. Last year, Forbes described a “lifeless market for meatless meat.” The Guardian asserted that “plant-based meat’s sizzle fizzled in the U.S.” A Bloomberg headline in January went further, declaring that fake meat was “just another fad.” As for the McPlant, McDonald’s erased it from its menu in the U.S. last August, less than a year after it started a trial run.

The industry had hit its first big stumbling block. In 2022, U.S. plant-based meat sales declined for the first time — 8 percent by volume. Beyond Meat, a behemoth in the sector and the supplier of McPlant patties, saw its stock price plummet 94 percent from its peak in 2020 as sales slid more than 20 percent last year. The company laid off one-fifth of its employees last fall. Impossible Foods — Beyond’s biggest rival — has fared better, but it also ended up laying off roughly 16 percent of its workforce this spring. The layoffs were intended to bring costs “more in line” with revenue and to position the company for “sustainable, balanced growth over the long term,” according to a statement from Impossible. 

“Today, basically, we’re in a little bit of this trough of disillusionment,” said T.K. Pillan, co-founder and chairman of Veggie Grill, one of the country’s biggest plant-based food chains and the first to sell the Beyond Burger. “Expectations and hype got fueled really high.” 

Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods said their inventions could do something earlier brands — Tofurky, Boca, Gardenburger — couldn’t. Although the two companies make discrete products with different ingredients and characteristics, they are often talked about in one breath because they share a novel and uncanny resemblance to meat. Impossible’s plant burger could compete with beef even among “uncompromising meat consumers,” Pat Brown, the founder of the company, claimed during a TED Talk in 2015. 

“People around the world love to eat meat. And who can blame them? It’s delicious,” Brown said. “The problem isn’t that people love meat. The problem is how we produce it.” 

As Brown described a “wildlife holocaust” caused by clearing forests around the world for agriculture, a woman behind him flipped an Impossible Burger on a griddle. “Cows aren’t getting any better at turning plants into meat,” Brown said. “And they never will. We’re getting better at it every day. And we’re going to keep getting better.” 

Climate advocates hoped that this new class of faux meat could lure people away from cow meat. Livestock contribute roughly 14 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and factory-farmed cattle are the worst offenders. “I know it sounds insane to replace a deeply entrenched trillion-dollar-a-year global industry that’s been a part of human culture since the dawn of human civilization,” Brown said in the TED Talk. “But it has to be done.” When he was interviewed by the New Yorker in 2019, Brown said Impossible could help end animal agriculture by 2035. 

Today, that ambitious goal sounds even more ambitious. Plant-based patties haven’t displaced real meat yet — the vast majority of people who buy plant burgers also buy animal protein, and they don’t seem to be buying less of it. According to a survey last year by the consulting firm Deloitte, half of U.S. shoppers have already purchased plant-based meat, but the market has reached a “saturation point.” The report found that people don’t view the food as favorably as they once did. So what happened?

There’s no shortage of theories. For starters, the burgers are made by machines. While they’ve been fine-tuned to include less fat and cholesterol than real beef, early products were full of sodium and used additives for taste and texture, like sugar and carrageenan — an extract from seaweed that’s the subject of health concerns among some scientists and nutritionists. Companies like Beyond and Impossible have tinkered with recipes to get rid of additives and make fake meat more nutritious, but the fact remains that their burgers are lab creatures.

“The big problem with plant-based meats is they fall into the category of ultra-processed,” said Marion Nestle, a longtime food studies professor at New York University. Even though plant-based meat might be healthier than red meat on a nutritional basis, it’s still part of a broader class of processed foods, including cereal and sodas, that have been linked to poor health outcomes. “There’s just tons of evidence that these are the kinds of foods to avoid,” Nestle said. “The ingredient list is lengthy and very impressive, and that has been the basis of attack by the meat industry.” 

Soon after Beyond and Impossible burgers took off, the Center for Consumer Freedom — a corporate-backed advocacy group perhaps best known for defending the tobacco industry — launched a campaign targeting plant-based meats. “Fake meat or dog food?” read a full-page ad the group placed in the Los Angeles Times in 2019. One of the organization’s main tactics has been to highlight that plant burgers come from factories, not farms.

“The meat industry really made a concerted effort to make people think [plant-based meat] is not healthy,” Pillan said. “They do a great job. They’re good marketers. They’re good lobbyists.”

The industry’s push came at a convenient moment: Around the same time, a health movement promoting “clean” foods — meat and vegetables that aren’t processed — entered the mainstream. “The meat alternatives have run up against this other trend,” said Jayson Lusk, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. Lusk often hears the refrain: “If I wanted plants, I’d just eat plants.” 

Plant-based meat now finds itself in a strange spot, simultaneously seen as healthy and unhealthy, with attitudes starting to tip toward the “junk food” designation. “Healthfulness” was the top reason people bought plant-based meat in 2021, according to an International Food Information Council survey. That same year, a Deloitte survey found that 68 percent of buyers thought the novel burgers were healthier than beef. In 2022, that figure slipped to 60 percent.  

Even more than health perceptions, “Taste and price are the two main reasons people don’t buy” plant patties, said Tessa Hale, director of corporate engagement at the Good Food Institute, a think tank that promotes alternative meats. “They don’t want to try it because they just have this idea that it’s going to taste bad,” Hale said.

Or they simply can’t afford to shell out for a pricier product, made even more expensive by inflation. Plant-based meats often cost two or three times more than their cow-based counterparts at the grocery store. In 2019, the average retail price of meat alternatives was $9.87 per pound, while that of conventional meat was $3.53. Today, Walmart sells Beyond Burgers at $9.68 per pound and beef patties for as little as $3.94 per pound. Some compare the cost gap to that between electric and gas-powered vehicles: Until prices come down, the premium, climate-friendly option won’t be widely adopted. 

For each of the top concerns — price, health, and taste — proponents say there’s reason to be optimistic. They observe that inflation has been worse for real meat than the products that imitate it. As production scales up and new technologies get perfected, the price curve for plant-based foods “is expected to keep on coming down,” said Chris Bryant, an alternative proteins researcher in the United Kingdom. 

Impossible Foods cut sale prices by 20 percent in 2021, and Beyond Meat has said it plans to sell at least one of its products for less than the going price of meat by 2024. In the Netherlands, growing demand and government support for faux meat reportedly have helped fake burgers achieve price parity with real ones. “We seem to be at the tipping point,” Bryant said. 

As for the health question, Pillan acknowledged that plant-based burgers aren’t always the healthiest option — next to, say, a salad or lentils. But he said what matters is that they’re healthier than beef. They have less cholesterol and fat, and some research suggests they lower risk of heart disease compared to red meat. 

A Beyond Meat spokesperson cited a similar case made by the company’s chief executive, Ethan Brown, on an earnings call in February. Brown criticized the “drummed up misperception that our products are overly processed and utilize complex ingredients” and pointed to a study suggesting that eating Beyond’s products instead of animal meat could lead to lower cholesterol levels.

Veggie Grill, for its part, has closed several locations in recent months, but also plans to launch a franchise program. In the company’s early days, “The West Coast was really where we could put multiple Veggie Grills and make the concept work,” Pillan said. “Now we could put multiple Veggie Grills in Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami.”

Meanwhile, producers aren’t done fiddling with the recipes for fake meat. Scientists are honing techniques like precision and biomass fermentation to reduce the number of ingredients needed to turn plants into meat. One company, Meati, is marketing steak and chicken products made almost entirely from mushrooms, touting it as being simultaneously low in fats and high in protein, vitamins, and minerals. 

All in all, the industry’s supporters aren’t that worried about the dire tone of the recent media coverage. “I still believe there is a lot of hype,” Hale said. “It’s a very nascent category, all things considered.” There remains a sense among proponents, much as there was 10 years ago, that meat made from plants could one day make a meaningful dent in the market for animal meat, living up to its many promises.

Consider the assurance that Brown, Impossible’s founder, offered to a group of kids four years ago when they toured his startup’s office to learn about his team’s invention: “I promise that by the time you are adults, the meat you eat will not come from dead animals,” Brown told the kids, who had donned white lab coats for the occasion. “You can come find me and beat me up if I’m wrong.”

*This piece has been updated to include a response from Beyond Meat.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/culture/plant-based-meat-beyond-beef-sales-decline-impossible-burger/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Plant-based meat was supposed to change the world—what happened? appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

In a summer of smashed temperature records and extreme weather events, it’s natural to wonder if anywhere is safe from the wrath of human-made climate change. The answer is probably not, even in the most remote places. A study published August 8 in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science found that extreme events, including ocean heatwaves and ice loss, will be more common and more severe in Antarctica. 

[Related: Record-breaking heat is bombarding the North and South poles.]

Drastic action is needed to limit global warming to the target of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the team on this study are warning that Antarctica’s recent extreme could only be the beginning.  

“Antarctic change has global implications,” study co-author and University of Exeter geoscientist and glaciologist Martin Siegert said in a statement. “Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero is our best hope of preserving Antarctica, and this must matter to every country—and individual—on the planet.”

Recently, the ice sheets on Antarctica’s western end and particularly its peninsula have seen dramatic and fast melting that threatens to raise global sea level over the next few centuries. The Thwaites glacier, also called the Doomsday Glacier, on the continent’s western side is melting at an especially rapid pace.

In the study, a team recorded extreme events occurring in the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, including weather, ocean temperatures, sea ice, glacier and ice shelf systems, as well as biodiversity on the land and sea. They found that the continent’s fragile environments “may well be subject to considerable stress and damage in future years and decades.” The team calls for urgent policy action to protect it and many countries could be breaching an international treaty by not protecting Antarctica.

“Signatories to the Antarctic Treaty (including the UK, USA, India and China) pledge to preserve the environment of this remote and fragile place,” said Siegert. “Nations must understand that by continuing to explore, extract and burn fossil fuels anywhere in the world, the environment of Antarctica will become ever more affected in ways inconsistent with their pledge.”

The study also considered Antarctica’s vulnerability to a range of extreme events to understand the causes and likely future changes. One of these includes the world’s largest recorded heatwave, which occurred in East Antarctica in 2022. Temperatures were a staggering 70 degrees above average, and winter sea ice formation is currently the lowest on record. 

The high temperatures have also been linked to years with lower krill numbers. Species reliant on krill like fur seals have had breeding failures as a result.

[Related: The East Antarctic Ice Sheet could raise sea levels 16 feet by 2500.]

“Our results show that while extreme events are known to impact the globe through heavy rainfall and flooding, heatwaves and wildfires, such as those seen in Europe this summer, they also impact the remote polar regions,” co-autor and University of Leeds professor of Earth observation Anna Hogg said in a statement. “Antarctic glaciers, sea ice and natural ecosystems are all impacted by extreme events. Therefore, it is essential that international treaties and policy are implemented in order to protect these beautiful but delicate regions.”

The study also calls for careful management of the area to protect vulnerable sites, as the retreat of the Antarctic sea ice sheet will make new areas of the region accessible by ships. Using the European Space Agency and European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites can provide regular monitoring of the entire Antarctic region and Southern Ocean, and can measure the ice. 

“Antarctic sea ice has been grabbing headlines in recent weeks, and this paper shows how sea ice records—first record highs but, since 2017, record lows—have been tumbling in Antarctica for several years,” study co-author and British Antarctic Survey sea ice expert Caroline Holmes said in a statement. “On top of that, there are deep interconnections between extreme events in different aspects of the Antarctic physical and biological system, almost all of them vulnerable to human influence in some way.”

The post Antarctica is in the climate change crosshairs appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

While most people think of the beach as a place to relax, it has always served a more purposeful role: a buffer against storms. It’s a role that will become even more important as climate change continues to disrupt nature’s delicate balance, inciting sea level rise and stronger, more frequent storms on the coasts.

But those living right along the shore may soon find themselves without as much of a cushion, as coastal erosion diminishes or displaces major beaches. At least 13 miles of beaches have been lost on the Hawaiian islands of Kauai, Oahu, and Maui, and entire beachfront communities are collapsing on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. States like Texas and Alaska have seen their coastlines “retreat” by an average of five to 10 feet per year since 1900. Two-thirds of California beaches could disappear by 2100 all because of sea level rise.

Some forms of soft and hard engineering, like trapping sand with wooden fences, promise to keep erosion at bay, but scientists warn these shouldn’t be considered a permanent fix.

How does coastal erosion work?

When a beach shrinks or even disappears, it’s because coastal erosion removes sand, mud, pebbles, or other sediment along large bodies of water. This could include the saltmarshes in southern Louisiana, sandy strips in the Bay Area of California, and the Great Lakes. 

It’s natural for the beach to be wider in northern summers, when waves are weaker and leave more sediment, and sparser in northern winters, when waves are stronger, according to Jennifer Miselis, who studies the effects of storms and sea level rise on coastal geology for the United States Geological Survey. This is because of many seasonal factors, including increased winds, storms, groundswell, and gravitational pull from the moon in winter.

[Related on PopSci+: Humans and nature will handle rising tides, together]

The problem is when sand is taken from the shoreline and then not replenished, resulting in chronic erosion. In the US, this is usually because the pathways that bring sand from the ocean or river become blocked. For example, an inlet that forms naturally might prevent sediment from flowing alongside the coast. In other countries, especially in the Global South, companies are intentionally eroding beaches through sand mining. Sand, which is a key ingredient in concrete, is the second most used resource in the world after water, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. 

Climate change could also mean less sand on shorelines. Stronger storms mean that more sand will be swept off beaches and into the water. Rising sea levels will cause more areas of beaches to be covered by water. “It’s what I call the bathtub model,” says Stephen Leatherman, a professor at Florida International University who researches beach erosion and sea level rise. “If you bring the water level up, it submerges things, but you’re not having any erosion. Your bathtub’s not falling apart.” However, when coupled with stronger storms, he explains, sea level rise can cause more of the beach to be washed away.

Where do people factor into all this?

Coastlines have always changed over time, says Mark Kulp, a professor of geology at the University of New Orleans. If you study the geologic record, you would find that sea levels have risen about 400 feet over the past 20,000 years or so. But climate change is causing sea levels to rise faster than before, and coastal infrastructure will make it harder for home and business owners to migrate. 

Unlike many millennia ago, humans help drive erosion today. It’s often exacerbated by structures that were built to protect people from flooding, but block off sediment flow from bodies of water as a consequence.

Take Galveston, Texas, where a hurricane killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people in 1900, making it the deadliest natural disaster in American history. After that, the city built a 10-mile-long seawall along the coast. The seawall has kept residents and property safe for the past century, but it also decimated what was once a wide beach, causing the city to lose 100 yards of sand a year and hurting local ecosystems and the tourism industry. And in southern Louisiana, which has some of the fastest deteriorating coasts in the country, part of the problem is the levees built to protect communities from flooding, which also prevent sediment from flowing through and replenishing the marshes. 

While people might think development along the coast is responsible for driving coastal erosion, Leatherman says this isn’t true—the reasons for coastal erosion and solutions vary significantly from place to place. But generally, he thinks jetties, which are rock structures built perpendicular to beaches to provide a safe passage for ships into harbors, and then seawalls cause the most erosion out of manmade structures.

What solutions are there?

Renourishment, which could mean dumping trucked-in sand on a beach, designing ways to trap sediment the tide washes in from flowing back into the ocean, or even dredging up sand from the ocean or lake floor to redistribute it on the beach, has been an increasingly popular method of slowing down the effects of erosion around the world. In the northeastern US in particular, “we’re doing a good job by nourishing beaches and keeping them in place,” Miselis says.

But renourishment, especially when it involves transporting new sand, is costly and only a Band-Aid for the problem. “Everybody wants beach nourishment,” Leatherman says. “But people don’t realize, you only set back the erosion clock. In other words, it’s like you’re treating the symptom, not curing the disease. You’re not stopping the sea level from coming up; you’re not stopping coastal storms from coming in.”

Other fixes might employ “soft engineering” techniques to trap sand on the beach, like fashioning wooden fences to build artificial sand dunes, and then planting native plant species to keep the dunes put. And in some cases, like in Louisiana, the levees that keep out flooding could be altered to allow some sediment to flow back into the Mississippi Delta, Kulp says. 

[Related: Pendulums under ocean waves could prevent beach erosion]

But ultimately, people have to accept that some of their favorite beaches will wash away little by little. “If we’re gonna live in coastal environments, we just have to come up with creative and unique solutions to try to limit or reduce some of the erosion,” Kulp says. “But we also need to simultaneously recognize that there may be coastal sections on a global [level] that we can’t necessarily do anything about. We just have to accept that they’re going to disappear and change and that’s part of the process.”

The post Why your favorite beach might be eroding appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on High Country News.

On a sweltering late April day, a flock of middle-aged men strolled in athleisure, practicing their backswings and rifling balls into the azure sky above the Green Springs golf community just outside St. George, a ballooning city of 100,000 in southwestern Utah. Some 2,000 homes, mostly single-family—many with RV garages—orbit the fairway, like rings around Planet Golf, and more are on their way. 

As in so many cities in the desert West, golf in St. George is a thirsty business, with a powerful lobby and a relationship with water painted in green on the landscape. Among its peers, however, St. George is in a league of its own. Few cities in the Southwest use more water per person: nearly 300 gallons a day. And a hefty portion of that, over half, goes to keeping ornamental grass, lawns and golf courses lush in an arid region where water supplies are dwindling every day. Within a decade, and without immediate action to conserve, local officials predict that its water shortage will become a water crisis.

Utah is notorious for granting an unusual degree of grace to this sort of profligate water use. That may be changing, however, at least when it comes to the golf industry: In 2022, the city of Ivins, an exurb of St. George, effectively banned the construction of new golf courses, while early this year, state Rep. Douglas Welton, R, introduced House Bill 188, which could require golf courses to be more transparent about how much water they use.

In a city and at a time where something’s gotta give, will golf be the first to fall?

Minutes down the road from the Green Springs community, at the Dixie Red Hills Golf Course, I joined a group of older players staging behind the first tee. Before we settled on the griddle-hot pleather of our golf carts, Jim Peacock, 80, slapped a top-spinning rocket up and over the rough that his friend Craig Felt, two years his senior, couldn’t help but admire. “Jim’s the athlete of the group,” Felt said. Soon, the chatter moved to water. “When I was in Mexico, there was only enough water for three flushes. That could happen to us if we don’t pay attention,” Felt said. While Tom Smith, 75, indicated that he’d rather give up golf than toilet-flushing, it’s not clear that the rest of the community is so inclined. “This is a place where a lot of people do a lot of golfing,” Greg Milne said, gesturing toward the sprawl of St. George.   

“That’s how it started. The course was built as a sort of vision for growth in the area.” 

This area’s mingling of desert and water has long attracted people. Southern Paiute bands lived near the Virgin River for a millennium or more before Mormon colonists arrived in the late 1850s, intent on making “Utah’s Dixie” bloom with cotton. For the next century, Washington County remained “a sleepy little community off the I-15 that people would pass by on their way to California,” said Colby Cowan, director of golf operations for the city of St. George. Throughout the 1950s, nuclear blasts at Nevada’s Yucca Flats test range blew radioactive dust onto the homes of the city’s 5,000 residents—dust that stubbornly clung to the valley’s reputation.

But in 1965, St. George unveiled the nine-hole Dixie Red Hills course, rebranding the Mormon Downwinder outpost as a putter’s paradise. “That’s how it started. The course was built as a sort of vision for growth in the area,” said Cowan. Since then, golf’s role in the regional recreation economy has burgeoned. The 14 golf courses in Washington County, including four owned by the city of St. George, attract nearly 600,000 visitors a year, generating $130 million dollars annually, according to Cowan. That puts golf on par with mining, quarrying, and oil and gas industries in the area, though still below the half-billion dollars generated annually by Zion National Park.

And, like those other industries, golf has political sway. When golf’s water needs came under fire in Washington County in 2021 and again in the state Legislature this January, the industry flexed its influence. Golf Alliance Utah, the lobbying wing of the Utah Golf Association, pulled strings at the Statehouse in Salt Lake City, killing the bill even after sponsors dropped the annual reporting requirement, arguing that it unfairly targeted the sport. 

Generally, the golf industry tries to burnish its image by touting its economic benefits and highlighting its efforts to decrease water use. “We’re doing our due diligence with water conservation,” Devin Dehlin, the executive director at the Utah Section Professional Golf Association, said in a call with High Country News. “What the sport brings economic-wise is the story we want to tell.” In practice, those changes have come down to encouraging course operators to replace some turf with native plants. Other technologies, like soil-moisture monitoring and artificial grass coloring, which gives turf a deep green appearance with minimal watering, are being adopted, though strictly on a voluntary basis. Dehlin said his organization does not track how widespread these changes are.

Of the ten thirstiest golf courses in Utah, seven are in Washington County, according to an investigation by the Salt Lake Tribune. Some privately owned courses, including Coral Canyon Golf Course and SunRiver Golf Club, actually increased their water use between 2018 and 2022. The mercury tops 100 degrees Fahrenheit here more than 50 days each year, so it takes an exorbitant amount of water to keep the fairways lush year-round: about 177 million gallons annually for each course, or roughly eight times the national average. And if the region continues to grow at its current breakneck rate, existing water supplies—from wells, springs and the Virgin River — will be severely strained. That prospect has some local and state officials backing a proposed pipeline that would carry Colorado River water from the ever-shrinking Lake Powell to this corner of the Utah desert. With or without the pipeline, the region is likely to face severe water rationing, with golf and lawns likely seeing the first cuts. Washington County’s forthcoming drought contingency plan could require cities to cut their water use by up to 30 percent in a worst-case scenario. “And if you look about where they would cut their water usage,” said Washington County Water Conservancy District Manager Zach Renstrom, “it really would come to large grassy areas, such as golf.”

In a bid to avoid future mandated cuts, St. George is scrambling to reduce its water use now. Under Renstrom’s guidance, the city passed sweeping conservation ordinances early this year—the toughest in Utah, but still mild compared to those in Las Vegas. Three of the four city-owned golf courses now use treated wastewater for irrigation rather than potable or “culinary” grade water. Las Vegas shifted to reused water for the majority of its courses by 2008. Cowan said the city-owned courses are beginning to remove ornamental grass from non-play areas. So far this year, the county has removed more than 264,000 square feet of grass. While that may sound like a lot, it’s only about six acres across the entire county, or roughly 4 percent of one local golf course. Even with those measures in place, Renstom says the halcyon days for golf in southwestern Utah need to end: “I’ve had a couple of developers come to me recently and want to talk about golf courses, and I flat-out said, ‘I won’t provide the water.’”

For now, though, the county still has some water to spare. St. George has secured $60 million for a wastewater treatment plant, all while stashing almost two years of reserves in a network of reservoirs. “We have a lot of water stored away,” said Ed Andrechak, water program manager for Conserve Southwest Utah, a sustainability advocacy nonprofit. If the county enforced the strict conservation rules that Las Vegas has, he believes it could grow at the blistering pace it’s projected to over the coming years.

But Andrechak worries that, ultimately, a culture of profligacy will be the barrier to conservation, not money or technical know-how: “We just don’t think water rules apply to us here,” he said. Andrechak cataloged a number of examples: a 1,200-foot lazy river under construction at the Black Desert golf resort in Ivins; the Desert Color community, which built around an artificial lake that Andrechak described as a “giant evapo-pond”; another three man-made lakes for the Southern Shores water-skiing-housing complex in Hurricane, and perhaps most bewildering, a Yogi Bear-themed water park east of St. George. The water park will require 5 million gallons or more of culinary-grade drinking water annually for rides like one nicknamed the “Royal Flush,” a toilet bowl-shaped slide. The Sand Hollow golf course next door gulps up 60 times as much water. “We’re 23 years into a mega drought, and yet my struggle here is that we’re not really that concerned about it,” Andrechak said. “That’s the culture.”

“We’re 23 years into a mega drought, and yet my struggle here is that we’re not really that concerned about it.”

This culture is enabled and even nurtured by policy: St. George’s water rates are among the lowest in the West, which results in bigger profits for course operators and more affordable green fees, but also disincentivizes conservation. “The whole idea has been to have low (water) rates to take care of the citizens by making golf affordable,” said Dehlin. “Having affordable water is important for the growth of the game and to keep our facilities in the conditions that we do. And that’s one thing about golf courses in Utah in general: they’re very well-manicured, very well-kept,” Dehlin said. “And yes, well-irrigated.” 

Samuel Shaw is an editorial intern for High Country News based in the Colorado Front Range. Email him at samuel.shaw@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy. Follow Samuel on Instagram @youngandforgettable. 

The post In water-strained Utah, can golf courses justify their giant footprint? appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Dungeness crabs hunt by flicking their chemical-detecting antennae to and fro. Sensing the water—the underwater equivalent of sniffing the air—is a well-trod strategy for homing in on potential prey. But that timeless tactic appears to be at risk, as new research shows that climate change–induced ocean acidification seems to cause Dungeness crabs’ antennae to falter.

Researchers at the University of Toronto Scarborough in Ontario put Dungeness crabs in water just slightly more acidic than normal—conditions that are already present in some coastal ecosystems and could be widespread by the year 2100 if humans continue to emit a high level of greenhouse gases. They found that the animals need to be exposed to cadaverine, a food signaling chemical, at a concentration 10 times higher than normal before they register its presence.

And it’s not just Dungeness crabs that appear to be in trouble. Acidification threatens to deprive a variety of marine species of crucial chemical cues. Research into this phenomenon is still limited, but as the field develops, the scope of the potential consequences is growing clearer.

“Almost every chemical that’s in the sea could be affected,” says Jorg Hardege, a chemical ecologist at the University of Hull in England.

Just like on land, where animals smell and taste chemicals to glean vital information, many marine creatures use chemical cues to spot food, locate potential mates, or avoid nearby predators. Chemoreception works because each of these cues is a molecule with a distinct chemical structure and physical shape. But because all of these chemicals are floating around in water, they’re susceptible to a range of chemical reactions. More acidic water, says Hardege, has more positively charged hydrogen ions floating around. Those hydrogen ions can bind to the cue chemicals, changing their shape—and how they’re detected. Hydrogen ions can also bind to the animals’ chemoreceptors, changing how they sense those chemical cues, Hardege says.

If you think of these chemical cues as a language, Hardege says, it’s as if words start sounding different while, at the same time, your ears are changing how they hear sound.

Unsurprisingly, disrupting an animal’s ability to detect key chemical cues can alter its behavior. Take the European green crab, for example. One study, coauthored by Hardege, shows that a slight increase in water’s acidity can change the shape of chemicals that tell the crabs to fan their eggs with water to provide fresh oxygen and remove waste. Crabs in experimentally acidified water were less sensitive to these cues—they needed at least 10 times as much of these chemicals added to the water before they started fanning their eggs more frequently.

Some fish have also demonstrated having trouble picking up on chemical cues in more acidic water. In one study, juvenile pink salmon seemed less attuned to chemical cues and less able to avoid predators. Gilthead seabream—a commonly eaten European fish—have shown the same trend.

Many of these experiments tested levels of ocean acidification that could be widespread by the end of the century if the world hits extreme climate change projections. But with coastal upwelling, a process that can bring acidic deep-ocean water to the surface, some coastal environments already see this level of acidification occasionally. And even if future carbon emissions are reigned in, the whole ocean will still grow more acidic than it is now. Individual species will likely have different thresholds at which the increasing acidity suddenly derails their ability to detect certain chemicals, Hardege says, and scientists don’t yet know where those thresholds might be.

Christina Roggatz, a marine chemical ecologist at the University of Bremen in Germany, notes that acidification does not always reduce animals’ sensitivity to chemicals. For example, one study found that in more acidic water, hermit crabs seem to be even more attracted to a particular chemical cue.

But with some cues growing stronger and others growing weaker, widespread acidification could upend the balance of chemical communication in the ocean, Roggatz says.

This is on top of the other, more overtly threatening, consequences of changing marine chemistry. In a particularly frightening case, Roggatz discovered that a combination of increasing acidity and rising temperatures actually increases the toxicities of saxitoxin, a potent neurotoxin from contaminated shellfish, and tetrodotoxin, produced by pufferfish, blue-ringed octopuses, and other animals.

Research into acidification’s potential to disrupt underwater chemical communication and sensory perception is really just getting started. Last year, Hardege, Roggatz, and others wrote a paper urging researchers, from chemists to ecologists, to unravel what these changes could mean.

It is possible, Hardege says, that wildlife could adapt to the changing chemical environment. The signal of nearby food, for instance, isn’t often one chemical, but an array of chemicals. Even if a species can no longer detect one of those chemicals, it might still be able to detect the others. Or, it might turn to its other senses, like vision.

Of course, it’s best if we don’t put that to the test. The best way to protect marine ecosystems from ocean acidification is to limit acidification, says Roggatz.

“If we can buy time by reducing the carbon dioxide amounts we emit substantially,” Roggatz says, “I think that is the solution.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

The post As oceans become more acidic, creatures could struggle to smell appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Tick season is not only starting sooner—it’s becoming a year-round event. While April through September are usually the most active months, the pesky eight-legged parasites are biting people and animals much earlier in the year than expected. The increasing tick bites are leading to a rise in a variety of tick-borne diseases, including some that were previously uncommon.

One reason for the hike in tick-transmitted illnesses like alpha-gal, Lyme, and babesiosis is because humans are expanding towns and cities into previously forested areas. Andrew Handel, a pediatric infectious disease specialist in Stony Brook Medicine, says cutting down forests creates an edge habitat—when one habitat type meets another—which presents more opportunity for common tick hosts such as deer and mice to interact with humans. 

[Related: A guide to the tick species every American should know]

Climate change is another culprit. Changes in rain and temperature have morphed regions with low rates of tick-borne diseases into a more palatable place for the parasites to live. What’s more, warmer conditions are getting ticks to wake up earlier from their winter sleep and have more time to bite nearby mammals. “As we see more mild winters, we’re absolutely going to see more tick-borne diseases,” says Handel.

The best thing to do is to stay aware of how ticks are circulating in your area. Even if you don’t live in the Northeast, you may be at risk for other tick-borne diseases. Knowing what to watch out for in spring, summer, and even other seasons can help treat and potentially prevent future tick bites—and the diseases that follow.

Alpha-gal syndrome

A bite from the lone star tick can make you allergic to red meat for life. The unusual condition takes root when someone becomes highly sensitive to a sugar molecule called alpha-gal that’s found in most mammals. People who develop the allergy cannot eat red meat (fish and birds are safe to consume) or mammal-based products like dairy and gelatin. They may also be restricted in using certain medication such as heparin, which uses pig intestines. An allergic reaction can range from hives and nausea to more life-threatening reactions like anaphylactic shock.

Alpha-gal syndrome has been a rare but increasing tick-borne condition. In 2009, there were only 24 alpha-gal cases reported in the US. By 2021, the number was estimated to be around 34,000. And even newer surveys estimate that around 450,000 Americans might be living with the diagnosed or undiagnosed condition.

While saliva from the lone star tick seems to trigger the mammalian allergy, deer tick bites are suspected of also causing it. According to the CDC, lone star ticks have concentrated in large numbers across the country. They are found in the southeastern, eastern, and south-central US states extending from Maine to central Texas and Oklahoma. 

There is no cure for alpha-gal syndrome. Instead, people need to learn to avoid certain foods and mammal-based products. Symptoms are managed using antihistamines and corticosteroids.

Babesiosis

Babesiosis is a parasitic infection transmitted by the bite of deer ticks (also known as black-legged ticks). These ticks are about the size of a poppy seed and found on small mammals like the white-footed mice living in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Minnesota and Wisconsin are two Midwestern states with endemic transmission of babesiosis.

Once the Babesia parasite enters the human body, it targets red blood cells. The parasites infect and destroy red blood cells by forcing their cell membrane to break open. A tremendous loss of red blood cells can, over time, cause hemolytic anemia. “It’s actually the same way that malaria works, and is why it’s called ‘the malaria of the Northeast,’” says Handel.

Babesiosis is treatable. Your doctor would prescribe a seven- to 10-day course of antibiotics if you are severely ill. Some people are at a higher risk of complications from anemia—people who are immunocompromised, those without a spleen, and newborn babies—and may need to get blood transfusions or other supportive care.

Lyme disease

Lyme disease is also spread through deer ticks. “These ticks carry and spread multiple diseases,” explains Chad Cross, a researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who studies parasites and vector-borne diseases. “If you are bitten by one, there’s always the possibility of being infected by more than one disease agent at the same time.”

While the CDC estimate shows 476,000 Lyme disease cases in the US each year, Cross states there are “at least 10 times more cases of Lyme disease than are actually reported” to the department. One reason for the discrepancy is that most cases are asymptomatic. When people do show symptoms, the fatigue and chills they exhibit can be mistaken for another condition. If left untreated, there is a risk of developing neurological problems such as facial paralysis and nerve damage to the limbs. Chronic lyme can lead to a host of persistent issues, too, many of which are still less understood. 

[Related: Biologists successfully hatched gene-edited ticks for the first time]

Most early Lyme disease cases are curable with a two- to four-week regimen of oral antibiotics such as doxycycline and amoxicillin. However, some patients may continue to experience pain, fatigue, and concentration issues six months after treatment. 

Anaplasmosis

Anaplasmosis manifests as a flu-like illness in humans. The bacterium is present in deer ticks in the Northeast and Midwestern US. The Western blacklegged tick, most prevalent around the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington, can also spread the pathogen. There has been an upward trend of anaplasmosis cases from 348 cases in 2000 to 5,655 cases in 2019.

Similar to Lyme disease, people who develop anaplasmosis develop nonspecific symptoms such as fever and muscle aches. If left untreated, it may turn fatal with some developing severe bleeding problems and organ failure. Handel says doxycycline is the most effective treatment option.

Powassan virus infection

Three tick species carry the Powassan virus: the groundhog tick, the squirrel tick, and the deer tick. Of those, the deer tick is the one that often bites and infects humans. Nearly all cases of this rare virus have occurred in the Northeast and Great Lakes region.

The virus causes mild symptoms such as headache, vomiting, and fever. By the time a diagnosis is made, Handel says about half of the patients present some type of neurologic deficit. People may also continue to show neurological problems, such as chronic headaches and memory problems after recovery.

Because there are only about 20 to 30 cases a year, Handel says there’s not a lot of medical research on how to treat it. There is no cure or antivirals to treat Powassan virus. Instead, infected individuals are given fluids, over-the-counter medications, and other supportive care to ease symptoms while the immune system fights off the infection.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever

There are two main ticks responsible for spreading rocky mountain spotted fever: the Rocky Mountain wood tick and the American dog tick. Cross says the American dog tick is very common out East while the Rocky Mountain wood tick is found in the West. Despite its name, Cross says Rocky Mountain spotted fever is being found more in the East and South than in the actual Rocky Mountain region. The less-common brown dog tick has also caused several cases along the US-Mexico border. The disease is part of a larger class of illnesses that strike thousands of people in the states each year.

The most noticeable sign is a rash that looks like red splotches or pinpoint dots in the first three days after getting bit. If treated with either doxycycline or an antibacterial agent within the first one to four days, the symptoms won’t worsen. Otherwise, the disease can be fatal. After a week, Cross says that people can develop swelling in the brain, life-threatening respiratory problems, and a coma-like state. Those who recover from severe illness may be left with permanent disability, such as paralysis or amputation of limbs.

Reduce your chances of tick infections

These days, ticks are a threat across most of the US and in practically every season. Experts warn that cases will only continue to rise as ticks expand to previously uninhabitable areas. 

[Related: Climate change could introduce humans to thousands of new viruses]

Your best bet at avoiding tick-borne diseases is to keep the pests off your body. Rather than staying indoors for the rest of your life, both experts recommend spraying tick and mosquito repellant. “DEET is what we usually recommend at 20 to 30 percent,” says Handel. If you’re going to be hiking or spending a lot of time outside, learn how to handle an insecticide called permethrin. Handel advises leaving your clothes overnight in the solution to kill any insect on contact. The repellency lasts for up to 10 washes. But make sure to only use it on your clothes or gear—it’s not meant to be sprayed directly on human skin.

Remember, you can pick up ticks even if you’re not an avid hiker or camper. Ticks tend to live on tall grass, meaning they might climb on you at the park or even on your own property. Avoid rubbing up on any tall grass and keep to the middle when walking down a path. Wearing long sleeves and tucking your pants inside your socks further prevents any openings for the pests to crawl into if they latch on your clothes. 

Once you get home, immediately wash your clothes in high heat and perform a tick check for any stragglers. If you take your pet outdoors (even if it’s just the yard), you’ll want to check them daily for ticks as well. There are also topical medications that you or a vet can apply to your pet to control for any external parasites. If you or any members of your household are feeling unwell, always let your doctor know that you’ve been in wooded areas or places with high tick circulation.

“These tick-borne diseases have been around for a long time and they’re going to become more common over time,” says Handel. “But by following these steps you can keep yourself safe and still enjoying the outdoors without having to have too much anxiety about catching one of these infections.”

This post has been updated. It was originally published on March 27, 2023.

The post 6 tick-borne diseases you really don’t want to get appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Scientists are already calculating that July 2023 will be the hottest month on record—and likely the warmest month that humanity has ever experienced. The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service announced late last week that this month’s heat was beyond record-smashing. The planet’s temperature, they report, has been temporarily passing over the crucial threshold of limiting global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial temperatures.

[Related: Extreme heat warning extends to more than 100 million people in the US.]

This news comes as no surprise to the millions of people around the world facing extreme heat. Phoenix, Arizona is about to enter its 31st straight day of temperatures above 110 degrees. Parts of northwest China saw a record-breaking 126 degrees earlier this month, while southern Europe is seeing wildfires following an extreme heatwave. These global heat waves would be “virtually impossible” without climate change, according to an early analysis released last week by the World Weather Attribution initiative.

“We can say that the first three weeks of July have been the warmest three week periods ever observed in our record,” Carlo Buentempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said via Zoom and in a statement. “This anomaly is so large with respect to other record-breaking months in our record that we are virtually certain that the month, the month as a whole, will become the warmest July on record, the warmest month on record, in all likelihood.”

Records like these generally track average air temperature across the entire world and are broken by hundredths of a degrees. However, the temperature for July’s first 23 days averaged 62.51 degrees, higher than the 61.93 degrees set in July 2019, according to the UN’s report. The data for these records goes back to 1940, but many scientists believe that it is almost certain that these recent readings are the warmest the Earth has been in 120,000 years, based on the data collected from coral reefs, deep sea sediment cores, and tree rings that paint a picture of past climates. 

Buontempo and other scientists believe that the steamy weather can be attributed to a combination of human-caused climate change and this year’s natural El Niño warming pattern in parts of the central Pacific. This pattern changes weather around the world and follows three straight years of La Niña, a Pacific cooling pattern. Despite multiple La Niña cooling patterns, 2015 to 2022 saw eight of the warmest years on record based on a 173 year long dataset. WMO’s Director of Climate Services Chris Hewitt cited “a clear and dramatic warming decade on decade” since the 1970s. 

[Related: World set to ‘temporarily’ breach major climate threshold in next five years.]

“But now the La Niña has ended” – to be replaced by the sea-warming El Niño effect – waters have begun to heat up in the tropical Pacific, bringing the “almost certain likelihood that one of the next five years will be the warmest on record,” Hewitt said in a statement. 

In May, WMO scientists predicted that the world will likely temporarily exceed the 2.7 degree threshold for at least one of the next five years. 

Temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean have also been skyrocketing since the spring. In mid-May, the global ocean surface temperatures reached “unprecedented levels” for the time of year and the ocean temperatures off the coast of Florida reached 100 degrees in some locations. 

UN Secretary-General António Guterres underscored the need for global action to reduce  emissions, climate adaptations, and climate finance. He warned that “the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived.”

“We can still stop the worst,” said Guterres. “But to do so we must turn a year of burning heat into a year of burning ambition.” 

The post July 2023 was likely the hottest month in 120,000 years appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

A group of scientists uncovered a 46,000-year-old soil nematode from Siberian permafrost, and in an Sleeping Beauty-esque experiment woke the microscopic organism up from a millenniums’ long rest. The findings are described in a study published July 27 in the open access journal PLOS Genetics.

[Related: Oyster mushrooms release nerve gas to kill worms before eviscerating them.]

Also called roundworms, nematodes are a very adaptable group of sometimes microscopic animals. In addition to tardigrades and rotifers, some nematodes can survive harsh conditions by entering a dormant state known as cryptobiosis. This process basically shuts down the animals’ metabolic systems until they can be revived when environmental conditions become more favorable. 

After uncovering the animals in Siberia’s northern Kolyma River, the team successfully woke them from this frozen-in-time state. Radiocarbon analysis dated the roundworms to 45,839 to 47,769 years ago, when direwolves and Neanderthals were still on Earth. 

Sequencing the genome revealed that the roundworm is a new species of nematode. Panagrolaimus kolymaensis is a functionally extinct species and joins the ranks of some of Earth’s most ubiquitous organisms that dwell in water, soil, and on the ocean floor. 

“P. kolymaensis‘s highly contiguous genome will make it possible to compare this feature to those of other Panagrolaimus species whose genomes are presently being sequenced by Schiffer’s team and colleagues,” study co-author and Director Emeritus at the DRESDEN-concept Genome Center Eugene Myers said in a statement. 

According to the team, nematodes do not require a lot of coaxing to wake up and wiggle around and make more little roundworms. They have since nurtured more than 100 generations of P. kolymaensis in the lab, where each new generation lasts about 8 to 12 days.

“Basically, you only have to bring the worms into amenable conditions, on a culture (agar) plate with some bacteria, some humidity and room temperature,” study co-author and University of Cologne zoologist Philipp Schiffer explained to Vice. “They just start crawling around then. They also just start reproducing. In this case this is even easier, as it is an all-female (asexual) species. They don‘t need to find males and have sex, they just start making eggs, which develop.”

In addition to the excitement of reviving a species that has been sleeping deep within the earth this long, studying these small spindle-shaped creatures may help scientists better understand how animals can adapt to habitat changes due to global warming and shifting weather patterns at a molecular level. 

[Related from PopSci+: Cave worms could hold the secrets to a better life.]

They found that mild dehydration exposure before freezing helped P. kolymaensis prepare for cryptobiosis and increased survival at -112 degrees Fahrenheit. The nematodes produced a sugar called trehalose when it was mildly dehydrated in the lab, potentially enabling it to endure these freezing and intense dehydration. 

“Our findings are essential for understanding evolutionary processes because generation times can range from days to millennia and because the long-term survival of a species’ individuals can result in the re-emergence of lineages that would otherwise have gone extinct,” study Schiffer said in a statement. 

The post Recently awoken 46,000-year-old nematodes already have 100 generations of babies appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

Oceans all over the world rely on a delicate balance of different elements to remain stable: Temperature, salinity, pH, and pressure all combine to create the complex bodies of water that maintain conditions for marine life and define the planet. Climate change has altered those conditions though, by warming oceans to record high temperatures and introducing more freshwater through sea-ice and glacier melt. 

Now, new research published on Tuesday warns that a vital Atlantic Ocean system could collapse by 2060, setting off one of the planet’s tipping points, or potential points of no return. That collapse could eventually spell catastrophe for the people who live in countries that border the Atlantic Ocean, leading to increased sea-level rise in the United States, decreased temperatures and altered storm patterns over western Europe, rejiggered climate and agricultural zones, and hotter ocean temperatures in the Caribbean. 

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, contradicts findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the United Nations’ scientific collaboration that publishes reports on the state of climate change. The group’s latest assessment, released last year, found the collapse of the group of Atlantic Ocean currents to be unlikely given the group only acknowledges weakening of the AMOC starting in 2004. The report states that scientists cannot say when or if a collapse will happen since they state even the decline prior to the 2000s cannot necessarily be attributed to climate change. 

“We absolutely have deep respect for the IPCC report,” Susanne Ditlevsen, a statistician at the University of Copenhagen and co-author of the study, told Grist. “When we first started, we had this idea that we could use this method that’s data-based, to kind of confirm what the IPCC report is saying. So when we actually got our first results, we were very surprised, and we didn’t believe them.” 

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is a thick band of water that travels from the Gulf of Mexico north along the southeastern U.S. before heading up the western edge of Europe, carrying mild temperatures with it, and onward toward Greenland and Iceland. Once there, the current is infused with heavy, cold, and salty water that then sinks, traveling back down the coast of the U.S. This system provides what one expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, called “symmetry” to temperatures in the North and South hemispheres. 

But as carbon dioxide levels rise, temperatures increase, and ice melts in the Arctic, this current is being inundated with freshwater, throwing it out of balance. This has led to a weakening of the AMOC, which recently saw its slowest point in 1,600 years in 2021. 

If the web of Atlantic Ocean currents stopped, it would constitute one of the Earth’s tipping points, which signal a dramatic, potentially irreversible shift in the condition of the planet — and its habitability for humans. A study last year found that the planet has already passed a few tipping points, including tropical coral die off and the beginning of the Greenland ice sheet collapse, at just 1.1 degree Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming. 

“We’re talking huge, huge climate changes in a very short time,” said Ditlevsen. “We would have an increase in the tropical areas… If you already have a very high, medium temperature and it rises even higher — and that is on top of global warming. Just imagine; we have 3 billion people living there. That is a huge problem.” 

The AMOC has stopped before, about 12,000 years ago and led to a variation of about 10 to 15 degrees C (18 to 27 degrees F) within a decade. But that was during an ice age, and modern global warming is a vastly different situation. 

