A warmer Arctic Ocean leads to more snowfall further south

An increasingly warm and ice-free Arctic Ocean has, in recent decades, led to more moisture in higher latitudes. This moisture is transported south by cyclonic weather systems where it precipitates as snow, influencing the global hydrological cycle and many terrestrial systems that depend on it
Illustration Credit: Tomonori Sato

A new model explains that water evaporating from the Arctic Ocean due to a warming climate is transported south and can lead to increased snowfall in northern Eurasia in late autumn and early winter. This information will allow for more accurate predictions of severe weather events.

Rising air temperatures due to global warming melt glaciers and polar ice caps. Seemingly paradoxically, snow cover in some areas in northern Eurasia has increased over the past decades. However, snow is a form of water; global warming increases the quantity of moisture in the atmosphere, and thus the quantity and likelihood of rain and snow. Understanding where exactly the moisture comes from, how it is produced and how it is transported south is relevant for better predictions of extreme weather and the evolution of the climate.

Researchers working to improve and simplify models for how PFAS flows through the ground

Will Gnesda demonstrates a PFAS flow lab experiment. Gnesda is graduate student in the UW–Madison Department of Geosciences and lead author of a new study modeling PFAS flow through the ground. The experiment is designed to build on the modeling study.
Photo Credit: Will Cushman

As a growing number of communities are forced to confront PFAS contamination in their groundwater, a key hurdle in addressing this harmful group of chemicals lies in unraveling how they move through a region of the environment called the unsaturated zone — a jumble of soil, rock and water sandwiched between the ground’s surface and the water table below.

A new study by University of Wisconsin­–Madison researchers offers a simplified new way of understanding PFAS movement through this zone.

PFAS is an abbreviation for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. The synthetic chemicals have been used for decades in products ranging from nonstick cookware to firefighting foams. Some PFAS chemicals are associated with health risks and can persist in the environment indefinitely. Modeling their flow through the unsaturated zone — also known as the vadose zone — is important because the chemicals can linger there for years or decades, all the while slowly leaching into aquifers many communities use to provide drinking water.

Researchers find decrease in crucial trace element preceded ancient mass extinction

The research group collecting samples.
Photo Credit Ben Gill

A decline in the element molybdenum across the planet’s oceans preceded a significant extinction event approximately 183 million years ago, new research from Florida State University shows.

The decrease may have contributed to the mass extinction, in which up to 90% of species in the oceans perished, and it suggests that much more organic carbon was buried in the extinction event than had been previously estimated. The work is published in AGU Advances.

“This research tells us more about what was happening with molybdenum during this extinction event, but we also take it a step further,” said Jeremy Owens, an associate professor in FSU’s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science and a paper co-author. “Our findings help us understand how much carbon was cycling through the system, and it’s much larger than previously thought — potentially on the scale of modern atmospheric and oceanic increases due to human activities.”

Previous research showed decreases in molybdenum during the main phase of the ancient mass extinction, but it was unclear how widespread the decrease was, how early it started or how long it lasted.

Limiting Global Warming Now Can Preserve Valuable Freshwater Resource

Spring snowmelt in the Ansel Adams Wilderness of the California Sierra Nevada. New research identifies how climate change could differentially alter spring snowmelt in iconic mountain landscapes of the American Cordillera.
Photo Credit: Alan Rhoades

Snowcapped mountains not only look majestic – They’re vital to a delicate ecosystem that has existed for tens of thousands of years. Mountain water runoff and snowmelt flows down to streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans – and today, around a quarter of the world depends on these natural “water towers” to replenish downstream reservoirs and groundwater aquifers for urban water supplies, agricultural irrigation, and ecosystem support.

But this valuable freshwater resource is in danger of disappearing. The planet is now around 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than pre-industrial levels, and mountain snowpacks are shrinking. Last year, a study co-led by Alan Rhoades and Erica Siirila-Woodburn, research scientists in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), found that if global warming continues along the high-emissions scenario, low-to-no-snow winters will become a regular occurrence in the mountain ranges of the western U.S. in 35 to 60 years.

