Future Timeline

(AP via The Asahi Shimbun) DELHI--The queues outside petrol pumps in Sri Lanka have lessened, but not the anxiety.

Asanka Sampath, a 43-year-old factory clerk, is forever vigilant. He checks his phone for messages, walks past the pump, and browses social media to see if fuel has arrived. Delays could mean being left stranded for days.

“I am really fed up with this,” he said.

His frustrations echo that of the 22-million inhabitants of the island nation, facing its worst ever economic crisis because of heavy debts, lost tourism revenue during the pandemic, and surging costs.

The consequent political turmoil culminated with the formation of a new government, but recovery has been complicated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the upending of global energy markets.

(EurekAlert) Thanks to the continuous funding of the work over six years so far by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, it was possible to test the IPK Leibniz Institute's extensive collection of old wheat varieties for their yield performance and resistance to yellow rust in the laboratory, but also in field trials. "This required a logistical masterstroke from all project participants and many innovative approaches to evaluate the potential of the old varieties without disruptive effects," says Dr. Albert Schulthess, first author of the study. To determine the yield potential, the old varieties were crossed with adapted elite varieties, for example. Only then became the yield potential of the old varieties clearly visible.

And that's not all: the researchers used the results to develop bridging lines for wheat breeding from promising old varieties by crossing them with current varieties. The performance of the resulting progeny surprised the researchers: "We observed higher yields in some bridging lines as compared to important current elite varieties," says Dr. Albert Schulthess, scientist in the research group "Quantitative Genetics". Prof. Dr. Jochen Reif, coordinator of the consortium and head of the research group, is convinced that thanks to the involvement of the two breeding companies, the biodiversity of the elite pool can be increased by using new valuable genetic variation of the bridge lines: "This is of great importance to tackle the huge problems that climate change poses to agriculture."

But that was not all. The results of the study enable a big step towards farming with less or no pesticide use. "Through the comprehensive sequencing of old and new varieties in combination with the valuable field data, we were able to identify possible new gene variants for resistance to yellow rust infestation," says Dr. Albert Schulthess. This would not have been possible without the decoding of the wheat genome, in which the IPK Leibniz Institute played a leading role. "With the new genome regions we discovered in a few old varieties, we can diversify the immune system of wheat," explains Prof. Dr. Jochen Reif.

Groundwaters that circulate through the subsoil as a result of melting permafrost can transport carbon dioxide and methane to Arctic lakes and in turn be emitted to the atmosphere. This process of transporting greenhouse gases increases the effects of climate change and is now being quantified for the first time by researchers from the universities in Umeå, Barcelona, and Linköping. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Permafrost is the soil that remains frozen all year round in different parts of the planet, such as the Arctic and Antarctica, as well as in high mountains and high plateaus. The current study focuses on Arctic lakes located in the sporadic permafrost region of northern Sweden. In this area —a typical tundra ecosystem—between 10 and 50% of the soils are permanently frozen. The top layer of the soil above the permafrost, the active layer, freezes and thaws annually.

In this region, the average annual temperature has risen considerably in recent years and is now above 0 degrees Celsius. This causes the permafrost—with its abundant organic matter rich in carbon and greenhouse gases—to thaw. Through the circulation of the groundwater, the permafrost acts as a spring that supplies the hydrologically connected lakes in the region with greenhouse gases. The gases are finally emitted from the lakes into the atmosphere.

To date, little has been known in detail about the importance of groundwater on greenhouse gas emissions from Arctic lakes. To answer questions about this process, the Spanish-Swedish researcher team in the current study used radon—a gas abundant in subsoil currents—as a tracer of groundwater discharge into the lakes.

(Courthouse News) — Thanks to satellite imaging technology, scientists can track seasonal changes in Antarctica for the first time. In a study published Thursday in The Cryosphere, researchers at the University of Cambridge and Austrian engineering company ENEVO detailed their findings that can lead to more accurate sea-rise calculations.

In contrast to its northern counterparts, such as the Greenland Ice Sheet, historically, there has not been data on the Antarctic ice flow. However, there was a general assumption by scientists that it was not subject to the same seasonal movements, especially in areas with large ice shelves and consistent below-freezing temperatures.

Using data from the Sentinel-1 radar satellite through the European Space Agency and NASA's optical Landsat 8, the researchers found recognizable seasonal movements flowing from glaciers into the George VI Ice Shelf, which is larger than the state of New Jersey. Specifically, there is a 15% increase in the glaciers feeding the ice shelf during the summer.

