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Tag: Climate Science

  • Earth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds

    Earth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds

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    Newswise — The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on beating.

    Now, a study by MIT researchers in Science Advances confirms that the planet harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.

    Just how does it accomplish this? A likely mechanism is “silicate weathering” — a geological process by which the slow and steady weathering of silicate rocks involves chemical reactions that ultimately draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and into ocean sediments, trapping the gas in rocks.

    Scientists have long suspected that silicate weathering plays a major role in regulating the Earth’s carbon cycle. The mechanism of silicate weathering could provide a geologically constant force in keeping carbon dioxide — and global temperatures — in check. But there’s never been direct evidence for the continual operation of such a feedback, until now.

    The new findings are based on a study of paleoclimate data that record changes in average global temperatures over the last 66 million years. The MIT team applied a mathematical analysis to see whether the data revealed any patterns characteristic of stabilizing phenomena that reined in global temperatures on a  geologic timescale.

    They found that indeed there appears to be a consistent pattern in which the Earth’s temperature swings are dampened over timescales of hundreds of thousands of years. The duration of this effect is similar to the timescales over which silicate weathering is predicted to act.

    The results are the first to use actual data to confirm the existence of a stabilizing feedback, the mechanism of which is likely silicate weathering. This stabilizing feedback would explain how the Earth has remained habitable through dramatic climate events in the geologic past.

    “On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out  through this stabilizing feedback,” says Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

    The study is co-authored by Arnscheidt and Daniel Rothman, professor of geophysics at MIT.

    Stability in data

    Scientists have previously seen hints of a climate-stabilizing effect in the Earth’s carbon cycle: Chemical analyses of ancient rocks have shown that the flux of carbon in and out of Earth’s surface environment has remained relatively balanced, even through dramatic swings in global temperature. Furthermore, models of silicate weathering predict that the process should have some stabilizing effect on the global climate. And finally, the fact of the Earth’s enduring habitability points to some inherent, geologic check on extreme temperature swings.

    “You have a planet whose climate was subjected to so many dramatic external changes. Why did life survive all this time? One argument is that we need some sort of stabilizing mechanism to keep temperatures suitable for life,” Arnscheidt says. “But it’s never been demonstrated from data that such a mechanism has consistently controlled Earth’s climate.”

    Arnscheidt and Rothman sought to confirm whether a stabilizing feedback has indeed been at work, by looking at  data of global temperature fluctuations through geologic history. They worked with a range of global temperature records compiled by other scientists, from the chemical composition of ancient marine fossils and shells, as well as preserved Antarctic ice cores.

    “This whole study is only possible because there have been great advances in improving the resolution of these deep-sea temperature records,” Arnscheidt notes. “Now we have data going back 66 million years, with data points at most thousands of years apart.”

    Speeding to a stop

    To the data, the team applied the mathematical theory of stochastic differential equations, which is commonly used to reveal patterns in widely fluctuating datasets.

    “We realized this theory makes predictions for what you would expect Earth’s temperature history to look like if there had been feedbacks acting on certain timescales,” Arnscheidt explains.

    Using this approach, the team analyzed the history of average global temperatures over the last 66 million years, considering the entire period over different timescales, such as tens of thousands of years versus hundreds of thousands, to see whether any patterns of stabilizing feedback emerged within each timescale.

    “To some extent, it’s like your car is speeding down the street, and when you put on the brakes, you slide for a long time before you stop,” Rothman says. “There’s a timescale over which frictional resistance, or a stabilizing feedback, kicks in, when the system returns to a steady state.”

    Without stabilizing feedbacks, fluctuations of global temperature should grow with timescale. But the team’s analysis revealed a regime in which fluctuations did not grow, implying that a stabilizing mechanism reigned in the climate before fluctuations grew too extreme. The timescale for this stabilizing effect — hundreds of thousands of years — coincides with what scientists predict for silicate weathering.

    Interestingly, Arnscheidt and Rothman found that on longer timescales, the data did not reveal any stabilizing feedbacks. That is, there doesn’t appear to be any recurring pull-back of global temperatures on timescales longer than a million years. Over these longer timescales, then, what has kept global temperatures in check?

    “There’s an idea that chance may have played a major role in determining why, after more than 3 billion years, life still exists,” Rothman offers.

    In other words, as the Earth’s temperatures fluctuate over longer stretches, these fluctuations may just happen to be small enough in the geologic sense, to be within a range that a stabilizing feedback, such as silicate weathering, could periodically keep the climate in check, and more to the point, within a habitable zone.

    “There are two camps: Some say random chance is a good enough explanation, and others say there must be a stabilizing feedback,” Arnscheidt says. “We’re able to show, directly from data, that the answer is probably somewhere in between. In other words, there was some stabilization, but pure luck likely also played a role in keeping Earth continuously habitable.”

    This research was supported in part by a MathWorks fellowship and the National Science Foundation.

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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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  • A win, win, win for dairy production in East Africa

    A win, win, win for dairy production in East Africa

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    Newswise — Adopting high yield dairy cattle breeds and improving feed would allow Tanzania to increase milk production, while reducing planet warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and alleviating poverty, a new study reveals.

    Tanzania has the second largest dairy herd in East Africa with 28 million cows. However, its dairy sector is poorly developed with mainly small-scale farms stocked with low-yielding breeds, using poor quality feeds. This, along with other supply chain problems around handling and refrigeration, results in poor productivity and the need to import processed dairy products leading to a $23 million trade deficit.

    A new research paper from an international team of researchers led by Lancaster University scientists and published in Nature Food is the first to find evidence that breeding higher yielding dairy cattle offers significant potential to help Tanzania to reduce its dependency on foreign food imports and at the same time help meet its climate commitments.

    The findings show that two key targets of Tanzanian government policy – becoming self-sufficient in milk and cutting GHG emissions by a third – can be achieved simultaneously while increasing income in farming communities.

    Researchers carried out a household survey of 1,200 dairy farmers in Tanzania which was used as a baseline for a sectoral modelling analysis. The survey, which extended across four districts and two agro-ecological zones, was used to estimate milk production, yields from different cattle breeds and how the cattle are managed – for instance what they are fed and how disease is managed.

    Tanzania’s local cattle cope well with high temperatures but produce little milk. New breeds, which cross local cattle with high yielding European cows, produce three times as much milk, while still coping well with heat.

    The study takes as its starting point the Tanzanian Dairy Development Roadmap (DDR), a Government plan which, with support from stakeholders, aims to achieve dairy self-sufficiency by 2030. Currently, Tanzania’s low cost-competitiveness with trading partners results in the import of roughly 23 Million USD per year in dairy, and the DDR aims to replace these imports with domestic production. The researchers model how the Roadmap could be delivered through farmers changing from local to improved breeds of cattle, and feeding their cattle more nutritious, locally produced feed. Crucially, it assumes land that is already used in agriculture, mainly local pasture, is converted to grow feed crops, so farmers do not rely on imported feed and no forest needs to be cut down to grow it.

    “The idea was to model the Tanzanian Government’s planned interventions to increase milk production and also their targets for improved dairy breeds and feeding practices,” said Dr James Hawkins, an environmental economist from the Lancaster Environment Centre, and lead author of the study.

    “What is very important is understanding the interactions between cattle management and productivity because the carbon footprint is strongly related to the productivity of dairy cows.”