The new research finds that this disintegration of the AMOC could occur as soon as 2025, or as far as 2095. While the findings are striking, scientists not involved in the research are approaching them cautiously.

Rong Zhang, an ocean scientist at NOAA, is skeptical of the methods used in the paper. She is particularly cautious about saying that the collapse will happen this century, let alone that it is imminent. The study uses historical records from the last 150 years to demonstrate that the weakening of the Atlantic ocean current is accelerating. But high-quality observations of this system of currents was only established in 2004, which provides a much smaller time-period to draw from.

“We need more direct AMOC observations to give us a real picture and a real early-warning signal,” she said.

Marcos Tedesco, an oceanographer and professor at Columbia University, can see both sides of the argument. 

Climate change necessitates that science can remain nimble and understand its increasing and exponential effects on the earth, but also science’s precision and thorough nature of processes, like peer review, help establish and keep its authority on certain subjects, according to Tedesco. 

Tedesco also notes that all the unknowns of climate change will only continue to complicate how much we can predict and measure all of those changes. 

“The Earth is changing,” said Tedesco. “And it’s changing into a direction where it’s never been before, because it’s never moved so fast into that direction. And this, of course, is because of the CO2 that’s been pushed in the atmosphere in the past 100 years.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/climate/a-vital-atlantic-ocean-system-could-collapse/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post A vital Atlantic Ocean system nears a point of no return appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

As the western United States continues to battle extreme temperatures, the waters off southern Florida are also heating up. Ocean temperatures reached unprecedented 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some places, as a mass bleaching event and die off from these scorching ocean temperatures is spreading across the reefs near Miami and the Florida Keys. 

[Related: Fish poop might help fight coral reef bleaching.]

Coral reefs are vital ecosystems, housing marine life from smaller fish up to turtles and sharks. They also buffer coastlines from increasingly chaotic storms. Climate change is one of the greatest threats currently facing coral ecosystems, as rising temperatures contribute to the scale and frequency of bleaching events and infectious disease outbreaks. When the water gets too warm, coral can become stressed and express algae living in their tissues, thus turning white. Corals are more likely to experience die-offs during these bleaching events. 

Scientists are now on a rescue mission to save the region’s coral species from extinction. Coral experts expect a “complete mortality” of the bleached reefs around the Florida Keys in only a week, and fear that other reefs deeper in the ocean could face this same fate.

“This is akin to all of the trees in the rainforest dying,” Florida Aquarium director and senior scientist Keri O’Neal told CNN. “Where do all of the other animals that rely on the rainforest go to live? This is the underwater version of the trees in the rainforest disappearing. Corals serve that same fundamental role.”

The University of South Florida and Florida Institute of Oceanography’s Keys Marine Laboratory (KML) is currently housing more than 1,500 coral specimens in an effort to save them. The corals were harvested over the past week from offshore nurseries and parent colonies. 

“For years we have been developing the infrastructure capacity to support reef restoration efforts that enable KML to temporarily house corals during emergencies such as this,” said KML director Cynthia Lewis said in a statement. “Typically, water temperatures at this time of year are in the mid 80s, but we are already recording temperatures of 90 degrees. It is very alarming.” 

This summer’s extreme heat and a lack of rainfall in Florida pushed water temperatures around the Sunshine State to some of the highest levels observed around the world. The National Buoy Center recorded a temperature of 101.1 degrees at a depth of five feet on Monday July 24 in Florida Bay. Other stations hit saw temperatures in the mid to upper-90s. While the most significant concentration of Florida coral isn’t located in Florida Bay, the coral around the Florida Keys still experienced temperatures topping 90 degrees.

[Related: To save coral reefs, color the larvae.]

“Climate change is our present reality,” Coral Restoration Foundation CEO R. Scott Winters, said in a statement.  “The impact on our reefs is undeniable. This crisis must serve as a wake-up call, emphasizing the need for globally concerted efforts to combat climate change.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) raised its coral bleaching warning system to their highest level (Alert Level 2) for the Florida Keys. This level means that the average water temperatures have been about 1.8 degrees above normal for at least eight consecutive weeks. The Florida Keys are expected to remain at Alert Level 2 for at least nine to 12 weeks. 

The post Mass coral reef bleaching in Florida as ocean temperatures hit 100 degrees appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Extreme heat waves roaring across North America, Europe, and China this month were exacerbated by climate change, according to an early analysis released July 25 by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative. The group,  an international group of volunteer scientists who assess climate change’s role in extreme weather, says that the heat baking parts of the United States and southern Europe would not have occurred without climate change. Additionally, they write that climate change made China’s historic heat wave at least 50 times more likely.

[Related: How ‘underground climate change’ affects life on the Earth’s surface.]

“Had there been no climate change, such an event would almost never have occurred,” study lead author Mariam Zachariah, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London, told the AP.  Zachariah called heat waves in Europe and North America “virtually impossible” without climate-change induced temperature rises. 

Since July began, dangerous heat waves have killed livestock and crops, triggered wildfires, stressed hospitals, and are responsible for multiple deaths across three continents. More than 100 people have died from the heat in Mexico since March, while Death Valley, California hit 128 degrees Fahrenheit  this month. China posted an all-time national temperature record of 126 degrees Fahrenheit earlier this month, while parts of Italy and Spain are moving towards Europe’s all time record of 119.8 degrees. The city of Phoenix, Arizona is expected to experience its 26th consecutive day with temperatures above 110 degrees today, smashing a record of 18 days set in 1974. 

In this new analysis, the WWA team examined weather data and computer model simulations to compare the Earth’s current climate, which has warmed about 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1800s, with the climate of the past.  The study found that not only has climate change increased the likelihood of these heat waves happening, but it is making them hotter. Earth’s stagnant atmosphere, warmed by carbon dioxide and other gasses, made Europe’s heatwave 4.5 degrees hotter, China’s 1.8 degrees warmer, and the southern US and Mexico’s heatwave 3.6 degrees hotter. 

Extreme heat waves like these are expected once every 15 years for the US and Mexico, once every 10 years in Southern Europe, and once every five years for China, according to the analysis.  “They are not rare in today’s climate,” WWA co-leader and Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto told The Washington Post. “What surprises me is that people are so surprised. It is exactly what we expected to see.” 

[Related: A cap on ‘luxury’ emissions could make a clean energy transition fairer.]

Otto added that the findings support a growing scientific consensus that the warmer the world gets, crippling heat waves, stronger storms, and climate-fueled disasters will be only more likely. 

While dire, this study should not be interpreted as evidence of “climate collapse” or as a situation we are powerless to stop, according to the team. The report stressed that we still have time to do something about climate change, but society must quickly reduce emissions of planet-heating pollution. They also encouraged countries and cities around the world to adapt sustainable energy systems, urban planning, and public health initiatives to better prepare for the extreme heat to come. 

“We still have time to secure a safe and healthy future, but we urgently need to stop burning fossil fuels and invest in decreasing vulnerability,” Otto told CNN. “If we do not, tens of thousands of people will keep dying from heat-related causes each year.” 

The post July’s extreme heat waves ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

During the summer, cities can get really hot compared to surrounding rural areas—just look at New Orleans and New York City compared to nearby areas with fewer impermeable surfaces. This urban heat island effect happens because buildings and other infrastructure absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes. Daytime temperatures in urban areas may end up being 1 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than that in outlying areas.

But it’s not just the surface and air temperatures that can rise—the ground also warms up. Rising air temperature, combined with the effects of human activities and infrastructure, can cause subsurface heat islands under urban areas. This “underground climate change” is also affected by indoor heating and operating appliances in buildings that inject heat into the ground.

[Related: A new climate report finally highlights the importance of our decisions.]

Since soils, rocks, and construction materials can deform when subjected to temperature variations, a recent study published in Communications Engineering sought to assess whether subsurface heat islands can cause ground deformations that would affect the performance of civil infrastructure.

“The results of this study support that the ground deformations caused by underground climate change can be of sufficient magnitude to affect the day-to-day function and long-term durability of civil structures and infrastructures,” says Alessandro Rotta Loria, study author and assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University.

Potentially excessive angular distortion, tilting, and/or cracking of structural members may affect the aesthetic and operational requirements of infrastructure. Luckily, these changes don’t necessarily represent an impact on their performance and don’t threaten people’s safety, says Rotta Loria.

How underground climate change affects the soil

Extreme changes in underground temperature under or near infrastructure impose temperature gradients that can promote pore water movement. The drying and wetting of soil is responsible for strains and deformations that can cause damage to structures, says Claudia Zapata, geo-engineer and associate professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University.

“While this is not a new issue that geotechnical engineers have to deal with, longer periods of high temperature can promote more significant changes in moisture content,” says Zapata. “The unsaturated condition will extend to deeper areas, causing larger deformations than those allowable by building codes.” 

The impact is generally related to the soil type and the extent of drying or wetting, among other factors. For instance, sandy materials are not as prone to large deformations under climatic change conditions, unlike clay-heavy soils, says Zapata.

When analyzing the potential impact of structures, Rotta Loria says the distinct features of different cities and their infrastructure should be considered. Older and denser cities may generally experience a more intense underground climate change, which can translate to more significant effects on civil infrastructures.

[Related: Why some climate change adaptations just make things worse.]

“Major cities like New York City, which are densely built and rich in underground structures and heat sources, exhibit a particularly intense underground climate change,” says Rotta Loria. “For this reason, these cities may be particularly prone to structural and infrastructural operational issues in the long-term.”

Ground deformations caused by underground climate change develop slowly, but continuously, therefore it should be mitigated in the coming years to avoid unwanted effects on civil structures and infrastructures, he adds. 

Mitigating underground climate change in a warming world

Underground climate change presents an opportunity for urban planners and policymakers to “enhance the sustainability of urban areas worldwide,” says Rotta Loria.

For example, applying thermal insulation to underground building envelopes and enclosures can minimize the amount of waste heat that would be injected into the ground. Installing shallow geothermal technologies to absorb at least part of the heat from basements, parking garages, and tunnels to reutilize it in buildings and infrastructures for space heating and hot water production is also a major possibility.

[Related: Urban sprawl defines unsustainable cities, but it can be undone.]

A 2022 study published in Nature Communications said that recycling subsurface heat, which accumulates due to climate change and urbanization, is a sustainable alternative to conventional space heating methods for various sites. Subsurface heat recycling makes it possible to capitalize on warming climates while helping society move to a low-carbon economy at the same time.

Rotta Loria says that retrofit interventions aimed at enhancing energy efficiency and geothermal installations to reutilize subsurface waste heat are “two concrete and relatively straightforward mitigation strategies” that would hamper underground climate change and its effects on civil infrastructure in a warming world. With all the impacts that climate change is having, and will soon have, on cities, it’s best to act sooner versus later.

The post How ‘underground climate change’ affects life on the Earth’s surface appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

On August 16, 2022, President Joe Biden signed what many have called the most important climate legislation in the history of the US—the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). After years of slow progress and resistance against policies that support the growth of clean energy and limit greenhouse gas emissions, the IRA finally looked like it could get the US back on track to Paris Climate Agreement goals. While the estimated decrease in emissions is notable, however, we’re still not on track to reach these lofty goals with the IRA alone.  

Eleven months after the enactment of the IRA, the Rhodium Group, an independent research group, published their annual Taking Stock report, this time including projecting the greenhouse gas reductions of the policy for the coming decades. What they’ve found is that the current policies, as of June 2023, put the US on track to decrease emissions 32 to 51 percent below 2005 levels by 2035. By 2030, the US is expected to achieve 29 to 49 percent reductions, which is a “meaningful departure from previous years’ expectations,” the authors write, but still not enough to hit Paris goals. 

[Related: ‘Humanity on thin ice’ says UN, but there is still time to act on climate change.]

The IRA largely takes aim at slashing emissions in the power and transportation sectors, and Rhodium’s analysis shows that these sectors are off to a good start. The report shows that in 2035 an estimated 63 to 87 percent of all US power generation could come from zero or low emitting plants, up from 40 percent in 2022. This, combined with the rapid growth of the electric vehicle industry, is poised to reduce household energy bills by $2,200-$2,400 per year in 2035 from 2022 levels, according to the report.

However, a challenge still lies in the industry sector of emissions reductions, where the law has a negligible impact on fossil fuel use from things like petroleum refining and steel production. “A bunch of these emissions are coming from burning stuff to heat stuff up,” Ben King, an associate director with Rhodium and lead author of the report, told the Washington Post. “We think there’s an opportunity to electrify those processes, but we’re still trying to crack the nut on those solutions.”

On top of that, continuing progress in power reductions would require an addition of 32-92 gigawatts of wind and solar power every year between now and 2035. According to the report, 32 GW of renewables is “roughly equivalent to the best year of renewable installations on record.”

[Related: World set to ‘temporarily’ breach major climate threshold in next five years.]

The report goes to show that federal policies can only take the country so far—reaching Paris Agreement goals is possible with supporting policies at the state level. According to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, DC and 24 states (such as California, New York, and Oregon) have all adopted specific emissions reduction targets, but some states (like Texas, Georgia, and Ohio) still lag behind. 

“The IRA is the most substantial federal action the US has ever taken to combat climate change, but it was not intended to solve every decarbonization challenge in one bill,” the authors write. “A sustained stream of federal and state actions is the only way to close the US emissions gap.”

The post US climate efforts look promising, but there’s more to do appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

As recently as 400,000 years ago, parts of Greenland were actually quite green. New analysis of some core samples taken from underneath Greenland’s ice sheet reveal that the island was ice-free at a time in Earth’s history when temperatures were similar to what the Earth is approaching now thanks to human-caused climate change. The findings were published July 20 in the journal Science, and may indicate some disastrous implications of future sea level rise.

[Related: Greenland’s polar bears are learning to get around in a less icy world.]

“We’re discovering the ice sheet is much more sensitive to climate change than we previously thought,” study co-author and Utah State University geoscientist Tammy Rittenour said in a statement. “This is a foreboding wake-up call.”

Greenland’s continental glacier covers about 80 percent of the 836,3000-square-mile land mass, and this new analysis overturns some previous assumptions that the majority of the glacier has been frozen for millions of years. A less icy and greener Greenland indicates that the ice sheet is not necessarily as stable as it appears. 

“We had always assumed the ice sheet has remained about the same for nearly 2.5 million years,” said Rittenour. “But our investigation indicates it melted enough to allow the growth of moss, shrubs and buzzing insects during an interglacial period called Marine Isotope Stage 11, between 424,000 to 374,000 years ago.”

Rittenour added that the melting caused at least five feet of sea level rise worldwide. Some of the models in the study suggest that sea levels could have been up to 30 feet higher than we see today. The Marine Isotope Stage 11 was an unusually long period of warming with slightly elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, today’s CO₂ levels are 1.5 times higher than they were 400,000 years ago and at least 50 percent higher than pre-industrial levels. 

These inflated levels of carbon dioxide would remain in place for hundreds, even thousands, of years—even if humans ceased all greenhouse gas emissions, according to Rittenour. Sea levels would rise about 23 feet if Greenland’s entire ice sheet were to melt completely. The measurements also do not take melting in Antarctica into consideration, which is also happening at a rate 20 times faster than scientists previously thought. 

“The deglaciation has implications for the entire globe and is especially sobering for our coastal mega-cities, where so much of the world’s population resides,” said Rittenour.

The study used frozen sediment from an ice core that was collected during a Cold War-era military project in 1966 at a US army base in northwestern Greenland.

[Related: Climate change revealed this U.S. military secret.]

“In 1960, the US Army launched a top-secret effort called Project Iceworm in northwestern Greenland to build a network of mobile nuclear launch sites under the ice sheet,” Rittenour said. “As part of that project, they also invited scientists and engineers to conduct experiments in a highly publicized ‘cover’ project, known as Camp Century, to study the feasibility of working and carrying out military missions under ice and in extreme-cold conditions.”

The 12-foot-long rock and soil sample was retrieved after scientists drilled through more than 4,500 feet of ice from beneath the ice sheet. The core sat untouched in a freezer until 2017 since there weren’t techniques to understand the sediment when the core was unearthed almost 60 years ago. 

Since the samples had remained frozen and relatively unbothered, the team could use luminescence dating to determine the last time they had been exposed to sunlight.

According to the study, the cores and new analysis add a sobering and “upsetting” warning of what our planet could be heading towards. 

The post Greenland’s ice sheets aren’t as old—or as resilient—as scientists expected appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

There are a myriad of things everyday consumers can do to reduce their carbon footprints: basic water conservation, recycling, and transitioning to electric vehicles. While it’s true that everyone can benefit from striving to live their greenest lives, a new study reaffirms a less popularized fact—the world’s wealthiest are disproportionately responsible for producing dangerous carbon emissions.

According to a new study, reducing “luxury” demands from the top 20 percent of Europeans using the most energy would save seven times the amount of emissions generated from meeting energy needs for the continent’s bottom 20 percent. In doing so, the hypothetical cutbacks would more than make up for the necessary emissions that stem from lifting the most vulnerable out of what some call energy poverty.

[Related: ‘Slow water’ could transform the Southwest, one little rock wall at a time.]

As detailed in a paper published on Monday in Nature Energy, researchers working together from the Universities of Leeds and Manchester modeled narrowing European households’ energy uses across an array of instances, including personal transportation, home insulation, and holiday travel. To do so, researchers created a fictional country composed of 100 citizens drawn from 27 European countries—all of the EU minus Austria, alongside the UK. In this scenario, the first citizen uses the least energy, with each subsequent resident using more. Researchers then lowered the demands of residents 81-to-100 down to the level of the 80th citizen, while simultaneously raising the energy demand of residents 1-19 to the level of resident 20.

The team determined that such luxury usage caps cut household energy emissions by over 11 percent, alongside transportation emissions by nearly 17 percent. Meanwhile, meeting needs for impoverished Europeans only raised emissions by barely 1 percent for home energy, and just under 1 percent for transportation costs.

[Related: Recycling plants spew a staggering amount of microplastics.]

In an interview with The Guardian on Monday, University of Leeds professor of sustainable welfare and study lead author Milena Buchs explained, “We have to start tackling luxury energy use to stay within an equitable carbon budget for the globe, but also to actually have the energy resources to enable people in fuel poverty to slightly increase their energy use and meet their needs.”

Such energy use reductions are incredibly feasible for middle- and upper-class residents, as they frequently have more agency and financial leeway to make the necessary adjustments with little-to-no impact on their quality of living. While technological innovations must still lead the way to a sustainable, healthy future for the planet, reducing the wealthiest individuals’ footprint is also a major component in ensuring critical climate goals are met. 

The post A cap on ‘luxury’ emissions could make a clean energy transition fairer appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

More than 100 million people across the US were under heat warnings this weekend, as a large heat dome pushes temperatures to extremes with few signs of relief. The excessive heat warnings and advisories stretch from the Pacific Northwest into California, parts of the Southern Plains, Central Gulf Coast, and southern tip of Florida, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). 

[Related: How to stay cool if you lose power during a heatwave.]

On Sunday July 17, Phoenix saw its 17th consecutive day of temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, putting the city on track to beat the longest stretch of such intense heat. The previous record of 18 days in a row above 110 degrees was set in 1974. Temperatures soared to 118 degrees on Sunday, and area hospitals reported patient surges and overcrowding. 

“This is the worst summer in recent memory,” Valleywise Health emergency medicine physician Frank LoVecchio told NBC News. “I’ve been working here since 1996, this same hospital, and this is one of the worst summers because we’ve had so many days in a row … this super warm weather.”

Heat has killed at least 12 people in Phoenix so far this year.

In Las Vegas, Harry Reid International Airport reached 100 degrees as early as 8:40 a.m. on Sunday, then briefly hitting 116—tying the record for July 16 set in 1998. Meteorologists urged residents to not underestimate the risk of days-long heat waves as temperatures are expected to tie or beat records. 

“This heatwave is not typical desert heat due to its long duration, extreme daytime temperatures and warm nights. Everyone needs to take this heat seriously, including those who live in the desert,” warned the NWS Las Vegas.

Death Valley, California saw temperatures of 128 degrees on Sunday, surpassing the daily record by a single degree in one of the hottest places on Earth. 

Heat domes, like the one responsible for all of this misery, are strong high-pressure systems that stay put over a large swath of land and trap hot ocean air. In the US, their main cause is a strong change (or gradient) in ocean temperatures from west to east in the tropical Pacific Ocean during the preceding winter, according to NOAA. 

The air descends to the ground, compresses, and then significantly warms. This cycle can continue for days or weeks, and it discourages cloud formation making for  very little coverage blocking the sun’s energy. Moisture typically evaporates at the beginning of a heat dome, but the moisture will eventually deplete.

[Related: ‘Unprecedented’ ocean temperatures and extreme heat waves pop up around the globe.]

“There is no cloud cover, there is a lot of solar radiation coming in, there is no precipitation,” climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Claudia Tebaldi, told Wired. “You also trigger this feedback—you dry the soil, and there is no way for things to cool down by evaporation.”

According to an analysis from science communication nonprofit Climate Central, today’s persistent heat is at least five times more likely due to climate change. The recent arrival of a naturally occurring El Niño weather pattern is also bringing hotter weather around the world. El Niño can also exacerbate warmer temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions.

“With global warming, such temperatures are becoming more and more likely to occur,” Ceverny, the World Meteorological Organization’s records coordinator, told the Associated Press. “Long-term: Global warming is causing higher and more frequent temperature extremes. Short-term: This particular weekend is being driven by a very very strong upper-level ridge of high pressure over the Western US.”

To stay safe, Ready.gov recommends learning to identify the signs of heat-related illnesses, finding places to keep cool like libraries and cooling centers, and taking cool showers or baths. You can also stay cool without air conditioning by keeping your body moist and keeping sunlight out by covering your windows. 

The post Extreme heat warning extends to more than 100 million people in the US appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Since the 1960s, the oxygen level in the world’s oceans has dropped by about 2 percent. While that may not sound like a lot, the continuous decline in oxygen content of oceanic and coastal waters, called deoxygenation, can alter marine ecosystems and biodiversity. This is largely happening due to global warming and nutrient runoff.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from anthropogenic activities like deforestation and fossil fuel use trap the sun’s heat, warming the planet and heating up the ocean. Oxygen becomes less soluble at higher temperatures, which means warm water holds less oxygen than cold water. Eutrophication due to excess inputs of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture or wastewater also stimulates algal blooms, resulting in oxygen depletion when they decompose.

[Related: Scientists say the ocean is changing color—and it’s probably our fault.]

Deoxygenation affects living resources and disrupts natural biogeochemical processes, says Nancy Rabalais, professor and chair in oceanography and wetland studies at Louisiana State University who researches coastal eutrophication and hypoxic environments. Oxygen concentrations play a role in the rates of breakdown of organic matter and the cycling of different elements in the environment. For instance, deoxygenation may enhance phosphorus recycling, reduce nitrogen losses, and initially enhance the availability of iron, all of which can alter the productivity of coastal and ocean ecosystems.

Loss of oxygen content also has significant impacts on marine microbes and animals. Deoxygenation can alter their abundance and diversity, reduce the quality and quantity of suitable habitats for them, and interfere with reproduction. The oxygen decline doesn’t have to be major to potentially cause ecosystem-wide changes. In oxygen minimum zones that may already be close to physiological thresholds, even small oxygen declines can have drastic impacts.

When oceans lose oxygen, marine organisms become stressed and need to adapt—if they can—to survive. Species that are especially sensitive to oxygenation changes, like tuna and sharks, are being driven to shallower habitats as oxygen-deficient zones expand, says Anya Hess, PhD candidate at Rutgers University who studies ocean oxygenation. Deoxygenation also threatens the ocean’s food provisioning ecosystem services for humans, potentially leading to reduced catches for fisheries and the collapse of regional stocks. 

Although new research suggests deoxygenation may eventually reverse, it might not happen until the far future. In a recent study published in Nature, Hess and her co-authors looked to the Miocene warm period about 16 to 14 million years ago when temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were higher than today to study a “possible example of how oceans behave during sustained warm periods,” she says.

Their results show that the eastern tropical Pacific—a major oxygen-deficient or “dead” zone that has been losing oxygen as the climate warms—was well oxygenated at that time, which suggests that deoxygenation could reverse on long timeframes as the climate continues to warm.

[Related: A deep sea mining zone in the remote Pacific is also a goldmine of unique species.]

Climate models from a 2018 study published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles predict oxygen concentration may start increasing and oxygen-starved regions in the ocean can begin shrinking by 2150 through 2300 due to decreasing tropical export production—the nutrient supply from the ocean interior—combined with increased ocean ventilation or the transport of surface waters into the interior. But marine ecosystems are already facing various impacts today—and rebounding is hard because deoxygenation can reconfigure food webs and organisms that can’t avoid low oxygen levels can become lethargic or die.

“I don’t think we should wait around to see whether deoxygenation will reverse as the climate continues to warm,” says Hess. “We know that rising temperatures are causing ocean deoxygenation, so if we want to stop it we know what we need to do—reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Policymakers can also establish long-term monitoring programs around the world to study oxygen measurements, which will help identify patterns and predict biological responses. All in all, deoxygenation trends may eventually reverse in the future, but taking the steps to mitigate climate change and control nutrient runoff will benefit humans and marine ecosystems today.

The post How climate change is pushing oxygen out of the world’s oceans appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Rescue and clean up efforts are underway in New York and Vermont after widespread flash flooding and torrential rain inundated the region over the last two days. Roadways have been washed away, multiple homes and businesses were flooded, as rivers and creek beds raged.

[Related: How disastrous floods can also lead to food insecurity.]

In New York’s Hudson Valley, up to eight inches of rain fell in some areas on Sunday, causing at least one death. On Monday, the National Weather Service said over 13 million Americans were under flood watches and warnings, as the storms stretched from eastern New York State into Boston, Massachusetts and western Maine. 

The flooding was reminiscent of the devastation left after the remnants of Hurricane Irene, which moved into the landlocked and mountainous state as a tropical storm in 2011. The results flooded many of Vermont’s small and isolated towns built along creeks and rivers and killed six people. 

In a news conference on Monday, Vermont Governor Phil Scott said this week’s system could surpass the amount that fell during Irene.  “What’s different for me is that Irene lasted about 24 hours,” Scott said at a news conference on Monday, according to The New York Times. “We’re getting just as much rain, if not more, and it’s going on for days. That’s my concern. It’s not just the initial damage.”

Some of the worst-hit areas in Vermont included Londonderry, Weston, and Ludlow, in the southern central part of the Green Mountain State. The state capital of Montpelier was also not spared from the flooding, with the downtown area under four to seven feet of water as the Winooski River swelled. The river eclipsed the levels seen during Irene and crested at 20.88 feet on Monday in the capital. It is expected to crest in Essex Junction on Tuesday afternoon.

Vermont Emergency Management officials said rescue crews had conducted more than 50 rescues and evacuated more people and pets from flooded homes as of Monday evening. 

“All our evacuations are vulnerable populations that do not want to leave. That’s what we’re seeing here, as well,” said Mike Cannon, coordinator of Vermont’s Urban Search and Rescue, according to WCAX. “This is particularly going to be difficult for us with the long rain event that we are going to experience.”

Cannon said that the help is on the way from teams in Massachusetts and North Carolina that bring with them a “large water rescue component, as well as a search component.” These teams can go into communities and do welfare checks that are expected to continue for several more days.  

[Related: The future of hurricanes is full of floods—a lot of them.]

The storm is the latest example of how catastrophic flooding likely fueled by climate change can hit anywhere. The air can hold more moisture as temperatures rise, leading to more severe rainfall that floods places that aren’t situated close to major bodies of water, including states like Vermont. Experts suggest that the catastrophic flooding in Pakistan last summer that left one third of the country under water and killed over 1,000 people was exacerbated by climate change. 

A 2022 study from the University of Vermont found that flooding along the Winooski River can be expected to cause more than $2 billion in property damage in the next 100 years. When climate change is factored in, the total increased to $5.29 billion. The region is home to over 140,000 Vermonters and the study found that this flooding could also become more frequent. An additional study published in October 2022 found that rain storms are getting more intense across the United States.

Burlington, Vermont has also been considered a potential future “climate haven,” as people may potentially begin to migrate away from the sea level rise-plagued coast, up to the north to escape heat, and away from the wildfire-prone Western United States. Other possible climate haven cities cited by Tulane University real estate professor Jesse Keenan in 2022 include Asheville, North Carolina, Madison in Wisconsin, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends that families have an emergency preparedness plan ready for floods, including where to seek shelter, evacuation routes, and a communication plan. It is also critical to never walk, swim, or drive through a flooded area and stay up to date on the latest information about water totals and evacuation.

The post Dangerous inland flooding will last for days in some Northeast states appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

In the forests of British Columbia, where recent wildfires have sent smoke across borders and dimmed blue summer skies, a series of studies from the past 30 years contends that large, old trees send resources and messages to the seedlings around them. The “mothering” could, hypothetically, help burned landscapes recover faster, boost the amount of carbon dioxide stores in soil, and improve the resiliency of natural systems overall.

The idea seems to borrow from bedtime tales about ancient trees and the enchanted forests they foster; to validate beliefs about all types of creatures nourish their young; to vouch for the inherent goodness of nature, where collaboration triumphs over competition. 

[Related: Behold the world’s tallest trees]

But two papers have recently called into question the evidence supporting the “mother tree” explanation. Do these veterans of the forest act as guardians for newer generations, protecting them from drought, disease, and deforestation? Or is their relationship much more complicated?

What is a ‘mother tree’?

The term “mother tree” was coined in the 2000s by a Canadian scientist named Suzanne Simard, who grew up in a family of loggers in the Monashee Mountains in British Columbia. The old-growth forests on the range sustained a booming timber industry for more than a century.

In her book Finding the Mother Tree, Simard describes a childhood spent wandering through the forest, gaining keen insight on the intimate connections between long-lived trees like Douglas firs and ponderosa pines and the ecosystems they inhabit. Later, she studied forestry, became a research scientist for the Canadian Ministry of Forests and now teaches and leads a lab at the University of British Columbia.

Her childhood experiences and decades of scientific research led her to draw a connection that was somewhat revolutionary in forestry management and the conventional biological thinking that species must compete to survive. Simard proposed that large trees that are hundreds or even thousands of years old can send carbon, nutrients, water, hormones, and even alarm signals to young plants via a network of underground fungi known as mycorrhiza. She describes these trees as “mothers” in her writing and interviews, and argues that they are essential in making forests around the planet better suited to survive climate change.

“We need to save the legacies, the mother trees and networks, and the wood, the genes, so they can pass their wisdom onto the next generation of trees so they can withstand the future stresses coming down the road,” Simard said in her Ted Talk from 2016. “We need to be conservationists.”

What’s the scientific evidence?

Some forestry researchers warn that the mother tree viewpoint is ahead of the science. A paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution in February reviewed 26 studies that look at the ability of underground fungal networks to transfer resources and if mother trees send resources to young plants.

The studies spanned continents, experimental design, and forest and soil type. The authors found that in about 80 percent of the studies, access to mycorrhizal networks associated with nearby trees had no benefit to the seedlings planted around them. In 18 percent of the studies the seedlings did benefit. And in a much smaller subset, those trees and their mycorrhizal networks actually harmed the others

“There are lots of important ecological roles for big trees in the forest,” says Justine Karst, the lead author of the paper and a professor at the University of Alberta. “But this sort of popularized idea of their role and how they work with these fungi as these passive conduits in the soil doing things under the direction of trees, there’s just not really evidence for that.”

Part of the problem is that there’s so much variability within the 26 studies, making it difficult to draw conclusions about mother trees—or large, old trees, as Karst prefers to call them—as a whole. 

“It differs in which forest the experiment was conducted in: how far the seedlings were growing from the mature tree, the type of seeds or the type of soils, if there’s overstory mortality,” Karst explains. “There’s so many of these background features that there’s just no way to generalize. This is something that we would suggest moving forward is that we need to understand, what is the cause of this variability? 

Another issue is that most of the research that supports the mother tree theory comes from studies in labs, Meghan Midgley, a soil ecologist at Morton Arboretum who was not an author on the recent review, explains. “We haven’t been able to observe it in the forest, which is where we’d really want to see this sort of relationship happening.” 

The idea might even be so appealing, scientists have let it bias them. “There are alternative explanations that have not been acknowledged in studies,” Karst says. For example, one common experimental design using mesh bag encourages different types of fungal growth, potentially biasing the results. 

PopSci reached out to Simard and The Mother Tree Project about these scientific uncertainties, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.

What role do fungi play?

One facet of the mother tree debate experts agree on is that fungi have a unique relationship with trees. Midgley studies this symbiotic subset of organisms, which grow on the tree’s root system and allow it to gain access to water and nutrients deep in the soil. In return, the guests get carbon, which the fungi can’t can’t produce itself. “From the tropics to boreal forests, trees are associating with fungi,” Midgley says. “This is a relationship that has been established for much of evolutionary time.

These collaborative fungi also have an overall beneficial effect on plants. “There are many hundreds of studies showing that when there’s no fungi, plants don’t grow as well as when there are fungi,” Midgeley adds. “There’s also some evidence that they can help protect plants from below-ground pathogens or from being eaten by below-ground invertebrates, so they can play a variety of roles for a plant.”

[Related: Inside the lab that’s growing mushroom computers]

Knowing this, forest manager might take fungi, as well as large, old trees, into account when restoring an ecosystem after a wildfire. However, there’s not enough evidence right now to support specific strategies, like introducing fungi into a forest that’s been harmed by wildfire, Midgley says.

She and Karst both suggest further research that would help scientists better understand the variability between mature trees and their relationships with fungi and the rest of the forest. “Why do seedlings sometimes show no response, a positive response, or a negative response [to older trees]?” Karst says. “We don’t know those answers, but I think that they’ll be important to find out.”

The post Are ‘mother trees’ real? appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Monday July 3, 2023 was possibly the hottest day ever recorded by humans, according to preliminary data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer Project. The average global temperature reached 63.62 degrees Fahrenheit, beating out the previous record of 62.46 degrees set back in August 2016. According to some experts, this is yet another sign of the worsening global climate crisis.

[Related: Extreme heat to blanket Texas with ‘no end in sight.’]

The Climate Reanalyzer is a common tool climate scientists often use to get a sense of the world’s temperatures. This data visualization model is based on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) computer simulations intended to create forecasts and uses satellite data. Its predictions are based on using a weather tool for forecasting and not on the ground record keeping. 

Much of the planet has been settled into the dog days of summer. For over a week, a large swath of the southern United States has been stuck under an intense heat dome and wildfires near the Oregon and Washington State border are quickly spreading.  These extreme weather patterns have likely been exacerbated by human-caused climate change, combined with an emerging El Niño pattern. El Niño is a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes and affects weather patterns around the globe and generally makes Earth hotter and heat waves more intense. 

High temperature records were beaten July 3 and 4 in both Quebec and northwestern Canada, as well as further south in Peru. 

Beijing, China has recorded nine straight days last week with temperatures above 95 degrees, while North Africa is seeing temperatures at around 122 degrees. Currently experiencing its winter, even Antarctica isn’t spared from unusual heat. Ukraine’s Vernadsky Research Base in Antarctica’s Argentine Islands recently broke its July temperature record with 47.6 degrees. 

“Unfortunately, it [this record] promises to only be the first in a series of new records set this year as increasing emissions of [carbon dioxide] and greenhouse gasses coupled with a growing El Nino event push temperatures to new highs,” Berkeley Earth research scientist Zeke Hausfather said in a statement, reported by Reuters. 

[Related: ‘Unprecedented’ ocean temperatures and extreme heat waves pop up around the globe.]

This week’s global record is preliminary and is awaiting approval from NOAA. Climate scientists typically use longer time frames of months, years, and decades to track the planet’s warming and this preliminary record is based on data that goes back to 1979 when satellites record-keeping began, while NOAA’s date goes back to 1880. “In the climate assessment community, I don’t think we’d assign the kind of gravitas to a single day observation as we would a month or a year,’’ National Center for Environmental Information (a NOAA division) director Deke Arndt told the Associated Press.

However, some experts still see this as an indication that climate change is heading into some uncharted waters as heat waves get more frequent and intense. 

“They are getting hotter,” Climate Analytics scientist and Columbia University adjunct scientist Kai Kornhuber, told NPR on June 28 when discussing the South’s heatwave. “They are occurring at a higher frequency, so that also increases the likelihood of sequential heat waves.”

The post July 3 may have marked the hottest day ever recorded appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Around the world, communities are bracing for sea level rise: the Netherlands is stabilizing its dikes, Senegal is relocating neighborhoods, Indonesia is moving its entire capital city. These projects are hefty, expensive, and slow.

But they may need to pick up the pace. As new research shows, in many places, sea level rise will cause coastal flooding and other disruptions much sooner than anyone realized. It’s not that the water is rising faster; it’s that the land was lower to begin with.

Calculating when a rising sea will flood any one place involves a lot of math: you need to know the height of the water, the range of the tide, the elevation and slope of the land, the pace of sea level rise, and how much the land itself is rising or falling, among myriad other factors. As with all of science, the accuracy of these predictions is only as good as the data flowing into them.

The problem, according to the new study by Ronald Vernimmen and Aljosja Hooijer, two data analysts working on flood risk in Southeast Asia, is that time after time, the measurements of coastal elevation that scientists feed into their models have been wildly inaccurate. In tropical forests, says Vernimmen, these misinterpretations can be off by 20 meters or more. “Obviously, you can’t use that,” he says.

The problem stems from limitations in the technology typically used to measure elevation: radar. Radar blankets an area in radio waves, then measures how long it takes the waves to bounce back. But radar isn’t precise enough to separate treetops from terra firma, and a patch of pines or cluster of condos can easily exaggerate the elevation. Many studies of sea level rise still use radar elevation data collected by the space shuttle in 2000.

Lidar is a lot like radar, but it uses lasers instead of radio waves. A lidar detector like the one on the ICESat-2 satellite, which NASA launched in 2018, can send up to one million pulses each second, firing lasers that can pinpoint the gaps between buildings and trees to more accurately gauge the elevation of the land underneath. Analysts still need algorithms to filter that barrage of information into a functional map, but the results are far more precise.

Vernimmen and Hooijer spent the past few years filtering the new satellite data for Earth’s immense coastline, comparing elevation estimates gathered from radar with the newer lidar-based measurements. It wasn’t pretty.

The scientists’ big finding is that forests and buildings along the coast have skewed radar maps, presenting planners with inaccurate elevation data. Lidar showed coastlines often lower than first realized. This has two important implications: the same amount of sea level rise will be able to reach much farther inland, and it’s going to happen a lot sooner than expected.

The scientists’ new lidar-based estimate predicts that roughly 482,000 square kilometers of land will be submerged with one meter of sea level rise, nearly triple the 123,000 square kilometers predicted by radar-based projections. That’s an extra Cameroon-sized chunk of Earth, currently home to roughly 132 million people, that will be underwater by 2100 under a high-emissions scenario.

The risk is greatest for river deltas in tropical regions where the land is flat, the population is often high, and the data tends to be old. With two meters of sea level rise, by around the year 2150 under a high-emission scenario, the Niger Delta in West Africa and Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta will have five times more land underwater than the older radar-based estimates suggested. The same is true for the Chao Phraya delta, which spans metropolitan Bangkok, Thailand’s capital of 11 million.

To Vernimmen, the recalculation means society needs to rethink some things. “There are huge construction projects underway in areas that really should not be built on,” he says.

The researchers made their elevation data set publicly available in hopes that governments take note of the new timeline, adds Hooijer.

Mir Matin, a remote sensing expert at United Nations University in Ontario who was not involved in the study, says these estimates could be made even more accurate by using airborne lidar—the type attached to drones or airplanes—rather than passive satellite-based readings. Though more accurate, airborne lidar is also more expensive, requiring pilots, planes, and planning. Some rich countries and large cities have shelled out for airborne lidar surveys, but Matin says developing countries would benefit as well. Rich countries—responsible for the bulk of global warming—could cover the cost, he says. “At the end, climate change is a global phenomenon,” Matin adds.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

The post Coastal flooding predictions triple appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Extreme heat is scorching the deep South, as multiple deaths have already been reported across several states, including a Dallas postal worker and a 62-year-old woman in Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

The heat index on Wednesday, or how the temperature feels with humidity considered, was expected to be 122 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana. One heat-induced storm created a tornado that killed three in Matador, Texas on Wednesday night. Storms in the Tulsa, Oklahoma region lead to the “highest-volume day ever, in our history” for Emergency Medical Services in the area on Wednesday. 

[Related: Heat is the silent killer we should all be worried about.]

“This chaos is our reality right now,” Adam Paluka, a spokesman for the Emergency Medical Services Authority in Tulsa, told the New York Times. 

Earlier this week, the heat triggered a series of tornadoes and storms leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power. As of Thursday morning, 104,679 Texan homes were without power, including two regions in the central part of the state with nearly county-wide electric outages. 

The intense heat dome is expected to continue into the remainder of the week, and possibly into the Fourth of July holiday. According to the New York Times, this heat dome is the result of a high-pressure ridge in the atmosphere. NOAA’s weather prediction center stated Thursday morning that “there is really no end in sight for the excessive heat that has plagued particularly Texas/southeastern New Mexico in recent days.” Going into next week, NOAA continues, 100 degree or higher heat could expand further east into the Lower Mississippi Valley (which includes parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee, according to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation). The Desert Southwest could also see similarly high temperatures on par with predictions for what is the region’s hottest season of the year. 

Extreme heat waves, such as the one in the US and elsewhere on the planet, are affected by multiple factors, including climate change and El Niño climate patterns which have been on the National Weather Service’s radar since earlier this summer. While El Niño is a naturally occurring climate event, combined with the effects of climate change, the potential impacts could make 2023 the hottest year in human history. 

“The Earth’s natural climate cycle and climate caused by humans are not independent of each other,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, told PopSci in May.

[Related: El Niño is back—here’s what that means.]

Heat waves can cause a multitude of health risks for people, either directly from exposure to extreme temperatures or the results of power outages. In both cases, marginalized communities experience greater risks due to preexisting energy insecurity. 

“As our grid ages and climate change worsens, we need to understand who power outages affect,” Joan Casey, an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, told PopSci in May.

If you are in a region that is currently experiencing extreme heat and unreliable electrical services, watch for signs of heat stroke or exhaustion, drink lots of liquids, and try to cool down your home in case of electric grid failure.

The post Extreme heat to blanket Texas with ‘no end in sight’ appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

There’s only one day to go before the official start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere—but some parts of the planet are already feeling the heat. Ocean temperatures are about nine degrees above normal in parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland, while India and parts of the southern United States are baking under record breaking heat. Here’s what you need to know. 

[Related: Summer is off to an extreme start—here’s why.]

‘Unheard of’ marine heatwave

The waters off the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland are several degrees above normal, particularly in the North Sea and north Atlantic Ocean. Global sea surface temperatures in April and May hit an all time high for those months according to records dating back to 1850. June is also on track to hit record heat levels, with the water in some areas off the coast of England up to nine degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above normal. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), parts of the North Sea are in a category four marine heatwave, which is considered “extreme.”

“The extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Niño,” University of Bristol earth scientist Daniela Schmidt told The Guardian.  “While marine heatwaves are found in warmer seas like the Mediterranean, such anomalous temperatures in this part of the north Atlantic are unheard of. They have been linked to less dust from the Sahara but also the North Atlantic climate variability, which will need further understanding to unravel.”

This heat is putting marine organisms at risk, and events like this will only continue if carbon emissions are not dramatically cut, according to Schmidt.

Southern heatwave–and severe weather–in the US

Over the holiday weekend, heat indexes in parts of Texas soared above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking records. More records are expected to fall this week as the power grid strains. Over 40 million people were affected by excessive heat warnings and heat advisories, from the border of Mexico and southwest Texas and eastward towards the border of southern Louisiana, and Mississippi. 

In addition to the heat, overnight tropical humidity will trap in heat and prevent the nighttime low temperatures from dipping below 80 degrees in some places. The heat is expected to continue through the rest of this week, according to the National Weather Service. 

All of this heat and humidity have fueled some June tornadoes. At least 17 tornadoes were reported over the weekend across Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Oregon, and Colorado. One person was killed and 18 others injured from the severe storms, including a reported tornado, in Jasper County, Mississippi. 

“I’ve seen more tornadoes than I can count. I’ve never seen the level of decimation to a town, as I’ve seen today,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference on Saturday, June 17 according to The Washington Post. 

[Related: World set to ‘temporarily’ breach major climate threshold in next five years.]

Deadly heat wave in northern India 

In India, roughly 170 people have died amid a sweltering heat wave affecting two of the country’s most populated states. Routine power outages and overwhelmed hospitals compound the already dangerous situation. 

Heat-related illnesses have killed at least 119 people in In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. In neighboring Bihar, at least 47 people have died.

“So many people are dying from the heat that we are not getting a minute’s time to rest. On Sunday, I carried 26 dead bodies,” Jitendra Kumar Yadav, a hearse driver in Deoria town, 110 68 miles from Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, told The Associated Press.

These regions of the country are known for extreme heat during the summer, but temperatures have been consistently above normal. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, high temperatures in recent days have consistently reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit. 

A dire report from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released late in 2022, found that the past eight years were the hottest on record. Since 1993, the rate of sea level rise has doubled, with the past two and a half years alone accounting for 10 percent of the overall rise in sea level since satellite measurements began about three decades ago. 

