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Shrinking Ice In The Bering Sea | Earth Wise

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The Bering Sea forms the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth:  Eurasia and the Americas.  Recent analysis of vegetation from a Bering Sea island has determined that the extent of sea ice in the region is the lowest it has been for over 5,000 years.

St. Matthew Island, a small island in the middle of the Bering Sea, has essentially been recording what is happening in the ocean and atmosphere around it, in the form of the composition of peat layers on the island.  By analyzing the chemical composition of peat core samples, scientists can estimate how sea ice in the region has changed over the course of time.

Changes in the relative amounts of two oxygen isotopes in the sediment and plant debris trapped in the peat on the island reflect the nature of precipitation during the period when the peat layers formed.  That ratio is correlated with the amount of sea ice in the region.  Satellite data acquired over the past 40 years confirms this correlation.

Analysis of the data shows that the current ice levels are unprecedented in the last 5,500 years.  These long-term findings affirm that reductions in Bering Sea ice are due to more than recent higher temperatures associated with global warming.  Atmospheric and ocean currents, which have also been altered by climate change, play a large role in the presence of sea ice.

Summertime sea ice in the Arctic was expected to reach its second-lowest extent in September in 40 years of observation.  Sea ice typically builds up again each winter, but the changes in ice extents actually lag behind changes in greenhouse gas level by decades.  Future ice loss is already built into the system.

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Bering Sea ice extent is at most reduced state in last 5,500 years

Photo, posted December 2, 2012, courtesy of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Generating Hydrogen From Poor-Quality Water | Earth Wise

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Hydrogen could be the basis of a complete energy system.  It could be stored and transported and could be used to power vehicles and to generate electricity in power plants.  Proponents of the so-called hydrogen economy contend that hydrogen is the best solution to the global energy challenge.  But among the challenges faced by a hydrogen economy is the development of an efficient and green method to produce hydrogen.

The primary carbon-free method of producing hydrogen is to break down water into its constituent elements – hydrogen and oxygen.  This can be done in a number of ways, notably by using electricity in a process called electrolysis.  A method that seems particularly attractive is to use sunlight as the energy source that breaks down the water molecule.

While there is an abundance of water on our planet, only some of it is suitable for people to drink and consume in other ways.    Much of the accessible water on earth is salty or polluted.  So, a technique to obtain hydrogen from water ideally should work with water that is otherwise of little use to people.

Researchers in Russia and the Czech Republic have recently developed a new material that efficiently generates hydrogen molecules by exposing water – even saltwater or polluted water – to sunlight. 

The new material is a three-layer structure composed of a thin film of gold, an ultra-thin layer of platinum, and a metal-organic framework or MOF of chromium compounds and organic molecules.  The MOF layer acts as a filter that gets rid of impurities.

Experiments have demonstrated that 100 square centimeters of the material can generate half a liter of hydrogen in an hour.  The researchers continue to improve the material and increase its efficiency over a broad range of the solar spectrum.

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New Material Can Generate Hydrogen from Salt and Polluted Water

Photo courtesy of Tomsk Polytechnic University.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

The Dead Zone In The Gulf Of Mexico | Earth Wise

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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.

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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.

Microplastic Hotspots In The Ocean | Earth Wise

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Many of us are aware of the infamous ocean “garbage patches” of floating plastic.  The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is roughly the size of Texas.  But over 10 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year and the floating patches only account for 1% of that total.  The remaining 99% of the plastic ends up in the deep ocean, generally in the form of microplastics – tiny fragments of large plastic debris that have broken down as well as manufactured polyethylene beads used in various products.

According to a new study published in the journal Science, there are actually microplastic hotspots on the ocean floor, formed by deep-sea currents that act as conveyer belts moving the tiny plastic fragments around.  One of these hotspots – in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the west coast of Italy – contained 1.9 million microplastic pieces in just one square meter of seafloor.  This is the highest reported value for any place in the world.