    The combination of more nutritious feed and more productive cattle means that production can be increased while reducing herd size, and cutting the amount of land needed to support the cattle, the study found. Better feed can increase the milk yield for local cows by up to 179% and for the higher yielding breeds by up to 130%. 

    The study modelled a series of scenarios, with different levels of milk production and adoption of new breeds and feeds. All the scenarios showed increases in production and a decrease in GHG emissions. The analysis showed that fulfilling the DDR targets for adopting improved breeds would enable Tanzania to meet 70% of the target milk production level while also fulfilling the country’s ambition to reduce GHG emissions from dairy by a third. The main driver of emissions reductions was from avoided land use change. While the model showed improving feed requires more cropland, a much larger decline in grasslands would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from forest clearance.

    “This is a win, win, win for Tanzania,” said Professor Mariana Rufino, from the Lancaster Environment Centre, principal investigator in the study, who has been researching dairy production in Africa for almost twenty years.

    “There have been a lot of studies showing how to mitigate emissions from the livestock sector that tell low-income countries what they should do, that they shouldn’t have livestock etc.  This study is special because we take Tanzania’s own ambitions, a country level target, and work out how they can achieve it, and more.

    “This Tanzanian policy only aims for food security, we find a way they can also improve incomes and meet their climate target at the same time.

    “Dairy is very good for poor communities. It generates daily cash, instead of farmers having to wait for a crop to be harvested once a year. There is a market for feed and lots of small businesses develop around dairy, so it generates income and alleviates poverty. Drinking milk can make a big difference to children in poor communities, providing a little bit of protein and concentrated micronutrients which they cannot get in other foods. So dairy can have a very important societal impact.”

    The income benefits are not equally distributed, the study shows, with farmers who do not have the resources to invest in, feed and care for higher yielding cattle losing out. The authors warn that while overall incomes increase, these farmers’ incomes could fall, especially if increasing production lowers the price they can charge for milk. Support policies should create safeguards for this key food sector, the researchers say.

    Dr Amos Omore, Tanzania country representative for the International Livestock Research Institute, said: “The findings of this paper have huge implications. The same quantity of milk being produced in smallholder dairy farms that dominate in eastern Africa can easily be produced with less than a quarter the number of animals currently, given the large yield gaps. What is required is more investment in sustainable animal productivity in smallholder farms – a clear win-win for better lives and greener planet.”

    The findings are outlined in the paper ‘High yield dairy cattle breeds improve farmer incomes, curtail greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dairy import dependency in Tanzania’

    Partners in the study include the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), both in Kenya, and the Universities of Reading, Queensland and Wisconsin-Madison.

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    Lancaster University

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  • What is a soil carbon credit?

    What is a soil carbon credit?

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    Newswise — November 15, 2022 – The agricultural industry is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Incentivizing climate-smart farming practices by creating “soil carbon credits” is one way to reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment. The Soil Science Society of America’s (SSSA) November 15th Soils Matter blog discusses soil carbon credits and carbon markets.

    Carbon can be stored in soil in many ways. One very important type of soil carbon is organic matter, which is made of decayed materials from living things like plants, animals and microbes.

    With a soil carbon credit system, carbon becomes a valued commodity for growers to gain additional revenue. One soil carbon credit represents 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide or an equivalent greenhouse gas emission that has been reduced, avoided, or removed from the atmosphere.

    Soil carbon credits are produced through carbon farming – using best practices that are known to hold carbon in the soils. Other practices that may receive credits might reduce nitrous oxide emissions. The practices vary by field but may include reduced tillage or no till, adding cover crops, rotational grazing, diversifying crop rotations, and reduced fertilizer usage.

    The new additional practices slow the rate in which carbon is released into the atmosphere and increases the storage of organic carbon in the soil. In a sense, carbon becomes a new crop.

    Growers “harvest” this crop through the collection and submission of data and records. They sell them to a new type of market, the carbon market.

    To ensure that the soil carbon credits are high-quality and the practices that generate them are environmentally beneficial, the credits must undertake a thorough vetting process. A project developer brings growers together and conducts all data collection and reporting. The project is then brought to a registry, which has established a set of standards for soil carbon projects.

    There are even third-party verifiers who ensure the data, methods, and results are accurate. They check that the results adhere to the registry’s standards. Once verified, the registry approves the project results and issues carbon credits that can be sold on a carbon market. Then, other companies, such as a manufacturer, can buy these credits to offset their carbon footprint.

    To read the entire blog, visit: https://soilsmatter.wordpress.com/2022/11/15/what-is-a-soil-carbon-credit/

    Follow SSSA on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SSSA.soils, Twitter at SSSA_Soils. SSSA has soils information on www.soils.org/discover-soils, for teachers at www.soils4teachers.org, and for students through 12th grade, www.soils4kids.org.

    The Soil Science Society of America (SSSA) is a progressive international scientific society that fosters the transfer of knowledge and practices to sustain global soils. Based in Madison, WI, and founded in 1936, SSSA is the professional home for 6,000+ members and 1,000+ certified professionals dedicated to advancing the field of soil science. The Society provides information about soils in relation to crop production, environmental quality, ecosystem sustainability, bioremediation, waste management, recycling, and wise land use.

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    American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), Soil Science Society of America (SSSA)

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  • Negligible climatic impact of the recent methane leak from the Nord Stream pipelines

    Negligible climatic impact of the recent methane leak from the Nord Stream pipelines

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    Newswise — On 26 September 2022, Nord Stream 1 and 2, two subsea pipelines for transferring natural gas from Russia to Germany, were both deliberately ruptured. Massive quantities of gases, primarily methane, escaped into the ocean and were then released into the atmosphere.

    Methane is the second most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas after CO2, but has a much stronger greenhouse effect. Hence, whether negative climatic impacts would arise from this incident is a key concern worldwide. A news article published in Nature commented on this issue, but no quantitative conclusions were made.

    Recently, researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, estimated the possible climatic impact of the leaked methane by adopting the energy-conservation framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6), released in 2021. Their findings have recently been published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

    Having collected all estimates of the total amount of leaked methane available in the world’s media after the incident, it was found that the earliest estimates (1–2 days after) reached up to 0.5 million tonnes (Mt). However, it later became clear that the quantity of methane that leaked was likely to be much lower than first estimated. In particular, a team from Nanjing University, China, provided a more accurate estimate of 0.22 ± 0.03 Mt by drawing upon multiple observations including those from high-resolution satellites.

    This value established that this was the largest methane emission in a single event in human history—more than two times that of the Aliso Canyon accident in California in 2015. However, according to IPCC AR6, annual emissions of methane from the oil and gas sectors amounted to as much as 70 Mt during 2008–2017. The leaked methane from the Nord Stream pipelines was equivalent to only 1 day of emissions from these sectors.

    IPCC AR6 also highlighted that methane in the atmosphere is gradually removed by reacting with certain radicals, such as hydroxyl radical, resulting in an approximate 10-year lifetime, which is short-lived compared to CO2. This means that the climatic impact of methane depends on the time horizon, which complicates matters when trying to calculate it directly. Instead, the researchers made an indirect estimate with the help of the concept of “global warming potential”. Specifically, they determined that the quantity of heat accumulated per unit mass of methane in the next 20 years after its emission into the atmosphere is 82.5 times that of CO2. Then, armed with this information, they were able to calculate that, when considering a time horizon of 20 years, the climatic impact of the leaked methane is equivalent to that of 20.6 Mt of CO2, which would raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration by only 0.0026 ppm. Based on the newest assessments in IPCC AR6 of the effective radiative forcing under doubled CO2, climate feedback, and ocean heat uptake efficiency, under the energy conservation framework, the global mean surface air temperature would in theory increase by 1.8×10−5 ℃.

