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Understanding Geoengineering | Earth Wise

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The most recent report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change includes discussion of a number of extreme and untested solutions to the climate crisis.  Among these are solar geoengineering – modifying clouds or spraying tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere in order to block some of the sun’s light and thereby cool the planet.  The underlying principles are relatively straightforward.

There have been various models that predict the extent to which solar geoengineering would lower the earth’s average temperature.  What hasn’t been modeled to any real extent is what other effects it would have.

The new report discusses the results of models that predict how temperatures would vary at different latitudes and how geoengineering would affect rainfall and snowfall.  According to the models, releasing sulfate aerosols into the upper atmosphere to block sunlight would lower average precipitation.  But every region would be affected differently.  Some regions would gain in an artificially cooler world, but others might, for example, suffer by no longer having suitable conditions to grow crops.

The drop in temperature would allow the planet’s carbon sinks (plants, soils, and oceans) to take up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  However, as long as people continue to pollute, carbon dioxide would continue to make the oceans more acidic, causing significant harm to marine ecosystems.  Furthermore, solar geoengineering would have to be an ongoing process that would go on indefinitely and if it were to suddenly stop, it would lead to rapid warming.

The more we learn about geoengineering, the more it becomes clear that there would be many side effects as well as serious moral, political, and practical issues.  Society has to consider if all these things represent too much danger to allow us to seriously consider such a strategy.

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In the New UN Climate Report, a Better Understanding of Solar Geoengineering

Photo, posted September 9, 2012, courtesy of Kelly Nighan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Offshore Wind In New Jersey | Earth Wise

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The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities recently selected to fund Ocean Wind 2, a 1,148-MW offshore wind energy project proposed by the Danish company Ørsted.  The agency also awarded Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind a contract to develop 1,410-MW of offshore wind capacity.

Ocean Wind 2 will develop the second section of the Ocean Wind federal lease area and will provide enough power for half a million New Jersey homes.  The first Ocean Wind project, also under development by Ørsted, was awarded in 2019. It’s expected to come online in 2024, and is located 15 miles off the coast of southern New Jersey. (The second project will be located adjacent to the first).

As part of the project, Ørsted is contributing to an expansion for the EEW facility in Paulsboro, where monopiles, which are foundation supports for offshore wind turbines, are manufactured.  That facility will be home to 500 full-time jobs and represents a $250 million investment into southern New Jersey.  The project is also bringing a commitment from GE Renewables to locate one of the country’s first offshore wind nacelle assembly facilities in New Jersey.  (This facility will assemble the nacelles for Ocean Wind 2 as well as other American offshore wind projects).

Overall, Ocean Wind 2 is expected to generate nearly $5 billion in net economic benefits for the state of New Jersey. 

The Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind project will be located 10-20 miles off the coast of New Jersey between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light and will bring about $850 million in local economic benefits to the state, including a variety of investments in local communities.

Overall, New Jersey has the goal of supplying more than 3.2 million homes with offshore wind power by 2035.

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New Jersey moves forward with two offshore wind projects representing almost 3 GW of capacity

Photo, posted March 24, 2016, courtesy of TEIA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Coastlines and Climate Change | Earth Wise

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Climate change poses a fundamental threat to life on earth and has already left observable effects on the planet.  For example, glaciers have shrunk, oceans have warmed, heatwaves have become more intense, and plant and animal ranges have shifted. 

As a result of the changing climate, coastal communities around the world are confronting the increasing threats posed by a combination of extreme storms and the predicted acceleration of sea level rise. 

Scientists from the University of Plymouth in England have developed a simple algorithm-based model to predict how coastlines could be affected by climate change.  This model allows coastal communities to identify the actions they need to take in order to adapt to their changing environment.

The Forecasting Coastal Evolution (or ForCE)  model has the potential to be a game-changer because it allows adaptations in the shoreline to be predicted over timescales of anything from days to decades. As a result, the model is capable of predicting both the short-term impact of extreme storms as well as predicting the longer-term impact of rising seas.   

The ForCE model relies on past and present beach measurements and data showing the physical properties of the coast.  It also considers other key factors like tidal, surge, and global sea-level rise data to assess how beaches might be impacted by climate change.  Beach sediments form the frontline defense against coastal erosion and flooding, and are key in preventing damage to valuable coastal infrastructure.

