Irina Panyushkina grew up in Siberia, near the Arctic Circle. She was raised on stories of explorers trudging through seas of ice to reach the North Pole.
Now, she is a climate scientist and associate research professor of dendrochronology in the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. And she is trying to understand how a warming world is transforming the place she once called home.
Someday, the Arctic Ocean may no longer host ice, since the northern regions of the world are warming are faster than the rest—a trend scientists refer to as Arctic amplification. As Arctic ice melts, new opportunities and challenges for humans will arise, researchers say.
Freshwater flowing into the Arctic Ocean from the continent is thought to exacerbate Arctic amplification, but the extent of its impact isn't fully understood. New research led by Panyushkina measures how the flow of the Yenisei River—the largest freshwater river that flows into the Arctic Ocean—has changed over the last few hundred years, and describes the impact freshwater has had on the Arctic.
Australia soars to 50 degrees for first time this century
Temperatures of 50°C or higher have been recorded in at least two locations in the northwest of Western Australia this Thursday, January 13, 2022, with a high of 50.5°C at Roebourne Airport.
This was the first time this century that any Australian location has reached the 50-degree mark.
The 50.5°C reading was the equal second-hottest Australian temperature ever recorded.
The 50.5°C equalled the hottest temp ever recorded in the state of Western Australia.
The 50.5°C reading came within 0.2°C of the all-time Australian record, which was 50.7°C at Oodnadatta (SA) in January 1960.
It's the first time since 1998 that any official weather station anywhere in Australia has reached the half-century. In other words, the Roebourne Airport reading is Australia's hottest recorded temperature in 24 years.
(Common Dreams) A new program launched by the Biden administration on Friday will hire 1,000 Americans to help expand the country's clean energy infrastructure, a step the White House says is "critical to achieving the president's goal of 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035."
Workers in the Clean Energy Corps will work in areas including engineering, physical science, legislative affairs, and contract management and will work on large-scale projects including the administration's Building a Better Grid initiative.
That project, using funds allocated by the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which passed last year, will deploy new transmission lines to send solar and wind power to communities across the country and make the energy grid more "safe, reliable, and resilient" to extreme weather events.
"It's truly a remarkable time to be at the Department of Energy as we set off to implement the historic $62 billion in clean energy investments," said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. "The launch of our Clean Energy Corps is the latest definitive step along our path to making transformational changes to America's energy sector and ensuring a clean energy future for all. We're calling on people of all backgrounds and career levels who understand the urgency of tackling climate change now, and are eager to join the team that is best positioned to do so."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called the creation of the corps "a great step" toward expanding the use of renewable energy and significantly reducing the country's carbon emissions.
(Bulletin of Atomic Scientists) It is (with apologies to Charles Dickens) the best of times; it is the worst of times.
Thanks to fossil fuels, billions of people in 2022 enjoy lives of wealth, comfort, and material possessions unimaginable before the industrial revolution.
But fossil fuels have their dark side. You might think you understand that, but it’s likely fossil fuels are even worse for the world than you think. Let’s start with climate change. Contrary to what you might hear listening to Fox News, the scientific understanding of climate change is good and it is progressing at exactly the rate predicted decades ago by Exxon.
What you probably don’t realize is how massive these changes may be. In the depths of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, the Earth was only 6 degrees Celsius colder than it is today. That world—with thousands of feet of ice sitting over much of North America, sea level 300 feet lower, and completely different ecosystems—would be unrecognizable to those living on today’s Earth.
This helps us put predictions of future warming into context. The chart below (see link above the quote box) shows predictions for the twenty-first century, but instead of units of temperature, I have plotted units of ice ages, where one ice age unit equals 6 degrees Celsius. Business-as-usual emissions gives us about 3 degrees Celsius of warming in 2100—about half of one ice-age unit. Given how much the Earth has changed since the last ice age, 3 degrees Celsius of warming may well remake the planet, leading to an Earth in 2100 as unrecognizable to us today as the world of the last ice age.