"Seasonality is important because, at the moment, all the estimations of how much mass is being lost from Antarctica don't account for the fact that there's any kind of seasonality or change in how fast the ice is flowing each season. It means that our current estimates are either over or underestimating how much mass is lost from Antarctica," said Karla Boxall from Cambridge's Scott Polar Research Institute in an interview. "Our projections of sea level rise are also going to be off."

The satellite advancements allowed scientists to get images every six days of the glacier. Then, using offset tracking, they could compare the images and measure the speed of change. The use of both satellites that both found the same data allowed photos — rain or shine.

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.

(EurekAlert) SAN DIEGO – A large-scale study of 47 species of monkeys and lemurs has found that climate change and deforestation are driving these tree-dwelling animals to the ground, where they are at higher risk due to lack of preferred food and shelter, and may experience more negative interaction with humans and domestic animals.

The study, slated to publish Oct. 10, in the journal The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),was led by Timothy Eppley, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance (SDZWA), and examined more than 150,000 hours of observation data on 15 lemur species and 32 monkey species at 68 sites in the Americas and Madagascar. This study was a remarkable worldwide collaboration, including 118 co-authors from 124 unique institutions.

“This study began with a discussion among colleagues about how we’d noticed certain populations of arboreal primates spending more time on the ground,” said Dr. Eppley, “yet at sites with relatively less disturbance, members of the same species may never descend to the ground.”

The authors estimated the influence of ecological drivers, including potential human-induced pressures and/or species-specific traits, on the level of terrestriality (time spent on the ground) in arboreal primates. The study found that primates that consume less fruit and live in large social groups were more likely to descend to the ground. The authors suggest that these traits act as a potential “pre-adaptation” to terrestriality. Furthermore, primates living in hotter environments, and with less canopy cover, were more likely to adapt to these changes by shifting toward more extensive ground use.

Many of these species are already burdened with living in warmer, fragmented and heavily disturbed environments that often have fewer available dietary resources. As climate change worsens and arboreal habitats diminish, the study suggests primates consuming a more generalized diet and living in larger groups may more easily adapt to a terrestrial lifestyle.

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.

(EurekAlert) The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), a system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic and transport cold water from the northern to the southern hemisphere, is a fundamental mechanism for the regulation of Earth’s climate. The conveyor belt has collapsed in the past owing to natural factors. The most recent collapse played a key role in the last deglaciation. AMOC is now threatened by global warming, scientists have shown, and a new study has discovered the sequence of past breakdown events.

The study was conducted by German researchers and Brazilian paleoclimatologist Cristiano Mazur Chiessi, a professor at the University of São Paulo’s School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH-USP) in Brazil. An article reporting their findings is published in Nature Communications.

“An investigation of marine sediments collected between Canada and Greenland led to the discovery that, in the past, glaciers covering the territories that now correspond to Canada and the northern United States released colossal numbers of icebergs into the Atlantic owing to ocean surface warming in the region,” Chiessi told Agência FAPESP.

The icebergs melted in the ocean and deposited continental sediments on the seabed. “Identification of these sediments and reconstitution of the subsurface temperature in the region enabled scientists to establish for the first time that subsurface warming preceded the mass iceberg release,” he said.

The enormous volume of fresh water added by the melting of the icebergs modified the composition of the ocean at high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. This had a tremendous impact on the global climate because the region between Canada and Greenland is a particularly sensitive part of AMOC.

Upper ocean heating in the equatorial Pacific—a key oceanographic region in Earth's climate system—is likely to make the East Asian monsoon season wetter, according to a study co-authored by a Rutgers researcher.

Recent increases in ocean heat content—where energy is absorbed by the waters—have been implicated in the intensification of tropical storms that draw their energy from the surface of the ocean. The link between ocean heating and rainfall on land is, however, less clear. A study published in Nature provides insight into this link.

"Our study suggests variations in ocean thermal structure affect the delivery of moisture, latent heat, and what happens when they arrive on land," said Yair Rosenthal, a professor of marine and coastal sciences in the Rutgers' School of Art and Sciences and School of Environmental and Biological Sciences.

Rosenthal said the changes in the latitudinal temperature gradient—the difference in sea-surface temperature between low and high latitudes—not only control how energy is absorbed by the equatorial upper ocean but how winds carry the moisture from the ocean onto land.

The study, led by Zhimin Jian of Tongji University in China, found that over the past 360,000 years, increases in monsoonal rain in eastern China correlated with increases in the heat content of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool–a region where sea surface temperatures remain above ~82°F year-round–likely due to enhanced transport of moisture and latent heat absorbed in the water vapor from the ocean to the continent.