According to the study, which was recently published in the journal Coastal Evolution, the ForCE model predictions have shown to be more than 80% accurate in current tests in South West England.

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New model accurately predicts how coasts will be impacted by storms and sea-level rise

Photo, posted April 17, 2016, courtesy of Nicolas Henderson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Offsetting Reef Acidification | Earth Wise

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The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system.  It is composed of nearly 3,000 individual reefs and 900 islands covering an area of more than 130,000 square miles.  In recent times, it has been under unprecedented stress from ocean warming, tropical cyclones, sediment and nutrient runoff, marine pests, and ocean acidification.

Among these stressors, ocean acidification is one of the most significant threats to the long-term viability of the reef because acidification affects the ability of corals to rebuild and repair their structures and recover from bleaching events.

New research from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, studied the impact of artificial ocean alkalinization on the acidity of the waters in the Great Barrier Reef.  The idea is to inject a source of alkalinity into the ocean, an accelerated version of a natural process that occurs from the chemical weathering of minerals under the sea.

The results of the study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, are that injecting an alkalinizing agent into the ocean along the length of the Reef would make it possible to offset ten years’ worth of ocean acidification based on the present rate of human-generated carbon emissions.  Such an effort could use an abundant mineral resource like olivine, which is already mined near the Great Barrier Reef.  Releasing 30,000 tons a day of the alkalinizing agent from an existing shipping line from a bulk carrier would reach almost the whole of the Great Barrier Reef.

In response to the declining health of coral reef ecosystems, many different intervention concepts and technologies are under consideration.  The goal of these would be to minimize environmental pressures and enhance the resilience of the ecosystems.

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Projected acidification of the Great Barrier Reef could be offset by ten years

Photo, posted August 4, 2019, courtesy of Larry Koester via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Floating Renewable Energy | Earth Wise

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A team of researchers at Texas A&M University believes that the next generation of offshore energy could come in the form of a synergistic combination of multiple renewable energy generators installed on a floating offshore platform.

Their concept for the ocean renewable energy station comprises wind, wave, ocean current, and solar energy elements that could generate electricity for anything from a coastal or island community to a research lab or military unit.  The station would be tethered to the sea bottom and could be used in locations where the water depth increases quickly, such as along the U.S. Pacific Coast or Hawaii.

Offshore wind is already commercially competitive, while wave-energy converters so far have been less cost-effective and only useful for specialized, smaller-scale applications.  The proposed ocean renewable energy station would make use of multiple different methods of electricity generation and incorporate innovative smart materials in the wave energy converters that respond to changes in wave height and frequency and allow for more consistent power production.

Denmark is already building a huge multi-source, multi-purpose ocean energy island.  This world’s first energy island will be 30 acres in area and serve as a hub for 200 giant offshore wind turbines generating 3 GW of electric power.  It is the largest construction project in Danish history, and will cost an estimate $34 billion.  As well as supplying other European countries with electricity, the goal is to use the new offshore island to produce green hydrogen from seawater, which can also be exported.  Large battery banks on the island will store surplus electricity for use in times of high demand.

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Research Underway On Floating Renewable Energy Station

Photo, posted September 27, 2014, courtesy of Eric Gross via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Marine Debris | Earth Wise

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Marine debris is a troubling issue around the world.  For most people, it is unsightly and perhaps inconvenient, but for many it is a critical problem that has serious impacts on many aspects of life.  This is especially the case for indigenous communities for whom the natural environment around the ocean is central to subsistence, recreation, culture, and economic opportunities.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sponsors a Marine Debris Program that supports multiple projects.  In Alaska’s Pribilof Islands, the indigenous communities of St. George and St. Paul Islands conduct regular cleanups to protect and steward the natural resources that they depend on.  They make use of unmanned aircraft system surveys to target removal and monitoring efforts.

Another NOAA-sponsored program works to clean up the Maybeso Estuary in Alaska’s Prince of Wales Islands.  The project has removed 35,000 pounds of debris, freeing the flow of the salmon stream and restoring the area as a prime hotspot for fishing, boating, and outdoor recreation.