Now, in a recent Nature Climate Change study, a research team led by Alan Rhoades found that if global warming reaches around 2.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, mountain ranges in the southern midlatitudes, the Andean region of Chile in particular, will face a low-to-no-snow future between the years 2046 and 2051 – or 20 years earlier than mountain ranges in the northern midlatitudes such as the Sierra Nevada or Rockies. (Low-to-no-snow occurs when the annual maximum water stored as snowpack is within the bottom 30% of historical conditions for a decade or more.)

New process developed to extract high purity rare earth element oxides

Pennsylvania stream impacted by acid mine drainage.
Photo Credit: Pennsylvania State University

Critical minerals, including rare earth elements, are used to power devices like smartphones and computers and are essential to our nation’s economy and national security. Penn State’s Center for Critical Minerals has developed a new purification process that extracts mixed rare earth oxides from acid mine drainage and associated sludges at purities of 88.5%

Critical minerals (CMs), including the 17 rare earth elements (REEs), are used in many common household products like smartphones and computers, and in many commercial products such as electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels. Demand for them has skyrocketed, and they are classified as critical because they have high economic importance, high supply risk, and their absence would have significant consequences on the economic and national security of the United States.

Acid mine drainage (AMD) and associated solids and precipitates resulting from AMD treatment have been found to be viable sources of multiple CMs, including REEs, aluminum, cobalt and manganese.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has funded efforts to demonstrate both the technical feasibility and economic viability of extracting, separating and recovering REEs and CMs from U.S. coal and coal by-product sources, with the goal of achieving mixed rare earth oxides from coal-based resources with minimum purities of 75%.

Earth might be experiencing 7th mass extinction, not 6th

Diorama depicting Ediacaran-era sea creatures.
Photo Credit: Smithsonian Institution

Earth is currently in the midst of a mass extinction, losing thousands of species each year. New research suggests environmental changes caused the first such event in history, which occurred millions of years earlier than scientists previously realized.

Most dinosaurs famously disappeared 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. Prior to that, a majority of Earth’s creatures were snuffed out between the Permian and Triassic periods, roughly 252 million years ago.

Thanks to the efforts of researchers at UC Riverside and Virginia Tech, it’s now known that a similar extinction occurred 550 million years ago, during the Ediacaran period. This discovery is documented in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

Although unclear whether this represents a true “mass extinction,” the percentage of organisms lost is similar to these other events, including the current, ongoing one.

Researchers believe environmental changes are to blame for the loss of approximately 80% of all Ediacaran creatures, which were the first complex, multicellular life forms on the planet.

Another Global Cooling Is Not Expected in the Soon

 

The last century and a half is the warmest in several thousand years.
Photo Credit: Ilya Safarov

Because of the large amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there will not be another ice age, which, according to scientists' calculations, should come in the not-so-distant future. Interglacial periods typically last 12,000 to 15,000 years, succeeded by glacial periods. The interglacial period, to which the present one belongs, lasts almost 12 thousand years, and should have ended soon and given way to an ice age. However, as climate modelers have shown, not only will temperatures not decrease in the coming decades, but they will increase. Rashit Khantemirov, a Head Specialist of the Laboratory of Natural Science Methods in Humanities at Ural Federal University, talked about it on the broadcast of Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.

"One of our most recent results of our work is an ultra-long tree-ring chronology. Based on data from the annual rings of semi-fossil trees in Yamal, we studied information on summer temperatures for 7,638 years. We found out that the current warming is the strongest. Since the middle of the 19th century temperature has been rising very rapidly and reached its highest level in the last decades. That is, there has been a warming of 1.5 degrees in global temperature over the last 150 years. This is not very critical for us now, but the consequences will be tangible: not we, but our children and grandchildren will suffer," Rashid Khantemirov explains.

