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A Rainy May

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If it seemed like May was unusually rainy, that’s because it was.  According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, May 2019 was the second-wettest month on record in the U.S. and contributed to a record-setting wet 12-month period.

The average precipitation for May was 4.41 inches, which is 1.5 inches above normal.  The wettest month in 125 years of record keeping was May 2015, which averaged just 0.03 inches more than this past May.

The period from June 2018 through May 2019 saw the wettest 12-month period on record in the U.S. with 37.68 inches, nearly 8 inches above average.  Increases in heavy rain events are among the most anticipated and well-documented impacts from climate change.

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During May, the stormy pattern led to widespread flooding in the nation’s heartland.  In North Carolina, early-season extreme heat and a rapidly-developing drought was replaced by intense rainfall and flooding.

With all the clouds and rain around, the average May temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 59.5 degrees, which ranked in the bottom third of the 125-year record.

Extreme and unusual weather is becoming commonplace as the climate changes.  Duluth, Minnesota had 10.6 inches of snow on May 9, breaking an all-time record for May.  Denver had its snowiest May in 77 years.  But while the U.S. experienced somewhat cooler weather than usual, the planet as a whole continues to warm.  April 2019 was the second hottest April on record, dating back to 1880.  The Arctic region saw a record low for sea ice. 

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Rain-soaked U.S. had its 2nd-wettest month on record in May

Photo, posted May 20, 2013, courtesy of Flickr.

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Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Making Roads From Ocean Plastic

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Like many other places around the world, India has a big problem with plastic waste.  Its 1.3 billion people each use an average of 24 pounds of plastic per year and much of it ends up in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean.

Fishermen in India’s southern state of Kerala have taken on the battle against plastic waste in the ocean by launching a campaign called Suchitwa Sagaram, or Clean Sea, in which they are collecting the plastic and bringing it back to shore.

In the first 10 months of the program, fisherman have removed 25 tons of plastic from the Arabian Sea.  Once the plastic waste reaches shore, it is fed into a plastic shredding machine.  As is the case for many of India’s plastic recycling schemes, the shredded plastic from the sea is converted into material that is used for road surfacing.

There are more than 20,000 miles of plastic roads in India, mostly in rural areas.  In fact, more than half the roads in the southern state of Tamil Nadu are plastic.  Such roads have become popular because they are more resilient to India’s searing heat.  The melting point of plastic roads is around 150 degrees Fahrenheit as compared to 122 degrees for conventional roads.

Roads made from recycled plastic are also cheaper than ones using conventional plastic additives.  A mile of plastic road uses the equivalent of a million and a half plastic bags and saves about a ton and a half of asphalt.  Overall, plastic roads are about 8% cheaper than conventional roads and create jobs for people in the fishing communities.

India’s plastic roads are a promising way to fight the problem of ocean plastic pollution.

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These Indian fishermen take plastic out of the sea and use it to build roads

Photo, posted April 25, 2016, courtesy of Bo Eide via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Cleaning Up Mount Everest

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Mount Everest is the highest mountain above sea level with an elevation over 29,000 feet.  As such, it is a prime attraction for mountain climbers seeking that ultimate achievement.  The summit was first reached in 1953 and for a long time, only major expeditions by the best mountaineers sought to repeat the feat.

In recent years, climbing Everest has become much more common.  In fact, since 1953, more than 4,000 people have reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain.  A record 807 accomplished the feat last year alone.  Thousands more visit lower elevations.

But climbing Everest is neither safe nor easy.  Ice and snow, powerful winds, and generally harsh conditions make Everest a treacherous place.  Over the decades, hundreds of climbers have died on its slopes and many of their bodies are still up there.  Apart from human remains, there are decades worth of garbage left behind by hikers and tourists.

The government of Nepal has mounted an ambitious project to clean up the refuse on Mount Everest.  In just the first two weeks, volunteers removed more than three tons of trash from the mountain. Among the rubbish removed from Everest are tents, climbing equipment, bottles, cans, empty oxygen containers, and human waste.  They also discovered the bodies of four climbers that had emerged from melting snow and ice.

Helicopters carried a third of the garbage to Kathmandu for recycling.  The rest was taken to a local district for disposal in landfills.  The initial work started at Everest’s base camp.  They are next moving to sites higher on the mountain.  They hope to remove at least 10 tons of trash this year.

Nepal would like to make the world’s tallest mountain clean.

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Volunteers Remove 3 Tons of Trash From Mount Everest in Two Weeks

Photo, posted May 23, 2012, courtesy of Gunther Hagleitner via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

More Antarctic Warming

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East Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth.  It makes up two-thirds of the continent, is home to the South Pole, and has vast ice sheets that have been around for tens of millions of years and are nearly three miles thick in places.  Temperatures there hover around 67 degrees below zero.  In 2010, a few spots on East Antarctica’s polar plateau reached a record-breaking 144 degrees below zero.

