connecticut

Wildfires And Air Quality | Earth Wise

October 26, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

People in the Northeast have been dealing with unhealthy air quality in recent times because of smoke from hundreds of wildfires in Canada. Canada has experienced a much higher than average incidence of blazes this year with nearly 500 fires burning uncontrolled at times.

It turns out that states far away from Canada aren’t necessarily free from the impact of the fires. Early in October, smoke from a wildfire burning in Quebec made its way south all the way down to Florida and created unhealthy air quality and reduced visibility across much of the state. Smoke from the same fire had created hazy air in Boston, New York City, and parts of Connecticut before heading south.

It took a rather unusual set of atmospheric conditions to make this happen. The smoke drifted from Canada into the western Atlantic. From there, it got trapped behind a cold front and was then pushed south along the east coast until it finally moved inland across Florida.

Wildfires produce a variety of particles and gases from the burning of vegetation such as organic carbon, black carbon, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and hazardous air pollutants. The mixture of particles and gases in wildfire smoke is associated with respiratory symptoms like shortness of breath and reduced lung function, as well as dangerous cardiovascular effects.

Smoke from increasingly frequent and increasingly large fires has started to undo decades of gains in air quality brought about by air pollution policies. According to researchers, wildfires in the United States in recent years have undone about 25% of past progress in cleaning up air pollution in states from coast to coast.

**********

Web Links

Wildfire Smoke From Canada Creates Unhealthy Air Quality in Florida

Photo, posted June 8, 2023, courtesy of Anthony Quintano via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Here Come The Lanternflies | Earth Wise

May 15, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The spotted lanternfly is an invasive pest from Asia that primarily feeds on tree of heaven, which is itself an invasive species that has become widespread. The real problem is that the lanternfly can also feed on some 70 other plants such as grapevines, maples, fruit trees, and more.

The lanternfly was first discovered in the US in Pennsylvania in 2014 and has since spread to 14 states including New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. (It was first spotted in New York in Staten Island in 2020 and has continued to spread).

The insect poses a significant threat to New York’s agricultural and forest health. Both the adults and nymphs feed on the sap of plants which stresses them making them vulnerable to diseases and other insect attacks. They also secrete a sticky substance that attracts molds and interferes with photosynthesis.

Lanternflies are not strong fliers. They mostly spread through human activity by laying their eggs on vehicles, firewood, outdoor furniture, and other objects that people transport.

The bout of unusually warm weather that the Northeast experienced in early spring is likely to have jumpstarted the spotted lanternfly timeline and hatching could be bumped up to as early as May.

Agriculture officials are asking for people to look for spotted lanternfly egg masses and scrape them off with implements with a sharp edge. Adult insects should be reported to local authorities and should be killed if at all possible. There is lots of information online about how to recognize the egg masses and the insects. Spotted lanternflies are not a direct threat to humans, but they have the potential to cause great harm to vineyards, orchards, and forests.

**********

Web Links

Spotted Lanternfly

Photo, posted September 12, 2018, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Climate Change And Hurricanes In The Northeast | Earth Wise

February 9, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study led by Yale University, more hurricanes are likely to hit Connecticut and the northeastern U.S. as global warming continues to increase temperatures in the region.

Hurricane Henri made landfall in August as a tropical storm on the Connecticut/Rhode Island border. In September 2020, subtropical storm Alpha made landfall in Portugal, the first subtropical or tropical cyclone ever observed to make landfall in the mainland of that country.

Tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and typhoons are typically intense and destructive in the lower latitudes.

The study concludes that violent storms could migrate northward in our hemisphere and southward in the southern hemisphere as a result of warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The research predicts that tropical cyclones will likely occur over a wider range of latitudes than has been the case on Earth for the last 3 million years.

In Connecticut, Hurricane Henri was not the only tropical storm to affect the region in 2021. The remnants of Hurricane Ida brought damaging winds and torrential rain that felled trees and flooded streets and basements.

The northern expansion of such violent storms is going on as water levels in the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound keep rising. Because of melting glaciers thousands of miles away, water levels in Long Island Sound could rise by as much as 20 inches by 2050, enough to submerge parts of Groton’s shore and cause regular flooding in roads and neighborhoods.

Future hurricane prediction is an inexact science, but the ongoing trends do not bode well for the region.