In Washington State’s Olympic Coast, the Makah Tribe has a project to locate and remove derelict crab pots and fishing lines from 80 miles of fishing area and marine sanctuary.  Derelict fishing gear can trap and entangle animals, degrade habitat, imperil navigation, and interfere with fishing.  The project team is working with tribal stakeholders on promoting marine debris awareness.

All of these communities have cared for the environment for generations, but marine debris poses perilous threats to their territories and community action is needed to preserve and protect these remarkable places.

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Lives and Livelihoods Disrupted by Marine Debris

Photo, posted September 11, 2015, courtesy of NOAA’s National Ocean Service via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Greenland Becoming Darker | Earth Wise

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According to research published by Dartmouth University, a weather pattern that pushes snowfall away from parts of Greenland’s ice sheet is causing the continent to become darker and warmer.

Reducing the amount of fresh, lighter-colored snow exposes older, darker snow on the surface of Greenland’s ice sheets.  Fresh snow is the brightest and whitest. The reflectivity of snow decreases fairly quickly as it ages. This decrease in albedo – or reflectivity – allows the ice sheet to absorb more heat and therefore melt more quickly. 

The research attributes the decrease in snowfall in Greenland to a phenomenon called atmospheric blocking in which persistent high-pressure systems hover over the ice sheet for up to weeks at a time.  Such systems have increased over Greenland since the mid-1990s.  They push snowstorms to the north, hold warmer air over Western Greenland, and reduce light-blocking cloud cover.

All of this contributes to Greenland melting faster and faster.  According to research cited in the study, the Greenland ice sheet has warmed by nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1982.  Overall, Greenland is experiencing the greatest melt and runoff rates in the last 450 years, at the minimum, and quite likely the greatest rates in the last 7,000 years.

The Greenland ice sheet is the second largest ice body in the world, after the Antarctic ice sheet.  It is 1,800 miles long and about 700 miles wide at its greatest width.  Its thickness is between 1.2 and 1.9 miles.  If the entire sheet were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 24 feet.  So, the darkening of Greenland is a source of great concern.

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Greenland Becoming Darker, Warmer as Snow Changes

Photo, posted April 3, 2012, courtesy of Francesco Paroni Sterbini via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Record Carbon Dioxide Levels | Earth Wise

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The coronavirus pandemic caused a temporary dip in the burning of fossil fuels around the world as many human activities were diminished or curtailed entirely.  Despite this, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere set a record in May, reaching the highest levels in human history.

Scientific instruments atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii measured an average of 419 parts per million for the month, according to analysis from both the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This level is about half a percent more than the previous record of 417 ppm, set in May of 2020.  Carbon dioxide is the largest greenhouse gas contributor driving global warming and, according to scientists, there hasn’t been this much of it in the atmosphere for millions of years.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide were actually 5.8 percent lower in 2020 than 2019, as a result of pandemic lockdowns.  This was the largest one-year drop ever recorded.  But humanity was still responsible for emitting more than 31 billion tons of carbon dioxide last year.  About half of that CO2 is absorbed by the world’s trees and oceans, but the other half lingers in the atmosphere for thousands of years, gradually warming the planet via the greenhouse effect.

As long as we keep emitting carbon dioxide, it is going to continue to pile up in the atmosphere.  The only way to stop it is for the world’s nations to zero out their net emissions, mostly by switching away from fossil fuels to technologies that do not emit carbon dioxide, such as electric vehicles fueled by wind, solar, or nuclear power.

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Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere Hits Record High Despite Pandemic Dip

Photo, posted August 7, 2013, courtesy of Gerry Machen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

California Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

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Offshore wind has been pretty much a non-starter in the U.S. until recently.  Now there is considerable activity in the Northeast Atlantic with major projects getting started off the coasts of Massachusetts, New York, and other eastern states.  The prospects for wind farms in the Pacific, on the other hand, have been pretty dismal.  There are significant logistical problems posed by a deep ocean floor and also opposition from the Navy that does not want obstacles for its ships.

A combination of progress in floating wind turbine technology and the arrival of an administration highly supportive of renewable energy technology has changed the situation.  In late May, the Navy abandoned its opposition to Pacific offshore wind and joined the Interior Department in giving support to allowing two areas off the California coast to be developed for wind turbines.

The plan allows commercial offshore wind farms in a 400-square-mile area in Morro Bay in central California, and in another area off the Humboldt Coast in Northern California.