(Grist) The climate crisis is damaging the health of fetuses, babies, and infants across the world, six new studies have found.
Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.
Other studies found exposure to smoke from wildfires doubled the risk of severe birth defects, while reduced fertility was linked to air pollution from fossil fuel burning, even at low levels. The studies, published in a special issue of the journal Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, spanned the globe from the United States to Denmark, Israel, and Australia.
“From the very beginning, from preconception, through early childhood into adolescence, we’re starting to see important impacts of climate hazards on health,” said Gregory Wellenius, who edited the issue with Amelia Wesselink, both professors at the Boston University School of Public Health.
“This is a problem that affects everybody, everywhere. These extreme events are going to become even more likely and more severe with continued climate change [and this research shows] why they’re important to us, not in the future, but today.”
I've just come to the realization that charcoal is one of the greenest sources of energy for planet Earth. It's renewable, it's emissions literally greenify Earth as it's mostly compressed carbon and it's very cheap to produce. Solar & wind power are probably one of the least green energy sources. Talk about double speak. I am tired of words that don't actually mean what they mean. I feel like I've been fooled for a very long time.
Interesting that the industry apparently knew about it and tried to capitalize on it. Seems like it didn't work so well for them.
Without necessarily endorsing the results of the study cited by R8z (see bottom of previous page), I would acknowledge that some feedback loops caused by global warming are not necessarily entirely negative. It is a complex situation. Still, I think it has been pretty clearly demonstrated that the negative effects of global climate change far exceed any positive effects. For example:
New Metric Shows How Severe Global Warming is Getting
by Andrew Freedman
February 1, 2022
(Axios) By taking into account how increasing surface temperatures will alter both humidity and a measure of the energy contained in the atmosphere, a new study finds the world is at a growing risk of extreme weather events.
Driving the news: The study, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on an integrated temperature and humidity metric.
The metric, researchers in China and the U.S. find, shows that as global temperatures climb, humidity and atmospheric energy do so even faster.
The boost in humidity and atmospheric energy, the study shows, are strongly correlated with trends in extreme heat and precipitation.
What they found: Surface warming is causing a faster increase in humidity, since warm air can hold more water vapor, and warming seas and land surfaces are giving up more water into the atmosphere through evaporation.
The framing of climate risk has become increasingly fraught. If you say it’s not as bad as the risk of all of humanity being wiped out in a full-scale nuclear exchange or by a large comet, you’re now the guy who is minimizing climate change. But this is really a question of perspective. People very legitimately worry about a vast range of problems (traffic jams, opioid addiction, violent crime, school quality, the sovereignty of Ukraine) that are clearly less serious than climate change. Climate shouldn’t need to rise to nuclear apocalypse levels of concern to be a big deal!
But when I see story after story after story on climate anxiety, I am mostly not reading stories of people who decide they want to increase their level of commitment to addressing climate change and then take action to do so. Everyone might feel better and the planet would be much better off if the anxious weren’t paralyzed by depression.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
Methane concentrations in the atmosphere raced past 1,900 parts per billion last year, nearly triple preindustrial levels, according to data released in January by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Scientists says the grim milestone underscores the importance of a pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit to curb emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 28 times as potent as CO2.
The growth of methane emissions slowed around the turn of the millennium, but began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007. The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
(Grist) The climate crisis is damaging the health of fetuses, babies, and infants across the world, six new studies have found.
Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.
Other studies found exposure to smoke from wildfires doubled the risk of severe birth defects, while reduced fertility was linked to air pollution from fossil fuel burning, even at low levels. The studies, published in a special issue of the journal Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, spanned the globe from the United States to Denmark, Israel, and Australia.
“From the very beginning, from preconception, through early childhood into adolescence, we’re starting to see important impacts of climate hazards on health,” said Gregory Wellenius, who edited the issue with Amelia Wesselink, both professors at the Boston University School of Public Health.
