Tag: Climate Science

Caribbean Island Nations Take Steps Towards a Sustainable Future

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Newswise — The University of Portsmouth is working with the Caribbean Islands of Antigua & Barbuda and Trinidad & Tobago as they move towards a more sustainable future.

Specialist workshops with government officials are being held this week in Antigua and Trinidad, supported by researchers from the University, to introduce the Rapid Readiness Assessment for a Sustainable Blue Economy.

This Rapid Readiness Assessment (RRA)is a trial that will be taking place over the next few months and the results will inform the Islands in their next steps towards becoming a sustainable ‘blue’ economy. This means the Islands will be able to effectively tap into ocean resources and support long-term economic growth, while also protecting marine and coastal ecosystems.

The RRA will evaluate how ready the Islands national systems, structures and stakeholders are to make the transition to becoming a sustainable blue economy. Building on progress already made in each country, the RRA will help governments and stakeholders understand their current situation and identify both opportunities and gaps.

Antaya March from the University of Portsmouth is leading the work being done in Antigua and Barbuda. She said: “This is a critical time to bring together all of the valuable, existing work in each country and identify how to harmonise approaches and avoid duplication of efforts. A sustainable blue economy presents the opportunity for Antigua & Barbuda and Trinidad & Tobago to truly tap into the wealth of resources the ocean offers, provide equitable sharing of the benefits and reduce their economies’ over reliance on tourism and oil respectively, for a more balanced and equal operating system.”

The assessments are being coordinated under the Commonwealth Blue Charter programme, with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Howell Marine Consulting and the University of Portsmouth. They will consider factors such as leadership, laws and policies, sustainable financing, stakeholder engagement and institutional infrastructure, among others. Government officials will work with experts to review the results and outline possible next steps towards the transition.

Project lead, Dr Jeff Ardron from the Commonwealth Secretariat said: “Commonwealth ocean states are acutely aware of the vast ocean resources that exist within their waters, as well as the need to protect the marine environment. We are pleased to be able to support Trinidad & Tobago, together with Antigua & Barbuda in developing sustainable blue economies, and thank them for their willingness to pilot this new methodology. Both face similar challenges as small island developing states, but they also have key economic differences. The rapid readiness assessments should pinpoint gaps and opportunities for each.”

UNEP spokesperson, Ole Vestergaard said: “During the first online discussion to familiarise stakeholders with the project, representatives from the partner governments thanked the Commonwealth, UNEP and other partners and welcomed the rapid readiness assessment process.”

Acting Director of the Department of the Blue Economy for Antigua and Barbuda, Ms Ann-Louise Hill, added: “The sustainable blue economy promotes economic growth and improved livelihoods across a wide range of sectors, while ensuring the sustainable and responsible use of marine resources. Through a combination of workshops, information-gathering and analysis, this process will help us to identify and understand what is required to improve Antigua and Barbuda’s sustainable blue economy.”

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University of Portsmouth

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October 12, 2022
Allen Coral Atlas at ASU launches improved tool to uncover reef threats and support conservation measures

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Newswise — The loss of coral reefs is a serious threat to the health of marine ecosystems around the world.

Rising ocean temperatures and coastal pollution are among many environmental stressors that contribute to the degradation of critical coral reef environments. Additional threats including deforestation, agricultural pollutants and land development, are damaging coastal marine zones at an alarming rate.

Today, the Allen Coral Atlas at Arizona State University is launching a novel turbidity monitoring tool, which is part of a new toolkit called “Reef Threats.” The Reef Threats system provides global, real-time, integrated data on bleaching, ocean temperature and turbidity. Turbidity is the ‘muck’, mostly from neighboring land use, that can harm coastal coral habitats.

The expanded capability of the Atlas’s monitoring system will provide crucial information for conservation managers around the world tasked with deciding where and how to best protect, support and save coral reefs.

“Each Allen Coral Atlas monitoring tool we create offers new insight into how conditions are changing on coral reefs,” says Greg Asner, director of ASU’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.

“The new Reef Threats toolkit will link changes in ocean temperature, turbidity and coral bleaching to coral loss and reef change over time. This is important because now we’ll see both the human drivers and the reef response with increasing breadth and detail. We’re hopeful that innovative mitigation measures will emerge for coral reefs worldwide,” says Asner.