The two California sites could support enough wind turbines to generate electricity to power 1.6 million homes.  That would make the California coast one of the largest generators of wind power in the world.  The forthcoming Vineyard Wind farm in Massachusetts is expected to have 84 giant turbines.  The two California sites could hold more than 300 turbines.

The offshore wind industry is booming around the world, especially near the coasts of Norway and the UK, where the water is shallow, and turbines can be anchored to the ocean floor.  By contrast, the Pacific Ocean floor drops steeply from the coastline, making it too deep to anchor wind towers.  The newly emerging technology of floating turbines is the key to establishing offshore wind in the Pacific.

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Biden Opens California’s Coast to Wind Farms

Photo, posted August 7, 2013, courtesy of Ray Bouknight via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Vanishing Kelp Forests | Earth Wise

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Bull kelp is the dominant species in offshore kelp forests north of Santa Cruz, California along the west coast of North America.  Bull kelp has similar physical structures to terrestrial plants; it anchors to the ocean floor with root-like structures called holdfasts, and has stem-like structures called stipes from which leaf-like blades stretch out through the water, absorbing nutrients and sunshine.

These giant seaweeds form lush underwater forests in northern California’s coastal waters and have long provided critical habitat for many species like salmon, crabs, and jellyfish.  But now, for much of the California coast, only a few patches of bull kelp remain.

A team from University of California Santa Cruz has studied satellite images of about 200 miles of coastline.  They found that starting in 2014, the area covered by kelp has dropped by more than 95%. 

The die-off was driven in part by an underwater heat wave that depleted nutrients in the water and made it harder for the kelp to grow.  Making matters much worse, populations of purple sea urchins, which eat kelp, have exploded in the region because of overfishing and other reductions in urchin predators such as sea otters.  The sea urchins eat kelp holdfasts, creating so-called urchin barrens where their destructive grazing has decimated kelp forests.

Bull kelp is a species at high risk of becoming endangered.  In coming decades, more marine heatwaves are expected.  These events as well as stronger El Niños will become more common and frequent with climate change.  Between these thermal events and the sea urchins, it will be difficult for kelp forests to survive.

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Ninety-five percent of bull kelp forests have vanished from 200-mile stretch of California coast

Photo, posted October 28, 2015, courtesy of Florian Graner/Green Fire Productions via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Protecting The Ocean Has Multiple Benefits | Earth Wise

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An international team of authors from 18 institutions has recently published a paper in the journal Nature that offers a solution that addresses several of humanity’s most pressing problems at the same time.  The paper provides a comprehensive assessment of where strict ocean protection can contribute to a more abundant supply of healthy seafood, help address climate change, and protect embattled species and habitats.

The study identified specific areas of the ocean that could provide all of these benefits if they were protected.  Currently, only about 7% of the ocean is under any kind of protection.  According to the study, if the appropriate 30% of the ocean was protected by the actions of the relevant countries by 2030, the cited benefits would be realized.

Safeguarding these regions would protect nearly 80% of marine species while increasing fishing catches by almost 9 million tons a year. It would also prevent the release of more than 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide by protecting the seafloor from bottom trawling, which is a widespread and destructive fishing practice.

Ocean life has been declining worldwide because of overfishing, habitat destruction, and climate change.  The study pioneers a new way to identify the places that – if protected – will boost food production and safeguard marine life, while at the same time reducing carbon emissions.  The study finds that countries with large national waters and large industrial trawl fisheries have the highest potential to contribute to climate change mitigation by protecting the carbon stored on the ocean floor.  The ocean covers 70% of the Earth and its importance in solving the challenges of our time must not be underestimated.

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Three Times the Gains

Photo, posted January 10, 2016, courtesy of Hafsteinn Robertsson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The World’s Largest Tidal Device | Earth Wise

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Most of the world’s activity in renewable energy is focused on solar and wind power.  The use of both is expanding rapidly. But there is also marine energy to be exploited.  Ocean waves and tidal movements hold huge amounts of energy.  Estimates are that the European Union could get 15% of its power from marine sources.  But ocean energy is currently expensive and there are significant technical challenges still to be overcome.

The world’s largest tidal power device will soon begin testing off the coast of Scotland.  The 680-ton, 240-foot-long, airplane-shaped device will be connected to the European Marine Energy Center for testing. 