Because of their small size, microplastics can be ingested by organisms across all levels of the marine food chain and eventually find their way into human diets. 

The spatial distribution and ultimate fate of ocean microplastics are strongly controlled by near-bed thermohaline currents.  These are deep-ocean currents driven by differences in water density, which is controlled by temperature and salinity.  Thermohaline currents are known to supply oxygen and nutrients to the flora and fauna found at the ocean bottom.  As a result, deep sea biodiversity hotspots are likely to be in same places where there are microplastic hotspots.

The discovery of these deep- sea hotspots is just another reason why we need behavior and policy interventions to limit the flow of plastics into natural environments.

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Seafloor microplastic hotspots controlled by deep-sea circulation

Photo, posted September 6, 2012, courtesy of Oregon State University via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Road Salt Pollution

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Mirror Lake is a popular recreational lake located in the Village of Lake Placid.  It is the most developed lake within the Adirondack Park, which is a publicly protected area that is actually larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, and Grand Canyon National Parks combined.

New research has revealed that road salt runoff into Mirror Lake is preventing natural water turnover which poses a risk to the balance of its ecology.  The study, which was published in Lake and Reservoir Management, found that road salt runoff is preventing spring mixing of the water column.    This creates more anoxic water conditions, meaning there is less oxygen in the water, and limits the ability of the habitat to support the native lake trout. 

Mirror Lake is the first lake in the Adirondack Park to show an interruption in lake turnover due to road salt.  Many lakes in northern climes experience so-called “dimictic turnover”, which is a natural process where wind and less stratified water conditions of spring and fall allow mixing of the water column that redistribute oxygen and nutrients throughout the lake.  High levels of surface-water chloride introduced into the lake from road salt runoff inhibit the mixing of the water column.

The lack of mixing and oxygenation is bad news for fish species such as lake trout, which require cold, oxygenated water to survive.  It may also put the lake at a greater risk of algal blooms.

Mirror Lake is small, surrounded by concentrated development, and receives the direct discharge of stormwater.  So, it is particularly vulnerable to road salt contamination.  Other lakes elsewhere in New York may experience similar conditions.  The researchers are confident that natural turnover conditions could be restored to the lake if road salt application in the watershed is reduced.

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Road salt pollutes lake in one of the largest US protected areas, new study shows

Photo, posted January 5, 2018, courtesy of MTA of the State of NY via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hydrogen From The Ocean

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Hydrogen is frequently touted as an excellent source of clean energy that could be used as a fuel in vehicles, or as a storage medium for energy generated by wind and solar power.  The challenge is that hydrogen is rather difficult and expensive to attain, and the most economical methods are not clean and green.

Most industrial hydrogen is produced by reforming natural gas, which has the drawback that carbon dioxide is generated in the process.  The environmentally friendly way to produce hydrogen is via electrolysis, in which a chemical reaction is triggered by a catalyst enabling electricity to split water into its constituent elements of oxygen and hydrogen.

The best performing catalyst for electrolysis is platinum, but its high price is a big drawback for the economics of making hydrogen.  Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found a pairing of minerals that may solve the problem.  Testing a molybdenum-phosphide catalyst with wastewater in a small reactor called a microbial electrolysis cell revealed that the new catalyst actually worked better than platinum.

Even better, the molybdenum-phosphide catalyst worked well with seawater.  If hydrogen can be produced using seawater, there would be a pretty much unlimited resource for making it.  By eliminating the use of platinum catalysts, it may be possible to reduce the cost of hydrogen made by electrolysis to a competitive level.

Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel currently costs about twice as much as gasoline on an energy-equivalent basis.  Given that running cars from batteries is considerably cheaper than using gas, the cost of hydrogen needs to come down considerably for it to be a viable vehicle fuel.

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Ditching Platinum for the Ocean Could Make Hydrogen Cheap

Photo, posted July 19, 2011, courtesy of Heather Paul via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Emissions-Free Cement

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The production of cement – which is the world’s leading construction material – is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 8% of global man-made emissions. 