Brianna Bambic leads the Allen Coral Atlas engagement team by facilitating workshops and field opportunities to use data from the Atlas in real time. Working directly with researchers, students, governments, and coastal managers in reef communities around the world, Bambic says the new tool will make a global impact in reef management.

“In a time of increasing human disturbance both on land and in our oceans, dynamic turbidity monitoring at this scale will drastically improve time and efficiency, as well as prioritize areas for conservation,” says Bambic, senior manager of global engagement with the ASU Center for Global Discovery and Conservation. “These new data can help local communities make more informed decisions about where to restore reefs and mangroves, and it will help identify sources of pollution caused by coastal land development and urban runoff.”

Having a visual, real-time tool provides an immediate focus on conservation action, and can help reduce the time it takes to complete a report. For example, the Ministry of Environment of Sri Lanka is creating an Environmentally Sensitive Areas map of Sri Lanka. The Atlas data will dramatically cut down the time and resources it takes to compile these reports, thus more time can be used for mitigation and conservation action.

Bambic says with real-time feedback to see where the coast is being disturbed, coastal communities can monitor if and when their restoration efforts are making a difference.

What is ocean turbidity?

Turbid water is cloudy and heavy with sediment, contaminants and pollutants stemming from land damage and disturbances. Coastal ocean turbidity is an accepted index of water quality that has been widely applied in field-based water quality monitoring programs. For example, the United States Geological Survey and National Water Quality Program use this index.

However, field-based point recordings have extremely limited spatial coverage. As a result, it is challenging to scale field data to large regions to capture the extent, temporal variation and sources of turbid waters.

Saving coral reefs requires the identification and reduction of local stressors and the cumulative impacts caused by human activities, particularly overfishing, coastal water pollution and land development.

“The muck smothers corals that generate habitat for other marine species and for humans. The improved turbidity monitor uses satellite imagery taken on a regular basis worldwide,” says Asner. “The tool uses European Sentinel-2 data, and while it does come with some satellite-based artifacts, it’s important to push our monitoring boundaries to provide timely, detailed information about the health of coral reefs.”

Mapping the health of coral reefs

The Atlas uses satellite imagery, advanced analytics and global collaboration to create maps of and monitor threats to marine ecosystems’ benthic and geomorphic data in unprecedented detail. The Atlas is a collaborative project led by the ASU Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science in partnership with Vulcan Inc., Planet Inc., the University of Queensland and the Coral Reef Alliance.

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Arizona State University (ASU)

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October 11, 2022
Opening the eye of the storm

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Newswise — For the first time, high-energy muon particles created in the atmosphere have allowed researchers to explore the structures of storms in a way that traditional visualization techniques, such as satellite imaging, cannot. The detail offered by this new technique could aid researchers modeling storms and related weather effects. This could also lead to more accurate early warning systems.

It’s hard not to notice the number of stories in the news about heavy storms in different parts of the world, often attributed to climate change. Weather prediction and early warning systems have always been important, but with increased storm activity it seems especially so these days. A team of researchers, led by Professor Hiroyuki Tanaka from Muographix at the University of Tokyo, offer the world of meteorology a novel way of detecting and exploring tropical cyclones using a quirk of particle physics that takes place above our heads all the time.

“You’ve probably seen photographs of cyclones taken from above, showing swirling vortices of clouds. But I doubt you’ve ever seen a cyclone from the side, perhaps as a computer graphic, but never as actual captured sensor data,” said Tanaka. “What we offer the world is the ability to do just this, visualize large-scale weather phenomena like cyclones from a 3D perspective, and in real time too. We do this using a technique called muography, which you can think of like an X-ray, but for seeing inside truly enormous things.”

Muography creates X-ray-like images of large objects, including volcanoes, the pyramids, bodies of water, and now, for the first time, atmospheric weather systems. Special sensors called scintillators are joined together to make a grid, a little like the pixels on your smartphone’s camera sensor. However, these scintillators don’t see optical light, but instead see particles called muons which are created in the atmosphere when cosmic rays from deep space collide with the atoms in the air. Muons are special because they pass through matter easily without scattering as much as other types of particles. But the small amount they do deviate by as they pass through solid, liquid, or even gaseous matter, can reveal details of their journey between the atmosphere and the sensors. By capturing a large number of muons passing through something, an image of it can be reconstructed.