The device, built by the Scottish company Orbital Marine Power, is designed to produce 2 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 2,000 homes.   It has a pair of 52-foot-long turbines attached to two wings.

Compared to wind and solar power, the marine energy sector has been much slower to develop because of the many difficulties of working in harsh marine environments as well as the technical challenges associated with harnessing power from waves and tides. But ocean waves and tidal movements hold enormous amounts of energy and have the advantage that they are available at all times, unlike wind and solar energy, which are variable in nature. 

Experts say that the future of tidal energy lies with arrays of floating or sea-bottom-mounted turbines that capture the energy of tidal currents in unobstructed waters.  There are various places around the world where this is an attractive opportunity, most notably in Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy, where the world’s most extreme tides – rising and falling more than 50 feet – contain vast amounts of power.

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The World’s Largest Tidal Power Device Will Soon Begin Testing Off Scotland

Photo, posted May 18, 2017, courtesy of Chris via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Forests And Climate Change | Earth Wise

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A carbon sink is anything that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases.  Examples of carbon sinks include the ocean, soil, and plants.  In contrast, a carbon source is anything that releases more carbon into the atmosphere than it absorbs.  Volcanic eruptions and burning fossil fuels are two examples.

Forests are among the most important carbon sinks.  Trees remove carbon from the air and store it in their trunks, branches, and leaves, and transfer some of it into the soil.  But in many regions, deforestation, forest degradation, and the impacts of climate change are weakening these carbon sinks. As a result, some climate activists advocate for large-scale tree-planting campaigns as a way to remove heat-trapping CO2 from the atmosphere and help mitigate climate change. 

But according to a new study recently published in the journal Science, planting new trees as a substitute for the direct reduction of greenhouse gas emissions could be a pipe dream.  While planting trees is easy, inexpensive, and can help slow climate warming, the ongoing warming would be simultaneously causing the loss of other trees.  Instead, the research team says it makes more sense to focus on keeping existing forests healthy so they can continue to act as carbon sinks, and to reduce emissions as much as possible and as quickly as possible.        

But keeping forests healthy will require a paradigm shift in forest management.  Instead of trying to maintain forests as they were in the 20th century, the research team says forests need to be managed proactively for the changes that can be anticipated. 

One thing is clear: We cannot plant our way out of the climate crisis.

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Forests and climate change: ‘We can’t plant our way out of the climate crisis’

Photo, posted August 9, 2015, courtesy of Nicholas A. Tonelli via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Sea Turtles And The Sargasso Sea | Earth Wise

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The lifecycle of sea turtles includes a longstanding mystery, often called the “lost years”.  Turtles hatching from nests along Florida’s Atlantic coast head into the ocean and are generally not seen again for several years before they return in their adolescence. Very little is known about where they spend this time in the open ocean.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida have learned that green turtles as well as loggerhead turtles – both iconic species in conservation efforts – may be spending their youth in the legendary Sargasso Sea.  The Sargasso Sea is located off the east coast of the U.S. in the North Atlantic Ocean.  It has frequently been featured in popular culture, such as in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, as a place where ships could be trapped in thick mats of floating, brown Sargassum seaweed for which the sea is named.

The researchers tracked the baby turtles by attaching advanced, solar-powered tracking devices, about an inch long, to their shells.  They used a special adhesive that held the devices to the turtle shells but would allow the devices to fall off after a few months causing no harm to the turtles or inhibiting shell growth or behavior.

It was previously thought that baby turtles would passively drift in sea currents and simply ride those currents until their later juvenile years.  The new research shows that the turtles actively orient to go into the Sargasso Sea.

Studies of where turtles go as they develop are fundamental to sound sea turtle conservation.  If we don’t know where turtles are and what parts of the ocean are important to them, we are doing conservation blindfolded.

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Legendary Sargasso Sea May be Sea Turtles’ Destination during Mysterious ‘Lost Years’

Photo, posted October 23, 2016, courtesy of Kris-Mikael Krister via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Accelerating Global Glacier Loss | Earth Wise

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

Glaciers are a sensitive indicator of climate change.  They have been melting at a high rate since the mid-20th century – regardless of altitude or latitude. But up until recently, the full extent of glacial ice loss has only been partially measured and understood.