The post ‘Unprecedented’ ocean temperatures and extreme heat waves pop up around the globe appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

WHEN VALER CLARK and Josiah Austin moved to El Coronado cattle ranch in southern Arizona in the 1980s, the seasonal rain didn’t soak into the soil but roared through arroyos and washes, cutting them deeper into the earth. The erosion was threatening a road, so they placed a few rocks across the adjacent wash. The tiny structure worked as intended, slowing water, catching soil, and fostering the return of long-gone plants. Clark and Austin had instinctually re-created an Indigenous technique for managing water in drylands. 

Ultimately, the duo added around 20,000 small rock barriers across tributaries of the often-dry Turkey Creek, which ran through their 1,800-acre property in the Chiricahua Mountains. Within a few monsoon seasons, water seeped from the structures year-round, and the creek corridor turned green with plants. Downstream landowners were suspicious, claiming that Clark and Austin were holding on to “their” water. But when Laura Norman, a physical scientist from the US Geological Survey, measured the flow in 2013, she found that the barriers weren’t just slowing flash floods and extending supply into the dry season: They’d actually raised the stream’s flow by 28 percent. 

Today, the Southwest is staggering through a “megadrought”—possibly the worst in 1,200 years. The Colorado River, which quenches the demands of more than 40 million people in seven US states and Mexico, is seeing average flows that are 19 percent lower than in the last century. Climate change is making the region’s water woes more severe, scientists say. But drought is partly determined by the gap between supply and human demand, and right now, demand is greater than the region’s supply. What’s more, our development choices—urban sprawl, industrial forestry and agriculture, intensive cattle grazing, and the concrete infrastructure we use to try to control water—are sapping the river’s natural systems and resilience. 

Modern development tends to erase places where water slows down: wetlands, flood plains, mountain meadows, and forests. These ecosystems absorb high flows, prevent floods, and move water underground, which raises the water table. A healthy groundwater system supplies streams, wetlands, and rivers during the dry season and hydrates soil and plants, making them less likely to burn in wildfires and allowing them to release water into the atmosphere, contributing to rain. But humans have dramatically altered the water cycle by draining or filling as much as 87 percent of global wetlands over the past three centuries, interrupting the flow of two-thirds of rivers, and doubling the land area of paved cities since 1992. All told, we have transformed 75 percent of the world’s total land area for housing, agriculture, and industry.

Clark and Austin’s approach to land management has shown one way to reverse these negative trends, and the strategy is now spreading across the Southwest and northern Mexico. Their streambed structures, coupled with Norman’s in-depth studies on the benefits, led to the USGS co-founding the Sky Island Restoration Collaborative, a group of government agencies, nonprofits, private landowners, scientists, and restorationists in the US and Mexico who are building thousands of slow-water structures.

Called natural infrastructure in dryland streams, or NIDS, these structures include beaver dams, human versions of beaver dams, one-rock dams, check dams, log dams, leaky weirs, earthen berms, and gabions. The appropriate intervention depends on the specific site’s width and slope, nearby natural materials, and other factors. Despite the fact that several have “dam” in the name, these features do not block downstream flows like concrete hydropower dams; they just slow it down. They’re intentionally leaky to detain water, not retain it. “They’re a totally different beast,” says Norman.

She and her colleagues have documented NIDS’ effectiveness in storing carbon dioxide and mitigating flooding, water scarcity, pollution, heat, erosion, dust, wildlife loss, and food insecurity. These interventions—combined with levee setbacks to reconnect rivers with flood plains, forest and grassland restoration, and support for beavers’ comeback after they were hunted nearly to extinction—are part of the global “slow water movement” that could help boost water availability throughout the Colorado River basin.

At the rim of the Grand Canyon, the all-powerful nature of water is explicit: The reflective squiggle a mile below carved the natural cathedral out of rock over millions of years. Yet Euro-American culture has interpreted that force as a challenge and tried to control it. Viewed solely in terms of human need, water is either considered a threat or a commodity—the new billion-dollar Colorado River deal involving the US government and three Western states is just one example. But that’s not the only way people relate to water. Other cultures, including many Indigenous groups in North America, perceive it as a friend or relative. With that perspective, the right to water comes with the responsibility to care for it, along with the many elements and organisms—soils, rocks, microbes, insects, and more—that also have relationships with it. 

Choosing to return land to water might seem wasteful to some. But by restoring drylands to wetlands, or ciénegas in Spanish, Clark and Austin have shown how healthy slow-water systems can repair delicate desert landscapes that humans have destroyed.  

A sick land

In early March, the morning after a fierce windstorm made saguaros sway and dropped snow on the low desert, I drove south from Tucson with Norman through the tiny hamlets of Elgin and Sonoita. We left behind the saguaros and paloverde trees of the Sonoran Desert and entered the Chihuahuan Desert, studded with big tuffets of sacaton grass and grazing pronghorns. At the roughly 28,000-acre Babacomari Ranch, we walked a channel of the San Pedro watershed. Norman, clad in a black cowboy hat, hiking boots, and a thick Wrangler work jacket, was meeting up with a fellow researcher to take soil samples. The channel has several gabions and log structures, installed eight years ago by Borderlands Restoration, a nonprofit that belongs to the Sky Island Restoration Collaborative. 

Gabions are chicken wire containers filled with rocks. More engineered than other NIDS interventions, but still low profile, they are typically used in valley bottoms and anchored deep into the sides of the stream banks. The pieces of wood in the log structures are spaced 6 to 12 inches apart, pushed vertically into the streambed. They are meant to help water move underground and create “messiness” in the stream that slows water, captures sediment, and creates habitat. Both features have acted as intended: Parts of them are barely visible because trapped sediment has raised the riverbed and allowed new plants, including sacaton grass, to take root.

Borderlands Restoration founder Ron Pulliam served in the Clinton administration’s Department of the Interior and taught ecology at the University of Georgia. He says major results from NIDS, such as streams flowing year-round, can take 10 to 20 years—but small improvements in erosion and vegetation can happen in just a year of two. Seeing those quick results three decades ago encouraged Clark and Austin to stick with their unconventional efforts at Turkey Creek and beyond. 

While the couple divorced several years back and sold El Coronado, Clark owns several other properties on both sides of the border. In consultation with ranchers and conservationists, she founded a nonprofit called Cuenca Los Ojos that builds NIDS and teaches these practices to other landowners and community members. Cuenca is also part of the Sky Islands group, and Clark’s daughter, Valerie Gordon, sits on the board.

This hard, dirty work is a long way from Clark’s early life in New York City. Then, in her 40s, she and Austin moved to El Coronado. The landscape “was so novel and so beautiful, it became the focus of my life,” she says. Curiosity about fire, water, plants, and lichen consumed her. “I’d never looked at ants before. I thought, There’s so much life going on here that I know nothing about.” 

That attention has served her well. “Valer has amazing powers of observation,” says Pulliam, a longtime friend and slow water ally. “She has a genius for understanding the movement of water and wildlife. She can’t explain it technically. But she has this intuitive feeling for how things work.” 

Now 83, Clark recalls her first summer at El Coronado in the 1980s. “The monsoon season hit and I was terrified, because I saw how much damage the flooding was doing in the hills. It was a lot of erosion. The vegetation was being flattened. I remember asking, ‘What do the cows eat? Rocks?’” She felt something was wrong and began studying the history of the area. She discovered that local trees were cut down in the 1800s to fuel copper production. Without them, grass boomed, so settlers brought in vast herds of cattle and sheep, who made short work of the vegetation. Mining and cotton production took a toll as well. Then when rain struck the denuded land, the water cut deep channels into the earth. 

What water wants

By placing rocks across a stream channel to slow water, Clark and Austin had intuitively re-created a technique that Indigenous peoples in the Southwest and northern Mexico had deployed for centuries to slow water, buffer against drought, and reverse desertification. 

Soon after the couple added those first structures, a group of men came to El Coronado from Mexico, looking for work. Clark showed them the little rock dam. “I said, ‘It’s wetter here, and grasses are coming in. What if we do that in the hills because they’re quite bare?’ And they said, ‘We do that at home.’” For generations, they had used a similar practice to grow corn. 

The men returned seasonally for 20 years and created some 20,000 rock structures throughout Turkey Creek’s side channels in the hills. As the low barriers caught sediment and deep-rooted grasses returned, “the mountains became sponges,” Clark recalls. “The wash became a stream, and scientists came and put fish in the stream.”

Gordon says the tenacity required to see this vision through is part of Clark’s personality. “My mother is very comfortable taking an unconventional path. She is not afraid of a challenge. And I think she also likes to do what other people don’t want to do.” 

Indigenous rock structures similar to those at El Coronado can be found throughout the Southwest. Over the last decade, Pulliam saw several on land purchased by Borderlands Restoration in Arizona, and was struck by how different the watersheds looked from others in the region that were severely washed out. “All of the little side draws in this area have almost no erosion,” he says. “If you look carefully, there are ancient rock structures at least 1,200 years old still working.”

Indigenous peoples are still creating and using slow-water structures for various purposes today. Michael Kotutwa Johnson is a member of the Hopi Tribe and has a Ph.D. in natural resources. But his most important credential, according to his University of Arizona profile, is that “he continues to practice Hopi dry farming, a practice of his people for millennia.”

The Hopi, like most Indigenous cultures, are “place-based societies,” says Johnson. Their place receives just 6 to 10 inches of precipitation a year, so they have developed methods designed to conserve soil moisture. Johnson explains some of them.

Hopi read the landscape and natural water flows, then build rock dams at the bases of mesas to divert runoff into fields. They also use rock detention structures to capture nutrient-bearing sediment to hold moisture, allowing farmers to plant different varieties of crops without fertilizers or irrigation. “Crops always need new soil with nutrients,” Johnson says. Contour farming—planting across the slope of the land at a certain angle—also slows water and wind. Another strategy includes leaving the stalks, cobs, and leaves on the ground after a corn harvest to catch snow, allowing it to melt and be absorbed into the soil. 

But there’s more to the Hopis’ resilience than a series of slow-water techniques, Johnson says. “It’s about having a relationship with the environment in a place that you’ve been living for a long, long time” and about the associated cultural belief system.

Rather than trying to maximize production, Hopi growers read the landscape to see what is possible for nature to provide that year. The timing and quantity of springtime vegetation serve as “biological indicators,” Johnson says. He notes that Hopi women select plants for certain traits and keep many varieties of seed for different annual conditions. “We’ve had 200-year droughts in our history. Our place is a testament to our resilience.”

Because traditional ecological knowledge doesn’t conform to Western science’s norms, the latter has been slow to recognize it as legitimate. Johnson counters, “When you have 3,000 years of replication, that is a science.” 

Making a convincing argument

Norman, whose expertise lies in forestry, watershed management, and remote sensing, agrees strongly with Johnson’s sentiment. But she realized that nature-inspired structures, whether built by Indigenous peoples or permaculture-minded land owners such as Clark and Austin, would not be recognized as a legitimate strategy by some unless their benefits were measured according to the Western scientific method. “My science is meant to address these misconceptions about the structures,” Norman says.

She has now dedicated a decade to leading the USGS Aridland Water Harvesting Study. Her work, with geomorphologists, biologists, botanists, and hydrologists, has proven that small stones and other natural materials placed across streams can restore and create permanent wetlands, regrow plants, store carbon dioxide, reconnect streams with flood plains, recharge groundwater, and increase stream flow. 

Norman grew up in Rhode Island, then moved west to Oregon for college and on to Arizona for graduate school. She first encountered rock detention structures when researching her Ph.D. dissertation, which used satellite data and flood modeling to make sense of environmental justice impacts from poor land management in Nogales, Mexico, and its twin city in Arizona. Erosion was releasing fine particle dust into the air, resulting in human health problems; flooding was endangering people; and heavy sediment loads were causing sewers to overflow. While working with the International Boundary and Water Commission to identify locations where structures could help address these problems, she became fascinated by the way small changes to the terrain could alter water flow and ultimately the shape and character of the land. 

Not long after, Norman heard rumors of an oasis in the Chiricahuas. Intrigued, she visited El Coronado Ranch after a rain. The rock structures detained huge pools of water, keeping the washes running. “Seeing that with my own eyes was mind-blowing,” she says.

To measure the effects, she compared a tributary of Turkey Creek with neighboring Rock Creek, which had no rock structures. Using modified stream gauges and precipitation measurements, she found that the subtle barriers reduced peak flows from summer monsoons by half and extended base flows into fall by three to four weeks. The check dams kept more water in the system, resulting in that incredible 28 percent increase of water flowing downstream. What’s more, they captured 200 tons of soil per year, cleaning the water of sediment and supporting verdant vegetation that attracted animals. 

Norman explains why there was more water in the treated stream. In contrast to Turkey Creek’s series of wetland sponges, Rock Creek has bare bedrock. “When water runs over an impervious surface and is exposed to elements, it evaporates,” Norman says. Compacted and dry soils also repel water, or become hydrophobic—“scared of water.” But when barriers make the life-giving liquid linger, it can permeate the soil.

“A lot of practitioners and ranchers were of the opinion that they were able to create more water [with rock detention structures],” says Norman. “But to be able to document that was amazing. More water storage and more water availability for everything, to reverse that degradation cycle into a restoration cycle.”

Pulliam, who has collaborated with Norman on some of her papers, says her scientific rigor has led to wider acceptance of these practices. “Early on, even at USGS, people were skeptical. But as evidence accumulated, they began to see Laura as a really innovative scientist,” he says. “Like Valer, she persisted through a period where no one had much faith in [the structures’] efficacy.”  

In 2021, the American Water Resources Association awarded Norman a medal of excellence, saying her “research is the foundation of a burgeoning community of practice and a shift in policy implementation in the arid Southwest.”

Desert oases

Studies from atmospheric scientists have found that, in the Colorado River basin, the warmer climate is creating a thirstier atmosphere, which could evaporate more water out of the soil and plants and sometimes turn snow directly to water vapor. They predict that Colorado River flows could be 20 to 30 percent lower by 2050, meaning state negotiators of the river’s sharing agreement should be planning for even less water than they have today.

But Norman and other experts studying water cycle restoration assert that it’s not just climate change making the West drier. People have also dried out the land over the last two centuries by killing beavers, cutting forests, overgrazing grasslands, and cutting off rivers from their flood plains and wetlands with levees, channels, and diversions. What if slow water interventions, including Natural Infrastructure in Dryland Streams, were deployed widely across the West? Could they heal the land-water relationship and reverse desertification?

“Yes,” Norman says, without hesitation.

In a paper published last fall, Norman and co-authors reviewed many studies that support the claim of region-wide restoration being able to counteract desertification. One reason is that NIDS create localized humidity and cooling. In a park in Phoenix, Norman found the air is up to 3 degrees Celsius cooler around structures for two days after a rainfall. 

Another reason is that about 40 percent of rain over land, on average, is formed from evaporation from soil and transpiration from plants. With forests cut, grasslands overgrazed, soil compacted, and more wetlands and flood plains paved over, that moisture is missing from the Colorado River’s water cycle. 

To undo part of the damage, slow-water projects need to be distributed throughout water basins, not centralized. The interventions are typically small, but their impact on flood protection, water storage, and localized cooling is cumulative, much as how solar panels on many roofs can generate a lot of electricity. “The whole Colorado River basin, plugged full of structures?” says Norman. “At that scale, you’d see a regional response that might impact the climate by sequestration of carbon and by cooling of temperatures from bringing moisture back into the atmosphere.”

These changes also support wildlife, providing critical refuges for animals native to the Sky Islands, one of the most biodiverse regions in North America. Supporting an array of animals—Gila monsters, black bears, mountain lions, ocelots, bobcats, coatis, javelinas, foxes, deer—is part of Cuenca Los Ojos’ mission and what drives Clark to heal land and water. “The horny toad [or horned lizard] squirts blood out of its eyes to scare you. There are just so many delightful creatures in the region.” The fact that she thinks blood-squirting eyes are delightful epitomizes her enthusiasm for everything she encounters on the land.

Scientists, including Pulliam, have been documenting the return of wildlife. They even recorded an endangered jaguar near the rock structures at Cienega Ranch, a site in the Aridland Water Harvesting Study.  “Because there’s water, the animals come,’’ says Norman.

One critter they’re tracking is famous for building its own infrastructure in water. Beavers have returned to southern Arizona after trappers wiped them out 150 years ago. They’ve also been found on Clark’s ranches in northern Mexico. “Beavers won’t settle in desiccated areas,” Pulliam says, “but if you provide seed areas where they can get established, they can gradually improve adjacent areas.”

The upwelling of a movement

Nature-based solutions are gaining ground worldwide, including in the US—incentivized by the Biden administration’s Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction acts. But they are still often dismissed as insignificant in the challenge of buffering human communities from flood, drought, and climate change. That attitude reveals a misunderstanding of the scale of human disruption to the water cycle, and therefore, the scale needed for projects like NIDS to repair that damage.

Because the federal government influences the way so much land and water in the American West is managed, it could make a monumental difference by embracing slow-water practices, says Clark. But while some federal employees support them, so far, it’s not part of the official policy at the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, or Bureau of Land Management. 

Still, the federal agencies are coming around, says Pulliam. One lightbulb moment came after wildfires roared through the Chiricahuas about a decade ago. “Watersheds with rock structures had much, much less damage, and the Forest Service started noticing,” Pulliam explains, adding that the department is now giving contracts to Cuenca Los Ojos and Borderlands Restoration to build structures on its land. Overall, however, he says the US government retains a bias for modern engineering in its funding. State agencies, on the other hand, are much more open to NIDS. “They all buy in. They see it. It’s in their backyard.” 

Local Indigenous communities have shown what close attention to nature’s ways can yield. “Water is really life to us,” says Johnson, the Hopi farmer, contrasting that attitude with the dominant society’s view that water is a commodity. “People are so far removed from the relationship that we have with water that they just don’t understand the complexities, and they keep making the same mistakes over and over again.” 

Maybe we can improve our relationship with water, as individuals like Johnson, Clark, and Austin demonstrate how to heal water systems, and scientists like Norman and Pulliam document the intricacies of how they work. In response to water scarcity in the Southwest, many people think the answer is to bring in more from elsewhere via dams, aqueducts, and desalination plants. But slow-water practitioners make the most of the water that’s already there. Norman recalls a local saying, half-jokingly, “Ah, that would be great if there were some magic water that just appeared!” When she started studying ecosystems benefiting from slow-water techniques, “I was like, I think we found some, you know?”

Read more PopSci+ stories.

The post ‘Slow water’ could transform the Southwest, one little rock wall at a time appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The raging wildfires in Canada recently engulfed the Northeastern US in smoke, causing the air quality to plummet to some of the worst ever recorded in the region. To minimize the exposure to hazardous air, health officials recommended that people stay indoors and wear masks. However, animals are also vulnerable to smoke inhalation. Zoos across New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia closed last week to bring their animals indoors, but free-roaming ones had nowhere to go to escape the smoke.

How animals are affected by wildfire smoke

Like humans, animals can inhale wildfire smoke and experience respiratory irritation and detrimental impacts on their cardiovascular system, says Lisa Miller, professor of anatomy, physiology, and cell biology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. All creatures that breathe air, whether they live on land or at sea, are vulnerable to airborne toxins found in wildlife smoke, such as fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen cyanide. Inhaling smoke can make them susceptible to carbon monoxide poisoning, a life-threatening condition that limits oxygen supply to the blood, tissues, and organs.

Smoke inhalation can further result in tachycardia and respiratory symptoms like labored breathing, panting, and coughing. Death from smoke-induced asphyxiation is also a possibility. Repeated or prolonged exposure to smoke can weaken animals’ immune response or result in chronic heart disease, but long-term, adverse health impacts may also come from a single smoke event.

[Related: Almost everyone in the world breathes unhealthy air]

The health effects of smoke can vary greatly because the toxicity depends on the distance from the burn site and the type of fire, says Miller. As the pollutants travel, their properties may be altered by the sun and other chemicals in the air. What’s burned in the wildfire also matters, whether it’s only biomass like trees and plants or human-made materials like homes and cars. “All of these factors make understanding the science of wildfires so challenging,” Miller adds.

Some groups of animals, like birds, are at greater risk of experiencing negative health outcomes. “Birds are highly sensitive to air pollution because their respiratory system supports highly efficient gas exchange and lacks some of the mechanisms mammals use to clear particles from their airways,” says Olivia Sanderfoot, an ecologist and postdoctoral fellow at the La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science. Aside from physiology, behavior and habitat use may also influence how much smoke a creature is exposed to, and, subsequently, the short- or long-term health issues they might face.

However, there are still some major questions on the harms of wildfire smoke on wildlife.

Checking up on wildlife health after fires

According to a 2022 review in the journal Environmental Research Letters by Sanderfoot and her collaborators, there are a limited number of published studies investigating the health outcomes and behavioral responses of animals who’ve inhaled wildfire smoke. For example, there is a lot left to learn about any strategies animals may use to reduce their exposure to air pollution, says Sanderfoot.

The difficulty of conducting this kind of research may be a contributor. Monitoring animals before, during, and after wildfires is difficult to plan and may put the health and safety of workers at risk. And while studying animal response in controlled environments like labs or outdoor enclosures may be easier to implement, scientists can’t reproduce the exact air quality and visibility conditions that occur in the environment.

In her research, Sanderfoot uses citizen science data to learn more about how smoke affects birds. She encourages people in areas affected by wildfires or hazardous air quality to contribute wildlife observations to online databases like eBird or iNaturalist, which gather and provide data for research and conservation purposes. Observations on smoky days would be particularly useful, she adds, but it’s important to wear an N95 mask when going out.

Ways to protect animals from wildfire smoke

Understanding how wildfire smoke affects wildlife is crucial in preventing dangerous health impacts as the planet gets even hotter. Climate change can make wildfires more frequent and intense with increased drought, high air temperatures, and strong winds, resulting in hotter, drier, and longer fire seasons in some regions. The number of wildfires is expected to increase globally by up to 14 percent by 2030 and 50 percent by 2100. A feedback loop occurs: Fires can also exacerbate climate change because burning ecosystems like peatlands and rainforests releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The best way to protect wildlife from smoke inhalation, habitat loss, and other fire-related issues is to prevent high-severity wildland fires in the first place. According to a 2023 review in the journal Conservation, a combination of public and personal land management, social governance, and efficient fire suppression efforts like fire lines are needed to reduce wildfire risk and improve response mechanisms. This could cover measures ranging from proper land regulation to protections for areas with endangered species.

[Related: Longleaf pine forests in Alabama are making a comeback—thanks to fire]

Raising awareness about the risks of setting small blazes, like campfires, in the dry season is also essential. A 2017 study in the journal PNAS analyzed US wildfire data from 1992 to 2012, excluding controlled agricultural fires and those with an unknown cause. They found that human-started fires accounted for 84 percent of all wildfires.
More information about the impacts of smoke on wildlife is needed to possibly adjust conservation plans in fire-heavy times of the year, says Sanderfoot. After large wildfires, agencies like the US Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management work together to restore animal habitats and support population comebacks. “Sometimes, science feels slow, but every day we make a little bit more progress,” says Sanderfoot. “Soon I hope we’ll have a much better sense of how we help wildlife endure both hotter and smokier summers.”

The post Clouds of wildfire smoke are toxic to humans and animals alike appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

In 1944, the US Forest Service launched the Smokey Bear campaign to promote fire prevention on public and recreational lands. “Smokey did a disservice in many ways because the message was so strong,” Heather Alexander, professor of forest ecology at Auburn University, says. “It was probably the best ad campaign ever that people remember: that fire is bad.”

“Smokey now says, ‘only you can prevent wildfire.’ But most people have no idea that a wildfire is unintentional and a prescribed fire is intentional,” she adds.

Today, Native American tribes, government agencies, conservation groups, and even private landowners regularly burn trees, grasses, scrub, and more to help the health of fire-dependent ecosystems. Many places across the county have gone without fire for decades, which makes it hard to reintroduce the natural process safely. But doing so is crucial to protecting biodiversity and reducing flammable underbrush that can fuel more catastrophic blazes. 

While wildfires are commonly associated with the West Coast, “there’s a culture of fire” in the Southeastern US as well, Alexander says. The longleaf pine ecosystem that historically covered the majority of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas and patches of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia requires natural fires every two to three years. From the late 1800s to the 1970s, fire-suppression laws prevented many natural burns from occurring and hindered the longleaf pine’s ability to reproduce, along with many other plants and animals that depend on them. The native evergreen, known for its finger-like needles that can grow longer than a foot, owes its existence to recurrent fires; efforts to restore the species and the ecosystem it underpins have vastly improved since the mid-1990s. These sunny forests that once characterized the Southeast will never fully return, but the remaining fragments can still be tended and hopefully, expanded.

Born of fire

Many of North America’s ecosystems have evolved to survive and utilize fire’s destructive force. Native American tribes, such as the Poarch Band of Creek Indians who historically lived in Alabama and Georgia, routinely conducted prescribed burns, setting low-intensity fires that would clear out underbrush, promote the growth of diverse plants, and create ecological niches for various wildlife to thrive. As European colonists pushed westward, they excluded fire from newly settled landscapes, removing an integral cycle from the environment. 

After decades of fire-suppression laws, US officials slowly began to integrate prescribed burn practices into federal land management strategies. Until then, there was a scientific misunderstanding that fire, whether started by lightning or Native American tribes, was a detrimental phenomenon. But scientists realized the opposite is true when mounting research in the 1960s proved fire’s positive and pivotal role in keeping the balance. 

[Related: Wildfires could hit your hometown. Here’s how to prepare.]

In Alabama, prescribed fires were reintroduced to the landscape in the 1970s by the state’s Forestry Commission. In 1996, the Alabama State Legislature passed a “Right to Burn” law, declaring burning as a landowner’s inherent right. By 2001, the practice had improved ecosystem health to the point where whitetail deer and wild turkey populations reached an all-time high. 

Longleaf pine forests are naturally open with abundant light pouring through the overstory, almost like a park. Wildflowers and native grasses carpet the floor. The habitat is home to countless varieties of birds, reptiles and amphibians that can’t be found anywhere else, and many of which are now endangered. Prior to extensive human development, bison, red wolves, and mountain lions roamed here. 

“These woods are radically different from the way things would’ve looked historically,” says Sehoy Thrower, an environmental protection specialist with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. 

After noticing the extent of the longleaf pine forest’s change over her lifetime, including the overgrowth of invasive plants and a lack of access to edible and medicinal plants that were more abundant when she and her grandmother were younger, Thrower asked herself, “What are the grand, sweeping, huge things we can do to really make a difference? The biggest answer is always fire.” 

Sweet home Alabama

The longleaf pine ecosystem once encompassed 90 million acres from Virginia to Texas. Today, it only adds up to 4.5 million acres—a 95 percent reduction from its original range. By 1920, most of the forest was lost to timber harvesting and land development, leaving it extremely fragmented.

Members of the Poarch Creek tribe, which is now largely based out of southwestern Alabama, a few miles from Mobile, support the remaining trees in a number of ways. “One of the greatest things they’ve done is planted thousands of longleaf pines back into our wildlife reserve acreage,” Thrower says. The other is prescribed fires.

James Agerton, land and forestry manager for the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, leads their burn team. “What we are trying to do at the tribe is keep or develop all of our property into what was naturally occurring in this region back before the timber harvest,” he says.

“Most burns [in Alabama] are done with ecosystem management in mind,” says Kyle Marable, resource stewardship biologist at the Alabama Wildlife Federation. “We’re not just trying to burn to reduce fire fuel loads, but we’re trying to burn because we want to get the plant community and ecosystem back to where it needs to be.”

State agencies, conservation groups such as the Nature Conservancy and Longleaf Alliance, and the Poarch Creek tribe all set controlled fires to restore the longleaf pine ecosystem and aid native plant and animal populations. For private landowners, there are financial incentives and cost share programs, such as through the US Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. 

“Burning is vital to prepare the land and seedbed for longleaf regeneration,” Agerton says. “Once longleaf are established in an area, regular burning helps with competing plants and just cleaning up the understory under the trees.” 

Nearly every part of the longleaf pine ecosystem depends on fire for maintenance and reproduction. Burning helps open up forests to receive more ground-level sunlight, allowing new pines and other flora to sprout. Otherwise, shade-tolerant plants, like red maple and sweet gum, outcompete the local species. “[The forest] just gets overgrown by those other trees, and it’ll die eventually because it’s not getting enough light,” Alexander says. “So fire is the mechanism to kill those other trees.” Many of the plants that take over longleaf pine forests typically grow in shady, wet conditions around rivers and creeks, where fire can’t easily reach. “They’ve been allowed to escape because we excluded fire,” Alexander explains. 

Agerton says he burns about 25 to 30 percent the Poarch Creek tribe’s longleaf pine lands at a time on a three-year rotation, which aligns with the ecosystem’s natural fire schedule. Because fire suppression has allowed underbrush to grow outside its historical bounds in the past century, his team won’t burn until they manually thin it out. 

Safety is a top priority. Every prescribed burn needs a written plan, including management objectives and contingency plans, and a permit from the Alabama Forestry Commission. All workers undergo a burn management course to receive a certification every five years. Before setting a fire, Agerton and his team will alert locals, prioritizing individuals with asthma or other respiratory problems. 

Agerton checks the forecast regularly and will only conduct a burn if conditions like wind, temperature, and moisture are correct. During the pre-burn meetings, the crew has a safety briefing before they head out with a fleet of ATVs, each holding a 50-gallon tank of water, and a firetruck, which is the last line of defense if the flames somehow cross the break lines the workers dig. 

[Related on PopSci: In the future, your car could warn you about nearby wildfires]

All these careful measures, combined with Native American science and nature-based practices, have led to hard-earned successes. The Forest Service’s latest update on the longleaf pine ecosystem estimates that 421,000 acres of longleaf pine have been reestablished throughout the South since 2012. This growth “suggests the work of landowners and land managers to establish new stands of longleaf pine, use prescribed burning for hardwood mid-story reduction, and perhaps bring mixed stands of longleaf pine and other species increasingly to longleaf dominance, may be effective,” according to the report.

Periodic burning is much more efficient than manually removing underbrush. “In our forestry management practice, it’s a lot easier to go in and set a fire than to load up two skid steers with grapples on them and clean a hundred acres,” Agerton says. “Where that may take a month, I can run a fire through in half a day.”

Underbrush doesn’t just add to wildfire risk: It also prevents diverse life from flourishing. In some areas of longleaf pine forest, scientists have found 40 plant species per square meter of woodland. The ecosystem supports approximately 35 amphibian, 56 reptile, 88 bird, and 40 mammal species—though many are approaching extinction. Multiple species of carnivorous pitcher plants that grow on the moist outskirts around longleaf forests have landed on the endangered species list, largely due to fire suppression. The threatened gopher tortoise plays the role of an ecosystem engineer: Its burrows are a crucial aspect of the longleaf pine habitat and provide shelter for at least 360 animal species.

“It’s not like everything is burned uniformly,” Alexander says. “There’s a lot of heterogeneity, and that heterogeneity creates more spaces for more wildlife to use. It’s about creating that patchiness because every organism has different needs. So, the more patchiness, more needs can get met.”

Other threatened and endangered wildlife, such as bobwhite quail, indigo snakes, and red-cockaded woodpeckers, are slowly returning to longleaf pine ecosystems post-burn. In addition to tortoise burrows, animals like birds and squirrels take refuge in woodpecker tree cavities.

“There are a lot of different species that are starting to thrive as far as quail, gopher tortoise, and snakes … you’re starting to see a comeback with those species,” Agerton says. “It’s good to be a part of something that’s starting to make a difference.” 

The resilience of longleaf pine forests can have cumulative benefits for the health of the planet, too. “If we take fire out of a system, then we make our universe more susceptible to really catastrophic fires,” Alexander notes. “We see that out West; we’ve seen it in Alaska; we see it in Russia. Anywhere that fires have been suppressed and not allowed to do their thing, then you get fuels accumulating.”

Back to earth

“There’s a lot of talk now about fire prescribed fire is not climate-smart forestry, because fires emit carbon into the atmosphere, and that’s absolutely true,” Alexander says. “But they recover all of [the emitted carbon].”

Unlike burning fossil fuels, the greenhouse gases released through burning forests can be neutralized down the line. After treated longleaf pines mature—in an astoundingly quick span of two years or so—they can store carbon dioxide in their roots, while fostering the growth of other carbon-sequestering plants in the understory. “All that carbon that gets emitted through fire is recovered as the forest responds to it and regrows and puts it back into vegetation and tree biomass,” Alexander explains. “There’s misunderstandings about how it all works.”

Prescribed burns are nothing like the tree-torching wildfires that have caused thousands of civilian deaths and injuries and billions of dollars in damage in the US in the past decade. They have low-intensity flames that merely lick at the bases of trees and grow one to five feet high, depending on the type of underbrush. So, they don’t release as much smoke as an uncontrolled fire would. 

Fire isn’t the most dangerous part of burning—the health risks created by smoke can affect far more people and wildlife. When burns aren’t conducted, catastrophic wildfires such as those seen in the West and in Canada are easily sparked by increasingly dry and hot conditions driven by climate change. The noxious effects can reach entire swaths of the continent.

[Related: How to mask up to protect yourself from wildfire smoke]

“There’s a lot of concern about climate change and how that will influence both wildfires and our ability to conduct prescribed fires,” Alexander says. Higher temperatures and less moisture on a global scale mean burn teams have to be more careful about where and when they set blazes. But conditions also have to be dry enough for fires to spark—and interestingly, some parts of Alabama are becoming cooler and wetter. That means the window for burning, which normally includes the entire cold season from October to March and the summer months of June and July, is becoming narrower, leaving crews with less time to clear all the forest acres that need rejuvenating.

Agerton says patience is one of a burner’s essential qualities because essentially, they have to play with fire. “But also to work in this industry, you need to have a passion for it,” he adds. “You need to have the desire to pass along something that is gonna be here long after you’re gone and take pride in doing that.” With his team’s efforts, the longleaf pine forests and the various plants and animals that call them home will be here for the next generation to enjoy.

To that end, fire management is of the many cultural traditions the Poarch Creek tribe is trying to revitalize in Alabama. “It’s something Creek people have done for millennia, and it’s something that’s disappeared in a cultural sense. But I think it will naturally come back,” Thrower says. 

Recently, two young tribal members approached Agerton to tell him that they decided to go to school to study forestry management. They will likely take over the reins once Agerton and others retire. “If anything, I’d say they probably will do more than what we’re doing now,” he says.

The coming decades will show how fire crews like the Poarch Creek tribe’s can increase the resilience of forests, grasslands, and other essential habitats. Many North American ecosystems evolved with fire as a natural process over millennia. “It’s important for people to understand that many forest types in the Eastern US also require fire,” Alexander says. “This is not a longleaf-only story.” 

The post Longleaf pine forests in Alabama are making a comeback—thanks to fire appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here.

Moving away from gasoline-powered cars won’t just help with climate change. It also could have major health benefits, according to a new report by the American Lung Association. 

The United States could save 89,000 lives and nearly $1 trillion in health costs by mid-century if drivers stop buying conventional combustion-engine cars and if the country cleans up its power grid by 2035, the organization found. 

“There’s a real significant health benefit to be achieved and significant suffering to be avoided — premature deaths to be avoided, children having asthma attacks avoided — by making this transition to technology that exists today,” said William Barrett, who works on clean air and climate policy at the American Lung Association and authored the report. 

The gasses and particles spewed from tailpipes are linked to a range of illnesses, including asthma, lung cancer, and heart disease. The potential health benefits of electric vehicles stem from the fact that they don’t produce the same toxic byproducts, like smog-forming oxides of nitrogen, as combustion engines. Although there have been relatively few real-world studies on EVs and air pollution, the American Lung Association’s report aligns with research showing that cars without combustion engines pollute less and lead to fewer respiratory illnesses than their gas-powered counterparts. 

The association’s findings come as states adopt policies to phase out gas-powered cars. Seven states, such as California and Oregon, have set targets to make all passenger vehicle sales by 2035 “zero-emissions” — meaning EVs, hydrogen fuel-cell cars, or plug-in hybrids. And the Environmental Protection Agency this spring proposed tailpipe emissions standards that could make electric vehicles two-thirds of all new cars sold by 2032. 

While the report’s authors note these developments and credit two pieces of legislation passed in recent years — the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — with spurring production of EVs and helping decarbonize the power grid, they said stronger state and federal standards are still needed to achieve the health gains outlined in the report. The report calls on more states to adopt regulations pioneered by California that promote zero-emissions vehicles while strengthening rules to slash pollution from gas-powered cars.   

To be sure, EV sales have grown rapidly in recent years but still only make up about 6 percent of the U.S. market. With an average cost of about $60,000, new electric cars are still a luxury purchase. In California, for instance, they’re concentrated mainly in wealthy, majority white and Asian neighborhoods. 

Key to saving the 89,000 lives projected in the report is an assumption that the whole country will be running on clean energy. 

“The assumption of having a clean grid is really important for these calculations,” said Sara Adar, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan who studies environmental health, including traffic pollution, and was not involved with the Lung Association’s report. “If we fail in our attempt to clean the grid and we are still generating electricity based on coal, I think those estimates will no longer be accurate,” Adar added.

Adar also offered a solution that didn’t come up in the report: “Not driving is absolutely the way to go.” 

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/rapid-shift-electric-cars-save-89000-lives-renewables/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post A rapid shift to electric cars would save 89,000 lives appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Researchers at Arizona State University are employing a breathing, perspiring, humanoid robot to study extreme temperatures’ effects on the body—including, yes, butt sweat. But as uncanny as ANDI (and its rear end) may look, the device could help experts better devise products, methods, and treatments to keep populations safe as the planet continues its dangerous, climate change-induced warming patterns.

Aside from such visible, sometimes socially awkward physical signs of heat stress, there’s actually a lot that experts still don’t know about humans’ biological reactions to high temperatures. But researchers like Jenni Vanos, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Sustainability, can’t simply plop test subjects into dangerously extreme heat scenarios and observe the dire effects. “There are situations we know of… where people are dying of heat and we still don’t fully understand what happened,” Vanos said in a recent statement. “ANDI can help us figure that out.”

[Related: 1 in 5 people are likely to live in dangerously hot climates by 2100.]

Funded by a National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation Grant and custom-built by Thermetrics, ASU’s ANDI is one of only two currently deployed at a research institution. It’s also the first thermal manikin capable of being used outdoors, thanks to a novel internal cooling channels. Within this unique system, cool water circulates throughout ANDI’s “body” to keep its overall temperature low enough to endure extreme heat, while sensors measure numerous variables influencing human perceptions of heat, such as sun brightness and air convection.

These perceptions are as varied as humans’ health and body types are—something ANDI can easily accommodate. “We can [enter] different BMI models, different age characteristics and different medical conditions,” said Ankit Joshi, an ASU research scientist and lead operator of ANDI. Joshi offers a diabetes patient, who has different thermal regulation abilities as a healthy person, as an example. “We can account for all this modification with our customized models.”

ASU’s ANDI generally resides in the aptly-named “Warm Room,” a chamber built to simulate heat-exposure scenarios seen in regions around the world, which includes factors such as wind, solar radiation, and temperatures as high as 140-degrees Fahrenheit. Within the Warm Room, ANDI can accurately measure human sweating mechanics such as changing core and skin temperatures.

Outside the Warm Room, however, ANDI is reportedly getting a walking buddy. Over the summer, the research team will pair the manikin with the non-humanoid MaRTy, ASU’s biometeorological heat robot. Both machines will stroll through ASU’s (very hot) campus, with MaRTy measuring the heat that hits a body, while ANDI can record how a body reacts to said temperatures.

[Related: Heat is the silent killer we should all be worried about.]

There is no single solution to adapting to rising temperatures, and researchers are well aware of this. “We’re trying to approach this from a very holistic point, but there’s not going to be a silver bullet for anything,” said Konrad Rykaczewski, an associate professor in ASU’s School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy and the study’s principal investigator. Such varying options include designing better cooling clothing, or even exoskeleton backpacks made specifically to help cool down its wearers.

The post This very sweaty robot measures how heat affects humans appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

For more than a hundred years, California, Arizona, and Nevada never accounted for evaporation on the lower basin of the Colorado River as they divided its water between themselves and later with Mexico. Their logic held that as long as there was more water than people used, they could ignore small losses from natural processes. More importantly, it was politically fraught—for decades, the lower basin states have been unable to reach an agreement about how evaporation should be taken into account when sharing the river’s waters. Even as a 23-year-long megadrought sucked moisture out of the already arid region, evaporation stayed off the books with decision making.

But now, as water managers scramble to find a solution to a river that’s been overused, mostly for irrigation-heavy crops like livestock feed, they’re forced into a harsh reality: every drop counts, including those that disappear into the air. 

In August 2022, the Biden administration ordered California, Arizona, and Nevada to cut their annual allotments from the river by significant amounts. Last month, the White House released a plan outlining two options, which would reduce the states’ use of the river by as much as one quarter: evenly split reductions on the lower basin, which divides the river’s flow from the tip of Arizona down to northern Mexico, between the three states, or make reductions based on senior water rights, which means fewer cuts for California. On May 22, after much politicking, the states proposed an alternative deal that pledges to use 13 percent less water from the river overall. But it’s still unclear if and how the proposed plan accounts for evaporation. 

How much water is evaporating from the lower basin of the Colorado River?

One way to measure how much water dries up in the system each year is by looking at the evaporation losses on Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the nation’s two largest reservoirs, located in Nevada and Arizona and Utah and Arizona, respectively. About 1.9 million acre-feet or 13 percent of the water from the reservoirs across the entire river is lost to evaporation each year, says Jack Schmidt, director of the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University. 

In particular, the lower basin (which includes Lakes Mead, Mohave, Havasu, and a few smaller mainstream reservoirs) lost an average of 906,000 acre-feet of water per year to evaporation from 2016 to 2020, according to Schmidt, who cites data from the Bureau of Reclamation. To put that number into context, Nevada can legally use about 300,000 acre-feet per year with the existing deal. “The evaporation of water in the lower basin is equal to three Nevadas. Some people would say that’s a big number,” Schmidt says. Other estimates put the amount of water lost to evaporation even higher at about 1.5 million acre-feet per year, or about five Nevadas.

But the overall amount of water that evaporates hasn’t actually changed that much in the past decade. That’s because there’s just less water in the reservoirs, which means there’s less water to lose,” according to Katherine Earp, a hydrologist for the Nevada Water Science Center. At the same time, she adds, as the reservoirs become shallower, the water becomes warmer, and evaporation increases slightly.

[Related: See inside Glen Canyon Dam as Lake Powell levels drop]

Evaporation occurs when energy, usually in the form of heat, turns a liquid into gas. In this case, sunlight heats up water from the reservoirs and transforms it into water vapor. While the process seems straightforward, many factors affect how much evaporation occurs on the reservoirs. “It’s the sun; it’s dry winds sweeping across the reservoirs; it’s whether or not it’s cloudy,” Schmidt says. “It’s all about the heat and the relative humidity of the air over the reservoir.” A warming climate can accelerate those drivers as well, he says.

Earp cautions that scientists don’t know how much climate change and evaporation will cut into water held in the lower basin. She says there are two factors that could see direct impacts: the reservoirs’ temperature and depth. “Those are changing as the [lakes along the Colorado River] are changing,” she says. “Most of the evaporation is being done right at the surface with the wind. So that’s not changing. We’ve always had a big hot desert—we will continue to have a big hot desert.”

What can states in the Colorado River deal do to fight evaporation?

Even if the states took immediate action to prevent evaporation on the Colorado River, it wouldn’t be simple. The reservoirs are too big for quick fixes. “People put covers on their swimming pools and hot tubs,” Schmidt says. “You’re not going to do any of that on Lake Powell and Lake Mead—these are reservoirs are more than 100 miles long.” Instead, he outlines two potential solutions: consolidating water from the two major reservoirs into one or pumping some of the water underground. 

Schmidt did the math behind the first option. In a white paper published in 2016, he examined how much water might be saved if the lower basin states fill Lake Mead and put any remaining water into Lake Powell. “Right now we manage the system to equalize the storage contents in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, and so we sort of maximize the surface area exposed to the sun,” he says. But he found the savings would be minimal, about 50,000 acre-feet of water across the two reservoirs, and says it should be used as a second-tier strategy.

[Related: Solar panels and water canals could form a real power couple in California]

In the second option, water from the reservoirs would slowly be cached underground. Arizona and California already store some water underground in recharge basins with the intention to put water back into local aquifers. But there’s a risk of not being able to track and recover all of the water that seeps back into the ground. Still, Schmidt says recharge basins might be a good option if evaporation gets worse. “It’s a technique trusted by water managers,” Schmidt says. “Yes, it’s uncertain. But those uncertainties do not concern people enough that they don’t do it.”

Earp says the subterranean-storage strategy might be difficult in southern Nevada, where the geology can’t store such large volumes of water. “When users can’t use all the water, they do store excess in smaller orders in Arizona and Las Vegas. But doing the whole lake is a much bigger scale thing,” she says. “I don’t know if it would work.”

Both Earp and Schmidt agree that evaporation will keep playing a role in negotiations over the lower basin. “The most fundamental attribute of the river is it’s fully tapped out,” Schmidt says. “When the natural flow of the river system declines, and you begin to account for everything (because you must), then evaporation is a significant process. And somebody’s got to account for it.”

The post Every drop of the Colorado River counts. So what about evaporation? appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here. 