“We successfully imaged the vertical profile of a cyclone, and this revealed density variations essential to understanding how cyclones work,” said Tanaka. “The images show cross sections of the cyclone which passed through Kagoshima Prefecture in western Japan. I was surprised to see clearly it had a low-density warm core that contrasted dramatically with the high-pressure cold exterior. There is absolutely no way to capture such data with traditional pressure sensors and photography.”

The detector the researchers used has a viewing angle of 90 degrees, but Tanaka envisages combining similar sensors to create hemispherical and therefore omnidirectional observation stations which could be placed along the length of a coastline. These could potentially see cyclones as far away as 300 kilometers. Although satellites already track these storms, the extra detail offered by muography could improve predictions about approaching storms.

“One of the next steps for us now will be to refine this technique in order to detect and visualize storms at different scales,” said Tanaka. “This could mean better modeling and prediction not only for larger storm systems, but more local weather conditions as well.”

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Journal article: Hiroyuki K.M. Tanaka, Jon Gluyas, Marko Holma, Jari Joutsenvaara, Pasi Kuusiniemi, Giovanni Leone, Domenico Lo Presti, Jun Matsushima, László Oláh, Sara Steigerwald, Lee F. Thompson, Ilya Usoskin, Stepan Poluianov, Dezső Varga, Yusuke Yokota. “Atmospheric Muography for Imaging and Monitoring Tropic Cyclones”. Scientific Reports.

About The University of Tokyo
The University of Tokyo is Japan’s leading university and one of the world’s top research universities. The vast research output of some 6,000 researchers is published in the world’s top journals across the arts and sciences. Our vibrant student body of around 15,000 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students includes over 4,000 international students. Find out more at www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/ or follow us on Twitter at @UTokyo_News_en.

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University of Tokyo

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October 7, 2022
Global warming at least doubled the probability of extreme ocean warming around Japan

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Newswise — In the past decade, the marginal seas of Japan frequently experienced extremely high sea surface temperatures (SSTs). A new study led by National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) researchers revealed that the increased occurrence frequency of extreme ocean warming events since the 2000s is attributable to global warming due to industrialization.

In August 2020, the southern area of Japan and the northwestern Pacific Ocean experienced unprecedentedly high SSTs, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA). A recent study published in January 2021 revealed that the record-high northwestern Pacific SST observed in August 2020 could not be expected to occur without human-induced climate changes. Since then, the JMA again announced that the record high SSTs were observed near Japan in July and October 2021 and from June to August 2022, but it remains unclear to what extent climate change has altered the occurrence likelihood of these regional extreme warming events.

“Impacts of global warming is not uniform, rather show regional and seasonal differences,” said a co-author Hideo Shiogama, the head of the Earth System Risk Assessment Section at Earth System Division, NIES. “A comprehensive analysis on regional SSTs for a long period may provide a quantitative understanding of how much ocean condition near Japan has been and will be affected by global warming. This better informs policymakers to plan climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.”

The paper published in Geophysical Research Letters today figures out the contribution of global warming to discrete monthly extreme ocean warming events in Japan’s marginal seas, which could occur less than once per 20 years in the preindustrial era. A climate research group at NIES focused on ten monitoring areas operationally used by the JMA, including the Japan Sea, East China Sea, Okinawa Islands, east of Taiwan, and the Pacific coasts of Japan. The scientists confirmed that observed SST changes from 1982 to 2021 were well reproduced by 24 climate models participating in the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), except for the region east of Hokkaido. Then, the extreme ocean warming events were identified in nine monitoring areas to reveal the contribution of climate change therein.

Extreme ocean warming and climate change

“In the present climate, every extreme ocean warming event is linked to global warming,” said corresponding lead author Michiya Hayashi, a research associate at NIES. The scientists estimated the occurrence frequencies of each event in the present and preindustrial climate conditions from January 1982 through July 2022 based on the CMIP6 climate models. “We found that the occurrence probability of almost all the extreme ocean warming events has already at least doubled since the 2000s than the preindustrial era. It is increased more than tenfold in sizeable cases since the mid-2010s, especially in southern Japan.”