    “Such a tiny warming cannot be perceived in ecosystems or human society,” explains Dr. Xiaolong Chen, first author of the study. “Still, anthropogenic methane has been the second largest driver of global warming, and is emitted from multiple sectors of agriculture and industry. If we are going to achieve the warming target of below 1.5℃ or 2℃ set out in the Paris Agreement, damage to infrastructure such as this should be avoided so that we can better control and reduce methane emissions.”

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    Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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  • NIH’s Climate and Health Initiative tackles global health effects associated with a changing climate

    NIH’s Climate and Health Initiative tackles global health effects associated with a changing climate

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    Newswise — Media Availability

    What: Leaders from the National Institutes of Health discuss the agency’s plan to address the risk to human health posed by a changing climate in a commentary published in The Lancet. As floods, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, and heat waves become more extreme, the risk to human health grows, exacerbating existing health threats and creating new public health challenges around the world.

    The authors, a coalition of leaders at NIH, outline how the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative is uniquely poised to lead and engage with communities and agencies globally to address the health effects associated with climate change.

    Article: The NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative and Strategic Framework: addressing the threat of climate change to health. The Lancet, November 2022. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)02163-8/fulltext

    Who:  The following NIH leaders are available for interviews:

    Richard P. Woychik, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. He is the lead author on The Lancet commentary, and the chair of the Executive Committee leading the NIH Climate Change and Health Initiative.

    Gary H. Gibbons, M.D., director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

    Roger I. Glass, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Fogarty International Center.

    Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health

    Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, M.D., director of the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

     

    NOTE FOR REPORTERS: This commentary is under embargo until 7:30 p.m. EDT on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.

    Comment pieces are written by experts in the field, and represent their own views, rather than necessarily the views of The Lancet or any Lancet specialty journal. Unlike Articles containing original research, not all Comments are externally peer reviewed.

     

    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit https://www.nih.gov.

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    National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

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  • DNA’ Podcast Hosts Two Climate and Health Twitter Spaces Chats

    DNA’ Podcast Hosts Two Climate and Health Twitter Spaces Chats

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    Newswise — Vanderbilt Health is hosting spin-off live chat episodes of its award-winning podcast series, “DNA: Discoveries in Action,” on Twitter Spaces. These live chats will explore how climate change is impacting well-being and how listeners can boost their climate literacy and action.

    These conversations are designed to cross-pollinate expertise, sectors and perspectives to illustrate the collaborative imperative of tackling climate change.

    DNA’s expert guests will explain why they have hope and want listeners to be energetic and reject “doomerism” while embracing reality and emphasizing teamwork without ego to accomplish individual and systemic goals.

    The conversations feature guests from Vanderbilt’s Medical Center, School of Law and School of Nursing, along with experts from Metro Nashville government, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Philips.

    The conversations will take place on Nov. 13 and 14, from 12:15 pm – 1 pm CT and will be held on Twitter Spaces. Some guests will appear live from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) annual meeting in Nashville with other guests joining remotely.

    Twitter Spaces is a feature that allows people to listen to real-time voice conversations taking place in the mobile app. Anyone may join the audience for the Twitter Spaces conversations; users may listen only on desktop. To be a part of the active audience and potentially ask a question, the mobile app is required.

    Get details by following @VUMC_Insights. Suggest questions ahead of or during the conversations by tweeting using the hashtag #ListenDNA.

    Click the links below to set reminders for the conversations or join the DNA Climate x Health Twitter Spaces on the day of the chat:

    Nashville’s Opportunity: Eco-Action or Anxiety, Sun., Nov. 13, from 12:15 pm to 1 pm CT

    Equity, Energy, Action: The Climate Opportunity, Mon., Nov. 14, from 12:15 pm to 1 pm CT

    The “Climate and Health” chapter of Discoveries in Action (DNA) offers  an expansive look at the disparities of climate change and its impact on health and well-being, as well as sustainability opportunities.

    Episodes offer tangible steps forward for further education and resources to personally shift toward climate-forward paradigms and leadership roles.

    Find the following episodes at listendna.com or subscribe on any podcast platform:

     

    How To…

    •Be A Climate Changemaker (Oct. 31)

    •Fill In The Knowledge Gap (Nov. 7)

    •DIY Climate Action (Nov. 14)

     

    The third season of VUMC’s award-winning podcast, DNA, is an experimental, fresh concept crafted to emphasize collaboration and conversation about how the current era of rapid change impacts mental and physical well-being.

     

     

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    Vanderbilt University Medical Center

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  • Flood Modeling Framework Reveals Heightened Risk and Disparities in Los Angeles

    Flood Modeling Framework Reveals Heightened Risk and Disparities in Los Angeles

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    Newswise — Irvine, Calif., Oct. 31, 2022 – Flood risk in Los Angeles is vastly larger than previously indicated by federally defined flood maps, and low-income and marginalized communities face a significantly higher threat, according to a study led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

    The findings are the product of a recently developed high-resolution flood modeling platform that can assess risk every 10 feet across the 2,700-square-mile expanse of the Greater Los Angeles basin. The framework, described in a paper published today in Nature Sustainability, connects hazards from rainfall, stream flow and storm tides with demographic data including population density, ethnicity, race and economic disadvantage.

    “We have developed an innovative, new flood risk modeling platform that, for the first time, enables household exposure and inequalities to be systematically quantified across major metro regions,” said lead author Brett Sanders, UCI professor of civil and environmental engineering. “This platform could, in principle, be applied everywhere to not only assess risks but measure the efficacy and equity of proposed solutions. And because the modeling is at a very fine resolution, anyone can immediately visualize the risk and contemplate how it might impact them.”

    A 100-year flood event in Los Angeles would expose more than 400,000 people to danger, and property damage could exceed $50 billion. According to the UCI researchers, losses would be comparable to those felt in severe hurricanes such as Katrina in 2005, Sandy in 2012, and Irma and Harvey in 2017, each of which incurred tens of billions of dollars in damages and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

    Los Angeles is less at risk of impact from a tropical cyclone – the most common source of flooding in the southeastern United States – but Southern California is subject to occasionally catastrophic levels of precipitation from climate change-driven atmospheric river events.

    “The impacts of a severe flood would not be evenly distributed across Angelinos,” Sanders said. “Disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected, and they’re less well protected. Recovery from floods is often prolonged and incomplete in these areas due to unequal government responses, which further exacerbate the inequities.”

    A sizeable portion of the risk – and the inequality in possible outcomes – in Greater Los Angeles comes from the region’s built environment, according to the researchers.

    “The impacts of a severe flood would not be evenly distributed across Angelinos. Disadvantaged communities are disproportionately affected, and they’re less well protected,” says Brett Sanders, UCI professor of civil and environmental engineering, here walking in the Santa Ana River channel. Jo Kwon / Spectrum News

    “Recent flooding disasters across the U.S. have demonstrated that cities are underprepared and that infrastructure is undersized,” said co-author Richard Matthew, UCI professor of urban planning and public policy. “As we saw in Texas and Florida recently, areas exposed to flood risk have been underestimated by previous mapping, especially among disadvantaged communities, and this is the case here in Los Angeles and Orange County too.”