“This is a problem that affects everybody, everywhere. These extreme events are going to become even more likely and more severe with continued climate change [and this research shows] why they’re important to us, not in the future, but today.”
(Science Alert) A new federal report with up-to-date projections for all states and territories predicts sea levels in the United States will rise more than three times as fast as they did last century.
According to new lines of data, the average sea level along the nation's coastline could increase by 0.3 meters (or a foot) as soon as 2050 – the same amount as was seen between 1920 and 2020.
The 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report was produced by a task force of 23 co-authors representing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and several others.
NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad says the findings are "a global wake-up call". Even in the best case scenario, sea levels are rising at a dangerously rapid rate, and the US is not the only nation at risk of losing infrastructure to the sea.
If the world continues to emit fossil fuels at its current rate, the report estimates the US can expect between 0.5 and 1.5 meters of extra sea level rise (1.5 to 5 feet) come 2100. Ultimately, that could mean the sea climbs more than 2 meters higher (7 feet) by the century's end.
Measurements of London's atmosphere show the city is releasing more of the potent greenhouse gas methane, primarily from natural gas leaks.
The measurements, performed by researchers at Imperial College London, show that most methane released in London is the result of natural gas infrastructure leaks, rather than landfill sites as previously thought.
Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and produces a stronger warming effect, but it stays in the atmosphere for less time. Methane emissions worldwide are a major concern and reducing them would help tackle climate change.
The results of the new study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, show London's natural gas infrastructure is leaking more methane than estimated, and the cumulation of lots of small leaks is adding up to considerable extra methane emissions from the city.
First author of the study and Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership student Eric Saboya, from the Department of Physics at Imperial, said their "study shows that London is emitting more methane than we thought, but because we've been able to pinpoint the source of much of this extra methane, we have a clear direction to reduce emissions."
Sediment cores taken from the Southern Ocean dating back 23 million years are providing insight into how ancient methane escaping from the seafloor could have led to regional or global climate and environmental changes, according to a study from two Texas A&M University researchers.
Yige Zhang, assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M, and doctoral student Bumsoo Kim have had their work published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.
The oceanographers examined cores—sediment samples from deep parts of the ocean floor—from the Oligocene-Miocene era, roughly 23 million years ago, from areas near Tasmania and Antarctica in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean. There are billions of tons of carbon stored beneath the ocean floor as gas hydrates—ice-like crystals composed of water and natural gas. Past releases of methane are believed to be related to huge earth events, such as global warming and subsequent climate shifts.
"For a long time, people thought that methane released from the ocean floor could go into the atmosphere and directly contribute to the greenhouse effect, leading to rapid warming and even mass extinctions," Zhang said. "But this idea is no longer popular in the last decade or so because we lack direct evidence of methane release in Earth's history. Also, modern observations show that even when methane gasses are released, they rarely make it to the atmosphere."
However, Kim and Zhang are now able to document past methane release by using markers that consume methane. These "methane-eating" substances are preserved in sediments for tens of millions of years, the researchers said. They could provide direct evidence of methane release from different places in the Southern Ocean.
Antarctic ice core records have shown that eastern Australia's drought risk is greater than thought.
The research, led by Dr. Tessa Vance from the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership and Dr. Anthony Kiem from the University of Newcastle, and involving Australian Antarctic Division scientists, has significant implications for water security and management across Australia and internationally.
The team compared 150 years of observations of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) climate variability index, which controls decadal drought and flood risk across eastern Australia, with a reconstruction of the index based on 2,000 years of climate records from Antarctic ice cores.
The IPO varies between negative (wetter climate in eastern Australia) and positive (drier climate in Eastern Australia) phases, which until now were assumed to alternate every 15-30 years.
Because these IPO phases vary the probability of drier or wetter periods, they change the risk of drought, flood and fire.