For instance, in July 2022, anomalously high SSTs observed in five monitoring areas, including the Japan Sea (Areas 1, 3), East China Sea (Areas 5, 8), and south of Okinawa near Taiwan (Area 10), are identified as the extreme ocean warming events. The updated results based on the preliminary data retrieved from the NEAR-GOOS RRTDB website on 15 September 2022 (not included in the published paper) show that, in August 2022, the events are also identified in six monitoring areas at the south of 35°N: the East China Sea (Areas 5, 8), south and east of Okinawa (Areas 10, 9), southeastern Kanto (Area 7), and seas off Shikoku and Tokai (Area 6). “We estimate that, in all of these identified events in July and August 2022, the occurrence frequencies are increased at least doubled due to climate change, and more than tenfold for those in the south of 35°N except for the north of East China Sea,” stated Hayashi.

“Climate change impacts on extreme ocean warming events in northern Japan began to emerge relatively late compared to southern Japan,” noted Shiogama. The increased global aerosol emissions until the 1980s tend to cool the Earth’s surface, which is more substantial in the North Pacific especially near northern Japan via atmospheric large-scale circulation changes. In addition, the year-to-year natural variability of SST is large in northern Japan so the global warming signal was less detectable than in southern Japan. Since in the last decades global aerosol emissions have been reduced, the cooling effect becomes less dominant to human-induced greenhouse gas warming. “Our study indicates,“ continued Shiogama, “that the contribution of climate change to SST extremes has been already discernible beyond natural variability even in northern Japan under the present climate condition.”

What about the ocean conditions expected in the future? The researchers further compared the probabilities of exceeding the monthly record high SSTs around Japan at different global warming levels from 0°C to 2°C using the 24 CMIP6 climate model outputs from 1901 to 2100. “Once global warming reaches 2°C, all of nine monitoring areas are expected to experience SSTs warmer than the past highest levels at least every two years,” said Tomoo Ogura, a co-author and the head of the Climate Modeling and Analysis Section at Earth System Division, NIES. He added, “Limiting global warming below 1.5°C is necessary not to have the record warm conditions in Japan’s marginal seas as the new normal climate.”

The quantitative analysis of SSTs around Japan implies that climate change has already become the major factor for most of the record high SSTs in recent years. “In the future, dynamics of each extreme warming event need to be examined by taking the long-term climate change and year-to-year natural variability into account,” noted Hayashi. “Nevertheless, we expect that our statistical results based on the latest climate models will help to implement adaptation and mitigation measures for climate change.”

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National Institute for Environmental Studies

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October 7, 2022
Climate change does not cause hurricanes, but it is very likely climate change caused Hurricane Ian to be more destructive

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While towns across Florida and the Carolinas are cleaning up in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and the death toll climbs, several high-profile climate change skeptics are questioning the connection between the hurricane and human-caused climate change.

“Blaming any one individual hurricane on man-made climate change is just the absolute height of absurdity,” tweeted conservative pundit Matt Walsh, in a post that was shared over 20,000 times. In another tweet posted on October 3rd, climate skeptic Peter Clack (whose claim has been the subject of a previous fact check) says, “A hurricane is not climate change. Nor is rainfall, storms or winter snow. They are all just the the weather. This concept of weather has been hijacked by a global warming frenzy, that has been relentless for 33 years. We must see a return to common sense.”

Scientists concede that any direct links between climate change and one weather event are difficult to prove. However, the consensus is that these extreme weather events are being exacerbated by climate change, making them more intense. Therefore, this claim is rated “half true.”

“It is true that climate change does not cause hurricanes,” says Andrew Dessler, director of Texas Center for Climate Studies and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M, “However, we can say with very high confidence that the hurricane was more destructive due to climate change.”

Hurricane Ian dumped an enormous amount of rain on parts of Florida. Radar estimates and ground observation rainfall shows well-over one foot of rain fell in just 12-24 hours across a swath of the region. In some of the hardest-hit areas such as Placida and Lake Wales, this exceeds the rainfall rates for 1-in-1,000 year flood events, according to NOAA data.

“We are 100% sure that the storm surge was more damaging because it was riding on a higher sea level,” adds Dessler, “We are very confident that global warming is also causing more rainfall from hurricanes because warmer air holds more water. Finally, we have some confidence that climate change is increasing the intensity of hurricanes, so this hurricane may have had stronger winds than it would otherwise have had.”

