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Climate Change And Sleep | Earth Wise

June 22, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

It’s no secret that our planet is heating up. According to scientists, the warming is primarily the result of increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, human activities are responsible for nearly all of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions over the last 150 years.

Climate change 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.

Most research examining the impact of climate change on human life has centered around extreme weather events and how they will affect social and economic health. But climate change may also have a major influence on fundamental daily human activities, like sleep, that are essential to well-being.

According to a new study recently published in the journal One Earth, scientists have found that increasing temperatures are negatively impacting human sleep around the globe. In the study, the research team analyzed anonymized global sleep data from sleep-tracking wristbands. The data included 7 million nightly sleep records from more than 47,000 adults across 68 countries, spanning all continents except Antarctica.

Before the year 2100, researchers say that suboptimal temperatures may erode 50 to 58 hours of sleep per person per year. On warm nights – where temperatures are greater than 86 degrees Fahrenheit – sleep declines an average of more than 14 minutes. To little surprise, they found that the effect of increasing temperatures on sleep loss is substantially greater for residents in lower income countries as well as in older adults.

Sleep is an essential restorative process integral to human health and productivity. And it’s threatened by our changing climate.

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Climate change likely to reduce the amount of sleep that people get per year

Photo, posted March 16, 2006, courtesy of Joe Green via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Tropical Species Moving North | Earth Wise

April 19, 2021 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Climate change is leading to warmer winter weather throughout the southern U.S., providing opportunities for many tropical plants and animals to move north. A new study by scientists at UC Berkeley looked at the changing distribution of tropical species driven by the warming climate.

Some species are appreciated in their new locations, such as sea turtles and the Florida manatee, which are gradually moving northward along the Atlantic Coast. Others, like the invasive Burmese python are not so welcome. That goes double for many insects, such as the mosquitoes that carry diseases like the West Nile virus, Zika, dengue, and yellow fever, as well as beetles that destroy native trees.

The transition zone, northward of which experiences freezes every winter, has always been a barrier to species native to more temperate places. For most organisms in such places, if they freeze, they die. Cold snaps like the recent one in Texas usually don’t happen for decades and are now likely to be less and less frequent. In the meantime, tropical species can get more and more of a foothold and maybe even develop populations that can tolerate more cold extremes in the future.

The warming climate is leading many plant species to expand their ranges, in some cases pushing out native species. The general story is that the species that do really well are the more generalist species whose host plants or food sources are quite varied or widely distributed and can tolerate a wide range of conditions. By definition, they tend to be the pest species.

We need to prepare for widespread shifts in the distribution of biodiversity as climate, including winter climate, changes.

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Tropical species are moving northward as winters warm

Photo, posted May 7, 2010, courtesy of Jim Reid / USFWS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Marine Life Moving The Wrong Way | Earth Wise

October 26, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the oceans have warmed in recent decades, various marine species ranging from whales to corals have begun to shift poleward in search of cooler waters. But a new study, reported in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that many sedentary marine species – including snails, worms, and mussels – are actually being transported in the wrong direction.

What is happening is that bottom-dwelling species – also known as benthic species – in the northwest Atlantic Ocean are spawning earlier in the year because of the warmer water temperatures. But earlier in the year is when ocean currents travel southward. As a result, the larvae of these animals are being carried into warmer waters rather than cooler ones, threatening their survival and shrinking their ranges. These larvae grow into adults in these warmer regions and are basically trapped there. This creates a feedback loop where the situation for the species gets worse and worse. Species like common sand dollars and the economically important blue mussel have had a 30 to 50% contraction of their ranges.

The result is that a number of bottom-dwelling species that previously were quite abundant have entirely disappeared from the outer shelf.

The researchers at Rutgers University likened this “wrong-way migration” of bottom-dwelling marine life to so-called elevator-to-extinction events that have been taking place in mountainous regions. This is where species such as birds and butterflies move to higher and higher elevations to escape rising temperatures until there is nowhere else for them to go.

The essential fact that this research reveals is that species don’t necessarily move to places where the climate is congenial for them. They may unfortunately end up migrating to even worse conditions.

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As Oceans Warm, Some Species Are Moving in the Wrong Direction

Photo, posted June 10, 2016, courtesy of James_Seattle via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Living In Extreme Heat | Earth Wise

June 3, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Global climate change has already left observable effects on the planet. Glaciers have shrunk, trees are flowering sooner, plant and animal ranges have shifted, and so on. Many effects of climate change that scientists had predicted in the past are now occurring. The loss of sea ice, intensifying heat waves, and accelerating sea level rise are some examples.

According to a new study recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, climate change is going to affect humans earlier, harder, and more widely than previously projected. The research team found that one billion people will be either displaced or endure insufferable heat for every one degree Celsius rise in global temperatures.

Under a worst case climate scenario, land that one third of the world’s population currently calls home will be as hot as the hottest parts of the Sahara desert within 50 years. Even under a more optimistic climate outlook, 1.2 billion people will still be exposed to temperatures outside the climate niche in which humans have thrived for at least 6,000 years.

The majority of the human population has always lived in regions where the average annual temperatures were between 43 degrees Fahrenheit and 82 degrees Fahrenheit. These are ideal temperatures for human health and for food production. But this temperature range is shrinking and shifting as a result of climate change.

The study’s authors predict there will be more change in the next 50 years than there has been in the past 6,000 years. They hope their findings will convince policymakers to accelerate their plans for emissions reductions and other climate mitigation strategies.

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Future of the human climate niche

One billion people will live in insufferable heat within 50 years – study

Photo, posted November 22, 2008, courtesy of Ronnie Finger via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Native Species Or Invasive Species? | Earth Wise

February 27, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

For decades, conservation biology has characterized the movement of species into new habitats as potential invasions of alien species that pose serious dangers to local ecosystems and resident species. Wild species are classified as either native or alien. But this way of looking at the natural world is becoming increasingly controversial.

As the world warms, a mass exodus of tens of thousands of species is transforming the distribution of biodiversity. Scientists have documented countless species shifting their ranges towards the poles, higher up into the mountains, and deeper into the oceans in response to the changing climate.

Deciduous shrubs have spread into the Arctic tundra. Tropical fish have arrived in the kelp forests of the eastern Mediterranean.

A growing number of scientists now say that continuing to base conservation policy on the native-alien dichotomy may actually endanger biodiversity. The climate-driven range shifts may be the only way for many species to survive. Furthermore, only a small fraction of new arrivals may actually endanger resident species and ecosystems.

There are real distinctions between climate-displaced species and disruptive alien species introduced through global trade and travel. Among other things, climate-displaced species tend to shift their ranges alongside other species they have co-evolved with.

There is talk of establishing a Climate Change Redistribution Treaty that would create a transnational system to manage species shifting across geopolitical and biogeographical borders. The assumptions traditionally made as to which species to protect, which to leave to their own devices, and which to eradicate are no longer valid and the time has come to base conservation policies on the new reality.

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Native Species or Invasive? The Distinction Blurs as the World Warms

Photo, posted March 21, 2011, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Widespread Local Extinctions

January 17, 2017 By EarthWise

Plants and animals have evolved over time to live in specific environmental niches. As the climate warms, parts of the ranges in which they live may no longer offer the conditions under which they can thrive. Species can respond to these changes in three ways: they can adapt to new conditions by undergoing niche shifts; they can relocate to better conditions, such as by moving to higher elevations or latitudes; or they can locally go extinct.