    Matthew noted that the drivers of disaster differ from inland to coastal areas. Poorer regions are more affected by intense rainfall, causing runoff to collect in streets and overwhelm flood channels, while more affluent communities along the coast are more vulnerable to flooding from storm tides and waves. Each set of hazards requires different mitigation measures, he stressed.

    “The development of this modeling framework is especially timely given that the U.S. is increasingly focused on climate change, committed to infrastructure investments, concerned about social justice, and in need of tools that facilitate community participation in infrastructure planning and design,” Sanders said.

    The project received financial support from the National Science Foundation, high-performance computing assistance from the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory in Wyoming, and data from Los Angeles County and Orange County. Additional researchers included Amir AghaKouchak, Steven Davis, Daniel Kahl, Jochen Schubert and Nicola Ulibarri of UCI; Katharine Mach of the University of Miami; David Brady of UC Riverside; and Fonna Forman of UC San Diego.

    About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

    Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

    NOTE TO EDITORS: PHOTO AVAILABLE AT
    https://news.uci.edu/2022/10/31/uci-flood-modeling-framework-reveals-heightened-risk-and-disparities-in-los-angeles

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    University of California, Irvine

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  • It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity: Water Loss Hurts Bees Most in the Desert

    It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity: Water Loss Hurts Bees Most in the Desert

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    Newswise — (San Diego) October 29, 2022—Digger bees lose large amounts of water during flight, which compromises their activity period and survival in the desert heat. Researchers from Arizona State University will present their work this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting in Comparative Physiology: From Organism to Omics in an Uncertain World conference in San Diego. 

    “Water loss appears to be a critical problem for male digger bees. Climate change will very likely challenge their important ecological functions.” —Meredith Johnson

    Climate change plays a role in the physiological evolution and survival of animals of all sizes. Desert animals, already acclimated to high temperatures, use evaporative heat loss to help prevent overheating. However, the sometimes-limited ability to replenish water loss means the danger of dehydration is a challenge for desert animals, including the Sonoran Desert digger bee.

    Bees are an integral part of the ecosystem due to their ability to pollinate—more than 80% of flowering plants rely on insect pollinators. When bees become unable to pollinate sufficiently—due to lack of food or other changes in their environment—plant biodiversity decreases and plant-eating animals are affected. A large percentage of food crops, including fruits, nuts and vegetables, also depend on pollination. Researchers explored the effects of heat, water stress and food availability on male digger bees in the Arizona Uplands, a region of the Sonoran Desert.

    During the study, air temperatures increased from around 66 degrees F in the early morning—when the bees began to fly to a mating site—to about 100 degrees at midday, when they typically stop flying for the day. In addition, no plants were in bloom at the study site to provide nectar for the bees to drink at the time of the study. Marking techniques used by the research team suggest that the bees survive for about a week, which means they are finding nectar somewhere in the desert. Researchers think the bees may be traveling for some distance during the later—and hotter—part of the day to find food.

    The researchers also examined the bees’ body temperature and body water content throughout the day. The hottest body temperature measurement was approximately 111 degrees F. Digger bees can withstand body temperatures around 125 degrees during flight, suggesting that overheating is not why the bees stopped flying before midday, explained Meredith Johnson, a doctoral candidate at Arizona State University and first author of the study.

    Water loss is a bigger problem for the insects. “These bees lose 17% of their body water content per hour, with the amount slightly increasing as the air temperature [rises],” Johnson said. “Loss of about 50% of total body water content is lethal, suggesting that these bees can maximally fly for about three hours.”

    The flying time constraint is important to note, as typically bees need to fly for six or seven hours each day searching for mating opportunities. Without sufficient time to mate, the bee population will shrink in the future.

    “Water loss appears to be a most critical problem for male digger bees. Climate change will very likely challenge their important ecological functions,” Johnson said.

    Physiology is a broad area of scientific inquiry that focuses on how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. The American Physiological Society connects a global, multidisciplinary community of more than 10,000 biomedical scientists and educators as part of its mission to advance scientific discovery, understand life and improve health. The Society drives collaboration and spotlights scientific discoveries through its 16 scholarly journals and programming that support researchers and educators in their work. 

     

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    American Physiological Society (APS)

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  • Math Model Shows Climate Change Puts Rainforest Animal’s Survival in Jeopardy

    Math Model Shows Climate Change Puts Rainforest Animal’s Survival in Jeopardy

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    Newswise — (San Diego) October 29, 2022—A South American marsupial with ties to an ancient line of animals may go extinct in the next half-century due to warming temperatures. Researchers from the Universidad Austral de Chile will present a mathematical model of the monito del monte’s survival predictions this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting in Comparative Physiology: From Organism to Omics in an Uncertain World conference in San Diego. 

    The monito del monte, native to the rainforests of South America, is a marsupial in the relict family Microbiotheriidae. These tiny animals typically weigh about 20 grams (0.7 ounce) and measure around 3 to 5 inches long. Monitos reproduce and prepare for winter hibernation during the summer. Preparation includes eating as much as possible—including fruit, insects, small birds and other dead animals—to store as body fat. Researchers estimate that monitos need to have fat reserves that are almost twice their body weight to survive the winter.

    Climate change predictions show that ambient temperatures in coastal Chile will increase an estimated 36.5 degrees F over the next 50 years. This will have a large impact on the ability of the monito population to survive the winter. The warmer temperatures will cause the animals to come out of hibernation earlier than usual, and they will be unable to find food during the winter, explained Roberto Nespolo Rossi, PhD, first author of the study. Nespolo and his research team developed a mathematical model to estimate survival rates for the monito population in the advent of global warming.

    The mathematical model uses an algebraic formula to connect days of winter survival with the ambient temperature. The calculations are based on the assumption that all of the monitos’ daily energy expenditure during hibernation comes from the fat stores they have accumulated during the warmer months.

     

    Energy content of fat (kilojoule per gram) X Fat stores (grams)

    ­­­­­_______________________________________________________ 

    Daily energy expenditure (kilojoule per day)

    The model “is one of the few predictive models built on physiological parameters, so it can be applied to other hibernators, for which there is plenty of physiological data,” Nespolo said. “Our predictions for 50 years … indicate that most coastal populations [of monitos] will go extinct,” he added. This is especially important because the monito, sometimes referred to as a “living fossil,” is the last living relative of the ancient marsupial order Microbiotheria.

    Physiology is a broad area of scientific inquiry that focuses on how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. The American Physiological Society connects a global, multidisciplinary community of more than 10,000 biomedical scientists and educators as part of its mission to advance scientific discovery, understand life and improve health. The Society drives collaboration and spotlights scientific discoveries through its 16 scholarly journals and programming that support researchers and educators in their work. 

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  • Food Security Harmed by Warming Ocean, Accelerating Fish Development

    Food Security Harmed by Warming Ocean, Accelerating Fish Development

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    Newswise — (San Diego) October 29, 2022— Higher temperatures spurred by worsening climate change increased the growth rate of fish and consumption of their yolk sac—a structure that provides an embryo with food and helps develop important structures, such as blood cells. In addition, higher temperatures boosted fish mortality rates and led to faster depletion of their yolk sac, according to researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. The findings will be presented this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting in Comparative Physiology: From Organism to Omics in an Uncertain World conference in San Diego. 