“You need to look at trends,” warns Kim Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry at University of California, San Diego. “And there is definitely an increase in the number of major weather related disasters occurring over recent decades.”

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Newswise

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October 7, 2022
Climate change does not cause hurricanes, but it is very likely climate change caused Hurricane Ian to be more destructive

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While towns across Florida and the Carolinas are cleaning up in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and the death toll climbs, several high-profile climate change skeptics are questioning the connection between the hurricane and human-caused climate change.

“Blaming any one individual hurricane on man-made climate change is just the absolute height of absurdity,” tweeted conservative pundit Matt Walsh, in a post that was shared over 20,000 times. In another tweet posted on October 3rd, climate skeptic Peter Clack (whose claim has been the subject of a previous fact check) says, “A hurricane is not climate change. Nor is rainfall, storms or winter snow. They are all just the the weather. This concept of weather has been hijacked by a global warming frenzy, that has been relentless for 33 years. We must see a return to common sense.”

Scientists concede that any direct links between climate change and one weather event are difficult to prove. However, the consensus is that these extreme weather events are being exacerbated by climate change, making them more intense. Therefore, this claim is rated “half true.”

“It is true that climate change does not cause hurricanes,” says Andrew Dessler, director of Texas Center for Climate Studies and professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M, “However, we can say with very high confidence that the hurricane was more destructive due to climate change.”

Hurricane Ian dumped an enormous amount of rain on parts of Florida. Radar estimates and ground observation rainfall shows well-over one foot of rain fell in just 12-24 hours across a swath of the region. In some of the hardest-hit areas such as Placida and Lake Wales, this exceeds the rainfall rates for 1-in-1,000 year flood events, according to NOAA data.

“We are 100% sure that the storm surge was more damaging because it was riding on a higher sea level,” adds Dessler, “We are very confident that global warming is also causing more rainfall from hurricanes because warmer air holds more water. Finally, we have some confidence that climate change is increasing the intensity of hurricanes, so this hurricane may have had stronger winds than it would otherwise have had.”

“You need to look at trends,” warns Kim Prather, Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry at University of California, San Diego. “And there is definitely an increase in the number of major weather related disasters occurring over recent decades.”

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Newswise

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October 7, 2022
On-site reactors could affordably turn CO2 into valuable chemicals

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Newswise — New technology developed at the University of Waterloo could make a significant difference in the fight against climate change by affordably converting harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels and other valuable chemicals on an industrial scale.

Outlined in a study published today in the journal Nature Energy, the system yields 10 times more carbon monoxide (CO) – which can be used to make ethanol, methane and other desirable substances – than existing, small-scale technologies now limited to testing in laboratories.

Its individual cells can also be stacked to form reactors of any size, making the technology a customizable, economically viable solution that could be installed right on site, for example, at factories with CO2 emissions.

“This is a critical bridge to connect CO2 lab technology to industrial applications,” said Dr. Zhongwei Chen, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo. “Without it, it is very difficult for materials-based technologies to be used commercially because they are just too expensive.”

The system features devices known as electrolyzers that convert CO2, a major greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, into CO using water and electricity.

Electrolyzers developed by the researchers have new electrodes and a new kind of liquid-based electrolyte, which is saturated with CO2 and flowed through the devices for conversion into CO via an electrochemical reaction.

Their electrolyzers are essentially 10-centimetre by 10-centimetre cells, many times larger than existing devices, that can be stacked and configured in reactors of any size.

“This is a completely new model for a CO2 reactor,” said Chen, the Canada Research Chair in Advanced Materials for Clean Energy. “It makes the whole process economically viable for industrialization and can be customized to meet specific requirements.”

The researchers envision on-site reactors at coal-fired power plants and factories, perhaps the size of a house or more, that would be directly fed CO2 emissions, further reducing costs by eliminating the need to capture and collect CO2 first.

They are also developing plans to power the reactors with on-site renewable energy sources such as solar panels, contributing to the environmental benefits.

“I’m excited by the potential of this technology,” Chen said. “If we really want to make a difference by reducing emissions, we have to concentrate on reducing costs to make it affordable.”

Chen’s collaborators at Waterloo included postdoctoral fellow Dr. Guobin Wen and chemical engineering professors Dr. Aiping Yu and Dr. Jeff Gostick. Several researchers at the South China Normal University also contributed.