One in five people could live in dangerously hot conditions by the end of the century if global warming continues at its current pace, even if nations uphold their pledges under the Paris Agreement, scientists warned in a new peer-reviewed study. It’s the latest research published in recent days that points to the stark human and societal costs of the accelerating climate crisis as global carbon emissions continue to rise to unprecedented levels.

The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Sustainability, estimates that some 2 billion people would see a mean annual temperature of 84 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, starting in as early as 2070, when Earth’s population is expected to reach at least 9.5 billion. Most people live in a “human climate niche” that ranges between a mean annual temperature of 55 degrees and 80 degrees, the researchers said, so that many people experiencing a major uptick in regional heat would be unprecedented.

Such a temperature threshold, where 84 degrees or higher becomes the middle ground for the year, can also be very dangerous for anyone without air conditioning or other means to cool off, the study’s authors also noted. According to their estimate, some of the nations that will be hardest hit by the heat are also home to some of the world’s poorest communities, where air conditioning typically isn’t an option.

Of the estimated 2 billion people that could be forced out of their climate niche and into dangerous extreme heat, the study found, 600 million will be in India, 300 million in Nigeria and 100 million in Indonesia.

“Those people who are affected are the poorer people on the planet,” Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at Exeter and the study’s lead author, told Forbes. “At higher temperatures, life becomes unbearable, affecting water, agriculture and food. You can’t barricade yourself from climate change. There is an undeniable interconnection amongst nations.”

Among the study’s most pertinent findings is the drastic difference it would make for the world to limit average warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—the most ambitious target of the Paris Agreement. Scientists estimate that under the global climate treaty’s current pledges, the world is still on track to warm by roughly 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100. But if emissions were significantly slashed to limit average warming to 1.5 degrees, Monday’s study said, just 400 million people would be pushed outside their climate niche instead of 2 billion.

Monday’s study also comes on the heels of a major report released last week by the United Nations’ weather agency, which warned that heat will likely soar to record levels in many parts of the world over the next five years. Global warming, combined with a climate pattern known as El Niño, will largely drive that heat, the report’s authors said, with the next five years almost certainly set to be the warmest five-year period ever recorded.

“This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment,” Petteri Taalas, the World Meteorological Organization’s secretary general, told the New York Times. “We need to be prepared.”

It’s not just extreme heat that climate scientists have warned about in recent days.

On Monday, the World Meteorological Organization released another report, which found that the economic damage of natural disasters continues to rise, even as improvements in early warning systems have helped reduce the loss of life. In that report, the U.N. body tallied nearly 12,000 extreme weather, climate and water-related events globally between 1970 and 2021 that have killed more than 2 million people and caused $4.3 trillion worth of economic damage.

And climate change is already affecting all parts of the world, not just the poorer regions. About $1.7 trillion of that financial damage took place in the United States alone.

The new studies and reports, in many ways, are pointing to a reality with which many people are already familiar. This week, swathes of India are baking under extreme heat, with some places reaching temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday. Over the weekend, raging wildfires in Canada continued to send smoke south into the U.S., prompting officials in Colorado and Montana to issue air quality alerts. And last week, heavy rainfall inundated 43 towns in Italy, causing landslides and flash floods that killed 14 people and destroyed hundreds of roads.

The post 1 in 5 people are likely to live in dangerously hot climates by 2100 appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Kelp is common along temperate shorelines around the world. For millennia, this large brown algae has been vital to coastal Indigenous peoples. In Washington State and British Columbia, kelp is a traditional food source, a focus for commercial cultivation, and habitat for critically endangered and threatened species like rockfish and young salmon. It’s hard to overstate kelp’s value. For the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, says shellfish biologist Annie Raymond, “you can’t quantify how important this biodiversity is, culturally.”

But over the past four decades, warming water and other factors have been killing kelps across the Salish Sea. So this summer, Raymond and her team will be hunting for kelp spores—colloquially called seeds—in the Juan de Fuca Strait, part of an ongoing effort to build an emergency fund for kelps, says Raymond, and ensure their future in the tribe’s traditional territory.

To face the pressing need to preserve kelp biodiversity, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe is partnering with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF) and other tribes, universities, and organizations to expand a seed bank for Washington kelps as part of the Puget Sound Kelp Conservation and Recovery Plan.

Begun in 2010 by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, the existing seed bank houses a collection of bull kelp spores from the Washington coast. Currently, the spores are housed in Wisconsin, but in the coming months, the collection will be moved to a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries research station in Manchester, Washington.

The expanding seed bank, says Raymond, is designed to preserve vulnerable kelp species for future restoration. While the tribe will only collect spores along the Juan de Fuca Strait, “the seed bank allows the tribe to contribute to habitat protection,” she says. “We want to help build resilience across the region.” The PSRF will also contribute to the seed bank, sampling sites along the Washington coast.

Jodie Toft, PSRF’s deputy director, says it’s taken years to build the infrastructure necessary to house such a precious resource at the Manchester Research Station for the long haul. Although the seed bank will house thousands of samples in a refrigerator no bigger than one in a typical kitchen, “we needed to make sure that our kelp lab was going to be able to keep the seed bank alive,” says Toft.

Unlike with many terrestrial plant seeds, which can be dried and stored for decades and remain viable, storing kelp for extended periods is more complex. To reproduce, explains Raymond, kelps release zoospores that develop into male and female gametophytes. To keep them viable, scientists store kelp gametophytes under red light, in low iron environments, or in a freezer, which puts it in a kind of arrested development. This means that the new bank needed to keep conditions tightly controlled, with emergency measures in case the power goes out.

The PSRF seed bank is just one of several kelp seed banks in California, Oregon, Alaska, and British Columbia. Simon Fraser University plant biologist Liam Coleman, who is working to start another kelp seed bank in British Columbia, says there’s an urgent need to make and maintain these kinds of biobanks. “The number one priority is just to make sure that biodiversity is backed up,” says Coleman. By preserving genetic diversity, scientists hope to give species the best chance they can to cope with future environmental challenges.

Seed banks will also give people in the future a chance to reforest kelps with the same genes that existed in the region in the first place, maximizing the chances that kelps will thrive.

“The gold standard for restoration is to replicate what was lost in the place where it was lost,” says Toft. Raymond hopes restoration in the future won’t be necessary. But if it is, and all goes as planned, “even 50 or 100 years in the future” the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe will be able to access the seed bank.

It’s not just the Jamestown S’Klallam who will benefit. Todd Woodard, the infrastructure and resources executive director of the Samish Indian Nation, says that in Samish territory, kelp populations have declined by 36 percent from 2006 to 2016. Woodward expects his community will use the seed bank to reseed some of their restoration sites.

Yet as NOAA’s Manchester seed bank nears completion, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe will have to make crucial decisions about which kelp species to preserve. “We know bull kelp will be one,” says Raymond, “but there are also a number of understory kelps that we want to study.”

Time, however, is already running short for Salish Sea kelps. Biodiversity is still high in the Juan de Fuca Strait, but other parts of Puget Sound have already lost nearly all of their bull kelp, and for some remaining populations, genetic diversity is exceedingly low. That’s why Raymond knows they need to work fast.

“The tribe has countless cultural resources that are intertwined with kelp,” she says. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

The post Scientists and Indigenous people team up to build a kelp seed bank appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story was originally published by Grist.

Given America’s penchant for gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs, you might be surprised to learn that the country’s gasoline usage is going down, maybe for good. Even though only about 1 percent of cars on the road today are electric, some say the United States has already passed “peak gasoline” — the pivotal moment when the fuel’s use finally begins a permanent decline after a century of growth. 

Gasoline consumption has not fully bounced back to levels seen before local governments began lockdowns in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people stopped driving to work every day. Back in the pre-pandemic year of 2018, Americans burned an average of 392 million gallons of gasoline, more than one gallon every day for every person in the country. Since that annual peak, a combination of remote work, high gas prices, and fuel economy standards that require that new cars get better gas mileage have diminished demand. To stay profitable, oil refiners have cut back on production.

Demand for gasoline this year could end up at around 366 million gallons per day, down 7 percent from 2018, according to analysis provided to Grist by the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research and advocacy nonprofit. With recent policies like the Inflation Reduction Act offering a tax credit of up to $7,500 for an electric vehicle and the Biden administration’s new emissions rules — which require two-thirds of new passenger vehicles be electric by 2031 — gasoline demand could decrease almost a quarter by 2030, according to the research group, compared to current levels.

That’s still not fast enough to hit important targets to slash greenhouse gases, says Janelle London, the co-executive director of Coltura, an organization advocating for the end of gasoline. “Scientists are saying that we have to cut emissions from all sources in half by 2030 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, and gasoline use just is not on track,” she said. The majority of the country’s transportation-related carbon emissions come from burning gasoline in cars, trucks, and SUVs. And transportation is currently the country’s largest source of pollution. London says that the fastest way to cut consumption is to target electric vehicle incentives toward “gasoline superusers”: the 10 percent of population that drives the most and guzzles nearly a third of the country’s gas. 

That’s not who’s buying electric vehicles right now. The typical EV driver is likely to be among those who drive the least, London said. “The only way we’re going to solve this near-term problem is to get the biggest gasoline users to switch to EVs, like, now, as soon as possible.” California, for instance, is on track for a 10 percent cut in gasoline use by 2030, far from its goal of halving gasoline use by the end of the decade. If superusers in California bought electric vehicles before everyone else, it would result in a steep, 43 percent drop that would move the state much closer to its climate goals.

London says that federal tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act “could be much better designed,” and she’s not the only one who thinks so. Ashley Nunes, director of federal climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research center, says the credits aren’t necessarily prompting people to give up their gas-powered cars. They’re just adding another vehicle. An estimated 44 percent of households with an electric vehicle have at least two other cars, if not three — nearly all of which run on gas. “First and foremost, I think that electric vehicle incentives should not be given to people who are not turning in their gasoline-powered car,” Nunes said. “We’re not paying for you to add another car in your garage.” 

In a study published Wednesday in the journal Sustainable Cities and Society, Nunes and other researchers found that offering blanket subsidies for electric vehicles isn’t an economically effective way of reducing carbon emissions. Targeting subsidies at households with only one vehicle and toward taxi or Uber drivers produces more bang for the federal buck. “You want to target people who drive their cars a lot, because that’s where you see the real emission benefits associated with EVs,” Nunes said.

In some states, there’s new interest in getting frequent drivers to switch to EVs. A bill in Vermont, for instance, would allow the Burlington Electric Department to use funds to help gasoline superusers buy electric vehicles. It passed through the state legislature this month and is headed to Republican Governor Phil Scott’s desk. If signed, it’ll be the first legislation in the country to offer EV incentives specifically to “superusers,” a term coined by Coltura two years ago.

Coltura makes the case that converting the biggest gasoline users into EV owners means less money for gas stations and more for power providers. “Utilities have a huge interest in getting these superusers to switch to EVs,” London said. “Suddenly, they’d be using a lot of electricity, right?” Someone who uses 1,000 gallons of gasoline a year, if switched to an EV, would use about 9,000 kilowatts of extra electricity each year, according to Coltura. Using the average cost of gasoline and electricity in February 2023, that means they’d spend about $1,150 on electricity instead of $3,390 on gas, saving roughly $2,000 a year.

There’s another effort underway in California that would allow superusers to receive more funding, in addition to federal tax credits, to switch. Assembly Bill 1267 would have directed the California Air Resources Board to institute a program that maximizes the reduction in gasoline — and thus the climate impact — for each dollar spent on incentives for superusers. After passing unanimously through two committee hearings this spring with bipartisan support, the bill died last week. (London said that it will likely be reintroduced next year.) The state already has a hodgepodge of programs that help lower-income residents buy electric cars — including one that offers grants of up to $9,500 to replace a gas guzzler with a cleaner vehicle — though they have suffered from a lack of funding.

The superusers who make less than the state’s median income wind up spending 10 percent of their income just on putting gas in their car. “People say you can’t afford an EV,” London said. “If you’re a superuser, you can’t afford to keep paying for gasoline.” 

The average price of an electric car is about $59,000, higher than the $48,000 average for all cars. But London says that average EV cost is “irrelevant” since there are cheaper options on the market. “The question is, is there an EV at the price point that I can afford one?” she asks. While the cheapest EV model, the Chevy Bolt, is being discontinued, a new Nissan Leaf starts at just under $30,000, and tax credits can knock the price down further.

Clayton Stranger, a managing director at the Rocky Mountain Institute, said that there was a “compelling” economic case to target superusers with EV incentives, though the savings alone might not be enough to make people switch: The infrastructure needs to be built in rural places to make people feel comfortable driving an electric car, giving them confidence there’s a place to charge if they need it.

And then there’s the other aspect of ending the gasoline era: getting Americans out of their cars and into buses and trains, and onto bike lanes and sidewalks. “We also need to significantly reduce the amount of driving that is done,” Stranger said. “EVs alone don’t get us all the way there.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/transportation/peak-gasoline-superusers-electric-vehicle-incentives/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post Gasoline use isn’t falling fast enough. Targeting ‘superusers’ could help. appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Undark.

Sweat was dripping down Luis Cassiano’s face. It was 2012, and Rio de Janeiro’s hottest day to date: At nearly 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the seaside city had just barely beaten its previous record set in 1984.

Cassiano and his mother, then 82, had lived in the same narrow four-story house since they moved to Parque Arará, a favela in northern Rio, some 20 years earlier. Like many other homes in the working-class community — one of more than 1,000 favelas in the Brazilian city of over 6.77 million — its roof is made of asbestos tiles. But homes in his community are now often roofed with corrugated steel sheets, a material frequently used for its low cost. It’s also a conductor of extreme heat.

While the temperatures outside made his roof hot enough to cook an egg — Cassiano said he once tried and succeeded — inside felt worse. “I only came home to sleep,” said Cassiano. “I had to escape.”

Parque Arará mirrors many other low-income urban communities, which tend to lack greenery and are more likely to face extreme heat than their wealthier or more rural counterparts. Such areas are often termed “heat islands” since they present pockets of high temperatures — sometimes as much as 20 degrees hotter than surrounding areas.

That weather takes a toll on human health. Heat waves are associated with increased rates of dehydration, heat stroke, and death; they can exacerbate chronic health conditions, including respiratory disorders; and they impact brain function. Such health problems will likely increase as heat waves become more frequent and severe with climate change. According to a 2021 study published in Nature Climate Change, more than a third of the world’s heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018 could be attributed to a warming planet.

The extreme heat worried Cassiano. And as a long-time favela resident, he knew he couldn’t depend on Brazil’s government to create better living conditions for his neighbors, the majority of whom are Black. So, he decided to do it himself.

While speaking with a friend working in sustainable development in Germany, Cassiano learned about green roofs: an architectural design feature in which rooftops are covered in vegetation to reduce temperatures both inside and outdoors. The European country started to seriously explore the technology in the 1960s, and by 2019, had expanded its green roofs to an estimated 30,000 acres, more than doubling in a decade.

“Why can’t favelas do that too?” he recalled thinking.

Scientific research suggests green infrastructure can offer urban residents a wide range of benefits: In addition to cooling ambient temperatures, they can reduce stormwater runoff, curb noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, and ease anxiety.

More than 10 years since that hot day in 2012 — and several heat records later — Cassiano heads Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit he started to educate residents about how they can build their own green roofs. Favela construction comes with its own set of technical peculiarities and public policy problems, and Cassiano enlisted the help of local scientists to research best practices and materials. But covering the roofs of an entire neighborhood requires time and — even with cost-reducing measures — a big budget.

His work has been steady, but slow. He is still far from converting every roof in his community of some 20,000 people. And with the effects of climate change arriving quickly, time may not be on their side. Still, Cassiano sees Teto Verde Favela as a template for others in similar situations around the world.

“I started to imagine the whole favela with green roofs,” he said. “And not just this favela, but others, too.”

Green roofs have been around for thousands of years, but it wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that the modern-day version really took off, thanks to new irrigation technology and protection against leaks developed in Germany.

The technology cools local temperatures in two ways. First, vegetation absorbs less heat than other roofing materials. Second, plant roots absorb water that is then released as vapor through the leaves — a process known as evapotranspiration that offers similar cooling effects to how sweat cools human skin.

Green roofs can also help prevent flooding by reducing runoff. A conventional roof might let 100 percent of rain run off, allowing water to pour into streets, but a green roof, depending on its structure and slope, “can reduce this runoff generation rate to anywhere from 25 to 60 percent,” Lucas Camargo da Silva Tassinari, a civil engineer who researches the effectiveness of green roofs, wrote in an email to Undark.

Such interventions could be helpful in Brazil, where flooding is an ongoing issue, and temperatures are rising. A 2015 study showed that land surface temperatures in the city’s heat islands had increased 3 degrees over the previous decade. But greenery appears to help: Researchers from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, or UFRJ, found a 36 degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city’s warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas.

In Parque Arará, Cassiano said the temperature regularly rises well above what is registered as the city’s official temperature, often measured in less dense areas closer to the ocean. He decided his community’s first green roof prototype would be built on his own home. As he researched the best way to get started, Cassiano came across Bruno Rezende, a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis at UFRJ. When he told him about his idea, Rezende came to Parque Arará right away.

There isn’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach to green roofs. A designer must take into account each location’s specific climate and building type in order for the project to not only be effective, but also structurally sound.

The problem is that green roofs can be quite heavy. They require a number of layers, each serving its own unique purpose, such as providing insulation or allowing for drainage. But Parque Arará, like all of Rio’s favelas, wasn’t built to code. Homes went up out of necessity, without engineers or architects, and are made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks, cinder blocks, asbestos tiles, and sheet metal. And that informal construction couldn’t necessarily hold the weight of all the layers a green roof would require.

After looking at Cassiano’s roof, Rezende’s first suggestion was to cover it with rolls of bidim, a lightweight nonwoven geotextile made of polyester from recycled drink bottles. Inside those rolls of bidim, leftover from a recent construction project, they placed several types of plants: basket plants, inchplants, creeping inchplants, and spiderworts. They set the rolls in the grooves of the asbestos roof, and then created an irrigation system that dripped water down.

With a cheap way to install lightweight green roofs, Rezende brought Cassiano to meet his advisers and present what they had found. The university agreed that the project showed such promise that it would provide materials for the next step, Cassiano said.

Once the plants on Cassiano’s roof had time to grow, Rezende and André Mantovani, a biologist and ecologist at Rio’s Botanical Gardens, returned to see what effect it had on Cassiano’s home. With several sensors placed under the roofs, the researchers compared the temperature inside his house to that of a neighbor’s for several days. (The researchers intended the study to last longer, but the favela’s unreliable energy system kept cutting power to their sensors.)

Despite the study’s limitations, the results were encouraging. During the period that researchers recorded temperatures, Cassiano’s roof was roughly 86 degrees. His neighbor’s, on the other hand, fluctuated between 86 and 122 degrees. At one point, the roofs of the two homes differed by nearly 40 degrees.

For Cassiano, the numbers confirmed what he suspected: If he wanted to make a difference, he needed to put green roofs on as many homes as possible.

“When we talk about green roofs, we think about one house. But that’s not enough,” said Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. “When you start to imagine a street, a block, a neighborhood, and a city or a community as a whole with several green roofs, then you have something. Because it’s about the collective. It benefits everyone.”

But thinking on a larger scale comes with a host of new challenges. In order for a green roof to be safe, a structure has to be able to support it, and studying the capacity of individual buildings takes time. And even with low-cost materials such as bidim, installing green roofs on hundreds or thousands of homes requires significant funds.

“The biggest obstacle is the cost,” said Bia Rafaelli, an architect based in São Paulo who has worked with communities like Cassiano’s to teach them about sustainable building options. “To make this all viable on a large scale,” installing green roofs on all the favelas, she said, “there would need to be sponsorship from companies or help from the government.”

While some municipalities in Brazil have legislation requiring green roofs on new construction when possible, Rio de Janeiro does not. A bill that would create a similar law to those in other cities has been at a standstill in Rio’s city council since May 2021.

Rio does, however, incentivize builders to install green roofs and other sustainable options — like solar panels and permeable paving. But such efforts don’t typically benefit residents of the favelas, where most building is done informally, without construction companies looking to legislation for guidelines and benefits.

In addition to red tape and other bureaucratic hurdles, any project related to the favelas also faces longstanding racism. According to a 2021 study conducted by Instituto Locomotiva, Data Favela, and Central Única das Favelas, 67 percent of the population in favelas across Brazil is Black. That’s disproportionately higher than the country’s general population, which is 55 percent Black.

“Public policy doesn’t reach” favelas, said Diosmar Filho, a geographer and senior researcher at the research association Iyaleta, where he heads studies on inequality and climate change. The working-class communities, he said, are heat islands because of environmental racism — the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color — which has left much of Brazil’s Black population with inadequate housing and health care, both of which are aggravated by the effects of climate change.

Such trends aren’t isolated to Brazil. A 2020 study published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning found that White neighborhoods in South African cities had disproportionately higher access to urban green infrastructure, including parks and green roofs — which the authors dubbed a “green Apartheid.” In a 2019 study, researchers at the University of Michigan used a spatial analysis to determine that green roofs were predominantly located in the city’s downtown, which they noted was more White and affluent than the rest of the city. (The study had limited data, however, and only analyzed 10 green roofs.)

Without support from the government or other authorities, Filho said, Black people often turn to each other for help. “It’s always the Black population that’s producing quality of life for the Black population,” he said, referring to people like Cassiano and projects like Teto Verde Favela.

“The actions of Teto Verde would be a great point of reference for urban housing policy for the reduction of impacts of climate change,” said Filho. But when municipalities deny people of color the right to safe housing and ways to push back against climate change, he added, “that’s when it becomes a case of environmental racism.”

Back in Rio, Cassiano continues to collaborate with research scientists and students at UFRJ. Together, they test new materials and methods to improve on the initial green roof prototype first installed on his home more than 10 years ago. To adapt for favela construction, his primary focus has been to reduce cost and reduce weight.

Instead of using an asphalt blanket as a layer of waterproof screening, Cassiano uses a vinyl sheet sandwiched between two layers of bidim. This means the cost of roofs installed by Teto Verde Favela is roughly 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot; conventional green roofs, though difficult to estimate in cost, can run as much as 53 Brazilian reais ($11) for the same amount of space. His roofs also started out hydroponic, meaning no soil was used, in order to decrease their weight.

Cassiano’s mother, now 93, loves caring for the plants on their roof. It not only helps lower the temperature in their home on hot days and retains rainwater to help prevent flooding in a downpour, but Cassiano said it also gives their mental health a much-needed boost.

“Now I couldn’t live here in this house without this green roof,” said Cassiano. “It makes me so happy when I see birds, when I see butterflies, when I see a flower or a fruit,” he added.

“It’s so much more than I ever imagined.”

Jill Langlois is an independent journalist based in São Paulo, Brazil. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and TIME, among others.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

The post Plant-covered roofs could help chill Brazil’s heat-stricken favelas appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Typhoon Mawar pelted Guam with heavy rain and the strength of a Category 4 hurricane over about two days. The storm was upgraded to a ‘Super Typhoon’ when it reached maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour as it moved north of the island. President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the  US territory of about 150,000 people on Tuesday May 23.

[Related: What hurricane categories mean, and why we use them.]

According to the National Weather Service Guam, the storm had Category 4-level winds of about 140 miles per hour just before midnight local time on Wednesday May 24 as it passed over Guam. Guam International Airport recorded sustained winds of 71 mph and a gust of 105 mph. The storm’s eye passed just north of the island, but the powerful eyewall hit the whole island.

Initial estimates say that close to a foot of rain fell and approached two feet in some parts of the territory. Guam is about the size of the city of Chicago and sits about 1,500 miles east of the Philippines.

Typhoons are the same type of warm-core tropical storm as hurricanes, except that they form west of the Northwest Pacific Ocean. Mawar was one of the strongest typhoons to hit Guam in decades. In 2002, Super Typhoon Pongsona struck the island with the force of a Category 4 hurricane and caused over $700 million in damage. 

In an address on Facebook, Guam Governor Lou Leon Guerrero urged residents to stay home for their safety, as the island was still seeing 40 to 50 mph winds on Thursday morning. The governor reported that the strongest winds from the storm were felt throughout the island, but particularly in the north.

The Guam Power Authority reported that the island’s energy grid was providing power to only about 1,000 of its roughly 52,000 customers. As of Thursday morning, the government had not reported any deaths due to the storm. 

According to The New York Times, strong building codes minimized damages and deaths from major storms in Guam. In most cases, “we just barbecue, chill, adapt” when a tropical cyclone blows through, says Wayne Chargualaf, who works at the local government’s housing authorities. However, since it has been over 20 years since Super Typhoon Pongsona, he told The Times that “we have an entire generation that has never experienced this. So a little bit of doubt started to creep into my mind. Are we really ready for this?”

[Related: Typhoon Merbok breaks records as it lashes the Alaskan coast.]

Human-caused climate change is contributing to an increasing number of intense tropical storm systems like Mawar. Tropical systems are generating more rainfall and bigger storm surges and are also more likely to intensify faster. Mawar rapidly intensified from Monday into Tuesday, with the storm’s top wind speeds increasing by 50 mph in only 18 hours.

Mawar will continue to track west-northwest away from Guam and towards the northern Philippines and Taiwan. It strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane with winds of 165 mph and gusts up to 200 mph, but slow weakening is likely and it is not expected to threaten land in the next several days.  

The Atlantic Hurricane Season begins on June 1 and runs until November 30. The National Hurricane Center is already watching a system off the coast of Florida. An early forecast from Colorado State University released in April calls for slightly below-average hurricane activity, partially due to the current neutral conditions before El Niño likely begins in the Pacific Ocean.

The post Guam hit by strongest ‘Super Typhoon’ in decades appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The decades-old international treaty that banned ozone-depleting substances has successfully averted huge amounts of sea ice loss—delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years, according to a new study. The study published May 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that regulating these harmful substances helped delay further globalc heating.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

In 1985, scientists first discovered a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica on the Earth’s south pole. Representatives from countries around the world gathered to craft a treaty to protect the ozone layer, which shields the planet from harmful levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The resulting Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 and went into effect in 1989 with the purpose of reducing atmospheric concentrations of ozone-depleting substances (OSDs) that were commonly used in refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers, and aerosols. It remains the only United Nations treaty ratified by every country in the world. 

This new study demonstrates that the treaty’s impact depends on future emissions and the impact goes as far north as the Arctic. 

“The first ice-free Arctic summer–with the Arctic Ocean practically free of sea ice–will be a major milestone in the process of climate change, and our findings were a surprise to us,” study co-author and Columbia University geophysicist Lorenzo Polvani said in a statement. “Our results show that the climate benefits from the Montreal Protocol are not in some faraway future: the Protocol is delaying the melting of Arctic sea ice at this very moment. That’s what a successful climate treaty does: it yields measurable results within a few decades of its implementation.”

According to Polvani and other climate scientists, the rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. The first completely ice-free Arctic summer will likely occur by 2050, largely due to increasing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Other powerful greenhouse gasses like ODS’ also contributed to this warming, but their concentrations in the atmosphere began to decline in the mid-1990s. 

In this new study, the two authors analyzed new climate model simulations and found that the changes implemented by the Montreal Protocol is delaying the first appearance of an ice-free Arctic summer by up to 15 years, depending on future carbon dioxide emissions. They compared the estimated warming from ODS’ with and without the Montreal Protocol under two scenarios of future carbon dioxide emissions from 1985 to 2050. If the Montreal Protocol had not been enacted, the estimated global mean surface temperature would be about 0.9°F warmer and the Arctic polar cap would be almost 1.8°F warmer in 2050, according to their results.

[Related: Fixing the ozone hole was a bigger deal than anyone realized.]

“This important climate mitigation stems entirely from the reduced greenhouse gas warming from the regulated ODSs, with the avoided stratospheric ozone losses playing no role,” co-author and University of Exeter applied mathematician and atmospheric scientist Mark England said in a statement. “While ODSs aren’t as abundant as other greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, they can have a real impact on global warming. ODSs have particularly powerful effects in the Arctic, and they were an important driver of Arctic climate change in the second half of the 20th Century. While stopping these effects was not the primary goal of the Montreal Protocol, it has been a fantastic by-product.” 

Both authors stressed the importance of remaining vigilant to atmospheric concentrations as the ozone layer is healing, especially due to a slight rise in ODS concentrations from 2010 to 2020.  In 2016, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol (called the Kigali Amendment) that required the phase out of the production and consumption of some hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) was added. While HFCs do not directly deplete ozone, they are powerful climate change-inducing gasses which can accelerate warming. An uptick in CFC use was detected in 2018 and tracked to China, but that was quickly fixed. Scientists say that the Kigali Amendment is estimated to avoid 0.5–0.9°F of warming by 2100, not including contributions from HFC-23 emissions.

The post The Montreal Protocol had a dramatic ice-saving side effect appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Nexus Media and Ambrook Research..

On a clear morning in April, after milking his seven cows, Tim Sauder looked over the pasture where he had just turned the animals out to graze. Like many dairy farms, Sauder’s fields swayed with a variety of greenery: chicory, alfalfa and clover. But they were also full of something typically missing on an agricultural landscape — trees. Thousands of them.

Between 2019 and 2021, Sauder planted 3,500 trees at Fiddle Creek Dairy, a 55-acre family farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he and his wife raise cows to produce yogurt, cheese and beef. Today, young willow, hickory, poplar, pecan and persimmon trees stud the pastures, and on a crisp spring morning, rows of honey and black locusts, bur and cow oaks, were beginning to leaf out, casting shadows on the long grass below.

Sauder said planting trees has always been a priority; before he filled his pastures with them, the farm was home to a small fruit orchard as well as riparian buffers — trees planted along the creek to prevent erosion and safeguard water quality. But the trees that his cattle now graze beneath represent a fundamental shift in his operation.

The Sauders are betting the farm, as it were, on silvopasture, the ancient practice of raising animals and growing trees and pasture on the same piece of land (silva is forest in Latin). In a silvopasture setup, farmers carefully manage each element to benefit the other—relying on manure to fertilize trees, for example, or fallen fruit to feed the livestock—resulting in a system that’s greater than the sum of its parts. 

It’s an old idea that’s gaining modern traction. Last year, the USDA awarded the Nature Conservancy and multiple partner organizations a $64 million grant to advance agroforestry — the umbrella term for agricultural practices that incorporate trees — by providing technical and financial assistance to farmers looking to make the switch. This year’s Farm Bill could mean another infusion of funding as well as the expansion of existing agroforestry programs to more explicitly include silvopasture. 

“The USDA is doing a lot, but a lot more could be done,” said Jabob Grace, communications project manager with the Savanna Institute, a nonprofit that promotes agroforestry practices. His organization is advocating that the 2023 Farm Bill increase appropriations for the National Agroforestry Center, the only government agency dedicated to the practice, from $5 million to $25 million (Grace said the Center has been chronically underfunded, never receiving more than $2 million annually). They’re also pushing for the establishment of regional agroforestry centers, the development of a USDA technical assistance program in agroforestry, and more grant money dedicated to helping farmers like Sauder establish a silvopasture system. 

In Sauder’s pastures, “each tree has multiple benefits,” he explained. Mulberry leaves have more protein than alfalfa, and the seed pods that fall off the honey locust every autumn are packed with sugar; those trees were chosen to supplement the animals’ diet. Sauder chose other tree species with leafy canopies to protect his herd’s health. “Come August, there will be shade here when the cows need it.”

Providing shade may seem like a matter of comfort, but it can actually be one of life and death. Last summer, thousands of cattle died in Kansas, after the area was racked by historic heat and humidity. As the climate heats up, researchers think mortality events like the one in Kansas will become more common. But even when cattle survive brutally hot summers, the impact of heat stress can wreak havoc on a farm’s bottom line.

Grace said the farmers he works with are worried about what hotter temperatures mean for their livelihoods. 

“When we talk to our producers about silvopasture, the first thing they’re interested in is shade,” Grace said. “They’re noticing the hotter temperatures. Their cattle are uncomfortable, they’re not putting on weight. Cash is almost directly flowing out of that farmer’s pocket when they have overheated cattle.”

A lot of cash, in fact. A 2022 study from Cornell University predicted that losses of cattle herds due to heat stress will total $15 to $40 billion a year by the end of the century. To avoid these losses, the authors note that “tree–livestock systems can be highly effective in reducing heat stress.” And Farm Bill funding could help more farmers get started.

Shade is one way silvopasture cuts down on costs, but there are others. Some poultry farmers use the method to shield their flocks from birds of prey. Vineyards and Christmas tree farms are increasingly turning to grazing animals to mow and control weeds.

But a silvopasture system can do more than simply save farmers money; it can help them diversify what they grow. Perhaps one of the oldest — and most profitable — examples of silvopasture is the dehesa system of southern Spain, where Ibérico pigs wander among towering oak trees, feasting on acorns and fertilizing the soil, resulting in some of the world’s most expensive ham and a cash crop of cork.

While livestock health and revenue are compelling reasons for farmers to practice silvopasture, perhaps the method’s most convincing advantage is its potential as a climate solution. 

Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that analyzes climate solutions, ranks silvopasture as the 11th most effective strategy for combating climate change — well ahead of solar panels, recycling and electric cars — finding that pastures with trees sequester five to 10 times as much carbon as similarly sized but treeless pastures.

The perennial roots of a silvopasture system can also help stabilize the soil, preventing erosion as well as the flooding that’s becoming more common with heavier rains. Additionally, a well-managed silvopasture operation can reduce wildfire loads — thanks to carefully spaced and pruned trees as well as grazing animals that control the shrubby understory — and increase biodiversity.

What’s more, when livestock get to eat the forage that’s right in front of them, the gas-guzzling farming equipment and trucks typically used to get food to feedlots can stay in park. “Cutting back on harvesting and transporting means a significant reduction in greenhouse gasses,” Grace explained.

According to Grace, large swaths of the American Midwest used to be covered by a natural silvopasture of sorts, an oak savanna ecosystem where grazing animals like bison dined on prairie beneath fruit and nut trees. Many Indigenous cultures embraced and benefited from this form of land management, until European settlers got to work deforesting the region, eventually building farms that worked more like factories. 

This emphasis on efficiency led to widespread monoculture and annual cropping systems where, Grace said, “for a good chunk of the year, not much is happening.” 

Today, only about 1.5% of farmers in the U.S. (approximately 31,000) practice any form of agroforestry, including silvopasture, a 2017 USDA survey revealed. But as summers get hotter and climate predictions more dire, interest in the practice is booming. Matthew Smith, research program lead at the USDA’s National Agroforestry Center, said “the demand for silvopasture knowledge and information is higher than anyone can provide.” 

That’s because silvopasture is more complicated than turning livestock loose in the woods; it requires choosing the right trees and forage for the local climate and constantly moving livestock from one place to another. 

“If folks are interested in silvopasture, they really should have expertise in rotational grazing beforehand…which is hard to learn,” Smith said. “Things can go wrong quickly when all your crops are in the same place.” Livestock left in one spot too long can damage trees, for example, and plants grown too close together can outcompete each other for light and nutrients. 

There are other challenges. For one thing, silvopasture systems require a large area of land and more hours of labor — at least at first — to maintain. Additionally, it takes trees many years to grow and begin to provide meaningful benefits. But, by far, the greatest obstacle for most farmers who want to practice silvopasture is the high price of purchasing, planting and maintaining trees. 

The vast majority of silvopasture operations rely on grants and cost-sharing programs from organizations like the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the USDA, programs  that advocates like Grace say badly need the boost in funding and staff that this year’s Farm Bill could provide. Grace said that the handful of existing agroforestry programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, are vague in their wording and need to be tweaked to more explicitly fund silvopasture projects and provide additional cost-sharing opportunities to farmers. 

Savanna Institute ally and climate NGO Carbon 180 is recommending that the 2023 Farm Bill increase federal cost share to 75% for agroforestry practices to help defray upfront costs and ensure farmers can access high-quality, regionally appropriate trees and shrubs. 

In the meantime, funding remains a “major barrier to farmers hoping to pursue silvopasture,” said Austin Unruh, owner of Trees for Graziers, who helped Tim Sauder secure money from the Pennsylvania office of the NRCS. Unruh, whose business has helped about 25 farms implement silvopasture in the last three years, said helping farmers pay for them “has been frustrating. It’s a different source of funding each time, different hoops to jump through.”

For Sauder, the financial assistance from the state was paramount. He said that without it, the trees in his pasture simply wouldn’t be there, “at least not for the next 20 years or so.” 

He admits that the new system has been a lot of work upfront, but that he expects it to pay off in the form of healthier pasture, soil and cows — and hopefully his land’s ability to support more of them. 

And yet, it’s working in tandem with nature that inspires Sauder the most. Running his farm with the health of the ecosystem top of mind, he said, is like making up for the mistakes of his ancestors, Mennonite immigrants who displaced Indigenous people and bent the land to their will. 

“I’m reimagining what would have happened if they had arrived here and said instead, ‘What’s the best way to live in this place?’”

This article is copublished with Ambrook Research as part of a series that looks at ways the 2023 Farm Bill can help address the climate crisis. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent, nonprofit news service covering climate change. Follow us @NexusMediaNews.

The post This ancient farming practice could get a boost from the US farm bill appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Within the next five years, the planet is 66 percent likely to reach 2.7°F (1.5°C ) of warming according to a jarring new update from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). 2.7°F is the internationally accepted global temperature threshold for limiting the worst effects of climate change.

[Related: For marine life to survive, we must cut carbon emissions.]

The WMO forecasts that global temperatures are expected to surge to record levels fueled by heat trapping gasses and a naturally occurring El Niño event. The organization also predicts that the annual average near-surface temperature will be over the threshold for at least one year between 2023 and 2027.

The 2015 Paris climate agreement set 2.7°F as a guardrail against increasingly dangerous atmospheric warming, and over 100 countries including the United States, Argentina, China, and Egypt, pledged to prevent long-term warming if possible. A special United Nations report from 2018 said going past this point would be dangerous and lead to significantly more death, destruction, and damage to global ecosystems.

According to the WMO, these new findings do not mean that Earth will permanently exceed the 2.7°F level that was specified in the Paris Agreement. The organization believes that the jump would be a temporary, and is not as worrisome as the agreed-upon climate danger point.

“A warming El Niño is expected to develop in the coming months and this will combine with human-induced climate change to push global temperatures into uncharted territory. This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment. We need to be prepared,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

Scientists believe that there is a 62 percent chance that an El Niño will develop by the end of this year. El Niño is a natural part of an oscillating weather system that develops in the Pacific Ocean. Earth has been in a rare “triple dip” of the opposing phase called La Niña for the past three years. La Niña typically has had a dampening effect on temperature increases around the world. With the new El Niño developing, there is a 98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will be the hottest on record, according to the WMO.

Warming in the arctic is also disproportionately high. This region heats much faster than the rest of the world, largely because as sea ice melts, solar radiation can no longer be reflected back and the heat is absorbed. This rapid warming is affecting global weather patterns and the jet stream. 

[Related: The past 8 years have been the hottest on human record, according to new report.]

Reaching this point, even just for a single year, would represent an acceleration of human impacts on the global climate system and send the world into “uncharted territory,” since average surface temperatures have never breached the threshold in recorded history. The highest average in previous years was 2.5 °F (1.28°C) above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists do not believe that the anomaly will occur this year, but the chance of temporarily exceeding this threshold has risen steadily since 2015, when it was close to zero. Between 2017 and 2021, there was only a 10 percent chance of exceeding this target.

“Global mean temperatures are predicted to continue increasing, moving us away further and further away from the climate we are used to,” Leon Hermanson, a Met Office expert scientist who led the report, said in a statement. 

The post World set to ‘temporarily’ breach major climate threshold in next five years appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Bleaching occurs when a stressed marine creature, most commonly a coral, expels its symbiotic algae and turns a ghostly white, often in response to a warming sea. But bleaching affects more than just corals. Giant clams—massive mollusks that can grow more than 1.2 meters in diameter and weigh as much as 225 kilograms—can bleach, too. And in recent research, scientists have learned more about how bleaching disrupts these sessile giants, affecting everything from their nutrition to their reproduction.

Giant clams live on coral reefs and are the largest bivalves on Earth. Like corals, giant clams bleach when they’re stressed, often as a response to excessively warm water. As with a coral, a bleached giant clam expels the algae, called zooxanthellae, that live inside it. These algae dwell in the soft tissue of the clam’s mantle and provide energy for the animal through photosynthesis, leaving a bleached clam with less energy and nutrients. At worst, bleaching can kill giant clams through food deficiency.

Scientists have been studying bleaching in giant clams for decades. In 1997 and 1998, during a brief period that saw extensive coral bleaching worldwide with corals succumbing in at least 32 disparate countries, bleached giant clams were observed from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to French Polynesia after water temperatures in the South Pacific rose significantly. In 2010, similar temperatures in the water off Thailand’s Ko Man Nai Island also led to scores of deaths.

Of the 12 species of giant clams, some are more resistant to heat stress than others. But as scientists are finding, even when a giant clam survives bleaching, other physiological functions can still be severely impaired.

A recent study in the Philippines of wild clams, for example, found that bleaching can hamper their reproduction. Bleaching reduces the number of eggs giant clams produce, and the more severe the bleaching, the fewer eggs they make. Reproducing “takes a lot of energy. So instead of using that energy for reproduction, they just use it for their survival,” says Sherry Lyn Sayco, the lead author of the study and a graduate student at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan.

Mei Lin Neo, a marine ecologist and giant clam expert at the National University of Singapore who was not involved in the study, says the work contributes to the story of how climate change can have “repercussions on the longevity of species.”

In general, she says, we know much more about how climate change affects corals than marine species with similar physiologies. “By understanding how other symbiotic species respond to climate change, each species becomes a unique indicator on how the overall reef ecosystem is doing.”

Bleached giant clams, it turns out, are often better than corals at coping with bleaching. Near Ko Man Nai Island, 40 percent of the bleached clams re-colored after a few months as the zooxanthellae repopulated in their tissues when temperatures cooled again. After the 1997–1998 bleaching event, over 95 percent of the 6,300 bleached clams near Australia’s Orpheus Island recovered.

Giant clams seem amenable to restocking, too. In the Philippines, where the largest species, Tridacna gigas, went locally extinct in the 1980s, restocking has brought it back.

“Clams are not just any organism,” Sayco says. “It’s not that we are just conserving them for them to be there,” she adds, “they have lots of benefits and ecosystem services, such as [boosting] fisheries [and] tourism.”

The post Stressed clams turn ghostly white in warming waters appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

On May 11, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will propose new limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants. Second only to the nation’s transportation sector, the electricity sector generates about 25 percent of all greenhouse gas pollution in the US. 

[Related: Renewable energy is climbing in the US, but so are our emissions—here’s why.]

According to the EPA, the proposal for coal and new natural gas power plants would keep up to 617 million metric tons of total carbon dioxide from spilling into the air through 2042. This is the equivalent to reducing the annual emissions of about half the cars in the United States. The EPA estimates that the net climate and health benefits of these new standards on new gas and existing coal-fired power plants are up to $85 billion through 2042.

“By proposing new standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, EPA is delivering on its mission to reduce harmful pollution that threatens people’s health and wellbeing,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “EPA’s proposal relies on proven, readily available technologies to limit carbon pollution and seizes the momentum already underway in the power sector to move toward a cleaner future. Alongside historic investment taking place across America in clean energy manufacturing and deployment, these proposals will help deliver tremendous benefits to the American people—cutting climate pollution and other harmful pollutants, protecting people’s health, and driving American innovation.”

The new rules will likely not mandate the use of technologies that capture carbon emissions before they leave a smokestack, such as direct air capture. It will instead set caps on pollution rates that planet operators will have to meet by either using a different technology or switching to a fuel source like green hydrogen. 

The new limits represent the Biden administration’s most ambitious effort to date to roll back the pollution from the US’ second-largest contributor to climate change. It also follows the current administration’s plans to cut car tailpipe emissions by speeding up the transition to mostly elective vehicles and curb methane leaks from gas and oil wells.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is adding over $370 billion into clean energy programs and the administration hopes that these new actions push the US further in the fight to constrain further human-made global warming.  

[Related: At New York City’s biggest power plant, a switch to clean energy will help a neighborhood breathe easier.]

These investments and regulations could put the US on track to meet President Biden’s pledge that the US will cut greenhouse gasses in half by 2030 and stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2050. While more policies are needed to reach the 2050 target, scientists say these goals must be met by all major industrialized nations to keep average global temperatures from increasing by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit compared with pre industrial levels. Beyond that temperature tipping point, catastrophic flooding, drought, heat waves, flooding, species extinction, and crop failure will become significantly harder for humanity to handle. Earth has already warmed by two degrees Fahrenheit.

If these regulations are finalized, they would mark the first time that the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. It extends to all current and future electric plants as well. 

The plan will face steep opposition from the fossil fuel industry and Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.

Despite these proposed new regulations, Biden has also faced criticism from many environmentalists for the decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska this March. Environmental groups call this massive oil drilling plan by ConocoPhillips a “carbon bomb” that could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day. 

Many younger voters and young climate activists say Biden broke a major 2020 campaign promise by approving Willow. With this in mind, EPA officials will announce these new regulations at the University of Maryland.