Monitoring “frothy” magma gases could help evade disaster

Aerial photograph of Kusatsu-Shirane area (October 2021). Thanks to its geothermally active location, the town of Kusatsu, Gunma Prefecture (in the background of this image), is one of Japan’s most popular onsen (hot springs) destinations. The acidic and vibrant turquoise Yugama crater lake, however, is definitely not suitable for swimming.
Photo Credit: Tomoya Obase

Volcanic eruptions are dangerous and difficult to predict. A team at the University of Tokyo has found that the ratio of atoms in specific gases released from volcanic fumaroles (gaps in the Earth’s surface) can provide an indicator of what is happening to the magma deep below — similar to taking a blood test to check your health. This can indicate when things might be “heating up.” Specifically, changes in the ratio of argon-40 and helium-3 can indicate how frothy the magma is, which signals the risk of different types of eruption. Understanding which ratios of which gases indicate a certain type of magma activity is a big step. Next, the team hopes to develop portable equipment which can provide on-site, real-time measurements for a 24/7 volcanic activity monitoring and early warning system.

Does the thought of standing on a volcano make you quiver with excitement, or fear? For many people, living in the shadow of a volcano is part of daily life. Japan has 111 active volcanoes and an average of 15 volcanic “events,” including eruptions, every year. But these events are notoriously difficult to predict and can be deadly. In 2014, Mount Ontake, Japan’s second-highest volcano and a famous tourist spot, unexpectedly erupted, sadly killing 58 people and leaving five missing. Earthquake activity is typically an early warning sign, but some eruptions (including the one at Ontake) can occur without clear earthquake signals and so disaster mitigators, like the Japan Meteorological Agency, would benefit from other reliable ways to forewarn residents of the next potential disaster.

Rapid fluctuations in oxygen levels coincided with Earth’s first mass extinction

Nevin Kozik during fieldwork to investigate how rapid changes in marine oxygen levels may have played a significant role in driving Earth’s first mass extinction.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Nevin Kozik

Rapid changes in marine oxygen levels may have played a significant role in driving Earth’s first mass extinction, according to a new study led by Florida State University researchers.

About 443 million years ago, life on Earth was undergoing the Late Ordovician mass extinction, or LOME, which eliminated about 85% of marine species. Scientists have long studied this mass extinction and continue to investigate its possible causes, such as reduced habitat loss in a rapidly cooling world or persistent low-oxygen conditions in the oceans.

By measuring isotopes of the element thallium — which shows special sensitivity to changes in oxygen in the ancient marine environment — the research team found that previously documented patterns of this mass extinction coincided with an initial rapid decrease in marine oxygen levels followed by a rapid increase in oxygen. Their work is published online in the journal Science Advances.

“Paleontologists have noted that there were several groups of organisms, such as graptolites and brachiopods, that started to decline very early in this mass extinction interval, but we didn’t really have any good evidence of an environmental or climate signature to tie that early decline of these groups to a particular mechanism,” said co-author Seth Young, an associate professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. “This paper can directly link that early phase of extinction to changes in oxygen. We see a marked change in thallium isotopes at the same time these organisms start their steady decline into the main phase of the mass extinction event.”

New critical period of sex determination in sea turtles identified

Sea turtles’ sex is determined based on the environment, which makes them especially vulnerable to climate change. An increase in incubation temperatures could jeopardize the production of both sexes.
 Photo credit: Jay Paredes

Unlike humans, turtles, lizards and other reptiles – such as crocodiles – do not have sex chromosomes. Their sex is determined based on the environment, which makes them especially vulnerable to climate change. An increase in incubation temperatures could jeopardize the production of both sexes.

Gauging primary sex ratios in these species is critical because it assesses their vulnerability under both current and future climate change constraints. While there has been great progress in sex ratio prediction, studies have been hampered due to a lack of accurate and representative regional and population sex ratio estimates. As a result, primary sex ratios calculations could be skewed.

Researchers from Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with the Université Paris-Saclay in France, have demonstrated that the timing of key developmental process driven by temperature is vital when it comes to identifying when sex is determined for sea turtle embryos. They also are the first to compare the output of the most widely used sex ratio prediction methods to actual sex ratios from natural clutches in sea turtles.

They have developed a new way to integrate the effect of thermal fluctuations on embryonic sex determination and predict sex ratios with much better accuracy than prior models. This method measures the strength of masculinization or feminization of temperatures using novel parameters that have uncovered how temperature-sensitive sex determination works.

