interactions

Empire Wind resumes

June 17, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

In April, the Trump Administration issued a stop order for the Empire Wind offshore wind project in New York, pushing the $5 billion project to the brink of collapse. The project is being built by the giant Norwegian energy company Equinor. When completed, the wind farm is expected to deliver enough electricity to power 500,000 New York homes.

Equinor had obtained all the necessary permits for the project after a four-year federal environmental review and work had begun on laying foundations for the wind turbines on the ocean floor.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum claimed that the permits for the project been rushed and ordered the work stopped. The stoppage was costing Equinor $50 million a week as well as jeopardizing an additional 1,000 jobs.

Weeks of intensive interactions between New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Equinor officials, and the White House finally resulted in a decision by the administration to lift the stop work order and allow the project to move forward.

The collapse of the project would have created major problems for New York. The state’s grid operators have been counting on the construction of several new offshore wind farms to provide large additional amounts of electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions. New York has aggressive targets for using renewable energy.

Empire Wind is expected to have 816 megawatts of capacity. Another offshore project in New York, Sunrise Wind, which is under construction 30 miles east of Montauk Point on Long Island, would have 924 megawatts of capacity.

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In Reversal, Trump Officials Will Allow Huge Offshore N.Y. Wind Farm to Proceed

Photo, posted August 9, 2022, courtesy of the Scottish Government via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Arctic Warming And Weather At Mid-Latitudes | Earth Wise

May 18, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Some of the most striking images of climate change are those of melting glaciers in the Arctic and polar bears stranded on shrinking sea ice. The Arctic has been warming at a rate twice as fast as the global average. In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the Arctic’s role in driving extreme weather events in other parts of the world.

Winters in the midlatitude regions have seen more extreme weather events. The past winter saw record-breaking cold temperatures and snowfall in Japan, China, and Korea. Many parts of Eurasia and North America experienced severe cold snaps, with heavy snowfall and prolonged periods of subzero temperature. On the other hand, Europe saw its second warmest winter on record with record high temperatures in many places, much drier than normal conditions, and the closure of many ski resorts.

A study published in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science by scientists from South Korea and the U.S. looked at various climate projection models as well as historic climate data to assess what is likely to happen to weather in the mid-latitudes as the Arctic continues to warm. Warmer Arctic Sea temperatures usually result in lower winter temperatures in East Asia and North America as ocean currents and the jet streams are altered.

The study shows that Arctic warming-triggered cold waves in the mid-latitudes are likely to persist in a warmer future, but that such events will become more difficult to predict. The study highlights the importance of continued efforts to better understand the interactions between Arctic warming and the climate of the midlatitudes. There need to be better ways to predict the extreme weather events that are likely to come.

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Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Researchers Correlate Arctic Warming to Extreme Winter Weather in Midlatitude and Its Future

Photo, posted August 31, 2006, courtesy of Hillebrand / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Electricity From Bacteria | Earth Wise

June 3, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Microbiologists at Radboud University in the Netherlands have demonstrated in the laboratory that methane-consuming bacteria can generate electrical power. Their study was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology.

The bacteria studied is called Candidatus Methanoperedens and in the natural environment it consumes methane in water sources that are contaminated with nitrogen including places like water-filled ditches and some lakes. The bacteria in the study make use of the nitrates in the water to break down and digest the methane. Methanogens, which are bacteria that reduce carbon dioxide to form methane, are the source of the methane in these places.

The researchers exploited these complex interactions of bacteria to create a source of electrical power that is essentially a kind of battery with two terminals. One of the terminals is a chemical terminal and one is a biological terminal. They grew the bacteria on one of the electrodes where the bacteria donate electrons that result from its conversion of methane. (Other microbiologists at the same institution had previously demonstrated electrical generation from a similar battery containing anammox bacteria that use ammonium rather than methane in their metabolic processing).

In the study, the Radboud scientists managed to convert 31% of the methane in the water into electricity but they are aiming at higher efficiencies.

This approach represents a potential alternative to conventional biogas electricity generation. In those installations, methane is produced by microorganisms digesting plant materials and the methane is subsequently burned to drive a turbine to generate power. Those systems in fact have an efficiency of less than 50%. The researchers want to determine whether microorganisms can do a better job of generating electricity from biological sources than combustion and turbines can do.

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Bacteria generate electricity from methane

Photo, posted December 3, 2008, courtesy of Martin Sutherland via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Rapid Antarctic Melting

June 28, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is the world’s largest ice shelf, covering an area roughly the size of France. Scientists have spent several years building up a record of how the northwest sector of the enormous ice shelf interacts with the ocean beneath it. Their results show that the ice is melting much more rapidly than previously thought because of in-flowing warm water.

In general, the stability of ice shelves is thought to be mostly influenced by their exposure to warm deep ocean water. But the new research has found that surface water heated by the sun also plays a crucial role in melting ice shelves.

The interactions between ice and ocean water that occur hundreds of meters below the surface of ice shelves have a direct impact on long-term sea level. The Ross Ice Shelf stabilizes the West Antarctic ice sheet by blocking the ice that flows into it from some of the world’s largest glaciers.

When ice shelves collapse, the glaciers that feed them can speed up by a factor of two or three. None of the collapsing shelves in the past have come anywhere close to the size of the Ross Ice Shelf, which is more than 100 times bigger.

The new study by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research showed that sun-heated surface water flowing into the cavity under the ice shelf near Ross Islands caused melt rates to nearly triple during the summer months. This indicates that the loss of sea ice resulting from climate change is likely to increase melt rates in the future. While the Ross Ice Shelf is still considered to be relatively stable, the new findings show that it may be more vulnerable than previously thought.

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Rapid melting of the world’s largest ice shelf linked to solar heat in the ocean

Photo, posted February 15, 2009, courtesy of Alan Light via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.