    Ocean temperatures are predicted to rise as carbon monoxide gas accumulates due to climate change. To determine the impact on larval white seabass, researchers sampled fish reared at 18–23 degrees Celsius throughout development from birth to six days old. With this process, they were hoping to differentiate the effects of temperature and time. They estimated growth and development rates by examining images obtained under a light microscope, among other methods.

    These findings are important because it helps inform fish population predictions in the face of climate change. The fishing industry is an important link in the U.S. food supply chain. Predicting growth rates and population structures of white seabass, a commercially and recreationally significant population in California, is critically important to help ensure food security.

    “Our results suggest that larval fish recruitment could swing to either extremity as a result of ocean warming,” said Ria Bhabu, co-author of the study and a student at the University of California San Diego. 

    Physiology is a broad area of scientific inquiry that focuses on how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. The American Physiological Society connects a global, multidisciplinary community of more than 10,000 biomedical scientists and educators as part of its mission to advance scientific discovery, understand life and improve health. The Society drives collaboration and spotlights scientific discoveries through its 16 scholarly journals and programming that support researchers and educators in their work. 

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  • Climate Change Negatively Affecting School Sharks

    Climate Change Negatively Affecting School Sharks

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    Newswise — (San Diego) October 29, 2022— Preliminary research data suggest warmer temperatures and increased salt levels might have negative effects on the behavior and physiology of school sharks. A clear indicator of physiological changes is higher levels of stress markers such as glucose and lactate concentrations in the blood. Researchers also noted behavior changes according to the warmer and saltier the environment is and the more time school sharks spend resting. School sharks are usually constantly swimming. A break in their usual activity means they might be too stressed to find food or escape predators. The findings will be presented this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting in Comparative Physiology: From Organism to Omics in an Uncertain World conference in San Diego. 

    Researchers also examined the response of school sharks to increases in temperatures and salinity levels based on neonatal and juvenile (one year old and older) stage. The findings show newborns were more tolerant of some of the environmental changes than juveniles. This suggests neonates might have a special ability at birth to inhabit coastal waterways where freshwater mixes with salt water before migrating into deeper waters as juveniles. 

    The shallow water home of school sharks is constantly fluctuating, but this natural variation is being exacerbated due to the rapid pace of climate change. As a result, researchers through this study were seeking to determine “if this endangered species will be able to continue using these protected, resource-rich waters, or if they will be forced out into the ocean, which may have major ecological implications for the survival of the species.” They specifically wanted to know if the nursery ground in southeast Tasmania will remain a viable area for school shark pups in the coming years. To reach their conclusion, researchers evaluated the physiology and biochemistry of neonatal and juvenile sharks. 

    “Hopefully, these findings will be able to guide or inform regulations that can improve shark health,” said Katherine Ollerhead, a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania in Australia and co-author of the study. 

    Physiology is a broad area of scientific inquiry that focuses on how molecules, cells, tissues and organs function in health and disease. The American Physiological Society connects a global, multidisciplinary community of more than 10,000 biomedical scientists and educators as part of its mission to advance scientific discovery, understand life and improve health. The Society drives collaboration and spotlights scientific discoveries through its 16 scholarly journals and programming that support researchers and educators in their work. 

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  • El NiñO Increases Seedling Mortality Even in Drought-Tolerant Forests

    El NiñO Increases Seedling Mortality Even in Drought-Tolerant Forests

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    Newswise — Global climate change may lead to more extreme weather events such as droughts. To predict the impact of climate change on tropical forests, it is necessary to understand more accurately the effects of drought. El Niño often reduces rainfall and causes drier forests in the tropical regions of Southeast Asia. Since tropical rainforests there usually experience rainfall year-round with no dry season, El Niño-induced drought increases tree mortality. Seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs), on the other hand, are considered more adaptive to drought given that they experience both wet and dry seasons. However, there remains limited understanding about the effects of El Niño on SDTFs.

    Addressing this knowledge gap, a research team led by graduate student Prapawadee Nutiprapun, from the Graduate School of Science at Osaka City University, Professor Akira Itoh, from the Graduate School of Science at Osaka Metropolitan University, and Professor Dokrak Marod, from the Faculty of Forestry at Kasetsart University, monitored seedling recruitment and mortality at an SDTF in a national park in Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, at monthly intervals for 7 years.

    During the study period, an extremely strong El Niño event occurred between 2014 and 2016, resulting in reduced rainfall. In 2016, the dry season was approximately 3 months longer than normal. The collected data show that severe and prolonged drought increased seedling mortality even in the SDTF. In addition, drought-caused mortality was greater in evergreen forests at higher elevations, where drought is usually less severe, than in deciduous forests at lower elevations, where severe drought is more frequently observed.

    Only in deciduous forests did the number of seedlings increase significantly during the El Niño period. This was mainly due to a large number of acorns produced by the deciduous oak Quercus brandisiana (Fagaceae). El Niño has been known to stimulate mass flowering and fruiting, leading to an increase in seedlings in tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia.

    “This study takes us one step closer to understanding the impact of El Niño on seasonally dry tropical forests in Southeast Asia,” said Ms. Nutiprapun.

    “A decline in the number of seedlings that carry the next generation will affect the entire forest in the long run,” concluded Professor Itoh. “We believe that we have obtained useful basic knowledge to develop measures to conserve tropical forest ecosystems in consideration of future climate change.”

     

    ###

    About OMU

    Osaka Metropolitan University is a new public university established by a merger between Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University in April 2022. For more science news, see https://www.upc-osaka.ac.jp/new-univ/en-research/, and follow @OsakaMetUniv_en, or search #OMUScience.

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  • Real-time space readings of ‘super emitter’ power plants leaves nowhere to hide for big polluters

    Real-time space readings of ‘super emitter’ power plants leaves nowhere to hide for big polluters

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    Summary: Under the Paris Agreement, countries will need to track greenhouse gas emissions at the level of individual ‘super-emitters’, such as power plants, in close-to real time. Researchers show for the first time that this is already possible with data from existing satellites and instruments like NASA’s OCO-2 and OCO-3 (attached to the International Space Station), both designed to measure emissions at much larger spatial scales. This proof-of-principle indicates that the EU’s ‘CO2M’ pair of satellites, planned for 2025 or 2026, with a joint coverage a hundred times greater than OCO-2 and OCO-3, should be able to deliver on future needs.  

    Newswise — Countries signed up to the 2015 Paris Agreement have committed themselves to keep the rise in average global temperature ‘well below’ 2 °C. Every five years, they are to issue so-called ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs), describing their actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. 

    Countries will thus need to track their carbon emissions, not only at a national level, but also at the scale of individual ‘super-emitters’ such as power plants, megacities, refineries, and giant factories — together responsible for nearly half of humanity’s total output of GHGs.

    In late 2025 or 2026, the EU plans to launch its ‘CO2M’ (Copernicus Anthropogenic CO2 Monitoring Mission) pair of satellites, whose job will be to help with this. 

    Important proof-of-principle for CO2M

    But now, scientists have shown that such tracking-at-the-source is already possible, even with existing satellites, for ‘super-emitters’ like the Bełchatów power plant in Poland. For this proof-of-principle, they used five years of measurements from NASA’s satellite ‘Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2’ (OCO-2; launched in 2014) and the instrument OCO-3, attached since 2019 to the International Space Station (ISS).