But almost unbelievably, parts of the East Antarctic seem to be melting.

Scientists are seeing worrying signs of ice loss in the East Antarctic.  Glaciers are starting to move more quickly and are dumping their ice into the Southern Ocean.  Satellite images show the fast-moving ice.  The biggest glacier – the Totten Glacier – alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by over 12 feet.

The Antarctic as a whole contains about 90% of the planet’s ice.  In theory, if it all melted, it would raise global sea levels by an average of 200 feet.

The growing concerns about eastern Antarctica are not that its interior plateau will soon start to melt.  It is still extremely cold there and should stay that way for a long time.  But its edges, which are in contact with warming ocean waters, are the real worry.  As the region’s ice shelves, which float atop the Southern Ocean, erode, the vast glaciers behind them could rapidly accelerate their slide into the sea.

Today, satellites show huge glaciers moving rapidly toward the coast, with wide rivers of ice sometimes moving several miles a year.  In the face of rapid change and limited data, it is difficult to predict what the Antarctic will do in the future.  But it doesn’t look good.

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Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting to Melt

Photo, posted January 3, 2013, courtesy of Christopher Michel via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Glaciers And Water Supply

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The world has roughly 150,000 glaciers covering about 200,000 square miles of the earth’s surface.  Over the last 40 years they’ve lost the equivalent of a layer of ice 70 feet thick.  Most of them are getting shorter as well.  Some have shrunk to nothing; many smaller glaciers in places like the Rockies and the Andes have disappeared entirely.

Glaciers represent the snows of centuries, compressed over time to form flowing rivers of ice.  They always change over time, accumulating snow in winter and losing ice to melting in summer.  But in recent times, the warming climate has allowed the melting to outpace the accumulation.

Much of the discussion about the retreating glaciers relates to sea level rise, catastrophic floods, debris flow, and the effects on rivers and ecosystems.

But in some places, the biggest impact of the loss of glaciers is on the supply of water for people and agriculture.  In Kazakhstan, Almaty, the country’s largest city depends on glacier-fed rivers for drinking water for its 2 million people and for irrigation water for crops.  All across the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan and Karakmoram mountain ranges, hundreds of millions of people rely on glacier-fed rivers for their water supplies. 

A melting glacier can at first increase stream flow but eventually reaches a tipping point and meltwater begins to taper.  In the short term, the melting glaciers may provide increased amounts of water coming down from the mountains, but eventually the flow in the rivers will begin to decline and populations will face a crisis.

It will be essential for people in many places to carefully plan for their future water needs in a changing world.

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Glaciers Are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water.

Photo, posted September 16, 2011, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Shrinking Arctic Glaciers

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The glaciers on Baffin Island, located in Canada’s northeastern Arctic, have been shrinking as the climate warms.  The melting, receding glaciers have exposed fragments of ancient plants that had frozen in the places where they once grew.  New research has shown that these spots have not seen the light of day for at least 40,000 years.

The entire planet has been warming since humanity started flooding the atmosphere with greenhouse gases at the start of the Industrial Revolution, but the effects are not uniform across the globe.  Some regions – like the Arctic – are seeing temperature rises that are greater and faster than anywhere else in the world.  As a result, glaciers in the Arctic have been melting away at rates never before observed in modern human history.

Researchers at the University of Colorado performed radiocarbon dating experiments in order to find out when the last time was that the Arctic was as warm as today.   There have been natural variations in Arctic temperatures caused by the complicated way the Earth wobbles on its axis.  For example, 10,000 years ago the northern latitudes pointed at the sun more directly during the summer than they do now, providing about 9% more sunshine during the summer.

The results of the study showed that the newly-uncovered plants had died at least 40,000 years earlier, indicating that the glaciers had not melted back to today’s size for at least that long.  Global measurements indicate that the planet as a whole has not been as warm as it is today for about 115,000 years, back then again a result of the orientation of the Earth.

Well, the Earth hasn’t wobbled recently.  The Arctic is melting because we are dumping massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

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These Arctic glaciers are smaller than ever before in human history

Photo, posted September 1, 2010, courtesy of Doryce S. via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Ice Melt In Greenland

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A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warns that Greenland’s ice Is melting much faster than previously thought.  The ice loss rapidly accelerated around 2002-2003 and by 2012 the annual loss was nearly four times the rate in 2003.

Most of the new ice melt is in southwest Greenland, a part of the island that wasn’t known to be losing ice that rapidly and is not where most of the large glaciers are in Greenland.  The loss is coming from the land-fast ice sheet itself.