The post Power plants may face emission limits for the first time if EPA rules pass appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Satellite data reveals that methane leaks from two main fossil fuel fields in Turkmenistan caused more global heating last year than all of the carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. The satellite data was produced by French energy and environmental geo-analytics company Kayrros for the Guardian.

[Related: Methane is the greenhouse gas we can no longer afford to ignore.]

The data, as reported by the Guardian, shows that the western western fossil fuel field on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan leaked over 2.9 million tons (2.6 million metric tonnes) of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted almost 2 million tons (1.8 million metric tonnes) during that timeline. Because methane is so much more potent than carbon dioxide, the two fields emit the equivalent of more than 403 million tons (366 million metric tonnes) of carbon dioxide, or more than the annual emissions by the United Kingdom. China and the United States are the largest emitters of CO₂ in the world and the UK ranks at 17.

Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas that is emitted during the production and transport of oil, natural gas, and coal. Emissions can also result from agriculture and livestock practices, land use, and the decay of organic waste in landfills, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. In 2021, methane accounted for 12 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the US, which is especially concerning since  it is 25 percent more effective at trapping heat than CO_2.

Methane was officially added to the list of climate change priorities to address this decade by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021. The amount of methane emitted by human activity has been underestimated in the past and emissions have surged in the past 15 years. A 2020 study by the University of Rochester found that levels of “naturally released” methane reported in the atmosphere were 10 times too high, and fossil fuel-based methane is actually about 25 to 40 percent higher than scientists previously predicted. 

“The big take-home nugget for me is they said if you look at all the warming activity done by humans over the last century … carbon dioxide has contributed 0.75 degrees Celsius, while methane has contributed to 0.5 degrees Celsius,” Bob Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, told PopSci in 2021. 

Previous reporting from the Guardian found that Turkmenistan is a top country for methane “super emitting” leaks and it is possible that switching from a process called flaring to venting methane might be behind the explosion in emissions. Flaring burns unwanted gas and adds CO₂ into the atmosphere, but it is an easy process to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon. Venting releases the invisible methane into the air completely unburned and has been harder to track until more recent developments in satellite technology. Since methane traps 80 times more heat than CO₂  over two decades, venting is far worse for the climate.

[Related: Everything you should know about methane as regulations loosen.]

“Methane is responsible for almost half of short-term [climate] warming and has absolutely not been managed up to now – it was completely out of control,” Kayrros president Antoine Rostand, told the Guardian.  “We know where the super emitters are and who is doing it,” he said. “We just need the policymakers and investors to do their job, which is to crack down on methane emissions. There is no comparable action in terms of [reducing] short-term climate impacts.”

Turkmenistan is currently China’s second biggest supplier of gas and the country is planning to double its exports to China. Until 2018, Turkmen citizens received free gas and electricity, but the country is also incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis. The likelihood of severe drought is projected to increase “very significantly” over the course of this century, and crop yields are expected to fail.

The upcoming 2023 COP28 climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates is seen by some to be an opportunity for change in the region. One source told the Guardian that diplomatic efforts are being made to urge Turkmenistan to cut its methane emissions. “We are really hoping Cop28 is a forcing mechanism,” the source said.

The post Satellites traced super methane plumes to Turkmenistan’s gas fields appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Back in 2021, President Joe Biden announced the administration’s new Justice40 Initiative through Executive Order 14008. The program’s aim is that 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities. Investments related to climate change, clean energy, reduction of legacy pollution, and the development of water and wastewater infrastructure, among others, all fall within the initiative.

The administration doesn’t intend the program to be a one-time investment, but rather, a way to improve the distribution of the benefits of government programs and ensure that they reach disadvantaged communities. Since it was established, 19 federal agencies have released a total of nearly 470 covered programs, with three agencies joining just last month. While it’s promising that the administration recognizes the need to address long-standing equities, it’s critical to assess how they plan to make environmental justice a reality.

Marginalized and underserved communities must be prioritized to advance environmental justice

Hannah Perls, senior staff attorney at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program (EELP), says that many of the environmental injustices around the country today are the result of a legacy of disinvestment in low-income communities. This is especially true in communities of color where “racist policies barred or discouraged public and private investment in housing, critical infrastructure, public transit, and natural spaces.”

[Related: Stronger pollution protections mean focusing on specific communities.]

These communities often face greater exposure to industrial pollution, higher health risks from deteriorating infrastructure, and more energy and housing burdens than wealthier, white communities, says Perls. They also lose out often in competitive federal funding processes—and in some cases, funding is intentionally withheld. This only reinforces existing wealth disparities. By explicitly targeting that 40 percent of federal climate investments reach these communities, the Justice 40 Initiative hopes to combat the legacy of disinvestment and equitably distribute the benefits of the transition to renewable energy, she adds.

To identify disadvantaged communities, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has put out its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), a geospatial mapping tool that identifies overburdened and underserved census tracts across all states.

“Agencies can build upon the CEJST as needed, again on a program-by-program basis,” says Perls. “One benefit of this flexibility is that agencies can incorporate burdens specific to their jurisdiction. For example, the Department of Energy’s definition incorporates five measures of energy burden and two measures of fossil dependence.”

The CEJST is an exciting starting point that the federal government can continue to refine. That said, “environmental justice burdens don’t necessarily follow census boundaries, so there should be opportunities for communities to make the case to receive federal dollars if their community is not identified by the tool,” says Silvia R. González, director of climate change, environmental justice, and health research at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

How to ensure that the benefits reach disadvantaged communities

All covered programs are required to consult the community stakeholders, ensure their involvement in determining program benefits, and report data on said benefits. An established number of 40 percent provides clear guidelines and expectations for agencies. To strengthen that goal, a team of researchers and advocates recommend that the 40 percent be a minimum for direct investments in disadvantaged communities.

“A direct investment means the percentage is not just a goal that relies on counting trickle-down benefits,” says González, who was involved in the report. “The straightforward nature of a direct benefit strategy would enhance transparency and accountability to taxpayers because it is tough to measure trickle-down benefits.”

To ensure investment objectives are met, transparency in reporting and evaluation is necessary, she adds. Accountability mechanisms are a must in guaranteeing equitable, effective, and efficient implementation.

[Related: The hard truth of building clean solar farms.]

“We currently have no federal environmental justice law,” says Perls. “As a result, most of the administration’s environmental justice commitments, including the Justice40 Initiative, are established via Executive Order and are therefore not judicially enforceable.”

Fortunately, there are some ways to monitor how the government is living up to its promises. The administration recently published the first version of the Environmental Justice Scorecard, a government-wide assessment of the actions taken by federal agencies to achieve environmental justice goals. Harvard Law School’s EELP also has a Federal Environmental Justice Tracker that tracks the progress of the administration’s environmental justice commitments and other agency-specific initiatives.

Overall, experts say it’s a positive sign that the Justice40 Initiative has catalyzed critical discussions to face climate change and historical disinvestment head-on. But as with any ambitious policy agenda, the implementation will need to overcome many hurdles, says González. The most vulnerable communities tend to be those that are least resourced, and they should not get left behind. Some communities or households may be under-resourced due to language, technology, trust, and capacity barriers to programs that can help them develop financial and health resiliency. There will need to be capacity-building and technical assistance for under-resourced communities to apply for and manage these investments, she adds.

In general, there is strong potential for Justice40-covered programs to bring transformational change from the bottom up. The knowledge and lived experiences of disadvantaged communities could shape targeted investments to ensure that their needs are met. “I hope Justice40 builds a framework rooted in principles of self-governance and self-determination, direct engagement, and collaboration with communities,” says González, “instead of top-down solutions.”

The post How the US is fighting wealth disparities in climate action appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Over the last four decades, global water use has increased by about 1 percent per year. This rise is driven by many factors, including population growth, changing consumption patterns, and socioeconomic development. By 2050, the United Nations Water estimates urban water demand to increase by 80 percent. As freshwater needs continue to rise in cities, the sustainable management of urban water supply becomes even more critical.

In the past two decades, over 80 metropolitan cities around the world have experienced water shortages and extreme drought. Such urban water crises are expected to occur more frequently in the near future, therefore it’s crucial to understand how they unfold, who is vulnerable to them, and how they can be addressed.

Why urban water crises occur today

Many factors contribute to the development of today’s water crises, including changing land cover and use, urban infrastructure maintenance, and climate change, says Adriana Zuniga-Teran, neighborhood design and environmental sciences expert and assistant professor of geography, development, and environment at the University of Arizona.

For instance, impervious surfaces like concrete and asphalt often replace natural porous land cover as cities grow, resulting in less precipitation infiltration, which can affect the whole hydrological cycle. In addition, cities, farms, mines, and industrial land use all consume a lot of water compared to natural landscapes. Furthermore, rich and poor countries alike face issues with aging water infrastructure, which requires a massive amount of resources to upgrade. Lastly, climate change factors in because extreme weather events can make water more polluted, scarce, and/or unpredictable.

[Related: Groundwater is an incredible resource. It’s time to treat it like one.]

In general, Zuniga-Teran says the reasons for urban water crises are, to an extent, caused by “a consequence of uncontrolled urban growth and the unsustainable use of water resources.”

Population growth is not enough to indicate water demand, because certain individuals and social groups use a lot of water (and other resources) while other groups don’t. What’s at play is the current political-economic system that makes it possible for some individuals to over consume water while others don’t even have access to it, says Elisa Savelli, a research fellow at the Uppsala University Department of Earth Sciences in Sweden.

Socioeconomic inequalities can drive water crises

According to a recent Nature Sustainability study on the metropolitan area of Cape Town, stark socioeconomic inequalities play a major role in the production of water crises. The authors built a model to account for unequal water consumption across different social groups, which allowed them to retrace who over consume water and who doesn’t. They found that privileged households with better access and financial resources are able to consume more water to use however they want to.

“We found that whilst constituting only 13 percent of the urban population, the elite consumed more than half of the city’s water, and for non-basic needs such as gardening or swimming pools,” says Savelli, who was lead author of the Nature study.

Not only did wealthier households consume more public water sources, but they also had access to private sources that aren’t controlled by municipalities, like boreholes. In comparison, informal dwellers and lower-income households constitute over 60 percent of the city population but consume only about 27 percent of the city’s water. 

“Socioeconomic inequalities can drive water shortages and crises as much as, if not more than, population growth or climate change,” says Savelli. The current political-economic system triggers the unsustainable exploitation of water sources with the objective of accumulating profit and capital, without accounting for water as a common resource, she adds.

Wealthy people generally have the infrastructure to make water available to them, so it’s easier for them to consume it. They also have larger properties to maintain, larger dwelling units, pools, and more, says Stephanie Pincetl, director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.

“In places like the Southwest, we need to aggressively change outdoor landscapes,” says Pincetl. In California, landscape irrigation accounts for about 50 percent of annual residential water consumption. Overall, federal and local governments have a responsibility to manage urban water supplies sustainably and equitably.

Various strategies to manage urban water supply sustainably

To ensure more sustainable management of urban water supply, Pincetl suggests establishing tiered water rates where rates are higher with more consumption. Water use budgets per household are already in some places across the country, like Orange County, California. Those who stay within their monthly water budget get a lower rate per centum cubic feet (CCF) compared to those who go over it.

A 2021 Water Economics and Policy study looked into the county’s application of tiered rates and found that water was saved for the two agencies that converted to a budget-based rate structure at multiple levels of consumption. However, Zuniga-Teran says water demand policies that aim to control human behavior might not be enough to influence the behavior of wealthy residents. After all, they may not mind paying a lot more for water.

Municipalities can also acquire water rights by buying farmlands to change the water use from agricultural to municipal, says Zuniga-Teran. Back in the 1970s, Tucson, Arizona purchased over 20,000 acres of farmland in Avra Valley to acquire water rights and preserve groundwater. Investing in education and communication programs to help individuals learn how they can contribute to sustainable water management is also important, she adds. A 2022 Sustainability study in Mexico aimed to implement an environmental education program on water conservation in 10-year-old students. The authors found that such environmental programs can improve water use and conservation.

[Related: A new climate report finally highlights the importance of our decisions.]

A major part of sustainable resource utilization is water reuse for both potable and non-potable purposes. For instance, Zuniga-Teran says households can collect greywater—excess runoff water from showers or washing machines—and harvest rainwater to use for car washing or toilet flushing. Cities could also reuse reclaimed water, or treated municipal wastewater, and send it to a drinking water treatment plant to be directed into the drinking water distribution system. Meanwhile, stormwater, or surface water from heavy rain or snow, may be used to irrigate landscapes and replenish local aquifers while reducing flooding, she adds. All these alternative water sources could be treated and used for a variety of purposes.

“Instead of building another dam or promoting water technologies, policies should seek to alter privileged lifestyles, limit water use for amenities, and redistribute income and water resources more equally,” says Savelli. “The construction of additional infrastructure would not address the root cause of water overconsumption, and in turn, this and other technocratic solutions would protract current water crises into the future.”

When it comes to sustainable urban water management, cities should prioritize low-income, marginalized communities that still experience legacies of redlining and disinvestment and are likely to suffer the impacts of climate change the most, says Zuniga-Teran. Therefore, funding engagement efforts is critical as well. “Equity has to be at the forefront of all water-related efforts,” she adds. “To address inequities, community engagement is needed to make sure all voices are heard and that programs and policies are designed to address their particular needs.”

The post Urban water crises often boil down to classism appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The West just had a very wet winter. The snowpack at the top of the Rocky Mountains, which feed the Colorado River, a crucial water source for seven states and Mexico, has been replenished. The Great Salt Lake has risen a little more than three feet. Currently, the US Drought Monitor shows that almost all of California is out of a severe drought.

Now, spring temperatures are causing the snowpack on the Sierra Nevadas to melt and trickle down to California’s waterways. After enforcing steep cuts in some counties in 2021 and 2022, the state just granted more river water to millions of residents and agriculture. For farms in particular, this means they may not have to rely as heavily on groundwater, which is being rapidly depleted in some parts of the state.

[Related: This phantom lake in California is back with a vengeance]

But scientists warn this one strange winter should be taken as that: extraordinary. To fully rid the West of its long-term megadrought, which research shows has been exacerbated by climate change, there would need to be several rainy and snowy winters in a row, says Wei Zhang, a climate scientist and assistant professor at Utah State University.

Zhang calculated how abnormal California’s precipitation was from December 2022 to February 2023 using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and found it was about 52 percent higher than average. “It’s an extreme event—it happens every few decades,” he notes.

“This wet winter definitely is great news for the Colorado River because of the snowpack. That snow runoff from the mountains will drain into the Colorado River and increase the stream flow,” Zhang explains. “But that cannot solve the water problem in the Colorado River—that demand is still much larger than the supply.”

The Colorado River has been overused for decades. And thanks to the megadrought, which has caused increased evaporation and decreased snowfall, it’s also shrinking. The federal government plans to adopt a final decision this summer about how to best manage the parched river—and which states will lose acre-feet of water from the plan. 

Zhang is also digging into why this past winter was so wet in Western states. He says it’s unlikely it was caused by climate change, which would cause precipitation to fall more as rain than snow. He thinks it’s more likely tied to shifts in jet streams, or the upper level wind flows that drive the movement of winter storms. These new patterns could potentially be tied to changes in climate, but either way, scientists need more evidence before they can make a definitive conclusion about the reason behind all the snow this winter.

“This extreme event could be caused by some random [atmospheric] processes in the climate system, or it could also be forced by some sea surface temperature anomalies, or because of the background changes in the [Earth’s] climate,” Zhang says. “But it’s very difficult to build that causal relationship between one extreme winter or one extreme event and climate change.”

[Related: Farmers accidentally created a flood-resistant ‘machine’ across Bangladesh]

Simon Wang, another climate scientist and professor at Utah State University, thinks that while climate change can contribute to the overall warming of the planet and increases in precipitation, it doesn’t regulate year-to-year patterns. 

Like Zhang, he’s cautious about how much impact one season can have. “Drought is a long-term problem that requires sustained water management and conservation efforts, as well as proactive measures to adapt to increasing aridification due to increased evaporation,” he writes in an email to PopSci. “While this wet winter has helped to alleviate some immediate concerns, it is not a solution to the diminishing water supply.”

Both Wang and Zhang emphasize that California and the rest of the West’s water woes have not yet waned. “Many people may think that we don’t have a water problem anymore. I don’t think that’s true,” Zhang says. “All the models are projecting a dryer and hotter western US [in the next decades]. I don’t think this event will overturn that trend.”

Correction (May 2, 2023): The article previous incorrectly stated that the Sierra Nevada snowpack feeds the Colorado River. It should be the Rocky Mountains.

The post What California’s weird winter means for its water problems appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Hana Iqbal drops her toddler off at nursery each day dressed in a raincoat, no matter what the forecast. Iqbal’s daughter goes to a forest school, where kids spend about half or more of their day outside, learning about the natural world. “Last week, my two-year-old was hammering nails into a piece of wood, wearing goggles and gloves,” she says.

Forest schools, also called nature pre-schools, outdoor pre-schools, and forest kindergartens, complement traditional education with a focus on environmental literacy. They vary in their cost, curriculum, and size, but generally mean that children spend a significant part of their classes outdoors and complete activities that help them learn about the nature around them. 

Iqbal describes herself not just as a forest schools convert, but an evangelist. “As a family doctor, I see so much heartbreaking mental health difficulty in young people every working day,” she wrote in a message to Popular Science. “I genuinely believe and hope that these streams of education—which allow children to develop mindfulness, body awareness, and relationship with nature, each other, and oneself—may be a little bit of an antidote to the challenges of modern life.”

She sends her daughter to a forest school in England, where the movement has flourished in recent years. In 2017, a shortlist of the best nurseries in the United Kingdom were all outdoor-focused. The schools are also common in Scandinavia, where the idea originated. Now, the trend is catching steam in the US as well. 

Forest schools have been around in the states since the 1960s, but have seen consistent growth since the 2010s, and a surge since the pandemic. Natural Start Alliance, which is a professional group for educators involved in environmental education, for newborns up to 8-year-olds, reports that it’s seen a big increase in interest in the past decade. In 2017, the organization logged about 275 nature preschools schools across the US; by 2022, that number had risen to more than 800 forest schools.

[Related: Homework might actually be bad]

Emily Van Laan, a communications specialist for Natural Start Alliance, attributes this to a few changes: increased conversation about the importance of early childhood development, the rise of play-based learning, concern over time spent on screens, and the spread of COVID-19 itself. She says that forest schools are scattered throughout the country, but have particularly high concentrations in California, Washington, and Minnesota.

“Sometimes people think about this approach to education as only being in places where the weather is always nice or always mild,” Van Laan says. “And that is definitely not the case. We see nature pre-schools in almost every state, including Alaska and Hawai’i, and definitely in every region of the US.”

Each school’s approach to outdoor learning will differ depending on the region. A program in Texas would think of exercises that keep kids cool during warmer months, or help them navigate snakes in the area. One in Minnesota would consider how children can stay warm and active when the temperature plunges, or teach them to forage for plants and fungi. 

“Every program will have guidance that is clearly communicated with parents in terms of the temperature barrier,” Van Laan says. For example, the forest school will tell parents how long children will spend outside in a certain temperature before going inside to take a break. Educators are also trained in risk assessment, like knowing the signs of when a child becomes too hot or cold.“The importance of having the right gear is a huge part of nature preschool,” Van Laan adds. “So they often do parent education on layering and a lot of programs often provide gear to the students that are enrolled.” 

Most programs are tuition-based and can be expensive, Van Laan says. But some offer a sliding scale or scholarships. One program in Wisconsin is free thanks to a partnership between a school district, nature center, and the YMCA. In Minnesota, 13 nature preschools are partially covered through public funding. 

Forest schools teach children how to be environmental stewards, something that is especially important as the world grapples with a changing climate. But there’s no research-based consensus on how to teach young children about climate change right now, Van Laan notes. (Even for older students, New Jersey is the only state with a mandated K-12 curriculum on climate change.) Van Laan says to start, educators should focus on teaching kids to connect with nature. “Certainly we’re not laying the responsibility of saving the planet on their tiny shoulders,” she says. 

[Related: Food forests can bring climate resilience, better health, and tasty produce to city residents]

At the same time, some forest schools have come face to face with the impacts of climate change. “The daily reality and urgency of climate change has increased,” she says. “And while we don’t want to introduce young children to ideas that frighten them, we also want to recognize their capacity for understanding. There are outdoor programs in California, for example, that have to close because of wildfires … Children are aware of these things. There’s no way to shield them from this knowledge, because they’re seeing it, they’re experiencing it.”

Iqbal says she’s happy her daughter has the unique opportunity to connect with nature daily—something she feels is made even more important with climate change. “My God, will the next generation need to know this and to look after this, after everything our generation and the generations before have created for them.”

Correction (April 24, 2023): The article previous said that Minnesota has 12 school districts with publicly funded nature preschools. The correct number is 13 nature preschools in total.

The post Young kids learn the realities of climate change in forest schools appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Today is a very special holiday where a skunky smell permeates the air. If you’re celebrating 4/20, Popular Science has the perfect lineup of dope science stories to make you everyone’s favorite bud. Don’t puff puff pass on this one!

Essential cannabis accessories

First things first, everyone needs some cannabis supplies before lighting up. But with so many twists on glassware and other options, how do you decide? From vaporizers to grinders to pen batteries, PopSci’s roundup of essential cannabis accessories will walk you through the choices.

A step-by-step guide to rolling a joint

Rolling a joint can’t be that hard, right? Wrong. Thankfully, in honor of 4/20, our DIY step-by-step guide will explain both the art and the science of rolling a joint, with advice straight from some of New York City’s expert budtenders. It’s the perfect refresher for veterans and crash course for newbies, complete with photos, detailed instructions, and material recommendations.

Can CBD help you chill? Here’s what we know so far.

CBD, THC’s sister molecule, has been working its way into various products as part of a budding industry. CBD is legal in more US states than cannabis, and can be added to almost any product as long as it has less than 0.3 percent THC. It’s a great alternative for those looking for stress relief, or don’t want the psychoactive effects of cannabis itself. Still have some questions about CBD? It’s not a panacea, but it may be worth trying out.

Is growing weed sustainable? The answer is complicated.

Using cannabis products to ease climate anxiety might be a Catch-22. Researchers say it’s hard to measure the environmental impact of today’s celebrated plant: Grow operations across the US take up a lot of water, land, and energy. Here’s what we know about the sustainability of cannabis.

Can you overdose on weed?

All substances have their risks, what about weed? Well, thankfully its not possible to overdose in the traditional sense, but overdoing it does pose some safety threats. Before you celebrate 4/20, listen to this Ask Us Anything podcast on the side effects of weed to gain some insights on responsible consumption.

The tasty chemicals flavoring the edible cannabis boom

Cannabis may have a distinctive smell, but a little-known aspect to users and non-users alike is that each strain has a special chemical composition. Like wine with its various aromas (such as floral, fruity, or earthy) different strains of cannabis possess a signature scent and taste. What makes them unique? Terpenes, or “terps,” are aromatic compounds found in many herbs and flowers. There are hundreds of known kinds that yield diverse flavors and effects. PopSci reported a comprehensive overview on the science of terpenes, ending with a list of the most buyable varieties.

Is marijuana a performance-enhancing drug? The best evidence says no.

Unfortunately for many athletes, cannabis use still falls on the list of prohibited substances. These regulations are in place to prevent the use of performance-enhancing drugs and ensure fair competition, but does cannabis really belong on the same list as steroids? Learn why the scientific reasoning behind cannabis regulations in sports might be lacking.

Cannabis gets its high-inducing power from ancient viruses

The next time a friend thanks a higher power for cannabis, remind them to appreciate viruses for their genetic contributions. (At the very least, it was a joint effort.) The psychoactive and medicinal effects of cannabis probably evolved from ancient viruses Mapping the genome of the plant posed a challenge to researchers as an illicit substance, but as it slowly became legal in different states over the past two decades, they dove deep into its background. What better time than 4/20 to learn the evolutionary history of cannabis.

Why German scientists got cows stoned

Nobody wants animals to get high on our supply, but these German scientists did it on purpose with cows. Not to laugh at the animals’ “pronounced tongue play,” as researchers described: They wanted to test if leftover organic matter from the hemp industry could be fed to livestock, reducing waste and curbing methane emissions from regular hay and soy. The German study led to some especially silly bovine behavior and THC-spiked milk.

Does CBD show up on a drug test?

Using cannabis products might lead to a positive drug test that could cost you a job or other opportunities. For those that want the stress-reducing effects of cannabis, but have to keep off the grass, consider quality products with this CBD drug test and product guide.

The post On 420, learn more about weed with these carefully cultivated science stories appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

In Dick Ogg’s 25 years of commercial fishing, he’s had a few close encounters with whales—mostly while pulling Dungeness crab pots off the ocean floor. “I’ve had whales right next to me,” within about five meters, says Ogg. “They follow me, they watch, they’re curious. And then they go on about their business.”

Ogg is fortunate his interactions have been so leisurely. For nearly a decade, California’s whales and crabbers have been locked in a persistent struggle. From 1985 to 2014, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported an average of 10 whales were entangled in fishing gear each year along the west coast of the United States. But between 2015 and 2017, that number jumped to 47 entanglements per year. Since 2015, most of the identifiable gear found on entangled whales has been from crab pots. For crabbers, efforts to protect whales from entanglement often hit their bottom line.

The Dungeness crab fishery is one of California’s largest and most lucrative; until recently, it was considered one of the most sustainable fisheries in the state. In recent years, managers have sought a balance between protecting whales and ensuring crabbers’ livelihoods. But as climate change transforms the northeast Pacific and whales are increasingly at risk of being entangled in crabbers’ lines, that delicate balance is beginning to unravel.

The 2015 crabbing season was a catastrophe for both crabbers and whales. A marine heatwave nurtured a bloom of toxic algae that pushed anchovies close to shore, and the whales followed. That year, NOAA recorded 48 entangled whales along the US west coast—nearly five times the historical average. The algae also rendered the crabs inedible, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) delayed the start of the fishing season by several months. The federal government declared the failed season a fishery disaster.

In 2017, the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity sued the CDFW over the spate of entanglements, prompting the department to set up a rapid risk assessment and mitigation program that closes portions of the Dungeness crab fishery when whales are nearby. The new approach has decreased entanglements, but it’s come at a high price for commercial fishers.

The CDFW has a handful of other tools they can use to protect whales, such as shortening the crabbing season and limiting the number of traps crabbers can drop. But according to a recent study, the only measure that could have effectively protected whales during the heatwave—shortening the crabbing season—is the one that would have hampered crabbers the most. And even then, these strong restrictions would have only reduced entanglements by around 50 percent.

If a similar marine heatwave hits again, entanglements could spike, too, says Jameal Samhouri, a NOAA ecologist and author of the paper. “It’s going to be really hard to resolve these trade-offs,” he says. “There may be some hard choices to make between whether we as a society want to push forward conservation matters or allow the fishery.”

Every year since the CDFW set up its mitigation program, the fishery has faced closures. Since 2015, the crabbing season has only opened on time once. Though the heatwave is gone, a boom of anchovy has kept whales close to shore.

For Ogg, the most difficult part of the season is waiting to go fish and not having any income. “It’s been really, really tough for a lot of guys,” he says. Another recent study calculates that in 2019 and 2020, whale-related delays cost California Dungeness fishers US $24-million—about the same as they lost during the heatwave in 2015.

Smaller boats, the study showed, were most severely impacted by the closures. It’s a trend Melissa Mahoney, executive director of Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust, has seen firsthand. While a large boat might set hundreds of crab pots in a day, smaller vessels can’t make up for a shortened season. “I just don’t know how long a lot of these fishermen can survive,” Mahoney says.

With climate change, marine heatwaves are now 20 times more frequent than they were in preindustrial times. As the Earth grows warmer, heatwaves that would have occurred every 100 years or so could happen once a decade or even once a year. In this hotter world, balancing the needs of both crabbers and whales will only grow more difficult.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission.

The post Turf wars between whales and crabbers have increased due to climate change appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article originally appeared in Grist.

In the premier episode of Apple TV’s climate show, Extrapolations, it’s 2037 and Earth is in turmoil. Global temperatures have reached record highs. Wildfires rage on every continent. People lack clean drinking water, while a stone-faced billionaire hoards patents to life-saving desalination technology. 

People are understandably upset. Because it’s nearly a decade and a half in the future, protests now include towering holograms and desperate calls to limit global warming — which has long since blown past 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — to 2 degrees C. One thing is eerily familiar, though: In one scene, demonstrators chant “net-zero now!” — a catchphrase with origins at the end of the last decade. 

To some, this is a surprising slogan to hear today, let alone in 2037. Although the concept of global net-zero is rooted in climate science, today’s carbon neutrality pledges from individual governments and corporations have been criticized in some quarters as a “con,” because they allow polluters to continue emitting greenhouse gases. The carbon offset projects that are supposed to neutralize all those residual emissions are often questionable, if not a sham.

“If today’s version of net-zero is still the rallying cry for climate action 15 years from now, we are in big, big trouble,” said Rachel Rose Jackson, director of climate research and policy for the nonprofit Corporate Accountability. “I hope we’re headed down a different path.”

Just what that path looks like, however, remains a matter of debate.

The concept of net-zero is rooted in the climate science of the early 2000s. Between 2005 and 2009, a series of research articles showed that global temperatures would continue rising alongside net emissions of carbon dioxide. The “net” acknowledged the role of long-term processes like deep-ocean carbon uptake, in which the seas absorb the pollutant from the air. These processes occur over decades, even centuries.

The term “net-zero” doesn’t appear in the Paris Agreement of 2015, but it was at about that time that it went mainstream. Based on recommendations from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, countries agreed in Article 4 of the accord to achieve a “balance” between sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions during the second half of the century.

So far, so good; this is relatively noncontroversial. “Global net-zero is nonnegotiable if you’re serious about climate targets,” said Sam Fankhauser, a professor of climate change economics and policy at the University of Oxford. Where things start to skew, however, is when individual countries and businesses adopt net-zero targets for themselves. “That’s where you leave the science and get into the realm of policy and opinion,” Fankhauser said.

Sweden became the first country to legislate a midcentury net-zero goal in 2017. Since then, that target has exploded in popularity, almost to the exclusion of other pledges. Some 92 percent of the global economy is now covered by a patchwork of such commitments, made by entities including 130 countries and 850 of the planet’s largest publicly traded companies. 

Fankhauser considers that good news. “None of those firms or organizations had any targets at all before, so they’re moving in the right direction,” he said, although he added that there’s lots of room for improvement in the integrity of those promises. A global analysis published last year found that 65 percent of the largest corporate net-zero targets don’t meet minimum reporting standards, and only 40 percent of municipal targets are reflected in legislation or policy documents.

Others, however, have harsher words for something they consider little more than “rank deception” from big polluters. With heads of state and fossil fuel companies pledging net-zero yet planning to expand oil and gas reserves, Jackson said the logic behind carbon neutrality has been “completely lit on fire” by greenwashing governments and corporations. “They have entirely co-opted the net-zero agenda,” she said. 

At the heart of the issue lies that little word, “net,” and the offsets it implies. When companies or governments can’t get their climate pollution to zero, they can pay for offset projects to either remove carbon from the atmosphere or prevent hypothetical emissions — like by protecting a stand of trees that otherwise would have been razed. Under ideal conditions, a third party evaluates these offsets and converts them into “credits” polluters can use to claim that some of their emissions have been neutralized.

The problem, however, is these offsets are too often bogus — the market for them is “honestly kind of a Wild West,” said Amanda Levin, interim director of policy analysis for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. For projects claiming to avoid emissions, it’s difficult to prove the counterfactual: Would a given forest really have been cut down without the offset project? And carbon removal schemes like those based on afforestation — planting trees that will store carbon as they grow — might last only a few years if a disease or forest fire comes along.

Levin said polluters too often use poorly regulated and opaque “junk offsets” to delay the absolute emissions reductions required to combat climate change. Although the IPCC includes offsets in nearly all of its pathways to keep global warming well below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), experts agree those offsets should be considered a last resort used only when it’s no longer possible to further cut climate pollution. 

“Net-zero does not mean that we don’t have to take steps to directly reduce our emissions,” Levin said. 

Many, many others — from environmental groups to scientists to policymakers — agree. Where opinions differ, however, is what to do about it. Many net-zero critiques are paired with suggestions for reform, like a 2022 report from a U.N. panel that blasted nongovernmental net-zero pledges as “greenwash.” It recommended tighter guidelines on reporting and transparency, as well as new measures to ensure the integrity of offsets.

Carbon Market Watch, a European watchdog and think tank, takes a slightly different approach. In a February letter to members of the European Parliament, the organization called for a total ban on “carbon neutrality” claims for companies’ products, arguing that such boasts give consumers the false idea that business as usual can continue without adverse impacts on the climate or environment. 

“To say that you neutralize your climate impact by investing in an avoided deforestation program halfway across the world? That’s not scientifically sound,” said Lindsay Otis, a policy expert for Carbon Market Watch. “It deters from real mitigation efforts that will keep us in line with our Paris Agreement goals.”

To Otis, it’s not necessarily offset projects that should be banned. Although she acknowledged that many are problematic, she said mitigation efforts like reforestation can have “a potential real-world benefit,” and it would be a mistake to stop funding them. Instead, she considers this a communication problem: Rather than allowing companies to claim carbon mitigation projects cancel out residual emissions, Carbon Market Watch favors a “contribution claim” model, in which polluters advertise only their financial support for such projects. Some carbon credit sellers like Myclimate are embracing a version of that model, as is the global payment service Klarna.

Carbon Market Watch distinguishes between “carbon neutrality” claims, which describe companies’ products and current environmental performance, and “net-zero” claims about what companies say they’ll do in the future, as in “net-zero by 2050.” It says the latter are still permissible, but only if backed by a detailed plan to quickly drive down emissions and not offset them.

On its face, this is similar to an alternative benchmark that has gained popularity in recent years: “real zero,” which involves the rapid elimination of all fossil fuel production and greenhouse gas emissions without the use of offsets. At least two major companies, the utilities NextEra and National Grid, have eschewed their own net-zero goals in favor of real zero. However, some environmental groups — including a coalition of 700 organizations from around the world — take the concept further. They see real zero as a whole new lens with which to view equitable climate action, one that rejects a single-minded, technocratic focus on greenhouse gas emissions. 

“The real zero framing puts at the center not just the urgency” of climate mitigation, “but also fairness,” said Jackson, the policy director at Corporate Accountability. She and others say real zero is an opportunity to reorient the international climate agenda around new priorities, like funneling climate finance to the developing world and protecting Indigenous land rights. It also sets faster decarbonization timelines for the biggest historical polluters and demands that they pay reparations to communities most harmed by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

It’s a far-reaching and ambitious agenda, and its calls for climate justice are broadly supported by experts and policy wonks. Still, some push back, returning to the idea of net-zero as a global necessity. 

“While real zero is a valuable guiding light, net-zero is still a worthy and necessary goal,” said Jackie Ennis, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her modeling shows that even the most ambitious carbon mitigation scenarios will require offsets for the hardest-to-abate corners of the economy, which she defined to include waste management and animal agriculture. She pointed to work from the independent Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market to define criteria that define a “high-quality” offset — including whether it contributes to sustainable development goals and doesn’t violate the rights of Indigenous peoples.

According to Fankhauser, the “gold standard” here is geological removal, in which carbon is drawn out of the atmosphere and locked up in rock formations. This technology can’t yet handle even a tiny fraction of the planet’s overall carbon emissions, but experts say it could one day enable offsets that are less prone to double-counting and more likely to sequester carbon for the long haul.

Fankhauser suggested a sort of middle ground between real and net-zero, in which governments set different decarbonization targets for different sectors: net-zero for those like shipping and steel-making for which zero-carbon alternatives aren’t yet viable, and the total elimination of emissions for the rest of the economy. Some jurisdictions already do something like this. The economy-wide net-zero target set by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act prohibits offsets for the power sector and caps them at 15 percent for the state’s overall emissions by 2050. That means 85 percent of Empire State emissions reductions must come from actually reducing emissions. 

“That’s a perfect example of how policymakers are trying to constrain the use of offsets so they’re being used where it’s most valuable,” said Levin, with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

More global efforts, however, are hard to come by, likely because there’s so much contention around the net-zero agenda. One thing people seem to agree on, however, is that the status quo is not working. Although thousands of companies and governments have pledged to reach net-zero sometime in the next several decades, the planet is still on track for dangerous levels of global warming — 2.8 degrees C (5 degrees F), to be precise. That’s more than enough to “cook the fool out of you,” as one protester in Extrapolations so eloquently put it.

“The current trajectory is one of failure,” Jackson told Grist, though she said it’s not too late to turn things around. “The money exists, the technology exists, the capacity exists — it’s only the lack of political will. If we’re brave enough to alter course and redirect toward what we know is needed, then a totally different world is possible.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post Inside climate activists’ uneasy relationship with ‘net-zero’ appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article originally appeared in Grist.

Spring has sprung unusually early in the eastern United States. From parts of the Gulf Coast all the way up through southern New England, leaves are popping out of shrubs and trees days or even weeks ahead of schedule. Some areas are experiencing their earliest spring on record, which means communities are also enduring an unusually early allergy season. Experts say rising temperatures, among the most visceral consequences of unfettered fossil fuel combustion, play a role in this year’s accelerated spring. 

Phenologists — people who study biological life cycles — use two metrics to delineate the change in seasons: First bloom, when plants begin to flower, and first leaf-out, when leaves unfurl. This year, first bloom and first leaf-out started creeping up the East Coast between three and four weeks ahead of schedule. That’s not entirely unusual; natural variation in seasons results in an early spring every few years. But, in some places, spring arrived extremely early — earlier than any time in the past four decades. 

Parts of central Texas and the Louisiana coast, southern Arkansas, southern Ohio, the D.C. area, New York City, and the New Jersey coastline all clocked their earliest spring on record, said Theresa Crimmins, director of the National Phenology Network, a group that collects data on seasons and other natural cycles. The organization uses mathematical models that combine historical observations of first leaf and first bloom with temperature and weather data to predict when lilacs and honeysuckles, typically the first plants to turn green each year, will start becoming active. The group then compares that first growth to an average baseline from the three decades between 1991 and 2020. The network’s models show that spring arrived a full 20 days ahead of schedule in spots across the eastern U.S. The trend was particularly vivid in the mid-Atlantic region.  

Warmth has everything to do with when trees start budding and leaves begin opening. This year, an especially mild winter in the eastern U.S., plus a string of very warm days in recent weeks, created ideal conditions for an early-onset spring. “That’s really what caused things to get so far ahead of schedule,” Crimmins said. 

It’s tough to peg climate change to a particular early leaf-out in any one place, but evidence of anthropogenic warming is obvious in how the timing of seasons in the U.S. has changed in the past several decades. “There is a clear underlying trend over the long term toward progressively earlier starts to the spring season in much of the country, much of the eastern U.S. in particular,” Crimmins said. “That is the result of steadily increasing global average temperatures.” 

Earlier springs are associated with a host of problems for human health. Recent research shows that the lengthening growing season has led to an allergy season that is 21 percent more intense and 20 days longer, on average, in North America. Shortened winters allow insects that carry disease, such as ticks and mosquitos, to get active earlier and spread pathogens to other animals and humans. 

“There’s a good chance that if you’re a sufferer of seasonal allergies and live in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S., you’re already feeling the effects of an early bloom,” Ben Noll, a meteorologist who tracks weather in New York’s Hudson Valley, told Grist.  

And early spring is a nightmare for farmers across the country who are already struggling to adapt to rapidly shifting environmental conditions. Mississippi’s blueberry crop was imperiled a couple of weeks ago when a hard frost descended on the state after a spate of abnormally warm days caused blueberry bushes to bloom early. One farmer in the state estimated that the frost wrecked 80 percent of his crop. 

“These seasonal changes can make life particularly tough for farmers whose livelihoods depend on the weather and ultimately produce the food that we consume,” Noll said.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post The earliest spring on record is bad news for the eastern US appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

As average global temperatures continue to rise, America’s pastime could be entering the “climate-ball era.” A report published April 7 in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society found that since 2010, more than 500 home runs can be attributed to higher-than-average temperatures. These higher-than-average temperatures are due to human-made global warming.

While the authors of this study only attribute one percent of recent home runs to climate change, their study found that warmer temperatures could account for 10 percent or more of home runs by 2100, if emissions and climate change continue on their current trajectory.

[Related: What’s really behind baseball’s recent home run surge.]

“Global warming is not just a phenomenon that shows up in hurricanes and heat waves—it’s going to alter every aspect of how we live and play,” study co-author and doctoral candidate in geography at Dartmouth University Chris Callahan tells PopSci in an email. “Reducing human emissions of greenhouse gasses is the only way to prevent these effects from accelerating.”

This study primarily arose because Callahan, a huge baseball fan, was interested in any possible connections between climate change and home runs. “This simple physical mechanism—higher temperatures mean reduced air density, which means less air resistance to batted balls—had been proposed previously, but no one had tested whether it shows up in the large-scale data. It turns out that it does!” Callahan says. 

Callanhan and his team analyzed more than 100,000 Major League Baseball (MLB) games and 220,000 individual hits to correlate the number of home runs with the occurrence of unseasonably warm temperatures during the game. Next, they estimated how much the reduced air density that results from high air temperature was a possible driving force in the number of home runs on one given day compared to other games. 

Other factors, such as performance-enhancing drugs, bat and ball construction, and technology like launch analytics intended to optimize a batter’s power were also taken into account. While the team does not believe that temperature is the dominant factor in the increase in home runs, particularly because present day batters are primed to hit the ball at optimal angles and speeds, temperature does play a factor.

The team particularly looked at the average number of home runs annually compared to every 2 degrees Fahrenheit increase in local average temperature at every MLB ballpark in the US. They found that the open-air Wrigley Field in Chicago would experience the largest spike (more than 15 home runs per season per 2 degree change), while Tampa Bay’s dome roofed Tropicana Field would stay level at one home run or less regardless of how hot it is outside the stadium. 

[Related: Will baseball ever replace umpires with robots?]

Night games lessened temperature and air density’s potential influence on the distance the ball travels, and covered stadiums would nearly eliminate the influence. Additionally, the study did not name precipitation as a factor, after all, most games are postponed or delayed. The number of runs per season due to temperature could be higher or lower depending on the conditions on each game day.

“I think it was surprising that the [heat’s] effect itself, while intuitive, was so clearly detectable in observations. As a non baseball fan, I was astounded by the data,” study co-author and geographer Justin Mankin tells PopSci. Mankin also noted that some next steps for this kind of research could potentially be looking into how wooden bats should change due to warming and how other ballistics based sports (golf, cricket, etc.) are affected by the increased temperature. 

While more home runs arguably makes for more exciting games, exposure to players and fans to extreme heat is a major risk factor that MLB and its teams will need to consider more frequently as the planet warms. 

“A key question for the organization at large is what’s an acceptable level of heat exposure for everybody and what’s the acceptable cost for maximizing home runs,” Mankin said in a statement. “Home runs are one pathway by which temperature is affecting game play, but there are other pathways that are more concerning because they have human risk attached to them.”

The post Hotter weather could be changing baseball appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Melting ice sheets in Antarctica can retreat much faster than scientists previously thought. A study published April 5 in the journal Nature found that at the end of the last Ice Age, parts of the Eurasian Ice Sheet retreated up to 2,000 feet per day. This rate is 20 times faster than previous measurements. These changes far outpace even the fastest-moving glaciers studied in Antarctica, which are estimated to retreat as quickly as 160 feet per day. 

The new findings could be crucial to better understanding today’s ice melt.

The Eurasian Ice Sheet was the third-largest ice mass during the last Ice Age and retreated from Norway about 20,000 years ago. At its largest, it had a span of almost 3,000 miles. Mirroring these retreats are ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, which have lost more than 6.4 trillion tons of ice over the past three decades. Both of these modern-day ice sheets are responsible for more than one-third of total sea level rise. 

“Our research provides a warning from the past about the speeds that ice sheets are physically capable of retreating at,” Christine Batchelor, study co-author and physical geographer from Newcastle University, said in a statement. “Our results show that pulses of rapid retreat can be far quicker than anything we’ve seen so far.”

[Related: We’re finally getting close-up, fearsome views of the doomsday glacier.]

For this study, an international team of researchers used high-resolution imagery of the seafloor to see how the ice sheet changed over. They mapped out more than 7,600 small-scale landforms called “corrugation ridges” on the seafloor around where the ice sheet once stood. The ridges are less than eight feet high and are spaced around 82 to 984 feet apart. These types of ridges are believed to have formed when the ice sheet’s retreating margin moved with the tide. Seafloor sediments are pushed into a ridge every low tide, so two ridges would have been produced during two daily tidal cycles. The spacing helped the team calculate the enormous speed of retreat. 

This kind of data on how ice sheets reacted to past periods of warming can help inform computer simulations which predict future ice-sheet and sea-level change. It also suggests that these periods of rapid melt may only last for days to months, which are relatively short periods of time from a geologic standpoint. 

“This shows how rates of ice-sheet retreat averaged over several years or longer can conceal shorter episodes of more rapid retreat,” study co-author and University of Cambridge glaciologist Julian Dowdeswell said in a statement. “It is important that computer simulations are able to reproduce this ‘pulsed’ ice-sheet behavior.”

[Related: Ice doesn’t always melt the same way—and these visuals prove it.]