    This success is an important achievement, as the OCO missions were designed to measure carbon emissions at much larger spatial scales.

    “Here we show for the first time that it’s already possible to measure changes in CO2 emissions from a large power plant, with observations from existing CO2-tracking satellites,” said Dr Ray Nassar, an atmospheric scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto, and the study’s first author, published in Frontiers in Remote Sensing.

    Largest power plant in Europe 

    The Bełchatów lignite-fired (brown coal) power plant is the largest thermal power station in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. Here, units are sometimes decommissioned and new ones put in service, while more often, units shut down temporarily for maintenance. To be of use, satellites and instruments like OCO-2 and OCO-3 should immediately detect changes in CO2 emissions due to these changes in operation — and here, Nassar and colleagues show for the first time that they can.

    CO2 is emitted by the 300 meter-high stacks at Bełchatów and carried by the wind in the form of an invisible plume, approximately 10-50 km long and 550 meters above Earth. OCO-2, which orbits the Earth at an altitude of 705 km, passes every 16 days close by or directly over Bełchatów. OCO-3 orbits at an altitude of 420 km and passes over or near Bełchatów more frequently. OCO-3 has the added capability to scan back and forth across a region, giving better local coverage or a wider view.

    Not every flyby or overpass is suitable

    Satellites can assess the CO2 ‘enhancement’ — extra CO2 emitted by a source — only in the absence of clouds and when the plume doesn’t pass over large water bodies or mountains. They measure ‘XCO2’, the average CO2 concentration across a column directly below, subtracting the current background value (locally, on average 415 ppm) around the plume. 

    Together, OCO-2 and OCO-3 yielded 10 suitable datasets about the CO2 plume above Bełchatów between 2017 and 2022.

    Excellent agreement between observed and predicted data 

    The researchers compared the measurements from space to estimates for Bełchatów’s emissions, based on its known daily power generation output. The measurements turned out to closely track the daily predictions. This proves that even today, existing satellites can track emissions in close-to-real time for installations like Bełchatów. For example, OCO-2 detected a pronounced but transient dip in emissions from Bełchatów between June and September 2021, due to shutdowns for maintenance.

    All clear for CO2M 

    The results are promising: they indicate that CO2M, with a joint spatial coverage about a hundred times greater than OCO-2 and OCO-3, will be able to deliver on future needs. 

    “The capacity to get the most precise information about CO2 emissions from ‘super-emitters’, such as the Bełchatów power plant, across the globe will boost transparency in carbon accounting and hopefully, it will ultimately help to reduce these emissions,” said Nassar.

    “This future capacity will lead to improved CO2 emission information at the scale of countries, cities or individual facilities, enhancing transparency under the Paris Agreement and supporting efforts to reduce emissions causing climate change.”

    ###    

    For editors / news media:

    Please link to the open access original research article “Tracking CO2 emission reductions from space: A case study at Europe’s largest fossil fuel power plant” in Frontiers in Remote Sensing in your reporting:

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsen.2022.1028240/full

     

     

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  • Scientists Find First Evidence That Marine Conservation Mitigates Climate Change

    Scientists Find First Evidence That Marine Conservation Mitigates Climate Change

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    Newswise — Marine protected areas act as a safeguard for oceans, seas, and estuaries. These zones help to preserve the plants and animals that call these waters home, but the benefits of protected areas extend far beyond their boundaries. In a review publishing October 21 in the journal One Earth, a team of researchers explain how marine protected areas help to sequester carbon and foster ecological and social adaption to climate change.

    “Marine protected areas are increasingly being promoted as an ocean-based climate solution. Yet such claims remain controversial due to the diffuse and poorly synthesized literature on climate benefits of marine protected areas,” write the authors. “To address this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic literature review of 22,403 publications spanning 241 marine protected areas.”

    The authors found that carbon sequestration in marine protected areas increased significantly in seagrass areas, mangroves, and in areas where sediment wasn’t trawled. “Partial or full degradation of mangroves and seagrass both resulted in similar decreases of sequestered carbon, indicating that even low levels of human impact result in important carbon emissions,” they write.

    In addition to boosting carbon sequestration, preserved areas were more biodiverse, had increased species richness, and showed benefits for humans, too. Marine protected areas had greater food security, and fish stocks in waters adjacent to these protected areas swelled. The authors note that the mitigation and adaptation benefits of these protected areas were only achieved under high levels of protection, and that benefits increased the longer an area had been protected.

    “Across all four pathways analyzed, only full and high levels of protection resulted in mitigation or adaptation benefits,” they write. “In contrast, low levels of protection generated no benefits. Furthermore, increases in species richness and in fishers’ income only occurred for fully protected areas, where no fishing is allowed.”

    ###

    One Earth, Jacquemont et al. “Ocean conservation boosts climate change mitigation and adaptation” https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(22)00480-8

    One Earth (@OneEarth_CP), published by Cell Press, is a monthly journal that features papers from the fields of natural, social, and applied sciences. One Earth is the home for high-quality research that seeks to understand and address today’s environmental Grand Challenges, publishing across the spectrum of environmental change and sustainability science. A sister journal to Cell, Chem, and Joule, One Earth aspires to break down barriers between disciplines and stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas with a platform that unites communities, fosters dialogue, and encourages transformative research. Visit http://www.cell.com/one-earth. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact [email protected].

    For the latest sustainability research and ideas from Cell Press follow @CellPressSust on Twitter.

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  • Marine Protected Areas Combat the Effects of Climate Change

    Marine Protected Areas Combat the Effects of Climate Change

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    Newswise — Marine protected areas (MPAs) are one of the solutions being put forward to help adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. To demonstrate their effectiveness, scientists from CRIOBE (CNRS/École Pratique des Hautes Etudes/UPVD), as part of an international team1, analysed 22,403 research articles on MPAs. Their results show that MPAs can significantly improve carbon sequestration, coastal protection, biodiversity and the reproductive capacity of marine organisms, as well as the catches and income of fishers when they are fully or highly protected. Although MPAs cannot solely compensate for the full impact of climate change, they are a valuable tool for the mitigation and adaptation of socio-ecological systems. While ocean-related solutions were previously proposed without any real grounding, these results now provide a scientific basis for intergovernmental conventions to address the climate crisis. This new study, published in One Earth on October 21, also reveals that the effect of MPAs on certain climate mechanisms is still not sufficiently documented.

    1This research involved scientists from the Ocean-Climate Platform at the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University) and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences (University of Washington).

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  • Monitoring soil moisture to protect forest and wildland systems

    Monitoring soil moisture to protect forest and wildland systems

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    Newswise — October 20, 2022 — A solid understanding of the water cycle is crucial to understanding landscape response under a changing climate. Soil moisture is a vital component of the water cycle with interactions and feedbacks that greatly affect the Earth’s critical zone. These topics will be discussed at the “National soil moisture monitoring network – focus on forest and wildland systems” symposium for the Communication and Public Engagement for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland.

    The meeting is sponsored by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and the Soil Science Society of America.