(Canadian Space Agency) The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, announced today that Canada will contribute to the Atmosphere Observing System (AOS) mission led by NASA. Canada's contribution is estimated at more than $200 million. Currently slated to launch in 2028 and 2031, this major multi-satellite mission will improve extreme weather prediction, climate modelling, and monitoring of disasters.

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity. The dynamics of our planet's atmosphere are changing. We need better environmental prediction to support adaptation and climate resilience. The AOS, including its Canadian contribution, will measure aerosols and clouds, and how they interact to impact Earth's weather and climate.

Canada's contribution to the AOS is the High-altitude Aerosols, Water vapour and Clouds (HAWC) mission. It consists of two Canadian instruments on a Canadian satellite and a third instrument on a NASA satellite, all planned for launch in 2031. These innovative instruments will provide critical data, enabling Canadian climate scientists and weather forecasters to better understand and predict extreme events, like severe storms, floods, droughts and poor air quality conditions. HAWC and AOS data will be fully accessible.

Thanks to early investments from the Canadian Space Agency in concept studies and technology development for these instruments, Canada was well positioned to take part in this important climate science mission. Canadian collaborators in the HAWC mission include a coast-to-coast consortium of universities, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Natural Resources Canada and the National Research Council of Canada.

Canada's contribution to the AOS mission supports the implementation of Resourceful, Resilient, Ready: Canada's Strategy for Satellite Earth Observation, which describes how Canada will take full advantage of the unique vantage point of space to address climate change and other key challenges of our time.

(EurekAlert) In Star Trek, the Borg are a ruthless, hive-minded collective that assimilate other beings with the intent of taking over the galaxy. Here on nonfictional planet Earth, Borgs are DNA packages that could help humans fight climate change.

Last year, a team led by Jill Banfield discovered DNA structures within a methane-consuming microbe called Methanoperedens that appear to supercharge the organism’s metabolic rate. They named the genetic elements “Borgs” because the DNA within them contains genes assimilated from many organisms. In a study published today in Nature, the researchers describe the curious collection of genes within Borgs and begin to investigate the role these DNA packages play in environmental processes, such as carbon cycling.

First contact

Methanoperedens are a type of archaea (unicellular organisms that resemble bacteria but represent a distinct branch of life) that break down methane (CH4) in soils, groundwater, and the atmosphere to support cellular metabolism. Methanoperedens and other methane-consuming microbes live in diverse ecosystems around the world but are believed to be less common than microbes that use photosynthesis, oxygen, or fermentation for energy. Yet they play an outsized role in Earth system processes by removing methane – the most potent greenhouse gas – from the atmosphere. Methane traps 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide and is estimated to account for about 30 percent of human-driven global warming. The gas is emitted naturally through geological processes and by methane-generating archaea; however, industrial processes are releasing stored methane back into the atmosphere in worrying quantities.

Banfield, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor of Earth & Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy & Management at UC Berkeley, studies how microbial activities shape large-scale environmental processes and how, in turn, environmental fluctuations alter the planet’s microbiomes. As part of this work, she and her colleagues regularly sample microbes in different habitats to see what interesting genes microbes are using for survival, and how these genes might affect global cycles of key elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur.

(EurekAlert) Clouds are notoriously hard to pin down, especially in climate science.

A study from the University of California, Davis, and published in the journal Nature Geoscience shows that air temperature and cloud cover are strongly influenced by the buoyancy effect of water vapor, an effect currently neglected in some leading global climate models.

Global climate models are the primary tools used to study Earth’s climate, predict its future changes and inform climate policymaking. However, climate models often differ on the precise degree of future warming, largely due to their representation of clouds.

“Climate models are the best tool we have to predict future climate change,” said lead author Da Yang, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at UC Davis and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. “It’s important that we actively try to improve them.”

Cold air rises?

While conventional wisdom has it that hot air rises, the reverse is true in the tropical atmosphere, the study notes. Previous research by Yang and his colleagues proposed that cold air rises in the tropics because humid air is lighter than dry air. This effect is known as vapor buoyancy, and it regulates the amount of low clouds over the subtropical ocean.

(Mother Jones)
Biting the Hand

It hasn’t been the best season for the invisible hand, the 18th century principle that the market be left to its own devices free of government intervention. In August, President Biden took his right hand and applied his signature to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) — signaling that the government would be tipping scales in the economy toward renewable energy. While unanimous opposition from Republicans signaled their continuing lip service to that free market ideology, in truth they — along with some Democrats — have long manipulated the economics of energy by steering billions of dollars in public funds toward the fossil fuel industry.