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University of Waterloo

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October 6, 2022
More accurate assessments of hurricane damage for responders

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Newswise — COLUMBUS, Ohio – Emergency crews responding to hurricane-damaged areas may soon get an assist from a machine learning model that can better predict the extent of building damage soon after the storm passes.

The model uses remote sensing from satellites that can generate building footprints from pre-hurricane images and then compare them with images taken after the storm.

While some previous models could only tell if a building was damaged or not damaged, this deep learning model can accurately classify how much damage buildings sustained – key information for emergency responders, said Desheng Liu, co-author of the study and professor of geography at The Ohio State University.

“Often it is difficult or impossible to rapidly assess the impact of a hurricane or other natural disaster from the ground,” Liu said.

“Our goal is to be able to provide near real-time information about building damage that can help emergency crews respond to disasters.”

Liu conducted the study with Polina Berezina, a graduate student in geography at Ohio State. Their results were published earlier this year in the journal Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk.

The researchers tested their new model on data from Hurricane Michael in 2018 and found that its overall damage assessment was 86.3% accurate in one region of Florida – an 11% improvement over one current state-of-the-art model.

The research study area included Bay County and parts of neighboring Calhoun, Gulf, Washington, Leon and Holmes counties on the panhandle of Florida. Panama City is the major metropolitan area included in the study.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the total damage to the U.S. economy from Hurricane Michael to equal $25 billion – of that, $18.4 billion occurred in Florida.

The researchers obtained commercial satellite images for the study area. Pre-hurricane images were from October or November 2017. Post-event imagery was obtained on cloud-free days directly after the hurricane impact, mostly on Oct. 13, 2018. The hurricane had made landfall on Oct. 10.

Within the dataset the researchers used, the study area included 22,686 buildings.

Berezina and Liu used a type of machine learning called convolutional neural networks (or CNN) to first generate building footprints from the pre-hurricane satellite imagery and then classify the amount of damage after the storm.

Their model classified buildings as undamaged, minor damage, major damage or destroyed.

Overall, the new model has an overall accuracy of 86.3%, improving upon the 75.3% accuracy of the support vector machine model (or SVM) to which it was compared.

“The SVM struggled to distinguish between minor and major damage, which can be a major issue for teams responding after a hurricane,” Liu said.

“Overall, our results for Hurricane Michael are promising.”

In live hurricane situations, Liu said the model could be used to rate the probability that individual buildings are in a certain damage class – such as minor damage or major damage – to help direct emergency management and first responders to where they should check first.

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Ohio State University

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October 6, 2022
195 ways to help California’s painted ladies

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Newswise — By documenting hundreds of new nectar plants for painted ladies, scientists have renewed hope these charismatic butterflies may prove resilient to climate change.

Every spring, swarms of the colorful butterflies can be spotted in Southern California as they make their way from western Mexico to the Pacific Northwest to breed. Some years, the number of migrating butterflies is in the millions.

Additionally, California is home to resident painted lady populations that require food sources year-round.

Though they are a major North American butterfly species, there is a lack of baseline data to quantify a decline in painted ladies. However, scientists believe they are being negatively affected by hotter, drier weather and habitat loss.

“The lack of rainfall in Southern California likely impacts the butterflies’ ability to move through the state, potentially decreasing nectar sources and causing them to die without reproducing,” said Jolene Saldivar, UC Riverside ecologist who led this effort to identify new painted lady nectar plants.

“There’s so much to be learned about these butterflies before drought and climate change damage them irreparably,” Saldivar said. This study, which identifies 195 new nectar plants for the species, is now published in the journal Environmental Entomology.

To obtain this result, the UCR team sorted through more than 10,000 images of painted ladies in California shrublands, supplied by community scientists through the iNaturalist website. Any images in which the butterflies did not have mouth parts extended and were not obviously feeding were omitted from analysis, as were any images of caterpillars.

The newly discovered nectar sources may offer Southern California gardeners wanting to support the species a wide range of options.

“Much of what we identified could responsibly be planted during a drought,” said Erin Wilson-Rankin, study co-author and UCR associate professor of entomology.

Of the top 10 most frequently observed plant species, seven are native to California. These include yellow-flowered rubber rabbitbrush, blue wild hyacinth, common fiddleneck, Fremont’s pincushion, black sage, wild heliotrope and desert lavender, which belongs to the mint family.