Cement production produces carbon dioxide in two ways:  from a key chemical process and from burning fuel to produce the cement.  The process of making “clinker” – the key constituent of cement – emits the largest amount of CO2.  Raw materials, mainly limestone and clay – are fed into huge kilns and heated to over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, requiring lots of fossil fuel.  This calcination process splits the material into calcium oxide and CO2.  The so-called clinker is then mixed with gypsum and limestone to produce cement.

A team of researchers at MIT has come up with a new way of manufacturing cement that greatly reduces the carbon emissions.  The new process makes use of an electrolyzer, where a battery is hooked up to two electrodes in water producing oxygen at one electrode and hydrogen at the other.  The oxygen-evolving electrode produces acid and the hydrogen-evolving electrode produces a base.  In the new process, pulverized limestone is dissolved in the acid at one electrode and calcium hydroxide precipitates out as a solid at the other.

High-purity carbon dioxide is released at the acid electrode, but it can be easily captured for further use such as the production of liquid fuels or even in carbonated beverages and dry ice.  The new approach could eliminate the use of fossil fuels in the heating process, substituting electricity generated from renewable sources. 

The process looks to be scalable and represents a possible approach to greatly reducing one of the perhaps lesser known but nevertheless very significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

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New approach suggests path to emissions-free cement

Photo, posted March 26, 2014, courtesy of Michael Coghlan via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A Powerful Case For Protecting Whales

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Efforts to mitigate climate change typically face two major challenges.  One is to find effective ways to reduce the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The other is how to raise enough money to implement climate mitigation strategies. 

Many proposed solutions to climate change, like carbon capture and storage, are complex, expensive, and in some cases, untested.  What if there was a low-tech solution that was effective and economical?

Well, it turns out there is one, and it comes from a surprisingly simple, “no-tech” strategy to capture CO2: increase global whale populations. 

According to a recent analysis by economists with the International Monetary Fund, whales help fight climate change by sequestering CO2 in the ocean. 

Whales sequester carbon in a few ways.  They hoard it in their fat and protein-rich bodies, stockpiling tons of carbon apiece.  When whales die, they turn into literal carbon sinks on the ocean floor.  While alive, whales dive to feed on tiny marine organisms like krill and plankton before surfacing to breathe and excrete. Those latter activities release an enormous plume of nutrients, including nitrogen, iron, and phosphorous, into the water.  These so-called “poo-namis” stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, microscopic marine algae that pull CO2 out of the air and return oxygen to the air via photosynthesis.  Phytoplankton are responsible for every other breath we take, contributing at least 50% of all oxygen to the atmosphere and capturing approximately 40% of all CO2 produced. 

With other economic benefits like ecotourism factored in, economists estimate that each whale is worth $2 million over its lifetime, making the entire global population possibly a one trillion dollar asset to humanity.

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How much is a whale worth?

Photo, posted June 12, 2013, courtesy of Gregory Smith via Flickr.

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A Giant Seaweed Bloom

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Scientists using data from NASA satellites have discovered and documented the largest bloom of seaweed in the world, stretching all the way from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.  The gigantic macroalgae bloom has been dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. 

The brown seaweed floats in surface water and in recent years has become a problem to shorelines lining the tropical Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and east coast of Florida.  The stuff carpets popular beach destinations and crowded coastal waters. In 2018, more than 20 million tons of it floated on the ocean surface.

Scientists have been studying the Sargassum algae using satellites since 2006, but the major blooms have only started appearing since 2011.  They have occurred every year between 2011 and 2018 except for 2013.  Before 2011, most of the free-floating Sargassum in the ocean was primarily found in patches around the Gulf of Mexico and the Sargasso Sea located on the western edge of the central Atlantic Ocean.

Sargassum provides habitat for turtles, crabs, fish and birds, and produces oxygen via photosynthesis.  However, too much of it can crowd out many marine species.