Fossil fuel companies have received at least $20 billion annually in federal and state government subsidies over the past 10 years alone, and as much as $6 trillion from governments worldwide. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres declared in September that the industry was “feasting off subsidies” while our planet burns. So there’s an important frame to the story of the IRA that’s worth remembering: The $141 billion it allocates to support wind and solar industries represents what is likely the first time that subsidies and tax credits for renewable energy in the United States have exceeded subsidies to fossil fuel companies — and is just about two-thirds of what the petrochemical companies have received from the government over the past decade.

The massive government support for oil and gas interests was largely missing from the reporting on the IRA, and is certainly worthy of greater media scrutiny moving forward. In the U.S. those subsidies come in the form of loan guarantees, tax breaks and discounted rates for drilling on public lands, and in some cases direct payments to explore for oil in difficult locales — all provided to the companies that are, collectively, most responsible for the massive and expensive climate disruptions being experienced on Earth. Identifying which fossil fuel companies receive those different forms of direct and indirect government aid would be a significant contribution to the public interest — particularly since the public funds the subsidies, and the public pays for the billions of dollars in damages to the economy from the companies’ greenhouse gas emissions.

The amount of methane in the atmosphere is racing ahead at an accelerating pace, according to a study by the World Meteorological Organization, threatening to undermine efforts to slow climate change.

The WMO’s Greenhouse Gas Bulletin said that “global emissions have rebounded since the COVID-related lockdowns” and that the increases in methane levels in 2020 and 2021 were the largest since systematic record keeping began in 1983.

10 steps you can take to lower your carbon footprint
“Methane concentrations are not just rising, they’re rising faster than ever,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at Stanford University.

The study comes on the same day as a new U.N. report which says that the world’s governments haven’t committed to cut enough climate emissions, putting the world on track for a 2.5 degree Celsius (4.5 degree Fahrenheit) increase in global temperatures by the end of the century.

Earlier on Wednesday the U.N's climate office said current pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on course to blow past the limit for global warming countries agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

It said its latest estimate based on 193 national emissions targets would see temperatures rise to 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial averages by the end of the century, a full degree higher than the ambitious goal set in the Paris pact to limit warming by 1.5 C (2.7 F).

"We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world," the head of the U.N. climate office, Simon Stiell, said in a statement. "To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years."

(EurekAlert) Writing in the journal BioScience, an international coalition led by Oregon State University researchers says in a report published today that the Earth’s vital signs have reached “code red” and that “humanity is unequivocally facing a climate emergency.”

In the special report, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022,” the authors note that 16 of 35 planetary vital signs they use to track climate change are at record extremes. The report’s authors share new data illustrating increasing frequency of extreme heat events, rising global tree cover loss because of fires, and a greater prevalence of the mosquito-borne dengue virus. Further, they note that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have reached 418 parts per million, the highest on record.

William Ripple, a distinguished professor in the OSU College of Forestry, and postdoctoral researcher Christopher Wolf are the lead authors of the report, and 10 other U.S. and global scientists are co-authors.

“Look at all of these heat waves, fires, floods and massive storms,” Ripple said. “The specter of climate change is at the door and pounding hard.”
The report follows by five years the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice” published by Ripple and colleagues in BioScience and co-signed by more than 15,000 scientists in 184 countries.

Climate change could alter wind regimes so much by the end of this century that desert dunes and sand seas may impact human infrastructure, agriculture and homes, finds new study by King's researchers.

In a new study published in Nature Climate Change, King's researchers have analyzed future wind regimes to predict the impact of morphing sand dunes. The encroachment of these moving desert dunes has the potential to threaten transportation infrastructure, industry, agriculture and settlements—with the possibility of entire villages disappearing under sand.

Desert dunes and sand seas cover approximately 20% of the world's arid zones. Analyzing data on the shape, migration speed and direction of mobile desert dunes around the world, Dr. Andreas Baas and Lucie Delobel from the Department of Geography have used future wind patterns altered by climate change to determine the impact on these changing landscapes.

Previous studies on climate change have focused on heat and water to determine the impacts on local environments. However, focusing on wind has allowed the researchers to predict the future consequences of climate change on arid regions such as the Sahara, The Horn of Africa, the Southern Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, China and Australia.

"Most climate change studies focus on water, including sea-level rise, glaciers and ice sheets, and much less has been done on changing wind regimes. In many arid countries the impact of changing winds on desert dunes may be more important than things like sea-level rise," says Baas.