These butterflies also readily feed on showy ornamental plants common to California landscaping, such as lantana, butterfly bush and rosemary, as well as flowering weeds.

“It’s an uber generalist insect, not picky at all,” Saldivar said.

Painted lady caterpillars consume plants, but they are not known to eat any agriculturally important species, nor are they known spreaders of any illness. They serve as good sources of prey for insects, spiders, birds, wasps and reptiles, and mature butterflies can pollinate some of the many plants they visit.

“It might be getting tougher for painted ladies in some places, but these butterflies will feed on what flowers are available — even a few plants in a window box could help them,” Wilson-Rankin said.

Saldivar says she believes the results of this paper may encourage community scientists, whose contributions to knowledge should be celebrated and promoted.

“Adding a photo and a little information to a community science website or through an app on your smartphone might seem minor, but in the big picture, it helps inform us about ecological processes we’d otherwise be very challenged to learn about,” Saldivar said.

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University of California, Riverside

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October 5, 2022
URI Prof. Isaac Ginis’ Team Is Making Dramatic Improvements in Storm Damage Prediction

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“I don’t predict a hurricane season. If a hurricane makes landfall near where you live, that is an active season for you,” says URI Professor of Oceanography Isaac Ginis.

Yet predicting the severity of a hurricane can mean the difference between life and death, which is why Ginis makes it his business to predict the power of these ferocious storms. He developed a computer model so successful it was adopted by the National Weather Service. As one of the few scientists worldwide to show the role the ocean plays in hurricanes, Ginis essentially proved that ocean temperature is the most important factor in hurricane intensity and power.

Says Ginis, “People may think if you have 20 hurricanes predicted in a season that it would be more dangerous than in a season with fewer, in terms of making landfall, which is not true. Even with an inactive season, we can have catastrophic hurricanes. In 1992 we had only seven hurricanes, but among them was Andrew, which made landfall in Florida and devastated the surrounding area south of Miami. It doesn’t matter how many are in the Atlantic since most of those go out to sea. The media will often ask how many, and if you hear a prediction of fewer storms, people feel they can relax, but that isn’t the case.”

Ginis’s research efforts have resulted in pioneering advances in modeling of the tropical cyclone-ocean interactions that have led to significant improvements in hurricane intensity forecast skills.

His research group has contributed to the development of the Hurricane Weather Research Forecast model used by the U.S. National Hurricane Center and Joint Typhoon Warning Center for operational forecasting of tropical cyclones in all ocean basins. One of his team’s most recent projects, the Rhode Island Coastal Hazards, Analysis, Modeling and Prediction (RI-CHAMP) system, which launched in June, advances storm model capabilities and develops a real-time hazard and impact prediction system for hurricanes and nor’easters in Southern New England. The system provides actionable information to decision makers in helping to prepare for a storm. When it comes to forecasting hurricanes, the focus is usually on more tropical locales. However, Ginis says, “the farther they move to the north, the more complex they become.”

More on Isaac Ginis:

Actionable Information, Aboard GSO (Spring 2022)
URI leads team of researchers awarded $1.5 million NOAA grant, URI News (Sept. 2021)
Ocean Research, University of Rhode Island (July 2021)
Isaac Ginis, University of Rhode Island (May 2018)

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University of Rhode Island

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September 29, 2022
Wind turbines recoup the energy required to build them within a year of normal operation

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There may be two sides to the debate about certain aspects of wind power, but the amount of oil they use is not one of them.

Despite the numbers, memes continue to make the rounds on social media claiming the technology is worthless because of the costs to produce them, and the oil required to lubricate its gears.

For example, one Twitter post reads, “the turbine has to spin continually [sic] for 7 years just to replace the energy it took to manufacture.” See other similar posts here, here and here.

The fact is that wind turbines recoup the energy required to build them within a year of normal operation, according to researchers, earning these claims a rating of False.

Jack Brouwer is a professor of mechanical & aerospace engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He is also the director of UCI’s Advanced Power and Energy Program and the National Fuel Cell Research Center.