Understanding these seafloor landforms also showcases the mechanics behind rapid ice retreat. The study found that the former ice sheet retreated most across the flattest point of its bed where, “less melting is required to thin the overlying ice to the point where it starts to float,” explained co-author and Cambridge glacial geophysicist Frazer Christie from Scott in a statement. “An ice margin can unground from the seafloor and retreat near-instantly when it becomes buoyant.”

The team believes that pulses of similarly quick retreat could soon be observed in some parts of Antarticia, including West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier. Nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier,” Thwaites could undergo a similar pulse of rapid ice retreat since it has recently retreated close to a flat area of its bed.

“Our findings suggest that present-day rates of melting are sufficient to cause short pulses of rapid retreat across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, including at Thwaites,” said Batchelor. “Satellites may well detect this style of ice-sheet retreat in the near-future, especially if we continue our current trend of climate warming.”

The post Antarctic ice can melt 20 times faster than we thought appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Water is quickly flooding back into California’s Tulare Lake Basin, engulfing towns and farms, submerging roads, and reviving a so-called phantom lake. Tulare was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi until settlers diverted its source rivers, forcing it to vanish by the mid-20th century. Now, it seems Tulare Lake is back with a vengeance. 

According to a 2007 study for the US Environmental Protection Agency, Tulare Lake was once a permanent feature of the San Joaquin Valley. It covered an estimated 790 square miles, creating a biodiverse wetlands ecosystem that encompassed approximately 10 percent of California. In the late 1800s, settlers began diverting Tulare’s tributaries for agricultural purposes, incrementally drying the lake and exposing nutrient-rich soil. 

[Related: Rain, storms, and mudslides batter California]

Now, the lake-turned-farmland is one of the most important agricultural regions in the state, worth an estimated $2 billion dollars in dairy products and crops like grapes, cotton, corn, alfalfa, almonds, and pistachios. While an influx of water is a relief to many in California, easing a years-long drought and refilling reservoirs, it spells disaster for regions like the Tulare Basin. Residents are already seeing vast amounts of water threaten their livelihoods—and it’s only just beginning. If current conditions keep up, says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain,this may be the worst flood for the Lake Tulare Basin yet.

What is a phantom lake?

A phantom lake is a seasonal body of water, typically reviving during periods of intense precipitation. These lakes are usually not very deep, as far as lakes go: Prior to water diversion, Tulare was estimated to be about 37 feet deep. Shallow lakes dry up much faster than deeper ones, owing to their larger surface area to volume ratio, allowing the sun to heat up and evaporate the water quickly. The California Central Valley’s hot, arid climate makes its phantom lakes especially ephemeral. 

Owens Lake, 220 miles north of Los Angeles, is another ghost that has recently resurrected. The construction of Los Angeles’ aqueduct depleted the freshwater body by diverting its tributary in 1913, but the lake is now rapidly refilling for the first time in 110 years. 

Tulare Lake has a similar backstory. It comprises a natural watershed for the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which feeds meltwater through multiple rivers and into the basin. Today, levees and dams prevent water from entering the basin by diverting or blocking these rivers. Though, as evidenced by the recent storms, those systems can only do so much to prevent flooding in the face of an extreme influx of water.

Why is Tulare Lake flooding again?

Atmospheric rivers—long, narrow plumes of atmospheric moisture—are to blame for the region’s recent storms. They originate in the tropics, where warm air can take up much more water than in colder climates. Climate change is raising temperatures and the atmosphere’s capacity for holding water, amplifying storms in California and many parts of the world. 

Despite the already significant flooding, most of the water that will enter the Tulare Basin hasn’t done so yet, Swain explains. Plenty of snow can still melt and flow down from the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Flood risk will likely rise across California following an uptick in extreme precipitation events, but the Tulare Lake area is the most vulnerable. With its low elevations and proximity to the Sierra Nevadas, “[the basin] is the place where we very strongly anticipate that flood risk will increase the most in a warming climate,” Swain says.

With global heating driving up temperatures and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, rain has begun to replace snow at high elevations and snowmelt has accelerated earlier in the year. Swain also points out that a much more severe flood could occur in a future scenario with slightly warmer temperatures, but the same amount of precipitation. Rain and snow create the flood, but rising temperatures intensify it.

Where is all the water coming from?

The Sierra Nevada mountain range lies east of the San Joaquin Valley. Each spring, as temperatures warm, the snowpack accumulated over the winter begins to melt. As it does so, gravity pulls meltwater down from the mountains and into the lowest regions of the valley—namely, the Tulare Lake Basin./p>

This year, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is three times larger than normal and still growing. As of April 4, 2023, the estimated snowpack for the southern Sierras is 302-percent above average.

“All of that water is eventually going to have to enter the San Joaquin watershed, and a lot of it’s going to pass through the Tulare Lake Basin,” Swain says. “That’s going to present some serious challenges—I mean bigger challenges than we’re currently seeing.”

In the coming weeks, the Tulare Lake Basin and larger San Joaquin Valley will, unfortunately, experience deeper and more widespread flooding.

“There’s just that much water up in the mountains, it can’t go anywhere else, right?” Swain adds. “… In the end, the water always wins.”

How long with the Tulare Lake flood last?

Tulare Lake is an isolated, shallow body of water. It has no tributaries or outlets, so whatever water enters the basin sits there until it evaporates. An impermeable layer of clay underneath the former lake prevents most water from exiting through the ground.

[Related: What is a flash flood?]

The lake has occasionally been revived in the past. In the last big flood event in 1982 and 1983, the second wettest period in recorded history in the area, the lake did not fully disappear until 1985, per the Fresno Bee. The amount of water that has already accumulated in this year’s flood could take months or even years to evaporate—and there’s still a lot of snow waiting to melt in the wings. As of April 5, current precipitation levels in the Tulare Lake Basin rival its wettest years on record, 1968 and 1969.

What are the solutions to the flooding?

Restoring natural floodplains, adding levee setbacks and recharge basins, and “essentially giving water more room to roam in places where we’ve pre-designated it so it doesn’t cause too many problems” are among the list of solutions for the Tulare Lake region and its residents, Swain says.

But implementing land use changes is easier said than done. The San Joaquin valley has a long history of water wars, and no single entity has the authority to make these changes. Private landowners are responsible for many of these decisions, leading to extralegal activity and political conflict.

“This is a very difficult problem legally, practically, and ethically, and I don’t think there are any obvious solutions,” Swain notes. “Even though there are some obvious land use changes that would help the broader problem, getting there and implementing them in an equitable way is far from a straightforward thing to do.”

It’s already too late to do anything this spring besides survive the influx of water and try to control the damage. The challenge now lies in long-term planning for future floods. Moving forward, local conversations about these decisions should be held, including Indigenous groups like the Yokut people who were forcibly removed from the area in the 1800s.

“We’re really in a tough spot where these are big problems that have been known for a long time,” Swain says. In the coming months, he expects water will inundate some places that are now dry. Not only that, but adding water to farmland that has been treated with fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals may mobilize contaminants. Farms with animal agriculture produce lots of fecal waste, threatening microbial contamination. Tulare County has already issued a health warning regarding floodwater contamination.

“It’s going to be a long spring for some in the San Joaquin Valley and the Tulare Basin, in particular,” Swain says.

The post This phantom lake in California is back with a vengeance appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article originally appeared in Grist.

Last year, U.S. renewable electricity generation surpassed coal for the first time, according to newly released federal data. The report marks a major milestone in the transition to clean energy, but experts say that much faster progress is needed to reach international climate targets.

According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal statistical agency, combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022. Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent — for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The figure narrowly exceeded coal’s 20 percent share of electricity generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021. 

The growth in renewable electricity was largely driven by a surge in added wind and solar capacity, the agency said. Texas was the top wind-generating state last year, producing more than a quarter of all U.S. wind generation. It was also the leading state for natural gas and coal power. Iowa and Oklahoma landed at second and third in wind generation, accounting for 10 percent and 9 percent of national wind power respectively. 

California took the lead in solar, clocking in with 26 percent of the nation’s solar electricity. Texas came in second at 16 percent, followed by North Carolina at 8 percent. Renewable generation also exceeded nuclear for the second year in a row, after surging ahead for the first time in 2021. 

But the report found that fossil fuels still dominate the country’s energy mix. Natural gas remained the top source of electricity in the U.S. — its share rose from 37 percent of electricity generation in 2021 to 39 percent in 2022. 

For 2023, the Energy Information Administration forecasts additional growth in renewables. The agency predicts wind power will increase from 11 percent to 12 percent of total power generation this year. Solar is projected to rise from 4 percent to 5 percent. Coal is expected to further decline from 20 percent to 17 percent. Meanwhile, natural gas generation is expected to remain unchanged.

Despite the encouraging news, some energy experts say the uptick in renewables still isn’t fast enough. On Tuesday, the International Renewable Energy Agency, an intergovernmental organization, announced that global annual investments in renewables need to more than quadruple to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). The assessment echoes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top climate science body, which called for a rapid scale-down of greenhouse gas emissions largely produced from fossil fuels. 

Melissa Lott, director of research for the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, told the Associated Press that the $369 billion in clean energy spending authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act should have a “tremendous” impact on further accelerating domestic renewable energy growth. But to reach that potential, the U.S. may need new policies to remove hurdles that stand in the way of building new clean energy infrastructure. 

In the United States, rapid deployment of renewable energy has been hindered by practical barriers including delays in connecting projects to aging electric grids. At the end of 2021, thousands of wind, solar, and battery storage projects were waiting to connect to grids across the country. According to data from the Department of Energy, less than 20 percent of wind and solar projects waiting to be connected are successfully completed. And even when projects are approved, developers often discover they need to pay for new transmission lines to deliver power to residents and businesses. Those transmission lines often face further permitting delays.

“It doesn’t matter how cheap the clean energy is,” Spencer Nelson, the managing director of research at the nonprofit ClearPath Foundation, recently told the New York Times. “If developers can’t get through the interconnection process quickly enough and get enough steel in the ground, we won’t hit our climate change goals.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

The post For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in the US appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their Sixth Synthesis Report on climate change (AR6), following a week-long meeting in Switzerland. The up to 50 page-long report finds that there is still a chance for humanity to avoid the worst of climate change’s future harms, but it might be our last chance.

“This report can be summarized as a message of hope,” said IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee in a press conference. “This report clearly emphasizes that we do have technology and know how and tools to solve climate problems.” These are the major takeaways from the new report.

We must reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2035

According to the report, carbon pollution and fossil fuel use must be reduced by nearly two-thirds by 2035 in order to stave off the worst effects of climate change. More than 100 years of burning fossil fuels, in addition to unequal and unsustainable energy and land use ,has led to global warming of 2°F above pre-industrial levels. This increase has caused more frequent and intense extreme weather events, and makes the world more dangerous for life in every region of the planet.

[Related: Here’s how global warming will change your town’s weather by 2080.]

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to all new fossil fuel exploration by 2040. Additionally, he called for carbon-free electricity generation in the developed world as early as 2035.

“Humanity is on thin ice — and that ice is melting fast,” Guterres said. “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”

The report also says that investment and adaptation measures to climate change must be ramped up to reach the goal of the 2015 Paris climate agreement of limiting the amount of warming to 2.7°F.  The world has already warmed 2°F, making it a few tenths of a degree away from some of the most dire effects of climate change. Earlier IPCC reports detailed the harms at this level of warming, which includes worsened storms, famine, and sea level rise. 

Adaptation and mitigation has huge net benefits

AR6 also outlines that the solutions lie in climate resistant development, which provide wider benefits to society as a whole. Better access to clean energy and technology can improve health outcomes, particularly for women and children. Low-carbon forms of transportation (walking, cycling, public transit, etc.) can improve air quality. The economic benefits from improving people’s health by reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be roughly the same or possibly greater than the costs it will take to reduce emissions. 

[Related: Pandemic shipping took a heavy toll on the climate.]

The panelists at the press conference stressed how actions this decade are crucial to ensure a safe future and that this report points to the co-benefits from acting now will have more than the IPCC’s report from 2014 (AR5).  

Political and financial will is key

The report also highlights the imperative role of financing adaptation and mitigation measures. The authors found that while government’s are key to enforcing policy, the financial sector must play their role too. 

“At the core, the financial system needs to be able to respond to the challenges ahead,” said Amjad Abdulla, IPCC Vice Chair. “There’s plenty of financing that’s available for multiple reasons and multiple activities, but our underlying assessment suggests, in that context, the investments that need to take place in both climate adaptation and mitigation needs to rise by three to six times at least.”

The report and press conference focused on the disparity between rich and developing nations, as wealthier nations cause more carbon dioxide emissions, while poorer countries get hit harder by extreme weather. The report calls for an increase in financial help for developing countries to adapt to a warmer world and switch to environmentally sustainable forms of energy. Following the UN’s Climate Conference in November 2022, financial pledges were made for a damage and compensation fund for developing countries. 

[Related: 3 of the the biggest climate decisions from COP27.]

The report is based on data from a few years ago, and does not take into account fossil fuel projects that are already in development and comes one week after President Biden approved the massive Willow oil project in Alaska. This new site could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day and is seen by some political columnists and Democrats as a betrayal by President Biden. 

“The Synthesis Report makes clear that we need swift and bold action to have any chance of averting the worst of the climate crisis. Under President Biden’s leadership, the U.S. has made historic progress in building an equitable clean energy economy, including the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Jill Tauber, EarthJustice Vice President of Litigation for Climate & Energy, in a press release. “However, the administration is undermining its own gains by greenlighting carbon bombs, like the Willow project, which would lock us into decades of more greenhouse gas emissions.”

In tandem with the reports findings, the World Resources Institute also points to fact that it is not too late to work to ensure a better future for the planet. 

“Despite their dire warnings, the IPCC offers reasons to be hopeful,” said World Resources Institute President and CEO Ani Dasgupta, in a press release. “The report shows a narrow path to secure a livable future if we rapidly correct course. This involves deep emission reductions from every sector of the economy, as well as much greater investments to build resilience to climate impacts and support for people facing unavoidable climate losses and damage. 

The post ‘Humanity on thin ice’ says UN, but there is still time to act on climate change appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Despite a series of devastating rain storms during December 2022 and January 2023, large portions of the western United States are still experiencing drought conditions. The US is just one of multiple countries facing abnormally dry conditions that are being exacerbated by human-made global warming. 

[Related: The nation’s largest water supplier declares a ‘drought emergency’ ahead of 2023.]

The eastern Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya) is forecast to face a sixth consecutive poor rainy season this spring which is intensifying the worst drought the region has seen in 40 years. (There are typically two rainy seasons per year: March to May and October to December.)

The drought is primarily due to a combination of warmer temperatures changing the climate and a weather phenomenon called La Niña. La Niña can temporarily reconfigure weather patterns around the globe and bring more rainfall to places such as Indonesia and Australia while reducing rain in eastern Africa.

In August 2022, a rare third consecutive La Niña was forecast by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO). “The worsening drought in the Horn of Africa and southern South America bears the hallmarks of La Niña, as does the above average rainfall in South-East Asia and Australasia. The new La Niña Update unfortunately confirms regional climate projections that the devastating drought in the Horn of Africa will worsen and affect millions of people,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement. 

A separate WMO report from November 2022 showed that the La Niña conditions are persisting. 

The drought has triggered widespread food insecurity, with Somalia on the brink of famine. Over 1.3 million people in Somalia have been forced to leave their farms and seek food elsewhere.  In Kenya, meteorologists pointed to climate change’s involvement in the crisis.

“It is time we started including climate change as a factor in our development plans. The current drought which we warned about some years ago has wider ramifications on the social economic conditions of the region including peace, security, and political stability,” Evans Mukolwe, former director of the Kenyan and UN weather agencies, told The Associated Press.

[Related: La Niña is likely back for another unpredictable winter.]

Countries in South America are also facing similar La Niña driven dryness. Since 2019, the central region of the continent has seen drought conditions. Neighboring Uruguay declared an agricultural emergency in October 2022 and the drought has also hit Argentina’s soy, corn, and wheat crops. The country is the world’s top exporter of both soy oil and meal and third for corn and the dry conditions have led to sharp cuts in harvest forecasts. 2022 was Central Argentina’s driest year since 1960. 

Scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) conducted a rapid report on the drought, concluding that climate change is not directly reducing the rainfall here, but the high temperatures are likely worsening the already dry conditions. Last week, Argentina and surrounding countries saw a heat wave which quickly evaporated some of the precipitation that had fallen during January and earlier this month. 

“Higher temperatures in the region in late 2022, which have been attributed to climate change, decreased water availability in the models,” the WWA wrote in their report. “Climate change probably reduced water availability over this period, increasing agricultural drought, although the study could not quantify this effect.”
WWA uses observations and climate models to see if climate change factors are present in extreme weather and compare what is happening now with what has happened in the past.

The post La Niña is exacerbating drought conditions for millions appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

In 2009, Prince Albert II of Monaco asked experimental vehicle manufacturer Venturi to take a crack at designing an electric vehicle that could handle the harsh cold of Antarctica. Over the next 12 years, the company went to work. After testing out two full prototypes, the company pulled off a final product launch on June 1, 2021. The Venturi Antarctica, as the vehicle is called, has been transporting scientists and lab equipment in eastern Antarctica since December 2021.

Designing an electric vehicle for the harsh climate of Antarctica is no easy feat. The battery and other components have to be able to tolerate the frigid Antarctic temperatures, and there needs to be space to store research equipment and transport the researchers comfortably. Venturi has experience with experimental electric vehicles going back to 2000, and has competed in Formula E, the top-tier electric car racing competition in the world, since its inaugural season in 2014. 

[Related: Boaty McBoatface’s new mission is more serious than its name]

According to Venturi, scientists based at the Belgian Princess Elizabeth research station have driven the Antarctica EV over 500 kilometers (310 miles) in just one summer of use. The vehicle has a range of 50 kilometers (31 miles), with space for a second battery if the scientists need more range. However, its range can vary depending on how compact the snow it has to drive on is, and scientists started noticing some problems. 

As climate change has affected global temperatures, Antarctica has warmed. Average temperatures on the icy continent ranges from a frigid -50 degrees Celsius (-58 F) inland to around -10 C (14 F) on the coasts, and the vehicle, designed for the extra cold, needed tweaks to tolerate the relative warmth. Venturi instructed researchers to limit trips to 40 kilometers (25 miles), and is beginning work on modifications to restore the vehicle to its true glory. 

Since Antarctica is covered almost entirely in snow, the Antarctica EV uses a continuous track system, just like you’d expect on a snowcat or a snowmobile. The treads spread the 5,500 pounds of vehicle over its entire surface area, preventing the Antarctica EV from sinking into the snow like a wheeled vehicle would. But the warmer temperatures have caused the snow to stick to the sprockets that drive the treads, creating unwanted vibrations that could further damage the vehicle. The company has since redesigned and replaced the sprockets in an attempt to keep the vehicle in working order.

Increasing temperatures also made it more likely for the cabin, which is packed with electronics and exposed to the sun, to overheat. To balance that out, Venturi has had to install a new ventilation system for a more comfortable riding experience. They also made a new cooling system for the power electronic systems themselves.

Venturi announced on January 24 that their next set of improvements will be focused on redesigning the treads and increasing the vehicle’s range in Antarctica. Barring any other unforeseen circumstances, these should allow the vehicle to putter around the ice and snow of the southern continent more and more in the years to come.

The post This Antarctic EV goes where other electric vehicles can’t tread appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

ANCIENT ROMANS were masters of concrete, fashioning concoctions of sand, water, and rock into long-lasting marvels. Bridges, stadiums, and other structures they built with the stuff still stand tall—even harbors and breakwaters that have been soaked by tides and storms for nearly 2,000 years. This substance, robust to the microscopic level, far outlives the modern material, which generally requires steel supports in salt water and is still likely to corrode within decades.

When the Roman Empire ended, so did its method of making marine concrete. But by following chemical clues within ancient architecture, today’s scientists have revived this technique. In recent years, researchers have only gotten better at understanding it, applying lessons from fields as diverse as archaeology, civil engineering, and volcanology. They have pulled tubes of the ancient substance from under the ocean. They have zapped it with X-rays to observe its microscopic minerals. Now they’ve mixed up their own industrial version.

In 2023, for the first time in nearly two millennia, Roman-style marine concrete will be tested on a coastline. Silica-X, a US-based company that specializes in experimental glass, plans to place four or five slabs into Long Island Sound beginning this summer. Unlike virtually all other concrete products made today, which are designed to resist their environments, these 2,600-pound samples will embrace their aquatic surroundings—and are expected to become stronger over time.

As water moves through the porous solid, the material’s minerals will dissolve, and new, strengthening compounds will form. “That is actually the secret of Roman concrete,” says University of Utah geology and geophysics research associate professor Marie D. Jackson, who is working on a reboot of the stuff with a $1.4 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, a federal program that supports early-stage technology research. 

Jackson has spent more than a decade investigating what happens when Roman concrete meets seawater. She is part of a team working alongside Silica-X; the prototypes destined to be dunked in the New York estuary are based on her recipe.

“One hundred percent, Marie is the most significant person” trying to understand and develop the substance, says her frequent collaborator, Google hardware developer Philip Brune. More than a decade ago, when Brune was a Ph.D. student, he and Jackson created the first of what they call Roman concrete analogues. After making a terrestrial type—similar to the basis of the Pantheon and Trajan’s Market—they switched to a marine variant.

Jackson has an application in mind for these historical replicants: guarding against the effects of climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects that by 2050, sea levels will rise by an average of 10 to 12 inches along American coasts. Modern concrete seawalls, which need to be replaced roughly every 30 years, already cover a substantial percentage of the US shoreline. If waves keep mounting, it will be necessary to find a more durable and sustainable option to reinforce our seaboards. 

The duality of concrete

Concrete’s ingredients are about as simple as a sugar cookie’s. Besides water and air, it requires a grainy material called aggregate, which may be sand, gravel, or crushed rock. The other necessity is cement, a mineral glue that holds the constituents together. Portland cement, invented in the mid-1800s in England, remains the basis for the majority of modern concrete formulas. This mix results in a consistently potent product. “You can make it on Mars with the same ingredients, and you know it will work,” says Admir Masic, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Concrete Sustainability Hub.

Portland cement production is the noxious part: Not only is it thirsty for fresh water and energy, it also releases loads of carbon dioxide. The manufacturing process is responsible for 7 to 8 percent of worldwide CO₂ emissions, according to Sabbie Miller, a civil and environmental engineering assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. If the global concrete industry were a nation, its greenhouse gas footprint would be the third biggest on the planet, after those of China and the US. 

The concrete sector is aware of its product’s environmental legacy and is willing to work toward change, Miller says. Global construction conglomerate HeidelbergCement, for one, announced in 2021 that it would construct the first carbon-neutral cement plant by 2030, a facility that would capture greenhouse gases and lock them up in bedrock below the sea. Other types of concrete in development are designed to lock up pollution within the material itself. Miller, who is working on techniques to turn carbon into a solid, storable mineral, says these are “very much early-days, we’ll-see-if-it-works technologies.”

Making concrete as the Romans did should reduce troublesome emissions, researchers say, in large part because this substance won’t need to be replaced frequently. Yet the ancient process doesn’t yield quite as much compressive strength—this resource won’t hold up super-tall buildings or heavily traveled bridges. In the concrete heart of Manhattan, “We will not use Roman-inspired material,” says Masic, who co-authored a paper with Jackson and two others on reactions within the building materials in the Roman tomb of Caecilia Metella and is an inventor of what he calls a “self-healing” substance. Rather, he says, the timeless concoction could be fashioned into roads that resist wear, walls that withstand waves, and vaults that confine nuclear waste.

What Roman-style concrete does best is survive, aided by its ability to repair itself within days. “This material has phenomenal durability,” Brune says. “Nothing else that you find in the built environment lasts with as much integrity and fidelity.” A key ingredient that gives it this ability lies in the sand-like pozzolan of Pozzuoli, Italy.

From fire to the sea

Jackson did not set out to unlock the secrets of Roman concrete. Drawn to volcanology and rock mechanics, she studied Hawaii’s Mauna Loa in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In 1995, she spent a year in Rome with her family, living near the ruins of the Circus Maximus, once a huge chariot-racing stadium. While there, she became fascinated with the volcanic rock incorporated into the city’s celebrated classical architecture.

Roman concrete has been the subject of intense scholarship—structures that persist for thousands of years tend to attract attention. But Jackson, with her geologist’s eye, saw something powerful below the surface. “It is very difficult to understand this material unless one understands volcanic rocks,” she says. In her analysis, Jackson focused on tephra, particles spit out in a volcanic eruption, and tuff, the rock that forms when tephra firms up. 

Her first paper about Roman building materials, a collaboration with four other scientists, was published in the journal Archaeometry in 2005. The group described seven deposits where ancient builders had collected tuff and stones. These were products of explosive eruptions from two volcanoes north and south of Rome. By the first century BCE, Roman architects had recognized the resilience of these rocks and had begun to place them in what Jackson notes were “strategic positions” around the city.

While she examined materials in the Eternal City, others were separately scouring the sea. A trio of scholars and scuba divers—classical archaeologists Robert L. Hohlfelder and John Oleson, and London-based architect Christopher Brandon—launched the Roman Maritime Concrete Study in 2001. Over the next several years, they collected dozens of core samples from Egypt, Greece, Italy, Israel, and Turkey, taken from 10 Roman harbor sites and one piscina, a seaside tank for corralling edible fish.

Some of the locations they inspected were immense structures: At Caesarea Palaestinae, a port city built between 22 and 10 BCE during the reign of King Herod, Romans created a harbor from an estimated 20,000 metric tons of volcanic ash. 

To look inside the ruins, the archaeologists needed heavy machinery. “You used to whack some pieces off the outside of a big, maybe 400-cubic-meter lump of concrete on the ocean floor,” says Oleson, a University of Victoria professor emeritus. But that approach has flaws. The surface is already decayed from sea growth, so whatever breaks off might not represent what’s deeper inside. “You’ve also been whacking on it with a hammer,” he says, which can foul the opportunity to measure its material strength.

The project required a more precise, piercing touch. A cement company in Italy, Italcementi, provided funding and helped get the three men a specialized hydraulic coring rig. Diving beneath the Mediterranean, they spent hours drilling, extracting cylindrical cores up to 20 feet long. “It was difficult,” Oleson says. “In places like Alexandria, the visibility—because of all the things you don’t want to think about—was less than your arm length.”

That effort paid off. No one had been able to look at the layers within the submerged structures before. The opinion at the time was that the concrete must have been extra strong to last for thousands of years in seawater. But that wasn’t the case, Oleson and his colleagues found: “In modern engineering terms, it’s quite weak,” he says. What it was, though, was remarkably consistent in its volcanic elements. Oleson theorizes that grain ships used Neapolitan pozzolan as ballast, ferrying it to work sites hundreds of miles from its source.

In 2007, the trio’s presentation on seawater concrete won an award at the Archaeological Institute of America’s annual meeting. “I was standing there, bathing in the glory, and this short, excitable woman came up and started talking to me,” Oleson recalls. The stranger was Jackson, who Oleson says launched into a detailed explanation of the rare crystal minerals she had observed within Roman architectural concrete. Oleson, for his part, had never taken a college chemistry course, but he recognized a kindred spirit—and that this geologist had expertise his group needed. 

They gave Jackson access to the maritime samples. And when she peered inside, she found chemical laboratories on a nanometer scale.

Reactions in the rock

In his first-century work Natural History, Roman author Pliny the Elder wrote of a dust that “as soon as it comes into contact with the waves of the sea and is submerged, becomes a single stone mass, impregnable to the waves and every day stronger.” How precisely these wet grains—the pozzolan—became ever stronger would not be revealed for almost 2,000 years.

When Jackson investigated the core samples Oleson and his colleagues had obtained, she spotted some of the same features she’d seen in the architectural concrete in metropolitan Rome. But in the sunken stuff, she also saw what she labeled mineral cycling: a looping reaction in which compounds formed, dissolved, and formed new ones.

To make concrete, Romans mixed tephra with hydrated lime. That accelerates the production of a mineral glue called calcium aluminum silicate hydrate, or C-A-S-H. (The backbone of unadulterated modern concrete, C-S-H, is a similar binder.) This happens within the first months of installation, Jackson says. Within five to 10 years, the material composition changes again, consuming all the hydrated lime through a kind of microscopic interior remodeling. By then, percolating fluid “begins to really make a difference” as it produces long-lasting, cementlike minerals within.

Jackson and a team of scientists used sophisticated microscope and X-ray techniques, including work done at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Light Source, to look at these powerful but teeny crystals. “We were able to show systematically that Roman seawater concrete had continued to change over time,” she says. Within each pore of the concrete, seawater had reacted with glass or crystal compounds. In particular, she found stiff, riblike plates of a rare mineral known as aluminous tobermorite, which probably help prevent fractures, as she and her colleagues wrote in a 2017 paper in the journal American Mineralogist.

The ocean itself plays a vital role. Roman fabricators made their marine concrete mixtures with seawater, and its salts became part of the mineral structure—sodium, chlorine, and other ions helped activate the tephra-lime reaction. Once the concrete was in the tides, as fluid slowly percolated through the hulking edifices, life flourished on the facades. Worms made tubes and other invertebrates sprouted shells.

Modern reinforced concrete, meanwhile, needs a high pH to preserve the steel rebar within, which means its surface is less friendly to living things. Once it is cast, after about 28 days of hardening and curing, it is near its maximum sturdiness, Brune notes. (Attempts are underway to give newer kinds of concrete the ability to restore themselves, such as infusing the material with bacterial spores that create limestone.)

Specifically, concrete using Portland cement is as brittle as it is strong. Under too much strain, it cracks, sometimes with a sharp snap that propagates and causes wide-scale failure. “The ability of the material to carry further loads, it’s gone. It’s fractured,” Jackson says. 

Roman concrete breaks differently. Brune and Jackson have tested their analogues under strain, creating semicircles out of the blend and pressing them to the cracking point. They observed that unlike extremely inflexible substances that will fail and essentially split into halves, Roman concrete displaces the strain over many small fractures, without necessarily losing its overall integrity. “Roman concrete-style materials respond really well to that kind of cracking,” Brune says, adding that this feature could explain why the age-old recipe has endured so long despite earthquakes and the churn of aquatic environments.

White clumps of lime found in Roman concrete can also keep it robust, as Masic and fellow MIT scientists reported in a Science Advances paper in January. In lab experiments, the team drained water through cracked concrete cylinders for 30 days. Water continuously flowed through broken samples of typical concrete. But in concrete with added lime gobs, calcite crystallized to fill the gaps. 

Jackson and Brune have observed similar self-restoring abilities in their marine concrete replicas. In to-be-published experiments funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy grant, they again cracked semicircles of the concoction. When they placed the damaged arcs in containers of seawater, chemical reactions resumed—new glue accumulated in the fractures. This, Jackson says, is concrete that self-repairs.

New trials, new island

As 2023 surges on, Roman-style concrete will venture further than ever before. US Army Corps of Engineers research geologist Charles Weiss, who studies concrete and other structural materials, has submitted a proposal to try out Jackson’s formula. If the Vicksburg, Mississippi, military lab receives the funds—“Working for the government, nothing is for sure,” he says—Corps researchers will cast the material and place it in a body of water.

Elsewhere, another federal project’s failure may have helped Jackson’s creation along. In 2018 in South Carolina, at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory, scientists were trying to make a product that could safely store radioactive garbage.

The national lab wanted to create foam glass, a type of bubble-filled substance meant to be inactive, and contracted the Silica-X team to help. They weren’t successful. The mixture kept reacting with its surroundings—a problem because if radioactive waste receptacles dissolve, they can release unstable particles. But what’s bad for nuclear trash is good for seawalls designed to respond to their environs. Glass designers at the lab recognized this potential and connected Jackson with the company.

Despite the growing interest in Roman-style concrete, it is neither feasible nor sustainable to mine industrial amounts of pozzolan from Naples. Instead, Philip Galland, Silica-X’s chief executive, says its production process digs into nonnuclear US waste streams to obtain silica, which is then transformed into synthetic tephra. That will be the basis for the upcoming Long Island Sound field test, Galland says, in an “area where it can offer shoreline resilience.”

Silica-X plans to assess the 3.5-foot cubes’ durability over two years. Along with its partners—the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and Alfred University, home to an influential ceramics college—the company will analyze the material’s potential as a storm-surge barrier and how it performs as a habitat for microbes and other local marine life.

At the same time, Jackson has returned to her original subject matter: volcanoes. She is the principal investigator of a project to study Surtsey, a tiny volcanic island off of Iceland that’s just 60 years old. A UNESCO World Heritage site, it emerged from the Atlantic in sprays of smoke and lava from 1963 to 1967. “I remember when it first erupted,” Jackson says, “because my dad came home from work and told us that there was a baby volcano erupting.”

At Surtsey, scientists have found microbial life in basalt rocks previously untouched by humans. (Aside from research teams who arrive by boat or helicopter, visitors are banned from the volcano.) They have drilled to the seafloor, through stone that is still hot years after the last eruption, and examined the tephra there. As it slumbers, Jackson believes this place can reveal what happened in the early years of submerged Roman concrete. 

What she knows about the material has been gleaned from stuff that’s aged for thousands of years underwater. Although the young terrain is an imperfect replica of the coveted ancient ingredient—the fluids there aren’t quite the same as what percolated through the Roman structures—Jackson says she has already spied some similar geochemical processes. The ash and seawater around the volcano offer a parallel to the early reactions that gave a great civilization its building blocks. This is a living laboratory that could teach us Roman concrete’s art of change, witnessed on a scale as massive as a new island or as tiny as minerals morphing across millennia. If all goes well, the modern version of this powerful invention will outlast its makers just the same.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

The post Inside the project to bring ‘self-healing’ Roman concrete to American shorelines appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

There’s a new rogue iceberg floating around Antarctica. The almost 600 square-mile iceberg broke off of the Brunt Ice Shelf on January 22, according to scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Researchers at BAS’ Halley Research Station have been tracking the ice shelf’s behavior for several years.

The Brunt Ice Shelf itself is close to 500 feet thick. It “calved” when a crack called Chasm-1 that has naturally been developing over the last few years extended across the whole shelf, causing the new iceberg to break free. 

[Related: An East Antarctic ice shelf has collapsed.]

“This calving event has been expected and is part of the natural behaviour of the Brunt Ice Shelf. It is not linked to climate change,” said Dominic Hodgson, a glaciologist with BAS, in a statement. “Our science and operational teams continue to monitor the ice shelf in real-time to ensure it is safe, and to maintain the delivery of the science we undertake at Halley”. 

While the area of the ice shelf that houses the research station is unaffected by recent calving events, Brunt has a complex geological structure and the impact of calving events remain unpredictable.

The first signs of changes in Chasm-1 were spotted by satellites in 2012. It began to widen, and the BAS moved Halley Research Station 14 miles inland in 2016. By the following year, BAS began only deploying staff to the station from November to March (Antarctic summer) the following year.

“Our glaciologists and operations teams have been anticipating this event. Measurements of the ice shelf are carried out multiple times a day using an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments that surround the station,” said BAS Director Jane Francis, in a statement. “These measure how the ice shelf is deforming and moving, and are compared to satellite images from ESA, NASA, and the German satellite TerraSAR-X. All data are sent back to Cambridge for analysis, so we know what is happening even in the Antarctic winter – when there are no staff on the station, it is dark for 24 hours, and the temperature falls below minus 50 degrees C (or -58F).”

[Related: Giant ice cracks in Antarctica stymie important research for the second winter in a row.]

BAS says the changes in the Brunt Ice Shelf are a natural process and that there isn’t any connection to recent rapid calving events on Larsen C Ice Shelf. This shelf had extensive surface meltwater when an iceberg the size of Luxembourg broke off of the ice shelf in 2017, but still no evidence that climate change has played a significant role. 

Ted Scambos, a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, told The Washington Post that while the iceberg “is a huge mass of ice, about 500 billion tons … it is far from being the largest iceberg ever seen, which rivaled Long Island. These large iceberg calvings, sometimes as large as a small state, are spectacular. But they’re just part of how Antarctica’s ice sheet works. Most of the time they have nothing to do with climate change.”

Currently, BAS has 21 staff at the station who will maintain power supplies and facilities until February 6.

The post A chunk of ice twice the size of New York City broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

In 1896, Swedish physicist and chemist Svante Arrhenius predicted that an increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere would lead to a temperature increase. Five years later, his colleague Nils Gustaf Ekholm coined the term “greenhouse effect.” But it took over 80 years for people to seriously begin paying attention to their findings.

In the background, though, researchers were still projecting and collecting data on climate change. Studies published in the 1960s and ‘70s examining carbon dioxide’s relationship to the Earth’s average surface temperature led to the United Nations forming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and worldwide awareness of the issue.

Unfortunately, not all that data was used for the greater good. In 2015, Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times published an investigative report together detailing oil giant Exxon’s expansive knowledge of the potentially catastrophic effects of global warming way back in 1977. According to the account, the company funded research into carbon dioxide emissions and rising temperatures for about a decade before dramatically curtailing the program and beginning its strategy of climate denial.

ExxonMobil (the two oil companies merged in 1999) responded to the paper with a statement: “We unequivocally reject allegations that ExxonMobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports that are inaccurate distortions of ExxonMobil’s nearly 40-year history of climate research. We understand that climate risks are real. The company has continuously, publicly and openly researched and discussed the risks of climate change, carbon life cycle analysis and emissions reductions.”

[Related: ExxonMobil’s ‘net-zero’ goals don’t address its biggest source of carbon emissions]

But a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University wasn’t convinced. In 2017, Geoffrey Supran, now an associate professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami, and his advisor, science historian Naomi Oreskes, published a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters examining those documents. Supran found just the opposite—that Exxon funded climate change research in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s behind closed doors but questioned the findings publicly.

Five years later, Supran and Oreskes have published a follow-up review outlining exactly what Exxon learned about climate change, regardless of their public statements. It’s the first systematic analysis of any fossil fuel company’s climate projections and was published in the journal Science on January 12. Here are four of the bombshells they found.

1. Exxon’s models on fossil fuels and climate change were super accurate 

Supran says he was taken aback when he first overlaid Exxon’s climate projections with the actual data. “I had this moment of pause when I actually plotted it, and you see all these lines land so tightly around the red line of reality,” he explains.

Over the last 40 years, the company’s models accurately predicted the increase in global surface temperature over time at an average of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. It was also on the ball with projections on the increase in global temperature with radiative forcing, a metric that measures how much of the sun’s energy remains in Earth’s atmosphere. In fact, Exxon’s models performed better than average when compared to other climate projections from that era.   

2. The researchers correctly rejected the global cooling hypothesis, even as the company promoted it

Of the 14 Exxon climate projections that Supran examined for his paper, not a single one was massively wrong. “They all excluded the possibility of no human-caused warming,” he says. “The curves always went up. The only question was exactly how quickly they rose.”

One chart Supran analyzed was a long-term look that tracked global temperature over the last 150,000 years. This graph was presented to Exxon executives in 1977 and accurately mapped the average global temperature. At the meeting, company scientists warned the executives that emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could have catastrophic results. Yet, over the following decades, the company publicly pushed the myth of global cooling.

3. Exxon knew when the world would first notice the effects of climate change

In 1995, the IPCC announced it had irrevocable proof that human activities were fueling climate change, a fact it’s reiterated in each new study. Supran analyzed 10 internal reports and one peer-reviewed publication to find Exxon’s estimate: Eight of the 11 predicted the world would detect changes by 2000. But publicly, ExxonMobil executives only acknowledged human-made climate change in 2007.

4. The commissioned studies correctly described the amount of carbon dioxide that would lead to catastrophic climate change

Climate scientists measure atmospheric carbon dioxide in parts per million, which measures the mass of a particular substance compared to the mass of the mixture it’s a part of. For most of human history, carbon dioxide has remained below 300 parts per million. While the Paris Climate Agreement, which resolved to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, did not set a limit on parts per million of carbon dioxide, another United Nations report found that a level of 450 parts per million would give humanity a 50 percent chance of staying under the Paris temperature threshold.

[Related: Renewable energy is climbing in the US, but so are our emissions—here’s why]

When Exxon scientists wanted to know how much carbon dioxide they could reasonably emit, they opted to use an upper limit of 550 parts per million for 2 degrees Celsius. They calculated that somewhere between 251 and 716 metric gigatons (the world emitted 37 metric gigatons total in 2021) was the most humanity could burn before crossing that threshold. More recent estimates have narrowed that range to between 442 and 651 metric gigatons, showing that yet again, the world’s largest oil and gas company understood climate science as well as anyone.

The post 4 ways Exxon predicted climate change, but still denied it appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The planet’s oceans tell us a lot about the Earth’s health as a whole, especially in the face of climate change. According to countless studies, the major indicators of a changing climate in the ocean aren’t looking good. Climate change in the ocean can be measured by three indicators: rising temperature, salinity contrast (how salty vs. how fresh the water is), and the separation of the water into layers called ocean stratification. By all three measures, the ocean needs help. And fast.

According to a study published January 11 in Advances in Atmospheric Science, ocean heat, salinity contrast, and stratification do not show any signs of slowing down, and better forecasting of these changes is needed to prepare for the extreme climate future ahead. The study found that a new record of 0-2000m ocean heat content (OHC) was set and recorded in 2022, and roughly ~10 zetta Joules (ZJ) of heat was added into the ocean. A zetta Joule is unit used to measure “work” or “heat”. For context, 1 Joule is about the amount of work of lifting an apple a meter into the air—this is around 10²² times that.

[Related: Here’s how much climate change intensified 2020’s hyperactive hurricane season.]

The study summarizes two datasets from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) and NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) that analyze observations of ocean heat content and the impacts of the heat since the 1950s. According to the authors, both data sets consistently say that the upper 2000m OHC hit a record high in 2022.

“Global warming continues and is manifested in record ocean heat, and also in continued extremes of salinity. The latter highlight that salty areas get saltier, and fresh areas get fresher and so there is a continuing increase in intensity of the hydrological cycle” said Lijing Cheng, co-author and a researcher for the IAP/CAS, in a statement.

The amount of heat going into the ocean can have serious consequences, including fueling wetter and stronger hurricanes. These consequences can also arise very quickly. Additionally, increasing saltiness and ocean stratification can change how carbon, oxygen, and heat are exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere. This change in interaction can cause a loss of oxygen in the water called ocean deoxygenation, which harms both marine life and life on land. Reducing the amount of fish in the ocean can also economically harm communities dependent on fishing.

[Related: The ocean’s iodine helps create clouds, but high levels burn through the ozone layer.]

“Some places are experiencing more droughts, which lead to an increased risk of wildfires, and other places are experiencing massive floods from heavy rainfall, often supported by increased evaporation from warm oceans. This contributes to changes in the hydrologic cycle and emphasizes the interactive role that oceans play,” said Kevin Trenberth, a co-author of the paper and researcher at both the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Auckland, in a statment.

Higher water temperatures and salinity contribute to mixing instead of water layering, which is only part of what can throw off the delicate balance between oceans and the atmosphere. The authors say that continued tracking of Earth’s cycles and changes will help scientists determine strategies for preparing for the consequences from changes to the hydrologic cycle and Earth’s increasingly warming oceans.

“The oceans are absorbing most of the heating from human carbon emissions,” said co-author Michael Mann, a co-author and professor of atmospheric science at the University of Pennsylvania, in a statement. “Until we reach net zero emissions, that heating will continue, and we’ll continue to break ocean heat content records, as we did this year. Better awareness and understanding of the oceans are a basis for the actions to combat climate change.”

The post Earth’s oceans are getting hotter and saltier than ever before in human history appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

ON A FOGGY midsummer morning 54 miles northwest of Santa Barbara, California, SpaceX engineers hustled through a ritual they’d been through before. They loaded a Falcon 9 rocket with tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene and supercold liquid oxygen, a propellant combo that brought the craft’s nine Merlin engines roaring to life with 1.7 million pounds of thrust. Soon after, the machine shot through the stratosphere, ready to dispatch 46 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites into low Earth orbit. But the rocket made another delivery too: a trail of sooty particles that lingered over the Pacific hours after blastoff.

The launch was the company’s 32nd of 2022, maintaining its current pace of firing off close to one rocket per week. With a record number of rides shuttling equipment, astronauts, and über-rich tourists to and from Earth, the high skies have never been busier. Between government programs like China’s Long March and private shots like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, the world tallied some 130 successful launches in 2021 and is on pace to finish 2022 with even more. Many trips, however, spew tiny bits of matter into the stratosphere, an area that hasn’t seen much pollution firsthand yet.

Climate scientists are still working to fully understand how rocket residue affects the planet’s UV shield. But even if they find warning signs, some organization or authority figure would have to step up to establish emission standards for the industry. In the meantime, a few aerospace companies are exploring sustainable alternatives, like biofuels, to power their far-flying systems.

The increasing frequency of launches has researchers like Martin N. Ross, an atmospheric physicist and project engineer at the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research center in California, worried about the future of the stratosphere—and the world. Predictions for rocket traffic in the coming decades point dramatically up, like a Falcon 9 on a pad. Should the sun heat up enough of the particles from the fuel trails, as some computer models suggest it will, space travel could become a significant driver of climate change. “This is not a theoretical concern,” Ross says.