    Presentations include:

    • Modeling soil moisture – approaches in forested landscapes, Carlos Quintero, Oak Ridge Institution for Science and Education
    • Strategies for improved soil moisture monitoring and coordination in the United States, Michael Cosh, USDA
    • Using soil moisture information to better understand and predict wildfire danger, Tyson Ochsner, Oklahoma State University
    • Investigating the usefulness of forest soil moisture, Russell Briggs, SUNY-Syracuse
    • Soil moisture applications for informed decision making, John Bolten, NASA

    For more information about the Communication and Public Engagement for Healthy People and a Healthy Planet ASA, CSSA, SSSA International Annual Meeting, visit https://www.acsmeetings.org/. Media are invited to attend the conference. Pre-registration by October 25, 2022 is required.

    For more specific information about this symposium, visit https://scisoc.confex.com/scisoc/2022am/meetingapp.cgi/Session/23282.  

    To speak with one of the scientists, contact Susan V. Fisk, [email protected] to arrange an interview.

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  • Goats and Sheep Battle in Climate Crisis

    Goats and Sheep Battle in Climate Crisis

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    Newswise — A new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Colorado State University, and the National Park Service indicates previously unknown high altitude contests between two of America’s most sensational mammals – mountain goats and bighorn sheep – over access to minerals previously unavailable due to the past presence of glaciers which, now, are vanishing due to global warming. 

    The study also points to other coveted resources such as desert water and shade in brutal environs from Africa, Asia, and North America; species in these extreme environments contest access to these biologically important resources but such interactions have not previously been catalogued by individual species, their size, or their status as ‘native’ or ‘exotic’. 

    “While humans continue to be justifiably concerned about the climate-induced havoc we’re wreaking planet-wide, much has remained unknown about species aggression among our mammalian brethren” said Joel Berger, the lead author and Senior Scientist for WCS and the Barbara Cox-Anthony Chair of Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University. 

    The findings from this work were distilled from fragmentary information dating backwards some four decades and included species as different as marmots and baboons, oryx and elephants, and rhinos, along with wild (i.e., feral) horses which displaced native pronghorn, mule deer, and elk from desert waters.

    The study revealed that mountain goats with their saber-like horns emerged victorious over bighorn sheep in more than 98 percent of contests at three sites along a 900-mile gradient of above-treeline mountainous habitat from Colorado to Alberta, Canada. While mountain goats are a native species in northwestern North America, they are exotic in Colorado and Wyoming, including the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, where they were introduced. Concerns there and elsewhere have focused on the extent to which goats may displace or outcompete native bighorns. Although it remains unknown if interactions to access resources have increased over time as our climate degrades, human activity has both increased and decreased access by wildlife to restricted resources such as minerals and water through road building and by the creation of artificial water sources. 

    The study appears in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Co-authors, Mark Biel, Chief biologist at Glacier National Park in Montana, and PhD candidate Forest Hayes at CSU, pointed out that high elevation aggression between species, whether passive or active, highlight the importance of limited resources, but it’s been well known that both bighorns and mountain goats will travel up to fifteen miles or more to access these limited resources.  Desert elephants travel distances even more impressive – up to 40 miles – to drink from distant waterholes in Namibia. 

    “It’s been exciting to gather data in wind, snow, and cold on goats and sheep in both Glacier and at Mt. Evans, Colorado, which reaches to more than 14,000 feet,” offered Forest Hayes where “our observations both at close range and from distances of more than a mile provided unique opportunities for detecting and understanding ecological interactions.” 

    Berger, Biel, and Hayes suggest a possible role of climate challenge through ground water depletion in desert areas but recognize humans may be a more immediate threat as water use for people increasingly jeopardizes the fragility of biodiversity in these systems.  “If we can’t offer species other than ourselves a chance, we’re just cooking our fates along similarly destructive paths” offered Berger. 

    Associated partners and funders for this project were Colorado State University and the Wildlife Conservation Society, Glacier National Park Conservatory, Denver Zoological Society, Denver Mountain Parks, and Frederick Dulude-de Broin at LaVal University. 

    ###

    WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society)

    MISSION: WCS saves wildlife and wild places worldwide through science, conservation action, education, and inspiring people to value nature. To achieve our mission, WCS, based at the Bronx Zoo, harnesses the power of its Global Conservation Program in nearly 60 nations and in all the world’s oceans and its five wildlife parks in New York City, visited by 4 million people annually. WCS combines its expertise in the field, zoos, and aquarium to achieve its conservation mission. Visit: newsroom.wcs.org Follow: @WCSNewsroom. For more information: 347-840-1242.

     

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  • Recent news of recovery in the Great Barrier Reef brings hope, but climate change-induced ocean warming is still causing massive bleaching of coral

    Recent news of recovery in the Great Barrier Reef brings hope, but climate change-induced ocean warming is still causing massive bleaching of coral

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    Fact Check By:
    Craig Jones, Newswise

    Truthfulness: Mostly False

    Claim:

    The fact is the Great Barrier Reef is doing exceptionally well. Church bells should be ringing. People should be celebrating. We will always worry about the GBR because it is precious. But there are more pressing matters than coral that has been waxing and waning and a climate that has been warming and cooling for eons. Popular media won’t report this good news, of course, so Dr. Peter Ridd will.

    Claim Publisher and Date: America Out Loud on 2022-10-04

    “Greenpeace Wrong — The Great Barrier Reef Is Thriving!” reads the headline for an article posted by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris on the conservative website, “America Out Loud.” The article cites a recent report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), which says that some parts of the Great Barrier Reef are at their highest in 36 years. Indeed, this is very good news for the world’s largest coral ecosystem. The Institute said that coral in the Great Barrier Reef is resilient and has recovered from past disturbances. However, when factoring in the loss of coral since 2014, the increase measures a modest rise of 3%. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered four bleaching events since 2016. Rising global temperatures due to the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere continue to pose a threat to the reef, scientists say.  The report explicitly says, “These gains can be lost quickly with another large-scale disturbance that causes extensive mortality.” This can hardly be described as “doing exceptionally well.” Therefore, the claim that the GBR is “thriving” is mostly false.

    Luisa Marcelinol, Research Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University explains…

    It is very good news that the coral cover in most areas of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is increasing over the past couple of years (between 33 and 36% of hard coral cover over the north, central and south GBR) but since 2014 and due to intense heatwaves and a severe cyclone during 2014- 2017, GBR coral cover dropped to 10% (Northern GBR) to 25% (Southern GBR). In other words, the increased coral cover – albeit a positive trend – is dwarfed by the loss of coral cover over the bleaching events of the past 6 years. As an example, let me show what the numbers mean. Throughout the Northern GBR coral cover dropped down to 10% of its pre-bleaching baseline. Then it partially rebounded by 33-36%. This means that the coral cover went up from 10% to 13%, a net increase in only 3%.

    A PNAS paper in 2012 by researchers at the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) who have been monitoring the GBR coral cover for the past few decades, described a tremendous loss of coral cover, from 28% to 14% between 1985 and 2012 because of severe tropical cyclones, coral bleaching episodes, and predation by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) outbreaks. The recent news of recovery in the GBR brings hope to conservation groups, park managers, scientists, and the public at large. It shows that because the last couple of years have been relatively mild regarding cyclones, heatwaves, and COTS outbreaks some coral species have been able to rebound, which speaks to the resilience of the reef. It remains to be seen if only some species have rebounded, and if there is loss of diversity, which may reduce future resilience, or if most species have rebounded. But we should not be dismissing the severe effect that climate change-induced ocean warming is bringing to coral reefs in the GBR and throughout the world; in the last 6 years, heatwaves have caused massive coral bleaching and unprecedented loss of coral cover throughout the tropics. Future projections of ocean warming assuming business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions are expected to bring more intense and frequent heat waves and cyclones, which will lead to massive bleaching and death of corals every year and little to no time to recover from stress. If we do not take climate action, coral reefs will likely be lost.