Now, according to new research led by scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland and the University of Toulouse in France, nearly all the world’s glaciers are becoming thinner and losing mass.  And the changes are accelerating.  The study, which is the most comprehensive and accurate of its kind to date, is the first to include all the world’s glaciers – around 220,000 in total – excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The research team’s findings were recently published in the journal Nature.

Between 2000 and 2019, the world’s glaciers lost an average of more than 294 billion tons of ice per year.  Between 2000 and 2004, glaciers lost an average of about 250 billion tons of ice each year.  But between 2015 and 2019, ice mass loss jumped up to an average of approximately 328 billion tons annually.    

Glacial melt is responsible for 21% of the observed sea level rise during this two decade time period studied.

This research is just another reminder of how we need to act urgently if we want to prevent the worst-case climate change scenario from becoming a reality. 

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Global glacier retreat has accelerated

Photo, posted September 17, 2015, courtesy of Richard Whitaker via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Green Light For Commercial-Scale Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

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The Biden administration has given final approval to a project it hopes will usher in a new era of wind energy in the United States.  The greenlight was announced by the Department of the Interior on May 11.

The Vineyard Wind project intends to install up to 84 huge wind turbines about 12 nautical miles off the cost of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.  In total, Vineyard Wind could generate 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 400,000 homes.  The construction project will create about 3,600 jobs.  The $2.8 billion project is a joint venture of the energy firms Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners.

The idea of a wind farm off the Massachusetts coast was conceived 20 years ago but ran into repeated setbacks, delays, and well-funded opposition from waterfront property owners concerned about what will ultimately be the barely discernable sight of tiny blips on the distant horizon.  The Trump administration moved to cancel the permitting process for Vineyard Wind, but the Biden administration revived the project in March as part of its greater efforts to tackle climate change.

Electricity generated by Vineyard Wind will travel via cables buried six feet below the ocean floor to Cape Cod, where they will connect to a substation and feed into the New England grid.  The project is expected to begin delivering wind-powered electricity in 2023.

The Biden administration says that it intends to fast-track permits for other wind projects off the Atlantic Coast and that it will offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrades to ports across the United States to support wind turbine construction.

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Biden Administration Approves Nation’s First Major Offshore Wind Farm

Photo, posted February 8, 2007, courtesy of mmatsuura via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Rising Seas In The Maldives | Earth Wise

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The Republic of Maldives is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka and India and about 400 miles from the Asian mainland.  It is one of the world’s most geographically dispersed sovereign states, the smallest Asian country by land area, and, with a little over 500,000 inhabitants, the second least populous country in Asia.  With its spectacular scenic beauty, it is also a premier tourist attraction.

With more than 80% of its 1,190 coral islands standing less than 1 meter above sea level, the Maldives has the lowest terrain of any country in the world.  As a result, the Maldives is particularly vulnerable to the sea level rise associated with climate change.

Some studies predict a grim future for the Maldives as well as other low-lying islands.  One study concluded that the islands could become uninhabitable by 2050 as wave-driven flooding becomes more common and freshwater becomes limited.

The Maldives government has explored plans to purchase land on higher ground in other countries.  Planners are also working to enhance the resilience of the country’s current islands.   An example is Hulhumalé, a newly constructed artificial island northeast of the country’s capital, Malé.

Construction of Hulhumalé began in 1997 and it now covers 1.5 square miles, making it the fourth largest island in the Maldives.  Its population is now more than 50,000, with more than 200,000 expected to eventually move there.  The new island, built by pumping sand from the seafloor onto a coral platform, rises about 2 meters above sea level.  The extra height could make the new island a refuge for Maldivians driven off lower-lying islands by the rising seas.

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Preparing for Rising Seas in the Maldives

Photo, posted June 15, 2009, courtesy of Elena N via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Seagrasses And Ocean Acidification | Earth Wise

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Seagrasses are the basis of important marine ecosystems.   Sea turtles, bat rays, leopard sharks, fish, and harbor seals are just some of the marine creatures that visit seagrass ecosystems for the food and habitat they provide.  They are nursery grounds for many aquatic animals and many birds visit seagrass meadows to dine on what lives within them.  They may seem like slimy grasses that we walk through along some shorelines, but they are important.