I refute the claim that “wind power is inefficient and unnecessarily expensive.” Data regarding wind power costs has been published by many organizations, for example by the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA) as presented below, which show that wind power costs have been dropping very significantly in the last decade and are becoming competitive with fossil fuel combustion power generation prices on an energy basis (note current prices for onshore wind less than $0.05/kWh and for offshore wind less than $0.10/kWh). And these prices are likely to continue to decline into the future as the market size and turbine sizes continue to increase. Regarding the inefficiency claim, wind turbines can convert wind energy into electricity at efficiencies in the range of 20-40%, but efficiency is an inconsequential metric that should not be used to determine the value of wind power since the input wind energy is renewable and available at zero cost, which is very different from the efficiency metric as applied to fuel generation for which fuel must be purchased.

Stephen C. Nolet, Principal Engineer and Senior Director, Innovation & Technology at TPI Composites, Inc. has this to say…

There are “notionally” many studies that have offered different conclusions (depending on the bias of the author). However, the consistent response I have seen which always contains a range of time (based upon turbine and siting conditions) report that the embodied energy of the installed turbine (which includes the entire energies in materials, transportation, erection and projected O&M over the life of the turbine) is returned in operation between 4 – 7 mo (120 to ~200 days).

Mark Bolinger, an engineer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has this to add…

“With proper maintenance, wind turbines should be expected to operate for 20 years or longer (industry projections these days are more like 30 years), which means that over their lifetime, wind turbines repay their energy debt many times over.”

“Wind is one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation that exists today.”

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September 16, 2022
Herschel Walker’s claim on how China’s “bad air” would move over to America is grossly inaccurate

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At a campaign event in Georgia, Herschel Walker, the former NFL star who is running for Senate and endorsed by President Trump, shared his thoughts on the “Green New Deal” and efforts to curb climate change with government policy. Walker suggested that U.S. climate efforts were pointless because “China’s bad air” would simply move over into American “air space.”

“We in America have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anybody in the world,” Walker begins at about the 24 mark in the video of his speech. Under the Green New Deal, he said, the U.S would spend “millions of billions of dollars cleaning our good air up. … Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up, while they’re messing ours up.”

“So what we’re doing is just spending money,” he continued. “Until these other countries can get on board and clean what they got up, it ain’t going to help us to start cleaning our stuff up. We’re already doing it the right way.”

We find nearly every aspect of this claim to be completely inaccurate. Walker’s description of how air circulates around the world is not correct, nor is the simplification of his assessment of “clean air” and “bad air.” The United States does not actively “clean” air now or under the proposed “Green New Deal.” The “Green New Deal” is a nonbinding resolution introduced in Congress in 2019 that lays out a broad vision for how the country might tackle climate change over the next decade in order to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. It didn’t pass the Senate vote. The Green New Deal does not address traditional air pollutants nor does it propose to spend “millions of billions of dollars cleaning our good air up.” Facts on the “Green Neal Deal” can be read here.

“Bad” air does not take over “good” air or vice versa. Yes, some forms of air pollution can travel to other places. Near-surface pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, can be lofted to high altitudes where strong winds can transport high concentrations across oceans to other continents. However, greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are responsible for climate change. These greenhouse gasses accumulate in the Earth’s atmosphere on a global scale as a result of human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, which traps heat and warms the entire planet. Also, to suggest curbing pollutants from its local source is pointless because some other locality’s pollutants will take over is missing the point. These harmful air pollutants affect local residents the most. Read more about the harmful effects of air pollution here, here and here.

As reported by Jessica McDonald at Factcheck.org

“Each of these gases can remain in the atmosphere for different amounts of time, ranging from a few years to thousands of years,” the Environmental Protection Agency has explained. “All of these gases remain in the atmosphere long enough to become well mixed, meaning that the amount that is measured in the atmosphere is roughly the same all over the world, regardless of the source of the emissions.”

“There can be enhanced concentrations near point sources and urban areas, but the levels of atmospheric CO2 over the US aren’t drastically different than over China,” Davis said in an email, referring to carbon dioxide. He noted that in April 2020, carbon dioxide levels over China and the U.S were within three to four parts per million of each other.

In other words, there is no American “good air” or Chinese “bad air.” When it comes to greenhouse gases, everyone ultimately shares the “air” — and the concentration of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere is increasing. This is raising the global average temperature, which is also causing other effects, such as sea level rise, ice melt and more extreme weather.

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July 22, 2022