**********

Web Links

More hurricanes likely to slam Connecticut and region due to climate change, says study

Photo, posted October 29, 2012, courtesy of Rachel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Is U.S. Offshore Wind Finally Happening? | Earth Wise

March 26, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Offshore wind capacity has been growing rapidly in recent years, especially in Europe and China. Globally, there is now more than 30 GW of offshore wind and industry experts predict that there will be well over 200 GW of installed capacity by 2030.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has only two small pilot projects, one with five turbines off Rhode Island and another with two turbines off Virginia. But after many years of battles with determined opponents, false starts, regulatory struggles, and other hurdles, the U.S. offshore wind industry appears to be poised to take off.

A combination of significant commitments by power companies to purchase offshore wind power, strong support by the Biden administration, and billions of dollars in investments is creating the new-found momentum.

New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maryland have collectively committed to buying 30 GW of offshore electricity by 2035. (That’s enough to power roughly 20 million homes).

Among the first major offshore installations to be completed in the next few years in the U.S. will be Vineyard Wind, 15 miles off of Martha’s Vineyard, another wind farm 60 miles east of New York’s Montauk Point, a third fifteen miles off Atlantic City, New Jersey, and a fourth off the Virginia Coast.

Offshore wind projects will create nearly 40,000 jobs just in the New York-New Jersey area over the next ten years. There is still some opposition from elements of the commercial fishing industry and from some coastal residents. However, with state and federal governments committed to reducing carbon emissions and rapidly reducing regulatory barriers, and with the price of offshore wind continuing to get lower and lower, most observers agree that the U.S. offshore wind industry is finally on the verge of really getting going.

**********

Web Links

On U.S. East Coast, Has Offshore Wind’s Moment Finally Arrived?

Photo, posted August 9, 2016, courtesy of Lars Plougmann via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Dead Zone In The Gulf Of Mexico | Earth Wise

July 6, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

The Gulf of Mexico has an area of low to no oxygen in the water that can kill fish and other marine life. It is an annual event that is primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activities in urban and agricultural areas throughout the Mississippi River watershed. When these excess nutrients reach the Gulf, they stimulate the overgrowth of algae, which eventually die and decompose, depleting the oxygen in the water as the algae sink to the bottom.

These low oxygen levels near the bottom of the Gulf cannot support most marine life. Some species – among them many fish, shrimp, and crabs – swim out of the area, but animals that can’t swim or move away are stressed or killed by the low oxygen. The dead zone in the Gulf occurs every summer.

A recent forecast for this summer’s dead zone predicts that the area of low or no oxygen will be approximate 6,700 square miles, which is roughly the size of Connecticut and Delaware combined. This is about 1,100 square miles smaller than last year’s dead zone and much less than the record of 8,776 square miles set in 2017. But it is still larger than the long-term average size of 5,387 square miles.

Making comparisons to the long-term average ignores the fact that the long-term average itself is unacceptable. The dead zone not only hurts marine life, but it also harms commercial and recreational fisheries and the communities they support. The actions that have been taken so far to reduce pollution in the Mississippi watershed are clearly not sufficient to drastically reduce the dead zone in the Gulf.

**********

Web Links

Large ‘dead zone’ expected for Gulf of Mexico

Photo, posted October 17, 2017, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Wildfire Pollution

January 24, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

California’s record-breaking wildfires this past season have been an unmitigated disaster with respect to loss of life, property, impact on human health, and in multiple other ways. And as if all of that was not bad enough, the impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere was equally catastrophic. The wildfires were deadly and cost billions of dollars but were also terrible for the environment and for the public’s health.

According to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior, the California wildfires released emissions equivalent to about 68 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is equal to the emissions from generating one year’s worth of electricity in the state, or about 15% of the total annual emissions in the state of California.

It is a vicious circle in which the changes to the climate that have lengthened the fire season and shortened the precipitation season are creating additional contributions to the warming of the climate.

Over the past century, California has warmed by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit. That extra-warmed air sucks water out of plants and soils, resulting in trees, shrubs, and rolling grasslands that are dry and primed to burn. That vegetation-drying effect compounds with every additional degree of warming. Plants lose their water more efficiently as temperatures get higher.

The result is that wildfires are increasing in size both in California and across the western United States. Fire experts at Columbia University estimate that since the 1980s, the warming climate has contributed to an extra 10 million acres of burning in western forests – an area about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

It’s a bad situation that is getting worse.

**********