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  • Recent news of recovery in the Great Barrier Reef brings hope, but climate change-induced ocean warming is still causing massive bleaching of coral

    Recent news of recovery in the Great Barrier Reef brings hope, but climate change-induced ocean warming is still causing massive bleaching of coral

    [ad_1]

    Fact Check By:
    Craig Jones, Newswise

    Truthfulness: Mostly False

    Claim:

    The fact is the Great Barrier Reef is doing exceptionally well. Church bells should be ringing. People should be celebrating. We will always worry about the GBR because it is precious. But there are more pressing matters than coral that has been waxing and waning and a climate that has been warming and cooling for eons. Popular media won’t report this good news, of course, so Dr. Peter Ridd will.

    Claim Publisher and Date: America Out Loud on 2022-10-04

    “Greenpeace Wrong — The Great Barrier Reef Is Thriving!” reads the headline for an article posted by Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris on the conservative website, “America Out Loud.” The article cites a recent report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), which says that some parts of the Great Barrier Reef are at their highest in 36 years. Indeed, this is very good news for the world’s largest coral ecosystem. The Institute said that coral in the Great Barrier Reef is resilient and has recovered from past disturbances. However, when factoring in the loss of coral since 2014, the increase measures a modest rise of 3%. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered four bleaching events since 2016. Rising global temperatures due to the buildup of greenhouse gasses in the Earth’s atmosphere continue to pose a threat to the reef, scientists say.  The report explicitly says, “These gains can be lost quickly with another large-scale disturbance that causes extensive mortality.” This can hardly be described as “doing exceptionally well.” Therefore, the claim that the GBR is “thriving” is mostly false.

    Luisa Marcelinol, Research Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University explains…

    It is very good news that the coral cover in most areas of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is increasing over the past couple of years (between 33 and 36% of hard coral cover over the north, central and south GBR) but since 2014 and due to intense heatwaves and a severe cyclone during 2014- 2017, GBR coral cover dropped to 10% (Northern GBR) to 25% (Southern GBR). In other words, the increased coral cover – albeit a positive trend – is dwarfed by the loss of coral cover over the bleaching events of the past 6 years. As an example, let me show what the numbers mean. Throughout the Northern GBR coral cover dropped down to 10% of its pre-bleaching baseline. Then it partially rebounded by 33-36%. This means that the coral cover went up from 10% to 13%, a net increase in only 3%.

    A PNAS paper in 2012 by researchers at the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) who have been monitoring the GBR coral cover for the past few decades, described a tremendous loss of coral cover, from 28% to 14% between 1985 and 2012 because of severe tropical cyclones, coral bleaching episodes, and predation by crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS) outbreaks. The recent news of recovery in the GBR brings hope to conservation groups, park managers, scientists, and the public at large. It shows that because the last couple of years have been relatively mild regarding cyclones, heatwaves, and COTS outbreaks some coral species have been able to rebound, which speaks to the resilience of the reef. It remains to be seen if only some species have rebounded, and if there is loss of diversity, which may reduce future resilience, or if most species have rebounded. But we should not be dismissing the severe effect that climate change-induced ocean warming is bringing to coral reefs in the GBR and throughout the world; in the last 6 years, heatwaves have caused massive coral bleaching and unprecedented loss of coral cover throughout the tropics. Future projections of ocean warming assuming business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions are expected to bring more intense and frequent heat waves and cyclones, which will lead to massive bleaching and death of corals every year and little to no time to recover from stress. If we do not take climate action, coral reefs will likely be lost.

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  • Study reveals new insights into how fast-moving glaciers may contribute to sea level rise

    Study reveals new insights into how fast-moving glaciers may contribute to sea level rise

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    Newswise — Climate change is resulting in sea level rise as ice on land melts and oceans expand. How much and how fast sea levels will rise in the near future will depend, in part, on the frequency of glacier calving events. These occur when large chunks of ice detach from glaciers that terminate in the ocean (known as tidewater glaciers), and fall into coastal fjords as icebergs. The faster these glaciers flow over the ground towards the ocean, the more ice enters the ocean, increasing the rate of sea level rise.

    During the warmer summer months, the surface of Greenland’s glaciers can melt and form large lakes that may then drain through to the base of the glacier. Studies on the inland Greenland ice sheet have shown that this reduces friction between the ice and ground, causing the ice to slide faster for a few days. Up to now, however, it has been unclear whether such drainage events affect the flow speed of tidewater glaciers, and hence the rate of calving events.

    To investigate this, a research team from Oxford University’s Earth Sciences department, the Oxford University Mathematical Institute, and Columbia University used Global Positioning System (GPS) observations of the flow speed of Helheim Glacier—the largest single-glacier contributor to sea level rise in Greenland. The GPS captured a near perfect natural experiment: high-temporal-resolution observations of the glacier’s flow response to lake drainage.

    The results found that Helheim Glacier behaved very differently to the inland ice sheet, which shows a fast, downhill movement during lake drainage events. In contrast, Helheim Glacier exhibited a relatively small ‘pulse’ of movement where the glacier sped up for a short amount of time and then moved slower, resulting in no net increase in movement.

    Using a numerical model of the subglacial drainage system, the researchers discovered that this observation was likely caused by Helheim glacier having an efficient system of channels and cavities along its bed. This allows the draining waters to be quickly evacuated from the glacier bed without causing an increase in the total net movement.

    Although this appears positive news in terms of sea level rise implications, the researchers suspected that a different effect may occur for glaciers without an efficient drainage system where surface melt is currently low but will increase in future due to climate change (such as in Antarctica).

    They ran a mathematical model based on the conditions of colder, Antarctic tidewater glaciers. The results indicated that lake drainages under these conditions would produce a net increase in glacier movement. This was largely due to the less efficient winter-time subglacial drainage system not being able to evacuate flood waters quickly. As of yet, however, there are no in situ observations of Antarctic tidewater glacier responses to lake drainage.

    The study calls into question some common approaches for inferring glacial drainage systems based on glacier velocities recorded using satellite observations (which are currently used in sea level rise models).

    Lead author Associate Professor Laura Stevens (Department of Earth Sciences, Oxford University) said: ‘What we’ve observed here at Helheim is that you can have a big input of meltwater into the drainage system during a lake drainage event, but that melt input doesn’t result in an appreciable change in glacier speed when you average over the week of the drainage event.’

    With the highest temporal resolution of satellite-derived glacier speeds currently available being roughly one week, lake drainage events like the one captured in the Helheim GPS data usually go unnoticed.

    ‘These tidewater glaciers are tricky,’ Associate Professor Stevens added. ‘We have a lot more to learn about how meltwater drainage operates and modulates tidewater-glacier speeds before we can confidently model their future response to atmospheric and oceanic warming.’

     

    About the University of Oxford

    Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the seventh year running, and ​number 2 in the QS World Rankings 2022. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.

    Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

    Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 200 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past three years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing £15.7 billion to the UK economy in 2018/19, and supports more than 28,000 full time jobs.

     

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