According to researchers, the ocean’s chemistry must have changed in order for the bloom to get so out of hand.  The factors involved include a large seed population left over from a previous bloom, nutrient input from West Africa, and nutrient input from the Amazon River.  The increase in nutrients may be a result of deforestation and fertilizer use.

Climate-change effects on precipitation and ocean currents ultimately do play a role in this, but increased ocean temperatures do not.  Unfortunately, these giant seaweed blooms are probably here to stay.

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NASA Satellites Find Biggest Seaweed Bloom in the World

Photo courtesy of NASA.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Intense Rainfall And Crops

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The warming of the planet does not necessarily imply local weather will be warmer or drier than average.  While heatwaves and droughts are increasingly common events in many places, so are intense rain events.

A new study led by scientists at the University of Illinois has found that intense rainfall is as damaging to the U.S. agricultural sector as heatwaves and excessive droughts.

The study examined more than three decades of crop insurance, climate, soil, and corn yield data.  Researchers found that since 1981, corn yields in the U.S. Midwest were reduced by as much as 34% during years with excessive rainfall.  Years with drought and heatwaves experienced yield losses of up to 37%.

Intense rain events can physically damage crops, delay planting and harvesting, restrict root growth, and cause oxygen deficiency and nutrient loss.  The study estimated that between 1989 and 2016, excessive rainfall caused $10 billion in agricultural losses. However, excessive rainfall can have either negative or positive impact on crop yield and the effects can vary regionally.

Parts of the Midwest have already experienced a 42% increase in the heaviest precipitation events since 1958.  Climate change models predict that much of this region will experience even more frequent and intense precipitation events in the coming decade.

According to the study, excessive rainfall is the major cause of crop damage currently in the U.S. for corn, and also has broad impacts for other staple crops such as soybeans and wheat. The authors suggest that as rainfall becomes more extreme, reforms will be needed in the U.S. crop insurance industry in order to better meet planting challenges faced by farmers. 

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Intense Rainfall Is As Damaging to Crops As Heatwaves and Drought, and Climate Change Is Making It Worse

Photo, posted October 2, 2013, courtesy of the United Soybean Board via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Forecasting A Massive Dead Zone

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The Gulf of Mexico dead zone occurs every summer, and is considered one of the largest dead zones in the world.  This cyclical event occurs where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico, just off the coast of Louisiana and Texas. 

This annual dead zone is primarily caused by excess nutrient pollution from human activities, such as urbanization and agriculture, occurring throughout the Mississippi River watershed.  Washed off the land by spring rains, these excess nutrients stimulate an overgrowth of algae once they reach the Gulf of Mexico.  The algae in the Gulf eventually die, and then sink and decompose in the water. The resulting area of the ocean ends up with a condition known as hypoxia, which is an insufficient amount of oxygen to support most marine life.  In hypoxic or dead zones, animals that can’t swim away will often suffocate and die. 

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimate that this year the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico will be approximately 8,000 square miles, which is roughly the size of Massachusetts.  The research team uses U.S. Geological Survey river flow and nutrient data to make its forecast. 

According to NOAA, the abnormally high amount of spring rainfall is a major factor contributing to this year’s dead zone.  Last month, nitrate loads entering the Mississippi River watershed were 18% above the long-term average, and phosphorus loads were about 49% above the long-term average. 

While the 2019 forecast is slightly less than the record size of more than 8,700 square miles set in 2017, it’s still much larger than the five year average size of 5,700. 

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Very large dead zone forecast for the Gulf of Mexico

Massive 8,000-mile ‘dead zone’ could be one of the gulf’s largest

Photo, posted May 22, 2009, courtesy of Michael McCarthy via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hacking Photosynthesis

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There is an enzyme known as RuBisCo that is involved in carbon fixation, the process plants use to convert carbon dioxide into sugar molecules.  The RuBisCo molecule is inside the leaves of most plants and is probably the most abundant protein in the world.

RuBisCo picks up carbon dioxide from the air and uses energy from the sun to turn the carbon into sugar molecules.  This process of photosynthesis is pretty much the foundation of life on Earth.