Unless you are reading this while floating aboard the International Space Station, you are breathing air from the troposphere—the bottommost band of the Earth’s atmosphere, which extends upward for several miles. The layer just above that, the stratosphere, sits anywhere from 6 to 31 miles above sea level and is deathly dull by comparison: There are barely any clouds there, so it doesn’t rain. The air is thin and freezing and contains ozone, an oxygen-based gas that protects all life from solar radiation but is toxic to the lungs.

Most greenhouse gases, including the 900 million tons of carbon dioxide produced by the aviation industry each year, trap heat in the troposphere. But rockets rip their vapors at higher altitudes, making them the single direct source of emissions in the upper stratosphere.

Acid in the sky

The stratosphere was people-free until 1931, when Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and his aide floated nearly 10 miles up, and back down, with a 500,000-cubic-foot hydrogen balloon. They were the first of many. By the 1960s, the US and Soviet space programs were regularly shooting rockets to the edge of the sky.

As astronaut and cosmonaut programs evolved during the Cold War, so did climate change research—especially studies of carbon dioxide pollution and atmospheric degradation. In the 1970s, NASA’s space shuttle program piqued the interest of atmospheric chemists like Ralph Cicerone and Richard Stolarski, who then attempted some of the first investigations into stratospheric rocket exhaust. The shuttle’s solid engines used a crystalline compound called ammonium perchlorate, which releases hydrochloric acid as a byproduct. Chlorine is highly destructive to ozone—the Environmental Protection Agency estimates a lone atom can break down tens of thousands of molecules of the atmospheric gas.

In a June 1973 report to NASA, Cicerone, Stolarski, and their colleagues calculated that 100 shuttle launches a year would produce “quite small” amounts of chlorine-containing compounds. But they warned that these chemicals could build up over time. Cicerone and Stolarski ultimately focused their attention on volcanic eruptions, because those belches represented larger and more dramatic releases of chlorine.

In the 1980s, British meteorologists revealed that the ozone layer in the Antarctic stratosphere was thinning. They identified the culprit as chlorine from aerosol spray cans and to O3-munching chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons from other human-made sources. That hole began to heal only after the 1987 Montreal Protocol, the first international agreement ever ratified by every member state of the United Nations. It phased out the use of CFCs, setting the atmosphere on a decades-long path to recovery.

In the wake of that treaty, “Anything that emitted chlorine was under suspicion,” Ross says. But it remained unclear whether rocket emissions too could alter the ozone layer.

For the following two decades, the US Air Force enlisted the Aerospace Corporation and atmospheric scientists like Darin Toohey, now a University of Colorado Boulder professor, to study the chemical composition of rocket exhaust. Using NASA’s WB-57 aircraft, a jet bomber able to fly 11 miles high and retrofitted for scientific observations, teams directly sampled emissions from American launch vehicles including Titan, Athena, and Delta into the early 2000s.

Freshly collected material from the plumes gave the researchers a firmer grasp on the ways solid propellant interacted with air. For instance, they examined the particles that were expelled when shuttle boosters burned aluminum powder as fuel—and how those bits reacted to ozone. The effect wasn’t as severe as they had feared, Ross says. Though the plumes depleted nearby ozone within the first hour after a launch, the layer was quickly restored after the emissions diffused.

Meanwhile, at the turn of the 21st century, blastoffs were decreasing in the US and Russia. After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry in 2003, killing its seven-person crew, NASA suspended other flights in the program for two years. Missions using the WB-57 aircraft to observe exhaust came to an end in 2005. Six years later, NASA officially retired the shuttle system.

New rockets, more soot

When SpaceX sent its first liquid-fueled rocket into orbit in 2008, it set the stage for more privately developed spaceflights. But the chemical it pumped into its marquee machines wasn’t anything new. A refined version of kerosene, Rocket Propellant-1 or RP-1, has powered generations of rockets, including the first-stage engines of the spaceships that ferried Apollo astronauts to the moon. It was well known and relatively cheap.

Sensing an aerospace trend, Ross, Toohey, and their colleague Michael Mills calculated what emissions would be produced by a fleet of similarly hydrocarbon-powered rockets anywhere between the Earth’s surface and 90 miles aloft. Their predictions, which they published in 2010 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, turned up something unexpected: an emissions signature full of black carbon, the same contaminant belched by poorly tuned diesel engines on the ground. “It seemed to have a disproportionate impact on the upper atmosphere,” Toohey says.

Those dark particles are “very, very good at absorbing the sun’s radiation,” adds Eloise Marais, an atmospheric chemist at University College London. Think of how you heat up faster on a hot summer day while wearing a black shirt rather than a white one, and you get the idea.

Near the ground, rain or other precipitation will flush dark carbon out of the air. But in the stratosphere, above rain clouds, soot sticks around. “As soon as we start to put things in that layer of the atmosphere, their impact is much greater, because it’s considerably cleaner up there than it is down here,” Marais says. In other words, the pristineness of the stratosphere makes it more vulnerable to the sun’s searing rays.

Black carbon particles can persist for about two years in the stratosphere before gravity drags them back down to the ground. They also heat up as they wait: In a study published this June in the journal Earth’s Future, Marais and her colleagues calculated that soot from rockets is about 500 times more efficient at warming the air than that from planes or emitters on the surface.

Another recent model run by Ross and Christopher Maloney, a research scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Sciences Laboratory, came to a similar conclusion about the dark stuff’s impact on climate change. Should space traffic increase tenfold within the next two decades, the stratosphere will warm by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, they predict.

That uptick is enough that “stratospheric dynamics [will] begin to shift,” Maloney says. Currents carry naturally produced ozone from hotter tropical regions toward cooler poles. If rockets scorch a pool of air above the Northern Hemisphere, where most launches take place, that warm-to-cold path could be disturbed—disrupting the circulation that ferries fresh O3 northward. The upshot: a thinner ozone layer at the higher latitudes and a toastier stratosphere overall.

Sizing up old launches can help clear up some of the gray areas in this process. In a paper published this July in the journal Physics of Fluids, a pair of researchers at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus simulated the plume from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from 2016. According to their model, in the first 2.75 minutes of flight, the craft generated 116 tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to a year’s worth of emissions from about 70 cars.

Toohey sees these projections as validation of the black carbon concerns he raised more than a decade ago—but thinks they’re not as compelling as direct observations would be. There has been “basically no progress, except additional model studies, telling us the original hypothesis was correct,” he says. What’s needed, he adds, is detection in the style of the earlier WB-57 missions. For example, spectrometers planted on the sides of spaceships could measure black carbon.

Policy is another limiting factor. The International Air Transport Association, an influential trade organization, has set carbon-neutral goals for airlines for 2050, but there is no comparable target for space—in part because there is no equivalent leader in the industry or regulatory body like the Federal Aviation Administration. “We don’t have an agreed-upon way to measure what rocket engines are doing to the environment,” Ross says.

While there are newer fuels out there, there’s no good way to determine how green they are. Even the one that burns cleanest, hydrogen, requires extra energy to be refined to its pure molecular form from methane or water. “The picture is very complex, as all propellants have environmental impact,” says Stephen Heister, who studies aerospace propulsion at Purdue University.

Atmospheric scientists say solutions to preserve the stratosphere must be developed collaboratively, as with the unified front that made the Montreal Protocol a juggernaut. “The way to deal with it is to start getting people with common interests together,” Toohey says, to find a sustainable path to space before lasting damage is done.

Photo credits for lead image: Left to right, top to bottom: Patrick T. Fallon/Getty Images; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Zheng Bin/Xinhua/Getty Images; Yang Guanyu/Xinhua/Getty Images; Cai Yang/Xinhua/Getty Images; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Korea Aerospace Research Institute/Getty Images; SOPA Images Ltd./Alamy (2); Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post/Getty Images; GeoPix/NASA/Joel Kowsky/Alamy; Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua/Getty Images; Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images; Zheng Bin/Xinhua/Getty Images

This story originally appeared in the High Issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

The post Rocket fuel might be polluting the Earth’s upper atmosphere appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This story ran as part of PopSci’s Hot Month. From unrelenting sunshine to sizzling grills, feeling hot (and cooling down) are part of the daily grind now. Warm up your brain with the latest science, gear, and smart DIY ideas. 

For the past millennium and longer, windcatchers have existed in and around the Persian Gulf. These architectural towers are perfect examples of natural ventilation and passive cooling—ideas that have become increasingly relevant in sustainable design. As architects and environmentalists alike seek to move away from conventional energy-intensive heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, windcatchers are a prime example of the marriage between architectural design and the environment as a solution to our new climate realities. 

If recent memories of sweltering summers aren’t enough motivation, data from the Environmental Protection Agency has shown that most states in the contiguous US can only expect the digits to climb on their thermostats. Eight of the top 10 warmest years on record in the US have occured since 1998, with 2012 and 2015 taking the spots for first and second. This year rang in as the fourth warmest. And there are ways to combat the problem that don’t involve an HVAC system.

[Related on PopSci+: This California company wants to make modern AC obsolete]

Keeping cool over the summer is all about controlling how the elements in the structure interact with solar energy. This, in turn, will determine the home’s design.

“Passive solar design… is all the things that you can do when you’re designing a building to basically naturally condition it and make it a better place to live,” says David Wright, an architect who has been in the sustainable design movement for nearly five decades. The principles of passive solar design are core to building houses that can both keep us comfy and prevent power bills from skyrocketing. 

1. Keep location in mind

Not all climates are created equal. Building in Boston versus in Austin will have its own unique set of restraints and challenges. As we face environmental threats of all kinds from wildfires in the West to hurricanes in the East, our homes must be built with the impending climate crisis in mind.

In an ideal scenario, your home will be oriented in such a way that it can conveniently take advantage of the naturally occurring wind patterns. By figuring out which way the summer breeze blows, you can better plan where entrances and windows will be placed to naturally cool your house. 

[Related: 5 ways to stay cool without blasting the AC]

If the topography allows it, you can even build your house so that, in the most tender of terms, it is earth-sheltered. These homes can either be entirely underground or have structures like walls or roofs built against soil. This is a particularly energy and cost-effective (at least in the long term) way of combating extreme climates. In the absence of a convenient hillside, you can install protective coverings like canvas, awnings or overhangs to prevent the sun from hitting the roof and walls of your house directly. Getting the depth of the overhang is crucial: Too deep and you lose your winter sun, too shallow and you’ve got too much summer heat. The proper measurements will depend on your location. You can hazard those calculations yourself using many available tools and guides online, or skip the searching and ask an architect for the specifics.

3. Place windows strategically

Windows are perhaps your most important tool when it comes to ventilating and cooling your home. Specifically, cross-ventilation relies on the concept that by creating windows of similar sizes opposite each other: air is sucked into the house, cools your body by helping the heat  evaporate off it, and then exits through the opposite windows. This creates a nice natural breeze. The key to creating good cross-ventilation is figuring out where the wind is coming from.

“You want to make sure you open windows on the west and the south where you can pick up those winds and then you need to get the wind back out,” says Vivan Loftness, a professor of architecture and former head of the school of architecture at Carnegie Mellon. “The more windows you can open, the more flow you’re going to get through the house. But if you want to speed up the wind, there’s a general rule of thumb that says you should have fewer open on the windward side and more open on the leeward side.”

Loftness is referring to the Venturi effect, a principle used in fluid dynamics which means that the speed of wind will increase if it is squeezed through a narrow opening, like wind tunnels in between skyscrapers. As the wind is drawn into the house through a smaller opening, it speeds up inside of the house, making the breeze feel stronger.

4. Create columns of moving air

By using some fundamental principles of chemistry and physics, you can also help redirect the airflow in your house. Using what designers call the stack effect, you can draw hot air towards the top of your house and move it away from pooling nearer the ground where people live, eat and sleep. Hot air rises because it is less dense than cooler air and so, creating a ventilation tower through high ceilings and a narrower opening, funnels the hot air into the tower. This motion pulls cooler air into the lower living spaces since it is more dense and will remain closer to the ground.

You can create this tower by either placing windows higher up, like clerestory windows (positioned near the ceiling) or skylights, or simply by creating spaces like atriums that have higher ceilings than the rest of the room. The greater the height difference between the peak height and the ground, the greater the effect. If you already have an attic, you can also create an attic hatch. In order to make sure that you’re not just recycling stale air, crack open a window to introduce some fresh air. (Don’t forget window screens for those pesky bugs.)

5. Choose roofing materials wisely

Insulate your roof. And while you’re at it, paint it, too. Insulating the top of your house, including the attic, prevents all the heat that builds up as sunlight hits the roof from entering the residence. It is an added layer of protection against the summer sun. Building your roof out of reflective materials is another way of making sure that less heat is absorbed through the roof. Like white linen on the beach, this has historically meant using materials that are lighter in color. But white roofs are not necessarily first on the list of most homeowners’ aesthetic desires. 

6. Build thicker walls

There’s a reason images of Mediterranean villas and Arabian desert abodes flood our minds when we think of hot sweltering summers. Those houses have traditionally always been built to withstand high degrees of warming. You’ll also notice a significant lack of wooden structures and attics. That’s because heavy, thick materials like concrete have a lot more thermal mass, which allows them to store excess heat during the day, which is then removed later at night by cool air. Through this process, materials like concrete, stone and brick are better at passively cooling homes because they essentially have a lot more capacity to store the heat that would otherwise get transferred to the air inside the house.

[Related: How heat pumps can fight global warming]

As Loftness explains, when we begin to design sustainability, we begin to design resilient homes. Resiliency is going to become increasingly important as storms and fires threaten how reliable our power is going to be. We might find ourselves in situations without air conditioning soon enough, and rather than going cold turkey then, we could design houses that don’t rely on artificial cooling now. 

The post 7 tips on how to build a house that stays cool appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

While snow is beginning to fall in parts of the northern hemisphere, it wasn’t too long ago that frosty mornings seemed impossible. This summer was the hottest on record for Europe and China, the second hottest for North America and Asia, and the and the fifth-hottest June-to-August period for the planet since record-keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA.

Scientists are working to better understand what extreme temperatures do to the human body. A study published today in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation finds that exposure to extremely hot or cold temperatures increases a heart disease patient’s risk of death.

[Related: Extreme heat days have tripled in cities over the past 40 years.]

“It underscores the urgent need to develop measures that will help our society mitigate the impact of climate change on cardiovascular disease,” study co-author Haitham Khraishah, a cardiovascular disease fellow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) and University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), said in a statement.

The team representing more than 35 international research institutions analyzed over 32 million global cardiovascular deaths over 40 years and found that more deaths occurred on days when temperatures were at their highest or lowest compared to more moderate climate days.

These findings used health data from 567 cities, in 27 countries, and on 5 continents between 1979 and 2019. The definition of “extreme weather” differed from city to city, but was defined in the study as the top 1 percent or bottom 1 percent of the “minimum mortality temperature,” or the temperature at which the lowest death rate occured.

They found that for every 1,000 cardiovascular deaths on extreme hot days (above 86° F in Baltimore) accounted for 2.2 additional deaths and extreme cold days (below 20° F in Baltimore) accounted for 9.1 additional deaths.

People with heart failure were most likely to be negatively impacted by very cold and very hot days, compared to other conditions such as stroke and arrhythmia. Those with heart failure saw a 12 percent greater risk of dying on extreme heat days compared with the optimal temperature days in a city and the risk of heart failure death increased by 37 percent during extreme cold. Additionally, there was a rise of 2.6 additional deaths on extreme hot days and 12.8 on extreme cold days for those with heart failure, compared to the other cardiovascular diseases studied.

“While we do not know the reason why temperature effects were more pronounced with heart failure patients it could be due to the progressive nature of heart failure as a disease,” said Khraishah. “One out of four people with heart failure are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, and only 20 percent of patients with heart failure survive 10 years after diagnosis.”

Some of this particular study’s limitations include an underrepresentation of data from South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. According to the team, it’s possible that extreme heat had more of an impact than initially measured due to this lack of data. 

[Related: The polar vortex is about to split in two. But what does that actually mean?]

The study factored humidity and air pollutants into their calculations, which also could have accounted for excess deaths in places experiencing temperature extremes. They also controlled for the lag effect, or the delayed effect of temperature on human health and climate zone.

While climate change is more associated with extreme heat, studies have found that climate change can cause extreme events on both ends of the temperature spectrum. One example is the disruption of the polar vortex, that brings frigid cold air from the arctic down to the northern hemisphere.

The team on this study expanded the heart disease mortality database within the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network, a group of epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and climate scientists studying the impact of climate change and environmental stressors on death rates.

“This study provides an indisputable link between extreme temperatures and heart disease mortality from one of the largest multinational datasets ever assembled,” said Mark T. Gladwin, Dean, UMSOM, Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore, in a statement. “The data can be more deeply mined to learn more about the role of health disparities and genetic predispositions that make some populations more vulnerable to climate change.”

The answers to these kinds of questions will be addressed in future research, according to Khraishah.

The post Heart disease-related deaths rise in extreme heat and extreme cold appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

It sounds like a page ripped out of a zombie apocalypse movie script, but biologists have managed to bring the dead back to life. In a study published without expert review online in November, environmental virologists resuscitated 13 amoeba-infecting pathogens trapped under several spans of permafrost in Siberia. The ancient viruses had laid dormant in ice for thousands of years: The youngest virus was estimated to be 27,000 years old and the oldest 48,500 years old, making it the most ancient virus to ever be reanimated. 

This isn’t the first time scientists messed with bygone nature. We’ve heard comeback stories of 32,000-year-old fruit to 101.5 million-year old bacteria found at the bottom of the ocean. “I thought, if they can revive a plant, we should be able to revive a virus [because] virus particles are inert,” says Jean Michel Claverie, a professor of genomic and bioinformatics at Aix-Marseille University in France, who was the senior author of the early research. The Arctic, specifically, is thought to have a reservoir of viruses locked in its many layers of ice.

[Related: Inside a frozen tunnel hiding the galaxy’s biggest secrets]

Claverie and his team have unthawed ancient amoeba-infecting viruses before by isolating them from permafrost core samples in the lab. But with climate change on their minds, they wanted to show that there’s a realistic chance of pre-ice age infections returning in a much hotter world. (Before this study, there were only two reports of frozen viruses, the pithovirus and mollivirus, remaining infectious after 30,000 years).

The authors successfully resuscitated 13 undocumented viruses taken from seven different permafrost samples in Siberia. The oldest was found at the bottom of a frozen lake, while others were buried in places like the stomach of a woolly mammoth and the intestines of the now-extinct dire wolf. The viruses came from amoeba-infecting families such as the pithovirus, pandoravirus, megavirus, and pacmanviruses. The researchers tested the pathogens’ infectious potential by exposing them to amoeba as bait, and found that they were still virulent. 

While the study only tested the infectiousness of amoeba-infecting viruses, Claverie infers that they’ve only scratched the surface on the number of contagious agents stuck in permafrost, including those that could target animals and humans. “Perhaps the most interesting finding is that if you try to revive ancient viruses from the melting permafrost, you can do it more easily than previously anticipated,” says Paulo Verardi, the department head of virology and vaccinology at the University of Connecticut, who was not a part of the experiment.

Of course, freeing a frozen pathogenic virus that might infect humans is a legitimate concern. One reason is because of the melting Arctic. The top “active” layer of permafrost briefly thaws in the summer, regularly releasing underground microbes back into our world. However, Claverie says the chances of ancient viruses encountering a proper host is small because they decay just as quickly as they’re let out when faced with heat, UV light, and oxygen. Climate change has accelerated the timeline of permafrost thawing, allowing deeper sections of ice to dissipate and potentially for more ancient viruses to be released. 

Rising temperatures have also made it easier for people to reside on the tundra. Siberia, a land rich in oil, is under constant mining and drilling, which has the potential to release these ancient viruses. With more people inhabiting these areas, there is a greater risk of a potentially dangerous virus, explains Claverie. For example, in 2016, a 12-year-old boy died from an anthrax outbreak in the Arctic Circle, which Russian authorities attributed to the release of centenarian spores being released from a warmed-up reindeer carcasses.

With the world still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, people are, understandably, on edge. In response to news on the paper, Twitter users expressed fear of another deadly pandemic and potentially something worse than H1N1 and SARS-CoV-2. However, “nothing in the study suggests that these viruses are capable of infecting humans,” says Michael Buchmeier, a professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, who was not affiliated with the research. He says that it’s “very unlikely” for a future pandemic to be caused by one of the revived pathogens in the study—with the worst-case scenario being that the amoeba-infecting viruses infect other protozoans.

For Veradi, the probability of an ancient Arctic virus re-emerging and causing problems to humans is very low, but not zero. However, he warns “it seems inevitable” that we’ll see a revival of a few of these organisms.

[Related: Can viruses be good for us?]

The idea of global warming thawing out deeper permafrost layers has drawn worry from other virologists as well. Mohamed Kamel, an assistant professor in medicine and infectious diseases at Cairo University in Egypt who has conducted his own research on climate change’s effects on infectious agents, argues that any possibility of millennia-old pathogens waking from their icy slumber should be a pressing matter. “This is definitely an issue worth worrying about, as it could result in major epidemics or even pandemics if not carefully monitored and contained,” he explains. One reason is the potential for novel microbial species to present unknown genotypes that we have no available vaccines for. Ancient strains that have been preserved for thousands of years could have also gained extremely robust characteristics as a way of surviving extreme elements. 

For now, rest assured that no sci-fi-like Siberian virus is infecting animals or humans. Nor are people turning into zombies, which one news outlet erroneously inferred from the study’s findings. If anything, the threat of another pandemic—no matter how small—may encourage virologists to invest more time into tracking viruses emerging from permafrost, as well as the living ones hanging out in other hidden reservoirs. 

The post Ancient frozen viruses don’t pose a threat to your health—yet appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Two researchers at the University of Notre Dame in collaboration with South Korea’s Kyung Hee University recently utilized quantum computing to help develop a new transparent window coating capable of blocking solar heat. In findings published in ACS Energy Levels, Tengfei Luo, Notre Dame’s Dorini Family Professor of Energy Studies, and postdoctoral associate, Seongmin Kim, worked together to devise their transparent radiative cooler (TRC) layer, which only permits external visible light that doesn’t raise indoor temperatures, thus cutting buildings’ cooling costs by as much as a third of current rates. According to the International Energy Agency, air conditioning and electric fans comprise 20 percent of buildings’ energy costs around the world—roughly 10 percent of human electricity consumption.

To determine the absolute best materials configuration, the team relied on machine learning and the promising field of quantum computing for a solution. Although in its relatively early phases of development, quantum computing offers immense potential due to its ability to far surpass traditional computing methods. Currently, even the most advanced of classical supercomputers rely on a binary state—representing information as 1’s and 0’s—to do all their calculations, meaning that there are limits to what they can and can’t achieve. Quantum computing, in contrast, can represent information as either 1, 0, or a combination of the two. This hypothetically gives scientists a massive advantage in numerous fields, such as natural science simulations and nuclear fusion research.

[Related: In photos: Journey to the center of a quantum computer.]

In order for Luo and Kim’s TRC design to work properly, incredibly thin layers of materials needed to be compiled in an exact way to ensure optimal heat reduction. In this case, machine learning and quantum computing teamed up to test models within fractions of a second, parsing through virtually ever possible mixture and material combination to find the best one.

The result is a 1.2 micron-thick layering of silica, alumina, and titanium oxide upon a glass base that is then coated with the same polymer used in contact lenses. The new combination subsequently outperformed other heat-reduction glass coating currently available. “I think the quantum computing strategy is as important as the material itself,” Luo said in a press release from the University of Notre Dame yesterday. “Using this approach, we were able to find the best-in-class material, design a radiative cooler and experimentally prove its cooling effect.”

As advancements progress, these kinds of transparent heat-reducing layers can be increasingly applied to windows and glass structures in order to help dramatically lower energy emissions as the world races to stave off climate change’s worst potential futures.

The post Scientists use quantum computing to create glass that cuts the need for AC by a third appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

After more than a decade of preparations, scheduling around seasons, controversies around human rights, and multiple labor lawsuits, the 2022 World Cup is deep into the group matches in Doha, Qatar. But there are other reasons why the current tournament stands out from the last 21 contests. This year international soccer authorities promised to deliver “the first carbon-neutral World Cup in history,” according to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ Sustainability Strategy.

The five notable objectives stated in the plan start with constructing and operating the World Cup sites to limit environmental impacts, while building locally. It also includes offsetting all greenhouse gas emissions produced for and during the tournament, as well as minimizing air pollution, landfill rubbish, and water use. This involves advancing low-carbon solutions, promoting waste management, and access to cleaner technologies in Qatar.

[Related: Cybersecurity experts blow the whistle on official apps for World Cup attendees]

The strategy further elaborates how FIFA aims to make the four-week competition carbon neutral. But what has this journey to prepare for the World Cup looked like for those living in Qatar? And how will the sustainability policies affect them after the players, tourists, and tournament officials pack up? “The event itself won’t have a significant effect—the design of the new developments in and around Doha, such as Lusail Stadium, where the final will be hosted, is actually very sensitive to climate effects and is designed to reduce urban heat island effects,” says Natasha Iskander, a professor at New York University and author of Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st-Century Qatar and Beyond. 

“Qatar, through an accident of geography, is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet. The temperatures will very soon become life-threatening—and certainly already are to the workers who build the World Cup,” Iskander explains. Some estimates put the temperature rise since 2010, when Qatar began breaking ground on the stadiums, at 1 degree Celsius per year.

The World Cup is meant to be a climate bubble: 12 years of work for a month of perfection. But behind FIFA’s strategies is a more sobering picture of the role fossil fuels play, both in the region and on the international soccer stage. Iskander points out that the hydrocarbon industry that has bankrolled the construction of the World Cup has accelerated climate change. At a price tag of $200 billion, this is the most expensive World Cup for a host country to date.

A lot of this funding is due to Qatar’s superior position in the energy industry. In an Oxford Business Group interview, Abdulla Mubarak Al Khalifa, group CEO of Qatar National Bank said, “Qatar has one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas and is the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas.” The country is only second to the US in terms of gas exports to the EU and UK; in 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to an energy crisis, and subsequently, a huge rise in demand for Qatar’s fuel reserves.

According to The Financial Times, a majority of the money spent on the World Cup infrastructure came from QatarEnery, the country’s state-owned petroleum company. QatarEnergy’s liquefied natural gas) revenues paid largely for much of the World Cup’s infrastructure. Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar’s energy minister, also told The Financial Times that it was very much in the country’s energy prospects to expand the company internationally in upcoming years.

While oil and gas are in great supply in Qatar, water is not. With its arid desert climate, the nation draws 60 percent of its freshwater from desalination plants. The World Cup is a further strain on that resource: It takes 10,000 liters of water a day just to keep the turf in each stadium cool and lush. FIFA’s sustainability strategy mentions using recycling and drip irrigation in hotels and other tourist centers, but it lacks detail on how these water management practices will extend to Qataris and workers at the tournament. (The government does have its own climate change initiatives as well.)

[Related: As California plans for a new desalination plant, take a look at how these facilities work]

Water infrastructure has been a long-term debate in this part of the world: In fact, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries cover 43 percent of the global desalination scope. However, with such a large number of processing plants, comes the need to power them. According to The Guardian, “The southern coasts of the Gulf are dotted with more than 300 desalination plants—mostly in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Bahrain.” In Qatar, there are plans to better integrate energy generation with desalination, but as of now, the thermal technology in the facilities depends on fossil fuels. So, while the World Cup claims to be carbon neutral, the desalination required to water the games and ceremonies themselves may already conflict with this claim.

FIFA estimates that Qatar will host 1.5 million foreigners over the course of the soccer tournament. But that’s eclipsed by the roughly 2 million laborers who raised the new parts of Doha from the ground, and the 3 million people who call the small peninsular country home. For them, sustainability needs to be long-lasting, even when the fame and fervor of the World Cup isn’t.

The post FIFA’s sustainability upgrades in Qatar won’t last beyond the World Cup appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Pushed by climate change, almost every part of the ocean is heating up. But off the west coast of the Galapagos Islands, there is a patch of cold, nutrient-rich water. This prosperous patch feeds phytoplankton and breathes life into the archipelago.

“The cool water sustains populations of penguins, marine iguanas, sea lions, fur seals, and cetaceans that would not be able to stay on the equator year round,” says Judith Denkinger, a marine ecologist at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.

Over the past four decades, this cold patch has cooled by roughly half a degree. Its persistence has scientists wondering how long it will hold. The Galapagos Islands are already famed for their biodiversity. Could it be that the water offshore will become a refuge for marine animals seeking cold water in a warming world? The answer, it seems, is yes. At least for a while.

There are other cold pools on the planet. One, in the North Atlantic just south of Greenland, is caused by the weakening of a global current that carries heat north. But according to a new study led by Kris Karnauskas and Donata Giglio, climate scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Galapagos cold pool is a product of the shape of the seafloor and the rotation of the planet—two things unlikely to change because of rising greenhouse gases. And the Galapagos are not the only islands seeing this effect.

Along the equator, several islands have unusually cold water lying immediately to their west. According to Karnauskas and Giglio’s work, this cooling is the product of upwelling caused by the collision of a deep ocean current against the islands lying in its path.

Analyzing 22 years’ worth of ocean temperature data collected by Argo floats, along with observations from satellites, ocean gliders, and cruises, the scientists constructed temperature profiles around several equatorial islands and pinpointed the location of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), a cold, fast-flowing current that travels eastward about 100 meters below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The EUC is held in place along the equator by the Coriolis force, an inertia brought on by the Earth’s spin on its axis. This same effect twists hurricanes anticlockwise north of the equator and clockwise south of it.

Karnauskas and Giglio’s work shows that when the EUC gets within 100 kilometers west of the Galapagos Islands, it suddenly intensifies as it’s diverted upward by the islands. This causes the water to be up to 1.5 °C cooler than the water outside this cold pool. The researchers found a similar, yet weaker, effect west of the Gilbert Islands in the western Pacific Ocean.

In a separate study, Karnauskas shows that over the past few decades, the EUC has been getting stronger and deeper. It’s also moved about 10 kilometers south, bringing its path more in line with the Galapagos Islands. All of those changes contribute to the observed cooling, says Karnauskas.

For the Galapagos marine ecosystem, this cooling is “a bit of a mixed bag,” says Jon Witman, a marine ecologist at Brown University in Rhode Island who was not involved in the studies. “The cool upwelled water of the EUC certainly has important positive impacts,” he says. But when combined with other oceanic processes that also cause temperatures to drop, such as La Niña, the cooling can hurt certain wildlife, such as by cold shocking corals, causing them to bleach and sometimes die.

For the near future, this shield of cold will likely benefit life around the Galapagos Islands and other equatorial islands. But this cooling water is fighting a losing battle with a warming atmosphere, says Karnauskas. “This cooling trend probably won’t last through the century; it will eventually be overwhelmed,” he says.

If some species are protected at least for a while, however, the Galapagos could become a genetic bank that could be used to reseed devastated marine ecosystems elsewhere, suggests Karnauskas. “And it’s just beautiful that it’s the iconic Galapagos that we’re talking about here.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine, and is republished here with permission.

The post The Galapagos might stay cool as the world heats up appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

The planet is currently in a rare triple-dip La Niña year, but climate change will likely affect the opposite weather system El Niño as well. These fluctuations in the sea surface temperature near the equator in the Pacific Ocean can weather around the world.

But just how much these systems will be impacted has been up in the air. However, a new study, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, finds that climate change is expected to strengthen El Niño and La Niña events by 2030.

In the study, researchers analyzed 70 years of sea surface temperature data from the Pacific Ocean. They used this data to model the changes in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) alongside the expected projections of continued global warming.

[Related: The past 8 years have been the hottest on human record, according to new report.]

ENSO represents Earth’s most significant year-to-year fluctuation in the climate and it can be a major driver of floods and droughts around the world. Differences in sea surface temperature in the Pacific fluctuate and switches between three main stages, warm El Niño, cold La Niña, and neutral.

During a La Niña event, ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean cool, alongside changes in tropical atmospheric circulation (mostly winds), barometric pressure, and rainfall. Importantly, this cooling doesn’t mean that global-warming is letting up. The colder surface waters in the Pacific Ocean push the jet stream north, which tends to lead to drought conditions in the southern part of the United States and heavy rains and flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. Winter temperatures are warmer than normal in the South and cooler than normal in the North during a La Niña year, and the weather event can also lead to a more severe Atlantic hurricane season.

El Niño has the opposite affect on global weather patterns: the trade winds weaken and warm water is pushed toward the west coast of the Americas. The Pacific jet stream moves south, giving areas in the northern US and Canada dryer and warmer than usual conditions, and wetter conditions in the Southeast and Gulf Coast. The Pacific jet stream moves south, giving areas in the northern US and Canada dryer and warmer than usual conditions, and wetter conditions in the Southeast and Gulf Coast.

[Related: Fossil fuels are causing a buildup of human health problems.]

Previous studies have suggested that these events may vary depending on where in the warm or cold ocean temperatures are located within the Pacific. According to the authors, this study sought to model how climate change will play into El Niño and La Niña events and where these changes in weather patterns could be detected.

The models found that climate change’s influence on El Niño and La Niña in the form of ocean surface temperature changes in the eastern Pacific will be detectable in only eight years, close to 40 years earlier than previously thought, potentially causing even more extreme weather events.

According to study co-author Wenju Cai, an oceans and atmosphere research scientist at CSIRO, it has been hard to identify where the change is occurring most strongly since ENSO’s oscillation is very complex and variable. “However, our study shows the effect of climate change, manifesting as changes in ocean surface temperature in the tropical eastern Pacific, will be obvious and unambiguous within about eight years,” Cai writes.

The study finds that Australia particularly needs to prepare for more floods and drought and the entire world face must be prepared for affects on human health, food production, global economies, and more

“Our findings should be incorporated into policies and strategies to adapt to climate change,” writes Cai. “And crucially, they add to the weight of evidence pointing to the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stabilise Earth’s climate.”

The study comes as the United Nations annual conference on climate change (COP27) draws to a close.

The post We’re only 8 years away from stronger El Niño and La Niña events appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

IN THE BEGINNING, the story goes, the Earth was formless and empty, and darkness shrouded the surface of the deep. Several millennia later, an independent scientist named James Lovelock started to ponder this primordial arrangement: He imagined a fictional planet called Daisyworld, carpeted with black and white daisies. The pale flowers reflected the sun, while the dusky ones absorbed light and heat. As the sun’s rays grew more powerful, the balance of blossoms shifted, stabilizing the globe’s temperature.

A similar process, Lovelock speculated, might have maintained Earth’s temperature over geological time. He believed the planet’s systems could self-regulate, and in the 1970s, he proposed what came to be known as the Gaia hypothesis. In 1987, shortly after Congressional hearings on climate change—during which a Republican senator from Rhode Island concluded that “the scientific evidence … is telling us we have a problem”—Lovelock was no longer satisfied with metaphors. Along with a team of atmospheric scientists, he formed a less hypothetical model in which the amount of algae in the ocean influenced cloud development, not unlike his daisy effect.

Soon, a cloud physicist took things one step further. In 1990, John Latham, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, suggested that low-lying clouds over the ocean could intentionally be made more reflective to compensate for greenhouse gas emissions making Earth hotter. In 2002, outlining a process later dubbed marine cloud brightening, Latham proposed that ships could spray sea salt into the atmosphere, where the additional particles would help water vapor condense. That, then, would increase the number of droplets in the clouds—and, like white daisies, send more sunlight back into space.

In the 30 years since Latham first proposed cloud brightening, the warming effect of carbon in the atmosphere has increased by more than 40 percent. As temperatures rise, global changes in events like droughts, wildfires, and extreme rainfall are happening faster than scientists initially predicted. With the climate crisis accelerating, the question has become more pressing: Can tinkering with clouds really cool the planet?

ON THE MANICURED grounds of the Palo Alto Research Center, a roof’s low silhouette is abruptly interrupted by a tall white event tent. Even for the Silicon Valley–based research and development company, the experiment inside is a moonshot. A giant fan spins to life as engineers test specialized instruments designed to measure tiny aerosols. Then someone opens a valve on a compressed air pump, and with a loud whir, a nozzle begins to spray seawater. The tent fills with gauzy mist, shot through with California sunshine. “It’s like being inside a cloud,” says Sarah Doherty, an atmospheric physicist and senior research scientist at the University of Washington. The water droplets dry quickly, but the salt crystals they contained are left hanging until the air tastes like tears.

Influenced by Lovelock and Latham’s ideas about maintaining a stable planetary temperature, a small group of retired physicists and engineers from some of the world’s top tech companies gather here every week with the goal of developing a system that can spray seawater from ships to brighten marine clouds. Affectionately nicknamed the Old Salts, many are in their 70s, some well into their 80s. “We’re officially getting old,” says Armand Neukermans, a mechanical engineer and applied physicist, but “climate change isn’t going to just go away.”

Neukermans helped create the first generation of inkjet printers at the Hewlett-Packard Company, where he met Lovelock when the visiting scientist was a consultant for the tech giant. Lovelock would later open Neukermans’ eyes to Latham’s vision of cloud brightening. Over the course of his career, Neukermans spent a lot of time trying to design nozzles that could spray toner as uniformly sized droplets. Today, he’s applying those lessons to generate consistently tiny salt crystals, between 30 and 100 nanometers in diameter, orders of magnitude smaller than the holes in a printhead. Atmospheric scientists have learned that clouds form around particles called cloud condensation nuclei, which help water vapors condense—and reflect sunlight. Sizing the salt particles just so turns them into extra nuclei: Too small, and the particles won’t work; too big, and they not only take more energy to spray aloft, but they can have the opposite effect and trigger rainfall, causing cloud loss.

The clouds best suited to tinkering are low-lying ones called stratocumulus, which naturally occur over colder oceans—like the Pacific off the coasts of California and Chile. Because stratocumulus cover about one-fifth of the Earth’s oceans, brightening them has the potential to collectively make a big impact. A 2021 model from a University of Washington scientist suggests that making them 16 percent more reflective could roughly offset a doubling of carbon dioxide, buying the world more time to reduce emissions.

In fact, things like dust, pollution, and salt from ocean spray already have this effect. Exhaust from shipping vessels, for example, helps water vapor condense. This has made clouds along major shipping channels more reflective. But as smokestacks and shipping fuel get cleaner, this silver lining is starting to evaporate.

The overall picture is much dimmer. Using satellite observations, a September 2022 study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics found that aerosols’ cooling effects, including their interactions with clouds, has decreased by 30 percent since 2000. That essentially amplifies the amount of warming from recent carbon dioxide emissions by as much as half, writes Johannes Quaas, a lead author and a climate scientist at Leipzig University.

Cloud research also has potential far beyond climate engineering. These commonplace wonders have a huge impact on global temperature, but are still one of the least understood elements of the atmosphere. Brightening gives investigators a novel way to conduct controlled experiments by intentionally introducing particles and studying their effects. The results could improve the accuracy of predictions and guide progress on potential mediations. Federal funding for this and other interventions, Doherty says, will also advance basic science.

As alarm grows over rising temperatures, the Old Salts aren’t the only people working on ways to reflect more sunlight and slow climate change. The top circles of academia and government are increasingly discussing these kinds of tactics, often called solar radiation management or geoengineering. Ideas include removing cirrus clouds, which absorb long-wave radiation and warm the planet, and—inspired by the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions—injecting sulfates or other compounds like calcium carbonate into the stratosphere to reflect light.

Some researchers are leery of these schemes, fearing they could destabilize ecosystem processes, intensify problems like ocean acidification, or create all-new problems. But the Old Salts view the effort as an insurance policy. In the absence of real progress in reducing emissions, many scientists now see this course as one that must be explored.

Increasingly, they warn of irreversible tipping points—like the looming collapse of the Thwaites glacier—that make it urgent to find new ways to control the crisis. Temperatures have increased so much that a September 2022 paper in the journal Science predicts that critical planetary functions may be disrupted even if emissions are curtailed. “I hope we never have to use marine cloud brightening,” Doherty says, “but I just don’t see us on a pathway to avoiding dangerous levels of climate warming.”

NEUKERMANS’ WORK on clouds started as an ad hoc effort. In the late 2000s, he began pulling together bright minds interested in addressing climate change. Sudhanshu Jain, a retired electrical engineer who designed computer chips for 25 years before winning a Santa Clara city council seat in 2020, met Neukermans at a fundraiser and wanted to see what he was up to. “And I just never left,” he recalls. “That’s the kind of guy he is.”

As the group of high-powered retirees grew, garnering its briny nickname, member Bob Ormond, who worked at a company that makes automated water treatment systems, offered the friends a borrowed room in his company’s offices in nearby Sunnyvale. Around 2009, Bill Gates gave them $300,000 in seed money. Once they burned through that, Neukermans recalls, “Everybody worked for free, and I paid the expenses.”

As longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the Old Salts were aided by their connections. At one point, they needed sheets of synthetic diamond film to make spray nozzles. “I traded the sheets for a couple of boxes of biscotti,” Neukermans says.

For expertise in atmospheric science, they turned to collaborators like Doherty and others at the University of Washington. The new additions helped them understand that not all clouds respond equally to additives: Some are already at their maximum brightness, or heavily influenced by other processes. Stratocumulus clouds tend to have lower droplet concentrations, so adding salt particles that act as nuclei can increase how reflective they are. If less sunlight hits the heat-absorbing dark water beneath them, that maximizes the cooling effect.

How, precisely, this research will transfer from the lab to an intervention on the ocean is still in the early stages of planning. But the idea is that a Goldilocks-calibrated nozzle, capable of spraying just the right size of salt crystal, would continuously run from a boat positioned under a marine cloud. “To do this at scale, you’d need thousands of ships over a large area,” Doherty points out. “But as long as that system keeps working, you’d have a steady supply of seawater.”

Initially, the Old Salts ran into many hurdles with their tech: Early attempts clogged nozzles, and the saltwater corroded equipment. But as grim new weather vocabulary like heat dome entered the lexicon, interest in their work surged. In 2015, the idea of climate interventions reached sufficient prominence that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a report examining possible strategies. Lynn Russell, a distinguished professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, who has spent her career studying aerosols and clouds and served on the report committee, says her impression was that the discussions focused on whether the research should even be pursued.

By 2019, the Old Salts had moved out of their borrowed offices and into the Palo Alto Research Center, where they finally had access to things like a machine shop, as well as the expertise PARC offered. And “Armand wanted younger people to get involved,” says Sean Garner, a general manager at Xerox, which owns PARC. In its new home, the team tried a fresh approach: It designed an effervescent spray nozzle that pumps air and saltwater through a single channel. This forces the liquid to the sides and compresses the air so that it leaves the nozzle at the speed of sound. Released into a much lower-pressure environment, the air explodes the surrounding ring of water, forming those elusive tiny droplets.

Jéssica Medrado, a young mechanical engineer at PARC who is collaborating with the Old Salts, says the system has finally proved capable of consistently generating droplets of the right size, and they are now trying to improve its efficiency—reducing the energy needed. Medrado is enthusiastic about the project; she’s originally from Brazil, where the dangers of climate change have become increasingly clear. Near her parents’ house, a woman recently drowned in a flash flood after being pulled into a street drain. “People shouldn’t be dying like that,” she says with horror. Such stories keep her motivated, even when the team hits roadblocks.

In 2021, the National Academies produced a second geoengineering report. This time, there was no hesitation: They recommended the US embark on brightening research and laid out a plan for designing and governing the programs. Chris Field, the director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, who worked on the report, says the planet’s trajectory has made him “much more open to looking at a broader range of options.” UCSD’s Russell agrees the need to research these kinds of strategies has only grown since the 2015 review. Even if the technology can be developed, though, she’s concerned about the risks. “The smart idea is reducing carbon emissions,” Russell says. “Marine cloud brightening, or any kind of climate engineering, is a dumb idea—but it may not be as dumb as doing nothing.”

EVENTUALLY, the team at PARC will need to try its equipment outdoors. Though it’s found a nearby industrial location suitable for a trial, it’s run into resistance to testing in the real world.

“One of the things people misunderstand is how far we are from being able to field any of these systems,” Xerox’s Garner says of climate interventions. “The role of science here is to reduce uncertainty and give policymakers tools so they can decide to use them down the road.”

To date, only one cloud brightening project has made it outside. In 2020, researchers from Australia’s Southern Cross University took a first step as part of emergency efforts to mitigate the effect of rising ocean temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef. They tested only whether the salt particles—sprayed by boat-mounted prototype nozzles that Neukermans advised on—could be detected in the atmosphere. The trial succeeded, and next the researchers hope to scale up and cool the ocean over the bleaching corals. “I’m glad they’re working on the reef with urgency,” Garner says, but he notes that it’s not an area known for stratocumulus clouds, meaning its brightening potential may be low.

In 2021, a Harvard-supported team hoped to conduct an outdoor experiment to advance its own solar geoengineering research, which, unlike the Old Salts’ efforts, centers on introducing particles like sulfates into the stratosphere. The researchers planned to deploy a balloon-powered gondola and equipment in northern Sweden as a first step toward testing brightening aerosols. But the Indigenous Saami council wrote a letter criticizing the project, stating the plans “constitute a real moral hazard,” adding that the technology “entails risks of catastrophic consequences.” An advisory committee subsequently ruled the trial should be delayed.

Each climate intervention strategy carries its own benefits and risks. The science behind stratospheric aerosols injections—aptly demonstrated by large volcanic eruptions—is fairly well understood. But Russell says they can persist for a year or more, and some of the compounds proposed, like sulfates, can have toxic effects. Some scientists also warn that if, say, a government were to suddenly halt an intervention, the resulting “termination shock” could cause temperatures to rebound sharply, accelerating warming.