15 ways to reforest the planet

 A family plants trees for forest restoration in Thailand.
Photo Credit: University of the Sunshine Coast Professor Andy Marshall

International scientists are calling for a ‘decade of global action’ to reforest the planet, following the overnight publication of a themed international journal led by researchers from Australia’s University of the Sunshine Coast.

The landmark issue of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions reveals the latest scientific advances in forest restoration with the aim of benefiting people as well as nature.

“This paves the way for evidence-based, on-the-ground action plans for the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration,” said Professor Andy Marshall of UniSC’s Forest Research Institute.

Professor Marshall said it was exciting to see the strong focus on forests at this week’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) underway in Egypt, with Australia joining world leaders in committing to halting forest loss and land degradation by 2030.

He said the recommendations in the new journal issue combined research findings with knowledge and experience from many countries.

“Our goals are ambitious and intend to deliver long-term success by learning from the past – from choosing the right location and restoration method through to mitigating socioeconomic pressures, weather extremes and people-wildlife interactions,” he said.

California Academy of Sciences researchers produce first-ever ‘family tree’ for aquarium-bred corals

Two-year-old corals sampled for this study in the Academy's Coral Spawning Lab.
Photo Credit: California Academy of Sciences

Corals bred in public aquaria provide novel research opportunities and a healthy stock for outplanting into the wild, essential components of a thriving future for coral reef ecosystems, which support around 25% of all life in Earth’s oceans. But the long-term success of such efforts hinges in part on maintaining genetic diversity in aquarium-bred corals which leads to increased resilience to threats like ocean warming and acidification. In a study published today in Frontiers in Marine Science, a diverse team of Steinhart Aquarium biologists and researchers from the California Academy of Sciences' Coral Spawning Lab produce the first-ever pedigree, or ‘family tree’, for corals bred in an aquarium and provide a list of best practices to maintain genetic diversity in aquarium-bred corals.

“Genetic diversity is what enables species to adapt to the myriad threats resulting from climate change,” says Academy Curator Rebecca Albright, PhD, who founded the Coral Spawning Lab, one of only a handful of facilities on Earth capable of successfully breeding corals. Albright’s work is an integral part of the Academy’s Hope for Reefs initiative, which is aimed at halting the decline of coral reefs in this generation. “For facilities like ours at the Coral Spawning Lab, ensuring each generation of corals is diverse allows us to conduct more robust experiments, which is a critical element of better understanding how corals can thrive on our changing planet. For organizations that do outplantings, increased genetic diversity translates to a greater chance of survival in the wild.”

Surfing scientists conduct 3D reef research at epic surf break

MEGA Lab Research Technician Kailey Pascoe mapping Cloudbreak in Fiji
Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Credit: Source University of Hawaiʻi

With more than 80% of the world’s oceans left unexplored, untouched and unseen by humans, researchers know more about the surface of Mars than the ocean. A University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo professor is helping to fill that knowledge gap by leading a team of scientists to 3D map the planet’s premier surf breaks to help better protect reefs around the world.

Professors John H.R. Burns (UH Hilo), Haunani Kane (Arizona State University) and Cliff Kapono (Arizona State University) recently mapped the reef at Kurukuru Mailani in Fiji, also known as Cloudbreak, which is home to some of the biggest and best waves in the world. The team takes high resolution images of the reef and uses a technique called photogrammetry to create 3D reconstructions that can be studied to help provide a better understanding of reef systems.

“These models will help us to understand the composition, characteristics and ecology of the reef and these waves that will help us to protect them in the face of disturbances such as sea level rise,” said Burns, an associate professor of marine science.

Researchers Solve Hundred-Year-Old Botanical Mystery that was Key to the Spread of Plant Life on Land

Plant material from Yale-Myers Forest and YSE greenhouses were used to study how their vascular systems are constructed and how they compare to the extinct plants from the fossil record. Without developing their vascular systems, plants would largely still look like mosses. Shown here: Huperzia lucidula, also known as Shining club-moss.
Photo Credit: courtesy of Craig Brodersen Lab.