Wonderful as it is, the process is not perfect.  RuBisCo is not very selective in grabbing molecules from the air.  It picks up oxygen as well as CO2 and it produces a toxic compound when it does that.

Plants operate a whole other complicated chemical process to deal with this toxic byproduct and uses up a lot of energy along the way, leaving less energy for making leaves or food that we can eat.

A research program at the University of Illinois called Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (or RIPE) has been trying to correct this problem; they have been trying to hack photosynthesis.  And they may well have succeeded.

Using genetic modification on tobacco plants, they have shut down the existing detoxification process and set up a much more efficient new one.  The result is super plants that grow faster and up to 40% bigger.

The next step is to get it to work on plants that people actually rely upon for food, like tomatoes, soybeans and black-eyed peas (which are a staple food crop in sub-Saharan Africa where food is scarce.)

It will be years before we know if the process can really produce more food and be safe, but it may end up leading to a major increase in crop productivity.

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Scientists Have ‘Hacked Photosynthesis’ In Search Of More Productive Crops

Photo, posted June 10, 2013, courtesy of Boon Hong Seto via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

A New Way to Make Hydrogen

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Many people consider hydrogen to be the fuel of the future, both for powering vehicles and for storing energy generated by renewable sources.   Hydrogen itself is a clean and green fuel.  Generating energy from it using fuel cells results in only water as a byproduct.

The biggest problem with hydrogen is that the most economical way to produce it and therefore the way most hydrogen is produced today, is by reforming natural gas, which is a process that generates carbon emissions.

The desirable way to make hydrogen is to produce it by breaking apart water into its hydrogen and oxygen components, a process known as electrolysis.   There are many ways to do it, but none of them to date measures up in terms of efficiency, cost, and longevity.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have recently developed a new catalyst that uses abundant, low-cost elements to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.  The catalyst is made from copper, nickel, and chromium, all of which are more abundant and less costly than platinum, which is the usual electrolysis catalyst.

The new catalyst performs well under pH-neutral conditions, which means it could even work on seawater without incurring the expense of desalination.  The Toronto researchers also believe their catalyst could be used as part of a process to make hydrocarbon fuels from hydrogen and CO22.  Their group is among the five finalists in the Carbon XPrize competition, which has a grand prize of $7.5 million for finding a way to convert waste CO2 into fuel.

Finding a low-cost, energy-efficient, and reliable way to make hydrogen out of water will be a big deal if it can be done on an industrial scale.

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U of T researchers discover low-cost way to produce hydrogen from water

Photo, posted July 23, 2015, courtesy of Magnus Johansson via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Hippo Waste And Fish

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Agricultural and sewage pollution can cause low-oxygen conditions and fish kills in rivers. A new study published in Nature Communications reports that hippo waste can have a similar effect in Africa’s Mara River, which passes through the world renowned Maasai Mara National Reserve of Kenya and is home to more than 4,000 hippos.

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A New Catalyst For Splitting Water

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Hydrogen is widely considered to be a desirable source of clean energy.  It can be used in fuel cells to power electric motors in cars or can be burned directly in internal combustion engines.   If it is compressed or converted to liquid, it can be efficiently stored and transported.  Most of all, when it is used as an energy source, the only emission it produces is water.

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New Rules For Ocean Conservation

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In a recent report to a United Nations ocean conference, scientists are warning that new rules are desperately needed to protect marine life in the open seas.  That’s because more than 60% of the ocean has no conservation rules since it’s located outside national jurisdictions.  The open ocean is at risk from climate change, over-fishing, deep sea mining, farm pollution, and plastics pollution. 

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A Hydrogen-Powered Train

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It seems like something out of a science fiction movie, but a nearly silent train that glides along its tracks emitting nothing but water is a reality.   In March, Germany conducted successful tests of the world’s first “Hydrail,” which is a hydrogen-powered, zero-emission train.

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