Marine cloud brightening research has run into criticism as well. Though salt dissipates from the atmosphere within a week or two, the Old Salts acknowledge that the method may have unintended consequences. Adding brine might harm local ecosystems, and, if done broadly enough to have a cooling effect, it could also redistribute precipitation—perhaps dramatically. “We’re not going rogue,” Jain says about their efforts. “We’re actually saying, ‘Let’s put in place governance and good, peer-reviewed science before you have a bunch of rogue efforts.’”

If marine brightening and other programs move forward, it will be important for scientists to engage community members in upfront conversation about the risks. “If in advance you know that decreasing global average temperature makes drought more likely in the Philippines, what do you do?” Stanford’s Field asks. As a contributor to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports since 2007, he understands the drive to look at drastic interventions, given the planet’s trajectory. But he believes it’s critical to include junctures when researchers or governments can decide to stop further efforts. “Say after the fact, you learn that an intervention could result in a partial failure of the Indian monsoon—you may need an exit ramp,” he explains.

Field argues that initial interventions, at least, would be technically straightforward to stop. “People view solar geoengineering as a fork in the road that, once you take, you’re totally committed to,” he says. “That might be true at high levels, but if we get to a point where we want to deploy this stuff, it’s relatively easy to turn on and off.” The Old Salts argue it’s important to conduct this research in order to determine safe parameters ahead of any possible deployment.

The National Academies now recommend the US develop a program to navigate all these concerns, complete with a code of conduct, permitting systems for experiments, and an expert committee to help make difficult decisions on an international level—essentially providing guardrails. To do so will require funding: “A reasonable initial investment for this program is in the range of $100-200 million total over 5 years,” the National Academies concluded in its 2021 report, though the authors note that this should remain a small fraction of a budget for national climate research.

Currently, funding for climate intervention research is piecemeal. SilverLining, a nonprofit dedicated to climate research, for example, has given $3 million in grants to investigate mitigations. Recent federal spending bills included $13 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to study the stratosphere. Some of that has gone toward establishing baseline information, including about the ozone layer, the region that absorbs most of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The agency is deploying high-altitude balloons to measure the aerosol particles that reflect light in the stratosphere. Such data is bound to advance our knowledge of how clouds actually work.

That’s critical information for climate change projections. Models don’t generally agree on which clouds will grow or shrink as temperatures increase—a primary reason current warming estimates vary so dramatically. “It’s one of the biggest uncertainties related to climate,” Doherty says. Since satellites started tracking clouds, the types targeted by marine brightening have been a constant fixture in the skies, “but as the planet gets warmer, there’s no guarantee.”

Meanwhile, back in California, the team hopes to expand its own testing. It would like to try out its nozzle system under less controlled outdoor conditions within the next year. Neukermans is still going into the lab, although recent medical issues have sometimes made it painful for him to be on his feet for long. “He’s really suffering, but he shows up,” Jain says. The pandemic has highlighted everyone’s mortality. “We’re in a hurry. We don’t have time.”

One recent afternoon, Neukermans put down his calculations to think about his ten grandchildren, and the world he is leaving them. “There is nothing we do that doesn’t have consequences,” he says with a sigh. “We have to try everything—we don’t know exactly what’s going to work.”

This story originally appeared in the High Issue of Popular Science. Read more PopSci+ stories.

The post Cloudy with a chance of cooling the planet appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai.

In August 2014, the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole was suddenly awash with microscopic life—gripped by an algae bloom that covered the Laptev Sea, a large chunk of the East Siberian Sea, and part of the open Arctic Ocean. In a regular year, late summer is a quiet time for the Arctic. Long past is the regular spring phytoplankton bloom that supports so much activity. By August, the algae that bloomed in the spring have sucked most of the nitrogen out of the water, leaving the region practically devoid of microscopic creatures and the larger animals that eat them. So where did this bloom come from?

Because the Arctic Ocean ecosystem is typically limited by the availability of nitrogen, researchers including Douglas Hamilton, an atmospheric scientist at North Carolina State University, started looking for where a glut of the nutrient might have come from to trigger the bloom. One by one, Hamilton and his colleagues examined various ocean-based sources, such as the upwelling of cold nutrient-rich water or the runoff from rivers. Nothing seemed to add up.

Convinced that no oceanic source was bringing in enough excess nitrogen to spark such a massive bloom, the scientists were left with just one option. “The only place left was the atmosphere,” Hamilton says.

Eventually, the scientists pinned down the most likely culprit: huge wildfires that were raging across Siberia thousands of kilometers south—fires that were burning through forests and, notably, nitrogen-rich peat. The smoke from those fires had drifted north where it deposited its nitrogen in the nutrient-starved water.

The work echoes a similar study, published last year, which shows that iron in the aerosols from wildfires in Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 fertilized anomalous algae blooms in the Southern Ocean. Joan Llort, a biogeochemical oceanographer at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain who worked on that study, says that as wildfires increase in frequency and intensity because of climate change, especially at higher latitudes, we may see more of these fertilization events and increasing numbers of blooms in traditionally nutrient-poor regions.

“We can’t say for certain yet as we have only recorded a couple of these events so far, but it seems to be going in that direction,” Llort says.

For many coastal areas, more algae blooms could be a problem. Some algae release toxins, while the decomposition of all that phytoplankton can deplete oxygen levels in the water. Increasing wildfires in California, for instance, could bring more harmful blooms to the Pacific coast, says Llort.

In the Arctic, however, the changes could be much more profound.

The Far North is undergoing a process of “borealization.” Rapidly warming and increasingly ice-free, the Arctic Ocean is coming to look a lot more like the North Atlantic. In fact, fish from boreal regions farther south are already shifting north, chasing their preferred water temperature. But the Arctic Ocean is much less productive than the North Atlantic. Even though the temperature is right, these migrating fish are not finding everything they need to survive. For these new arrivals to thrive, the Arctic Ocean will require big new inputs of nutrients to support them. Like the input from wildfires.

For the Arctic Ocean, then, if increasing wildfires and the 2014 bloom are a sign of things to come, this higher flow of nutrients could transform Arctic ecosystems.

“If we keep seeing more of this in the future,” Hamilton says, “we can expect the Arctic Ocean to be getting significantly more nitrogen than it has been for the past several thousand years.”

The post Wildfire smoke from across continents is changing the Arctic Ocean’s makeup appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Over the next two weeks, scientists, government officials, and activists are coming together at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt to discuss some of the most pressing issues threatening our planet’s existence.

Building on last year’s United Nations climate change conference in Scotland, the key issues dominating headlines this time include mitigation measures, adaptation strategies, net-zero targets, and funds for losses and damages in communities that are bearing the brunt of the crisis.

This year, the US delegation is heading into COP on the heels of the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The $369-billion policy, which also tackles other issues like lowering healthcare costs, is the largest investment in American history in climate and energy to date. 

Dan Lashof, US director of the World Resources Institute, says this means that President Joe Biden will head into the negotiations with more credibility than before. The country’s current goal is to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. With the IRA in place, Lashof believes that the government has put forward a credible path to reduce emissions by around 40 percent. 

Despite the act’s positive outcomes, however, Lashof cautions that it’s built on incentives for American manufacturers in renewable energy supply chains. The next step in taking credible climate action would be to pass mandatory requirements, both at the federal and local level, to achieve lower emissions with better certainty. States, specifically, will have to set goals and enact policies to supplement the overall strategy of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. 

Global negotiations at COP should also inspire more widespread coordination. “It’s essential for the US to meet its targets, but also to encourage greater ambition from other countries,” Lashof says. 

Is it still possible to limit global warming to 1.5°C or less?

According to the UN Emissions Gap Report published in October, the G20 is collectively expected to fall short of its 2030 climate promises without further action. This means that there is a chance of breaching the Paris Agreement goal of limiting the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius of increase from pre-industrial levels. Still, holding warming at 1.5 degrees represents our best chance at avoiding irreversible changes to the Earth’s climate system and protecting vulnerable groups of people and wildlife.

“Every tonne [of carbon dioxide] matters; every tenth of a degree matters. The closer we can get to 1.5 degrees, the better,” says Lashof. “The gap report doesn’t say it’s impossible—its projections are based on what current policies are and current targets.”

[Related: The past 8 years have been the hottest on human record]

A report released by the World Research Institute last month also found that the world is not on track to meet the 1.5-degree limit in 40 different indicators of climate action. Lashof points out that this means any progress needs to be accelerated to meet the pace of change that is required.

Lisa Vanhala, who leads a European Research Council-funded project on the Politics and Governance of Climate Change Loss and Damage, echoes a similar sentiment. “1.5 degrees matters because that threatens the very territorial existence of some states in the international system,” she explains. Even a fraction of a degree can be incredibly significant for people in low-lying island nations like Tuvalu and Kiribas. 

How can COP27 help?

With the growing intensity of climate disasters around the world, Vanhala expects that indemnities, not just warming limits, will dominate this year’s negotiations. The day before the conference officially kicked off, negotiators from developing countries secured a hard-fought win by arguing to include finance for loss and damage on the agenda.

Loss and damage finance essentially acts as reparations for vulnerable countries that are facing the disproportionate effects of climate change. A decade ago, the UN helped set up the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage—but the parties responsible for paying into the fund have contested it ever since. 

Gaia Larsen, director of climate finance, access, and deployment at the World Research Institute, thinks that wealthy nations like the US are hesitant to commit to loss and damage funds because it could be seen as an admission of guilt with legal liability. So, the newly adopted agenda item for COP27 includes a clause stating that “cooperation and facilitation and [does] not involve liability or compensation.”

The strategy might not spur progress on previous goals like warming thresholds, but it’s a priority for those deep in the throes of the climate crisis. The Pakistani delegation, for instance, opened the conference by speaking to the importance of receiving loss and damage finance in the wake of deadly and costly floods. And back in September, UN secretary-general António Guterres stated that wealthier countries “bear a moral responsibility” to help poorer nations recover, adapt, and build resilience to disasters. “Let’s not forget that 80 percent of emissions driving this type of climate destruction are from the G20,” he said at the time.

But some developing countries are past the point of pinpointing blame and are more focused on securing tangible funding to deal with their climate realities, Vanhala says. One way they can currently do that is through the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which is part of an international environmental treaty intended to help developing countries implement climate mitigation and adaptation measures. While there is a need for multiple sources of capital, Larsen says that due to challenges like data gaps and increased bureaucracy, there’s limited support to create a separate new fund for loss and damages. 

[Related: Personal carbon allowances, explained]

In fact, developing countries are struggling to receive financing that’s already been approved. A $100-billion annual fund for climate mitigation fund is still short $16.7 billion. One analysis by Carbon Brief found that the US itself owes $32 billion.

Now that loss and damage financing sits firmly on the agenda, COP27 will test whether giant carbon emitters like the US will mobilize climate finance and reduce global emissions at the rate the world needs.

“I think the people that have been fighting for 1.5 degrees will continue to do so. And even if we’re fighting for 2 degrees, we’re fighting to get emissions down as fast as possible,” says Larsen. Most countries have until 2050 to clean up their act, but the longer they wait, the less achievable the goals will get.

The post Why the 1.5-degree-Celsius climate goal still matters appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Google often touts its commitment to sustainability and tackling climate change head-on, but a new study courtesy of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) reveals the Big Tech giant won’t hesitate to take oil corporations’ money in exchange for diminishing their role in our ongoing planetary crisis. According to the CCDH’s new report, Google has accepted nearly $24 million for top search ad spots from oil giants over the past two years alone. Of that amount, almost half was spent on advertising specifically targeted for sustainability search terms like “net zero” and “eco-friendly,” presenting users with advertising and sites that skewed climate science in the companies’ favor, explained Reuters earlier this week.

In October 2021, Google pledged to “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” but in the ensuing months has routinely failed to live up to its promise. This often takes the form of accepting fossil fuel companies’ “greenwashing” campaigns, a term referring to advertising and PR that makes businesses seem more environmentally conscious and active than they truly are.

[Related: Are ‘water positive’ pledges from tech companies just a new kind of greenwashing?]

“Big Oil’s deception is by design. It is a tried and true business plan for the world’s largest polluters to make public promises about sustainability, whilst lining their pockets with the largest profits in decades,” explained CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed in the report’s introduction. The study shows, for example, that when users search phrases like “pros and cons of the paris climate agreement [sic]” or “what are greenhouse gases” they invariably see ads sold by companies like ExxonMobil at the top of the page. Because previous studies indicate studies only a small fraction of Google searchers click links on a second page of search results, Google “is allowing fossil fuel companies to dominate the information ecosystem to peddle their deception.”

To remedy the situation, CCDH recommends Google immediately cease its flagrant hypocrisy when it comes to advertising clients, as well as  “create a public and transparent ad library” for organizations, government officials, and general users to see where funding originates. In September 2022, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on the Environment released its own initial investigatory findings regarding Big Oil tactics, finding that companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell admitted in their own words within internal documents to “gaslighting” the public.

The post How Google Search is helping ‘greenwash’ oil companies appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Global carbon emissions rose in 2021, bouncing back up an estimated six percent following months of slowed emission during the COVID-19 shutdowns. It was a sobering reminder of just how much work remained ahead of us to if we are to ensure a sustainable future for ourselves, but according to a new report from the International Energy Agency released earlier this week, this year’s numbers are thankfully much lower. The latest data analyzed by IEA experts indicates global CO2 emissions are on course to increase by nearly 300 million tons in 2022 compared to last year’s levels, putting the total amount around 33.8 billion tons. Any increase isn’t exactly great, but it’s a far cry from the almost 2 billion ton leap made between 2021 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The key to this heartening alteration is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the rapid rise in renewable energy sources. The IEA notes that, were it not for “major deployments” of renewable energy tech alongside increased demand for electric vehicles (EVs), we would have likely seen almost triple that number. This even figures the ongoing geopolitical crisis in Ukraine, which has had dramatic effects on the global supply of natural gas and oil. “Even though the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has propped up global coal demand in 2022 by making natural gas far more expensive, the relatively small increase in coal emissions has been considerably outweighed by the expansion of renewables,” notes the IEA in its summary.

[Related: This space-adapted solar panel can fold like origami.]

The report notes that solar and wind systems led the rise in renewable energy generation in 2022, producing over 700 terawatt-hours(TWh)—the largest annual rise ever measured—accounting for two-thirds of all renewable power. Additionally, “despite the challenging situation that hydropower has faced in several regions due to droughts this year, global hydropower output is up year-on-year, contributing over one-fifth of the expected growth in renewable power.”

Of course, it rarely is all good news when it comes to our fight against climate change. A minuscule rise in emissions is certainly wonderful to hear, but humanity needs to massively reduce our total amount if we’re to stave off the worst effects of eco-catastrophe. A recent study showed that, were we to continue on pace at our current trajectory, nearly 90 percent of all marine life could be wiped out by the end of the century. Still, seeing the measurable effects of increased renewable energies is certainly encouraging news, to say the least. With any luck, we’ll see similarly low numbers—if not even lower—this time next year.

The post Global CO2 emissions grew by less than a percent this year thanks to renewables appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

Right now, there are 68 carbon pricing initiatives implemented around the world, according to the World Bank. Carbon pricing schemes apply a financial cost to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to try and shift the burden of environmental impact to those responsible for it and who are in a position to reduce it. The goal is to bring down GHG emissions by taxing the carbon content of fossil fuels and creating a supply and demand for emissions allowances.

However, New Zealand is taking carbon pricing to a whole new ballpark—the ranch.

Last week, the New Zealand government announced its plans to impose a farm-level levy on farmers for their livestock’s emissions—the first of its kind around the globe—to meet climate targets. Taxing animal agriculture, which contributes about 14.5 to 16.5 percent to global GHG emissions, can be important in transitioning to a low-emissions future. 

Although the levy is far from being implemented, it’s essential to explore how feasible it is to impose and how it would affect farmers, animals, and food. 

Reduce emissions from animal agriculture to meet climate goals

Methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide are responsible for more than half of New Zealand’s gross emissions. Livestock supply chains generally emit these through four pathways: enteric fermentation or the digestive process of ruminants that produce methane as a byproduct, feed production, manure management, and energy consumption.

Livestock burps, urine, and manure are significant methane and nitrous oxide sources. These two greenhouse gasses are about 25 and 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere. Feed production is also a big factor because the expansion of feed crops and pastures into natural areas emits carbon dioxide. At the same time, the use of manure and nitrogen fertilizers results in nitrous oxide emissions.

The goal is to set this farm-level pricing system in motion by 2025 to incentivize farmers to minimize their emissions. The revenue will be invested back into the agriculture sector by funding research and technology that may reduce emissions further.

[Related: Putting cows on a seaweed diet helps curb their methane burps.]

“[Livestock emissions] are currently not priced in the market, and when we buy beef, the climate impacts and environmental costs to society are not reflected in the price,” says Greg Keoleian, director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability. “The proposed tax on livestock in New Zealand is a mechanism to internalize that cost and avoid the further expenditures related to climate change impacts.”

There are various emissions reduction strategies that farmers can adopt across the livestock supply chain. For instance, increasing reproductive efficiency (like by reducing the interval between parities) may be beneficial because a more efficient animal retains more dietary nitrogen protein. Therefore there will be less nitrogen in their urine and manure. Improved fertility in dairy cattle can reduce methane emissions by 10 to 24 percent and nitrous oxide by 9 to 17 percent.

That said, enhancing productivity or efficiency must be carefully measured and controlled because it may harm animal health and welfare. More reproductive pressure can increase the metabolic demands associated with pregnancy, potentially resulting in a higher risk of metabolic diseases like clinical hypocalcemia and ketosis, reduced immune function, and reduced subsequent fertility.

Changing livestock’s diet—like adding fatty acids, seaweed, or maize and barley—may also reduce emissions from enteric fermentation. Regularly scraping manure and transporting it to an outside storage facility for pigs and cattle production systems can reduce methane and nitrous oxide emissions by 55 and 41 percent, respectively.

“This program is positioning the agriculture industry in New Zealand to become leaders in reducing methane and carbon dioxide emissions from livestock production,” says Keoleian. “Certifications and labeling could be used to differentiate their farm products in the marketplace for green consumers willing to pay more for lower carbon footprint meat.”

Levy on farmers might not necessarily be the magic bullet to reducing emissions

Although the levy proposal aims to reduce GHG emissions, it isn’t as straightforward as it seems. 

“There is no doubt the food system in general and ruminant production in particular needs to reduce its carbon footprint,” says Ermias Kebreab, director of the UC Davis World Food Center. “However, the burden needs to be shared by society and not just farmers that are already operating on small margins.”

Sam McIvor and Andrew Morrison, CEO, and Chairman of Beef + Lamb New Zealand, respectively, emailed farmers last week and said, “we will not accept a system that disproportionately puts our farmers and communities at risk.” The Federated Farmers of New Zealand also expressed disappointment with the government’s proposal.

There is potential for emission leakage if livestock production is displaced to areas with little regulation, says Kebreab. Emission leakage refers to the increase in emissions of a region with weaker environmental regulations due to another region’s strengthening of its environmental policies because the production just relocated to unregulated jurisdictions.

[Related: The inconvenient truth about Burger King’s ‘reduced methane’ Whopper.]

In addition, the policy might encourage some farmers towards less carbon-intensive livestock, such as pigs instead of beef cattle, which can pose a problem from an international perspective regarding beef supply, says Keoleian. “Setting the policy is complex because of how it could impact small versus large producers, trade implications, and how consumers respond, which ultimately drives production and livestock emissions,” he adds.

Regarding regulation, Kebreab prefers the ‘carrot’ over the ‘stick’ approach, which means rewarding positive behavior instead of having the threat of punishment. And research shows this might be a better strategy for newer policies. According to a 2019 Scientific Reports study, positive incentives or rewards are necessary to foster cooperation in collective action for the public good—like international climate change mitigation—while negative incentives like sanctions are more effective for maintaining cooperation after it has been initiated.

Kebreab believes it is a bit too early to implement such a levy on farmers today and suggests setting the goal low and ramping it up later as more technologies and emission reduction strategies become available or adopted by farmers.

For now, the proposal is currently going through a consultation process to get feedback and work through the transition assistance, levy setting, and sequestration. This farm-level emissions pricing system will likely take a while and a bit of refining before being implemented.

The post New Zealand may be the first country to carbon price cow farts appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

Wearing a navy-blue polo neck emblazoned with the Florida Aquarium logo, Keri O’Neil hugs a white cooler at Miami International Airport. “Coral babieeeeees,” she says, before letting out a short laugh. Relief. The container holds 10 plastic bottles teeming with thousands of tiny peach-colored specks. Shaped like cornflakes and no more than a millimeter in length, they are the larvae of elkhorn coral, an endangered species that is as characteristic to the reefs of the Florida Keys and the Caribbean as polar bears are to the Arctic or giant sequoias to Sierra Nevada.

With the larvae kept at 27 °C inside their insulated cooler nestled in the trunk of her car, O’Neil drives back to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, where she works as senior coral scientist at the aquarium’s Center for Conservation. Once there, the larvae begin their metamorphosis from free-swimming specks into settled polyps, the beginnings of those branching, antler-like shapes that define this species. O’Neil and her colleagues provide everything the coral needs for a strong start in life: warm water with a gentle flow, symbiotic algae that find a home inside the coral’s cells, a soft glow of sunlight, and some ceramic squares “seasoned with algae” that act as landing pads for the larvae.

The transformation of larvae into polyps was the final step in a coral breeding project that began on the shores of Curaçao, an island off the coast of Venezuela, in the summer of 2018 and involved a cadre of conservationists and scientists who each specialize in one specific stage of coral development. From collection of eggs during mass spawning events to the cryopreservation of sperm, and from fertilization to larval growth, every step had to go swimmingly for the project to have any chance of success. “It’s like the most stressful relay on Earth,” says Kristen Marhaver, a coral scientist at the Caribbean Research and Management of Biodiversity Foundation in Curaçao, who helped start this relay race by collecting eggs during a nighttime dive at a reef that’s a 45-minute drive from her laboratory. As O’Neil was picking up her coral “babies” in Miami, a second team of scientists at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota, Florida, received its own. The pressure on both labs was immense. To fail now would be to drop the baton just before the final straight.

But, if anything, their efforts were too successful; hundreds of larvae settled as translucent and fragile blobs of tissue (each a single polyp) and then started to divide, branching into the clear waters of their shallow, open-top tanks. Elkhorn coral grows an average of five to 10 centimeters per year, a bamboo-like pace for corals in general. To stop them becoming entangled, O’Neil had to cut, separate, and move her colonies to different paddle pool–sized tanks over the course of the next year. “We almost ended up with a six-foot-by-four-foot [1.8-meter-by-1.2-meter] solid piece of elkhorn coral made up of 400 different individuals,” she says. “They were just outgrowing the tanks.”

The rows of coral in O’Neil’s tanks are a window into a former world. The reefs of the Florida Keys were once dominated by elkhorn coral. Visiting these islands that curl southward from Florida like the tip of a bird of prey’s beak, biologist, conservationist, and writer—most notably of Silent Spring, but also of several books on the ocean—Rachel Carson peered into the shallows using a “water glass,” an instrument akin to a glass-bottom bucket. Through this simple portal, she saw great stands of “trees of stone,” a forest of coral. Today, after decades of disease, coastal development, and bleaching, over 95 percent of the state’s elkhorn coral have been lost. And this population isn’t just depleted in number, like a forest that’s been felled, but is also impoverished from within. Some reefs in the Keys descend from a single individual that has reproduced via fragmentation—bits break off the parent coral and start a new colony. This mode of reproduction allows corals to spread, but without the genetic mixing that comes with sex, these clones are more susceptible to disturbances such as disease. The coral larvae raised by O’Neil at the Florida Aquarium are different; they are the product of sperm and egg, a shuffling of genes, and the growth of genetically unique clumps of coral. Reintroducing them could provide a boost to the coral’s genetic diversity—a quick stir to the gene pool—and could save a denuded ecosystem. Their reintroduction could also spell its doom.

Hidden inside the genetic code of the Florida Aquarium’s coral is a map of an atypical origin: the eggs collected from Curaçao were fertilized using sperm from the Caribbean, including Florida. Although the same species (Acropora palmata), these coral populations would never breed in the wild. The distance between the two is hundreds of kilometers and contains the island blockade of the Greater Antilles—an impossible journey for any sperm. The coral housed in the Florida Aquarium are the products of human hands, the latest addition to a recent—and often controversial—trend in conservation known as “assisted gene flow,” shuttling existing genetic diversity to new places.

No hands have offered more assistance to these coral than those of Mary Hagedorn, senior research scientist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, who is based at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Hagedorn flew to the Caribbean to guide this project from start to finish. It is her research that made this work possible. Since 2004, she has developed cryopreservation techniques that can freeze coral sperm and—just as importantly—keep them fertile upon thawing. Although cryopreservation has been used for IVF in humans and other mammals for decades, it’s only in the last few years that other coral conservationists have adopted Hagedorn’s techniques for coral sperm. At a time when these methodologies are most needed, Hagedorn’s work has matured into a solid science, says Tom Moore, a coral restoration manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at the time of this project and now in the private sector. “I think we’re going to start seeing a lot more of this done in the course of the next few years.”

Without the option to freeze sperm, coral conservationists have been forced to work within the few hours these sex cells remain viable. In Florida, Moore says, scientists from the Lower Keys would drive north to meet colleagues from the Upper Keys and swap sperm samples on the side of the road, fertilizing eggs there and then before the sperm stopped swimming. With the option to freeze sperm using liquid nitrogen, however, samples can be transported long distances—from Florida to Curaçao, for example. Then, when eggs are collected from the reef, the sperm can be thawed and used in concentrations that make fertilization most likely. Hagedorn’s work opens up new possibilities that, just a few years ago, were largely ignored.

Self-funded for many years, Hagedorn’s research was nearly stopped altogether in December 2011. Her savings had run out and funders didn’t seem to see the potential of her work. “I was a month away from closing my lab,” she says. Then she received an unexpected call from the Roddenberry Foundation, a philanthropic organization set up in memory of Gene Roddenberry, the writer of Star Trek. Since Hagedorn’s work fit the criteria for bold and unique science, the foundation wanted to fund her research for five years. Since then, her work has grown to include frozen larvae, frozen coral symbiotic algae, and frozen coral fragments, and it has been adopted by labs around the world. To help her cryopreservation methods spread, Hagedorn runs workshops and shares her techniques freely; the instructions to build her equipment can be downloaded and then manufactured with a 3D printer.

As with IVF in humans, coral fertilization is not a perfect science. In a study published in 2017, Hagedorn and her colleagues showed that fertilization rates from frozen coral sperm are significantly lower than from fresh sperm, roughly 50 percent versus over 90 percent. And these figures were based on coral that lived as neighbors on the same reef. The researchers wanted to increase genetic diversity in the future (through assisted gene flow), but it was still unknown whether populations that had been isolated for thousands of years could produce viable offspring, especially after their sperm had been frozen. The idea to breed elkhorn coral from the Florida Keys with those from Curaçao was the most extreme test yet of Hagedorn’s methods. It was a moonshot for coral conservation, says O’Neil. “We wanted to do something that had never been done before.”

Marhaver thought that they had a five to 10 percent chance of success. To have hundreds of healthy coral now sitting in tanks barely crossed her mind. Conservationists are more attuned to the vibrations of endangerment, extinction, and loss. To have a moonshot succeed is unfamiliar territory. With the impossible now possible, the next hurdle is moving from the lab to the ocean, a leap that not everyone is comfortable with.

As in medical practice, the first rule of restoring ailing ecosystems is primum non nocere, “first, do no harm.” And what concerns Lisa Gregg, program and policy coordinator at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), the organization that decides the fate of the Florida-Curaçao coral, is that they aren’t suited to the local conditions of the Florida Keys, a place that Carson referred to as having an atmosphere that is “strongly and peculiarly [its] own.” These islands are formed from sedimentation, while those of Curaçao and the eastern Caribbean are founded on volcanic activity. Plus, the Florida Keys also have their own unique combination of problems, from infectious disease to coastal development, and from hurricanes to coral bleaching. “We have a lot of problems here,” says O’Neil. “And it is quite likely that the corals that are still alive in Florida after everything that’s happened to them are probably the ones that are best suited to living in Florida and providing offspring that may be capable of surviving in Florida.” If Curaçao genes were introduced, they might lead to lower rates of reproduction, shorter life spans, or lowered resistance to local diseases. Imperceptible at first, such “outbreeding depression” can slowly weaken a population, generation by generation. To introduce genes that haven’t experienced the same history could be a ratchet toward extinction.

The risk of such outbreeding depression is very low, however—a doomsday forecast for Florida’s reefs, many conservationists think. “I’m not so concerned that there’s a huge risk of the Curaçao [genes] causing a major detriment to the native Florida population,” says Iliana Baums, head of marine conservation and restoration at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, who has studied elkhorn coral since 1998. “But that’s based on my knowledge of the literature for other species and modeling and so on. I don’t have any direct evidence for that.” Direct evidence would require reintroduction, a catch-22 of conservation; the very thing that is controversial and potentially dangerous is also the route to understanding.

Gregg was clear with O’Neil, Marhaver, Hagedorn, and their colleagues from the beginning of this project. “They knew right off the bat … that they were not going to be able to out-plant [the coral]. It was never in question.” The FWC has a “nearest neighbor” policy when it comes to conserving Florida’s coral reefs, she says. “With Acropora palmata, I believe the nearest neighbor would be Cuba or Belize. But other acceptable areas to bring corals in from would be Mexico or the Bahamas. If you’ve got corals coming from Curaçao, that’s leaps and bounds away from Florida.”

After nearly 20 years of research and the near closure of her lab, Hagedorn is tired of waiting. She is sympathetic to the FWC’s approach, but also believes that this large population of captive coral should be introduced—in “a restricted and monitored fashion”—given the critical status of A. palmata. “There’s so little coral in Florida now, it’s just a joke,” she says. In addition to tracking their precipitous decline, scientists have tried to find evidence that new, sexually produced elkhorn coral are settling in the area, but they regularly come back empty-handed. Since this species releases sperm and eggs en masse once a year, the lack of natural recruitment is a worrying sign that such mass spawning events are failing. Warmer waters, pollution, a thick covering of algae, and the rarity of mature coral all add up to prevent new baby coral from settling. Whatever the case, successful sexual reproduction—the fertilization of egg and sperm to create a swimming larva—is so low that it no longer supports this population. “Every year, we seem to lose more [coral] without making more, because sexual reproduction isn’t working,” says Baums. “None of us could’ve imagined that these coral populations would die out this fast. I don’t think any one of us could have really wrapped our heads around that, even 10 years ago … I think we’re at the stage that we need to try something new.”

Even with this precipitous decline, there is still time to try a less extreme version of assisted gene flow, O’Neil says. Now that the Florida-Curaçao experiment has been a success, her team can consider crossing coral from Mexico, the Bahamas, or Cuba—just a relative stone’s throw away—with Florida stock. These populations are able to mix naturally: although sperm can’t survive the journey, the planktonic larvae can travel the current from the Bahamas to Florida so are considered part of the same subpopulation. Gregg says that she would support any elkhorn restoration project that conforms to the FWC “nearest neighbor” policy. Until then, such assisted gene flow will remain limited to laboratories and aquariums.

In December 2021, O’Neil said goodbye to the coral she had raised from peach-colored larvae to hand-sized elkhorn recruits. With the project’s end, they were being transported from the Florida Aquarium to the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, where they joined the rest of the coral grown as part of this study. Some are being exposed to warmer temperatures to see if they are better able to survive in the warmer waters predicted for the future. Others will be transported to museums and aquariums around the United States. The rest sit patiently and continue to divide, to grow, polyp by polyp. They may never be introduced into the wild, but their mere existence opens a wide-angle vista for coral conservation. If such disparate populations can be crossed and grown by the hundred, almost anything is possible. The next coral babies that O’Neil collects from the airport will have simply traveled a shorter distance in their cooler.

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine, and is republished here with permission.

The post Scientists grow stunning, endangered coral in a lab appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

This article was originally featured on High Country News.

Editor’s note: This story contains a graphic description relating to the loss of a child.

The heat was in the triple digits when Lea Bossler and her U.S. Forest Service engine crew reached the blaze unfurling in a canyon outside Nogales, Arizona. As she trekked up a hill with her shovel-like rhino tool, flaming barrel cacti tumbled down the slope, igniting more parched fuels along the way. Despite the heat, a 45-pound pack and little sleep, Bossler felt strong and capable, mopping up the edges of the fire, extinguishing collapsed cactuses that smoldered like burnt rubber. This was her third season as a wildland firefighter, and she was well on her way to fulfilling her goal of becoming an incident commander.

After the fire was contained, Bossler and her crew drove home to Missoula, Montana, concluding a two-week roll in the Southwest. It was early July 2020, the middle of a record-breaking fire season that would burn over 10 million acres across the country, and Bossler was resting before her next assignment. There was a coronavirus outbreak at her partner’s workplace, and just a couple of days after she came home, she caught a debilitating case of COVID-19. Now, more than two years later, the 32-year-old still hasn’t recovered. Long COVID has not only damaged her health, it has also forced her to give up her career in firefighting.

Currently, over 19 million people in the United States—1 in 13 adults—are living with long COVID, though some estimates place the number as high as 23 million. Long COVID is a complex condition that affects all age groups and can involve multiple organ systems. It’s diagnosed weeks or months after a COVID-19 infection. Some of the symptoms include cognitive dysfunction, respiratory and cardiovascular problems and extreme fatigue, though roughly 200 other symptoms are recognized, and some can linger for years. Many patients meet the diagnostic criteria for other diagnoses, as well. Those include postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which causes extreme dizziness, headaches and rapid heart-rate; and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)—sometimes called chronic fatigue syndrome—a disabling neurological disease that has been underfunded for decades.

A World Health Organization official recently warned that repeated infections may increase the risk of long COVID. A recent US Census Bureau survey analyzed by the National Center for Health Statistics showed that as many as 1 in 5 adults who were infected with COVID-19 now have symptoms of long COVID. 

While the number of US wildland firefighters affected is unknown, the workforce is considered at high risk of contracting COVID-19: In 2021, the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths in wildland firefighters was COVID-19. Firefighters are already stretched thin due to the prolonged and intensified fire seasons caused by climate change. Long COVID is not only affecting firefighters’ health and livelihoods, it could also seriously hamper their response to the escalating crisis.

Firefighters are a strikingly transient workforce, making them more vulnerable to catching and spreading COVID-19. “You have firefighters and other fire personnel who are traveling from all over the country to arrive at one common location,” said Matthew Thompson, a research forester with the Forest Service.

The lack of sanitation and privacy in the camps, combined with fatigue, heat, physically demanding work and other factors add to that vulnerability, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), which provides leadership to wildland fire operations among federal, state, local, tribal and territorial partners. One of the largest COVID outbreaks at a fire camp occurred during the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire in northern Colorado, with 79 positive cases and 273 close contacts who were quarantined. A Forest Service press officer emailed that among nearly 11,000 permanent and temporary agency firefighters, there were 1,847 reported cases of COVID-19 within the past 12 months. 

In a recent modeling study, Thompson and his co-authors found that social distancing and vaccination reduced outbreaks in fire camps, though their study did not assess long COVID or the highly contagious omicron variant. (According to a 2022 study in the journal Nature Medicine, vaccination may only slightly reduce the risk of long COVID.) Thompson’s study also found that firefighters were infected even more often outside of fire camp than within it, meaning that they are continually at risk as the US eases preventative measures, allowing for dangerous peaks that can occur in the heart of fire season. 

The NWCG recommends COVID safety prevention practices for wildland firefighters based on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. But a widely referenced CDC document about COVID and wildland firefighters doesn’t specifically mention long COVID.

In a review published last year, Kathleen Navarro, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, noted that particulate matter—including the hazardous mixture of small particles and droplets found in wildfire smoke—could contribute to a greater likelihood of COVID-19 infection in wildland firefighters, as well as more severe illness. “It’s not only the risk of transmission or getting COVID,” said Navarro. “It’s also the severity of outcomes.” 

But firefighters face a risk of long COVID, no matter the severity of their acute case: A 2022 white paper stated that nearly 76 percent of those diagnosed with long COVID have not been hospitalized.

Bossler returned to work after her 14-day quarantine despite not feeling fully recovered. “I went back hoping I would go back to normal,” she said. “But I really didn’t. I worked through it because you just don’t pass up opportunities as a female firefighter.” She often felt like she was drowning as she continued to fight fires across Montana the rest of the summer. 

“There’s an attitude in firefighters that you don’t quit for anything,” she said. “And there’s just no education, warning, or recognition of long COVID in fire.” 

Advocates for those with chronic illness warned of the possibility of complex chronic illness following COVID-19 in the beginning of the pandemic, but the federal government’s public health apparatus did not amplify these messages and still doesn’t consistently emphasize the risk of long-term health effects following an initial case. “I can only assume that I did more damage to myself,” she said. “I gave in to this notion that because I was young and healthy, I’d be fine, when I knew, deep down, there was something really wrong with me.”

A growing number of physicians warn that resuming activity while not yet fully recovered may increase a person’s likelihood of developing long COVID. But owing to financial hardship, inadequate sick leave and other pressures, many workers in the United States push on through their illnesses. 

Bossler continued to work on her crew through the summer, despite lingering symptoms. But then, in late August, she found out she was pregnant. She said she likely conceived around the time she first contracted COVID-19 in early July 2020.

In a joint decision with her superiors, Bossler transferred from the engine crew to a timber strike team for the rest of the season. Her due date was in May, and she planned to take a Forest Service office job that summer and resume working as a firefighter the following season—assuming she recovered from long COVID. But these plans were put on hold in January when she gave birth to her daughter, Maesyn, prematurely, at only 25 weeks. Her baby suffered fetal inflammatory response syndrome due to the maternal history of COVID, and Bossler’s placenta was filled with blood clots, which contributed to placental failure and abruption. “A COVID-affected placenta looks like you took a roadkill deer, took the liver out, and shot it with a shotgun a couple of times,” Bossler told me. 

When she first went into the hospital at 23 weeks with contractions from early labor, Bossler was told there was only a 30 percent chance of her baby surviving. Her daughter weighed just 1 pound and 6 ounces at birth when she arrived two weeks later and gained only 5 more pounds during her 115 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She died on May 14, 2021, close to her original due date. In Maesyn’s final moments, Bossler was able to take her daughter out of the NICU to see the sky for the first time. Maesyn died outside in the spring sunlight, in the arms of Bossler and her partner, Marcus Cahoon.

Now, over two years since she first contracted COVID, Bossler continues to experience debilitating long COVID symptoms. She cannot walk more than half a mile without feeling fatigued and also struggles with headaches and memory loss, and has difficulty paying attention. She has chest pain that she says has worsened significantly since she was reinfected in June. Bossler believes her pregnancy complications made her more aware of her illness, which she might otherwise have been too stubborn to acknowledge. “I know of people that have long COVID that are still trying to be firefighters,” she said, “but I don’t think they have the same understanding or recognition of it that I might have. 

“I think all employers of wildland firefighters would be doing a huge disservice to their employees to not recognize long COVID and the mental health challenges that come from it,” Bossler said. When I reached out to the Forest Service in August about the agency’s approach to long COVID education and prevention, I was told to contact the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees all federal employees. The Interior Department, which employs over 5,000 temporary and permanent wildland fire personnel, wrote that it develops policy based on recommendations from the CDC and Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, which is led by the White House COVID-19 Response Team, the General Services Administration and the OPM—none of which offer publicly available guidelines on long COVID. The Office of Personnel Management sent a written statement in response to our request for comment but did not elaborate on its policies related to long COVID.

“(First responders’) careers depend on our health and us being able to respond to a fire or an emergency at any point of time, despite how we feel,” said Karyn Bishof, the founder of the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project, a nonprofit advocating for education, research and patient welfare. She said that many first responders, including wildland firefighters, are reluctant to speak about health issues for fear of losing their livelihoods. “The flip side of that is if they’re not seeking treatment and care, they’re not only risking their own lives, but possibly the lives of their crews.”

Bishof became infected with COVID after an outbreak at her firefighter paramedic training in the city of Palm Beach Gardens in South Florida. She told me she was later let go from her job on the Fire Rescue team without explanation. In late 2020, Bishof was also denied workers’ compensation after a doctor diagnosed her symptoms as psychosomatic, a common experience for many patients with complex chronic illness. She has since filed a discrimination lawsuit against the city of Palm Beach Gardens. The city did not respond to my request for comment.

Like other infectious diseases, including Lyme, mononucleosis and SARS-1, COVID-19 can develop into complex chronic illnesses. Researchers have consistently found a range of abnormalities in long COVID patients, including micro clots, persistent viral reservoirs, reactivated viruses and autoimmune responses. The US Department of Health and Human Services has recognized that the condition can be a disability, but in the fall of 2021, Bishof—like many long COVID patients—was denied Social Security disability benefits. She reapplied but was denied a second time and is now awaiting an appeal hearing.

Because there is no cure for long COVID, Bishof said that preventing COVID-19 and increasing public awareness of its long-term consequences are paramount, especially in protecting first responders. She’s concerned that if long COVID continues to affect one of every five infected people, it will inevitably effect public safety. “If we lose that percentage of that workforce, what does that mean for emergency response times?” she asked. “What does that mean for wildfire response?”

In testimony before a Senate Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis this July, Katie Bach, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that policymakers need to support improved health care, sick leave, disability and workplace accommodations for workers. Given that as many as 4 million long COVID patients are unable to work, Bach estimates a cost of as much as $230 billion in lost earnings alone, not including other costs, such as health care or reduced productivity. 

The Forest Service and Interior Department offer sick leave for employees exposed to communicable diseases, like COVID-19, as well as disability accommodations that can include teleworking and more flexible work hours. Federal firefighters who can’t work at all due to long COVID contracted on the job may be eligible for workers’ compensation, according to an Interior spokesperson. But employees infected outside of work are not eligible for any benefits, according to guidelines by the Office of Personnel Management. 

Looking back at her experience over the past two years, Bossler says the Forest Service needs to develop policies that help protect firefighters from long COVID, as well as provide support for those affected by it. She was forced to leave her job at the Forest Service when she went into early labor. “It was a medically forced resignation,” she said. After her daughter’s birth, she considered returning to the agency, but at that point, she was still grieving and unable to work full-time due to her long COVID symptoms. 

In the fall of 2021, she began working part-time as a health unit coordinator in the same neonatal intensive care unit that treated Maesyn. A number of the nurses there, like other first responders, also suffer from long COVID. “I wanted to work somewhere that would understand me,” Bossler told me. 

“I learned how to handle all these traumatic situations by relying on the lessons from fire,” Bossler said. Maesyn’s brief life and death had such a profound impact that Bossler feels an obligation to continue telling her daughter’s story while educating people about this chronic illness. “I think about other firefighters that lost their ability to do their job.

“It’s not just your job. It’s your identity. The grief that comes with that is just not discussed enough.” 

This story was supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Miles W. Griffis is an independent journalist based in Los Angeles, California. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

The post Wildland firefighters face another danger—an increased risk of long COVID appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.

What’s better than one type of clean energy? A triple threat of technologies working together to bring renewables to the grid. Just last week, the first utility-scale energy facility combining solar, wind, and battery storage opened up and started providing power in northern Oregon. Between 300 megawatts of wind, 50 megawatts of solar, and 30 megawatts of battery storage, the triple-powered project can power around 100,000 homes using clean energy. 

The project, called Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facilities is co-owned by NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, and Portland General Electric (PGE).

Solar and wind energy naturally work well together because of their opposite power hours—wind tends to be strongest at night, and the sunniest hours are during the day. Still, a  key part here is the battery storage, which provides a little bit of an extra cushion for the intermittency of solar and wind energy. With all that storage, energy can be harnessed on demand, even if the sun and wind are nowhere to be seen.

Before the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, renewable energy projects that incorporated storage were largely just stuck with solar, because “energy storage was only incentivized under the tax code when it was associated directly and solely with a solar project,” Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO at the American Council on Renewable Energy, told Utility Dive. But since the massive climate bill passed, the door has opened for battery projects to nestle in with wind and other renewables as well.

[Related: Scientists think we can get 90 percent clean energy by 2035.]

In 2007, Oregon set emissions reductions targets at 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 75 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, and the governor ordered even tighter targets in 2020. Emissions targets for energy delivered to retail customers are ambitious: emissions must be reduced by at least 80 percent by 2030, 90 by 2035 and 100 percent by 2040.

But they are getting there—in 2020, 68 percent of utility-scale electricity generation was from renewables, according to the US Energy Information Administration. For PGE and NextEra, this project represents another step forward. 

“By supporting innovative projects like Wheatridge, we continue to accelerate renewable energy solutions for our state, communities and customers, while maintaining reliability and affordability,” Maria Pope, president and CEO of Portland General Electric said in a press release. “This partnership marks a technological milestone in decarbonizing our system and making clean energy accessible to all Oregonians.”

Even outside the US, projects incorporating wind, solar, and battery storage are rare. One such project just came online in March in the Netherlands, and projects in Australia and the UK are underway. With climate policy back in action across the country, hopefully there will be more renewable energy team-ups in the future.

The post The US’s first utility-scale renewable energy triple threat is online in Oregon appeared first on Popular Science.

Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made.