Data from NASA satellites and GPS stations scattered around Greenland’s coast shows that between 2002 and 2016, Greenland lost approximately 280 billion tons of ice per year.  That is enough melt to cover the entire states of Florida and New York hip deep in meltwater, as well as drowning Washington, D.C. and one or two other small states.

Global warming of just 1 degree Celsius is the main driver behind this massive meltdown of ice.  The temperature rise coupled with a negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation causes rapid surface melt of the ice sheet during summers.  The Oscillation is a natural, irregular change in atmospheric pressure that brings warm, sunny weather to the western side of Greenland during its negative phase.

The Greenland ice sheet is 2 miles thick in some places and contains enough ice to raise sea levels 23 feet if it all melted.  The melting Greenland ice is already slowing the Gulf Stream, which is wreaking havoc with European weather.  If we don’t get a handle on global temperature rise, things are only going to get worse.

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Greenland’s ice is melting four times faster than thought—what it means

Photo, posted April 21, 2017, courtesy of Markus Trienke via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Melting Ice In Greenland

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The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest ice body in the world after the Antarctic ice sheet.  It covers over 660,000 square miles, more than twice the size of the state of Texas.  But it is melting.

According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster today than at any point in the last 350 years.  A team of U.S. and European researchers analyzed more than three centuries of melt patterns in ice cores from western Greenland. They then linked this historical data to modern observations of melting and runoff across the entire ice sheet.

According to the researchers, from an historical perspective, today’smelt rates are off the charts.  There is a 50% increase in total ice sheet melt water runoff since the start of the industrial era and a 30% increase since the 20th century alone.

Over the last 20 years, melt intensity has increased 250 to 575 percent compared to pre-industrial melt rates. The period from 2004-2013, the most recent decade analyzed, experienced a more sustained and greater magnitude of melt than in any previous 10-year period in the 350-year record.

The Greenland ice sheet is the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.  It is adding 72 cubic miles of meltwater to the world’s oceans every year.

The melting of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating which is a frightening prospect.  If the sheet were to melt in its entirety, global sea levels would rise by 23 feet.  The world needs to do whatever it can to keep that doomsday scenario from happening.

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Greenland Ice Sheet Melting At Fastest Rate in 350 Years

Photo, posted September 8, 2014, courtesy of Marco Verch via Flickr.  

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Increasing Antarctic Ice Loss

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Antarctica’s ice sheets contain enough frozen water to raise sea levels globally about 190 feet.  Ice in the Antarctic is melting at a record-breaking rate and subsequent sea rises could have catastrophic consequences around the world.  So, it is no surprise that scientists have been closely tracking ice loss in recent decades to understand both the current and future impacts of climate change.

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Algae And The Greenland Ice Sheet

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The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic ice sheet.  It is about 1,500 miles long, nearly 900 miles across at its widest point, and averages more than a mile in thickness.  It has experienced record melting in recent years and is a source of great concern as the climate continues to warm. The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing an estimated 270 billion tons of ice each year.   If the entire sheet were to melt, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet which, of course, would be a world-wide catastrophe.

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Mass Production Of Biodegradable Plastic  

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Plastic pollution is a major problem for the world’s oceans and non-biodegradable plastics continue to fill the planet’s landfills and litter the landscape.   There are many approaches to making plant-derived, biodegradable plastics but most of these materials do not offer the resistance to heat and moisture that is characteristic of petroleum-based plastics.

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‘Noah’s Ark’ Takes On Water

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The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, built into a hillside in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard far above the Arctic Circle, is often described as humanity’s last hope against extinction after some global crisis.  While there are more than 1,700 gene banks around the world that keep collections of seeds, all of them are vulnerable to war, natural disasters, equipment malfunctions, and other problems.  Except the Svalbard vault – or so we thought.  It has been dubbed the “Noah’s Ark” of seeds and a last chance for the world to regenerate if the worst should come to pass.  It’s mission is to keep the world’s seeds safe. 

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Climate Change And Reindeer

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Hundreds of thousands of reindeer roam Russia’s Yamal Peninsula, which is located in northwestern Siberia, and are herded by the indigenous Nenets people, reportedly among the Arctic’s last truly nomadic reindeer herders.  Reindeer provide these indigenous people with transportation, food, clothes, and even tools made from their bones.  Reindeer are well suited for the freezing temperatures and thick snow of this climate.  But they are not well suited for climate change. 

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More Ice In Antarctica

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Two years ago, NASA reported that the sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent, surpassing levels mapped since the late 1970s.  This seemed to be quite contrary to the global warming trend that is leading to the melting of the Arctic and glaciers worldwide.  And in fact, it does seem rather puzzling.

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