These marine forests are valuable for many different reasons including climate mitigation and erosion control.  A third of the carbon dioxide emitted across the globe is absorbed by the ocean and seagrass meadows are an important carbon sink.

A new study, recently published in the journal Global Change Biology, investigated how seagrasses can buffer ocean acidification.  The six-year-long study found that these ecosystems can alleviate low ocean pH – that is, more acidic – conditions for extended periods of time, even at night in the absence of photosynthesis. 

In some places, the pH buffering from the seagrasses brings the local environments back to preindustrial pH conditions, like what the ocean might have experienced around the year 1750.

Seagrasses naturally absorb carbon as they photosynthesize when the sun is out, which drives the buffering ability.  The study found the surprising result that the effects of pH buffering even persisted during the night, when there is no photosynthesis.

The study has implications for aquaculture management as well as climate change mitigation, and conservation and restoration efforts.  Globally, seagrass ecosystems are in decline.  These results show how important it is to help them survive and prosper.

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Seagrasses Turn Back the Clock on Ocean Acidification

Photo, posted October 13, 2010, courtesy of Claire Fackler, CINMS, NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Giant Breakaway Iceberg | Earth Wise

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Scientists have been closely monitoring multiple cracks and chasms that have formed in the 500-foot-thick Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica over the past few years.  In late 2019, a new crack was spotted in a portion of the shelf north of an area known as the McDonald Ice Rumples.  The rift was monitored by satellite imaging and was seen by February as moving about 15 feet a day.

In the early hours of February 26th, the crack widened rapidly before finally breaking free from the rest of the floating ice shelf.  News reports around the world have described the massive 500-square-mile iceberg by comparing it to the size of well-known cities:  1.5 times the size of greater Paris, 10 times the size of San Francisco, twice the size of Chicago, nearly the size of Greater London, and so on.

Antarctica is known for churning out some enormous bergs.  The new iceberg, which has been named A-74, is huge, but doesn’t compare to the iceberg A-68 that calved from the Larson C Ice Shelf in 2017.  That one was almost five times larger.

The calving of A-74 does not pose a threat to the presently unmanned British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research Station, which was repositioned in 2017 to a more secure location after the ice shelf was deemed to be unsafe.  The section where the station now sits is still holding on, but when it eventually breaks, it will likely create a berg nearly 700 square miles in size.

It remains to be seen what will become of the new iceberg.  Most likely, it will eventually get caught up in the Weddell Gyre, a clockwise-rotating ocean flow in the Southern Ocean that covers an area more than half the size of the US.

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Breakup at Brunt

Photo, posted October 27, 2016, courtesy of NASA/Nathan Kurtz via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Collapse of Northern California Kelp Forests | Earth Wise

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For thousands of years, thick canopies of kelp formed an underwater forest spanning the coast of Northern California.  Kelp is the cornerstone of a rich subtidal community, providing food and habitat for all sorts of marine creatures.  But in recent years, a shocking transformation has occurred.  Satellite imagery reveals that the area covered by kelp forests off the coast of Northern California has declined by more than 95%.  Only a few small, isolated patches remain.  

In a new study, researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz found that the kelp forest decline was an abrupt collapse as opposed to a gradual decline. 

According to the study, which was recently published in the journal Communications Biology, kelp forests north of San Francisco were resilient to warming events in the past, like El Niños and marine heatwaves. But the decline of a key sea urchin predator – the sunflower sea star – from sea star wasting disease caused the kelp forests’ resiliency to plummet.  Sea urchins are voracious consumers of kelp.     

But it was a series of events – not just the sea urchins – that combined to decimate the Northern California kelp forest.   A marine heatwave that became known as “the blob” developed in 2014 and moved down the West Coast in 2015.  Around the same time, a strong El Niño event developed and brought warmer water up the coast from the south.  The warming ocean waters combined with the ravenous sea urchin population resulted in the dramatic decline of kelp. 

According to researchers, the prospects for a Northern California kelp forest recovery remain poor unless sea urchin predators return to the ecosystem. 

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The collapse of Northern California kelp forests will be hard to reverse

Photo, posted August 13, 2019, courtesy of Sara Hamilton of OSU College of Science via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

WAMC/Northeast Public Radio is a regional public radio network serving parts of seven northeastern states (more...)