The earliest land plants were small — just a few centimeters tall at most — and restricted to moist, boggy habitats around streams and ponds. Around 400 million years ago, however, plants developed vascular systems to extract water more efficiently from the soil and use it for photosynthesis, a transition that would forever alter the Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems. A team of researchers have now solved a 100-year-old paleontology mystery: How did ancient plants emerge from swamps and riverbanks to new habitats with limited access to water?

In a new paper published in Science, YSE Professor of Plant Physiological Ecology Craig Brodersen and his research team, including lead author Martin Bouda ’17 PhD, ’12 MPhil and Kyra A. Prats ’22 PhD, ’16 MFS, discovered that a simple change in the vascular system of plants made them more drought-resistant, which opened up new landscapes for exploration.

The research was spurred by a century-long debate about why the simple, cylindrical vascular system of the earliest land plants rapidly changed to more complex shapes. In the 1920s, scientists noted this increasing complexity in the fossil record but were not able to pinpoint the reason — if there even was one — for the evolutionary changes.

Linking Mass Extinctions to the Expansion and Radiation of Land Plants

Ymer Island, Greenland, during the collection of the Heintzbjerg sample sequence used in this study. In the foreground looking down the slope is the Zoologdalen Formation. The body of water is the Dusen Fjord, which separates the northern and southern portions of Ymer Island.
Photo Credit: John Marshall, University of Southampton.

The Devonian Period, 419 to 358 million years ago, was one of the most turbulent times in Earth’s past and was marked by at least six significant marine extinctions, including one of the five largest mass extinctions ever to have occurred. Additionally, it was during the Devonian that trees and complex land plants similar to those we know today first evolved and spread across the landscape. This evolutionary advancement included the development of significant and complex root systems capable of affecting soil biogeochemistry on a scale the ancient Earth had yet to experience.

It has been theorized that these two seemingly separate events, marine extinctions and plant evolution and expansion, were intricately linked in the Devonian. Specifically, it has been proposed that plant evolution and root development occurred so rapidly and on such a massive scale that nutrient export from the land to the ancient oceans would have drastically increased. This scenario is seen in modern systems where anthropogenically sourced nutrient export has vastly increased the nutrient load into areas such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes, leading to large-scale algal blooms that ultimately deplete the oxygen in the water column. This effect, known as eutrophication, magnified on a global scale, would have been catastrophic to ancient oceans, fueling algal blooms that would have depleted most of the ocean’s oxygen.

Deforestation and grassland conversion are the biggest causes of biodiversity loss

Researchers rank the main drivers of global biodiversity loss. 
Photo Credit: Matthias Behr

The conversion of natural forests and grasslands to intensive agriculture and livestock is the biggest cause of global biodiversity loss. The next biggest drivers are the exploitation of wildlife through fishing, logging, trade and hunting - and then pollution. Climate change ranks fourth on land so far but second in oceans. This is the main result of an international study led by researchers from Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC) in Argentina, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Natural History Museum London. The study, published in Science Advances, demonstrates that fighting climate change alone will not be enough to prevent the further loss of biodiversity.

Whilst climate change has rightly attracted attention for its catastrophic consequences for the natural world, it is currently only the fourth largest driver of biodiversity loss on land, followed by invasive alien species in fifth place. "This major new study, published during the COP27 climate summit, demonstrates clearly that fighting climate change alone will not be enough to prevent the further loss of biodiversity, and with it our future", says Dr Nicolas Titeux, one of the two first authors. "The various direct drivers should be addressed with similar ambition as the climate crisis and as a whole." Titeux currently works at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology but conducted the major part of the study at the UFZ with funding from iDiv.

Evolution of tree roots may have driven mass extinctions

Scientists collect rock samples on Ymer Island in eastern Greenland, one of several sites whose analysis provided insight into the chemical makeup of lake beds in the Devonian Period.
Photo Credit: John Marshall, University of Southampton

The evolution of tree roots may have triggered a series of mass extinctions that rocked the Earth’s oceans during the Devonian Period over 300 million years ago, according to a study led by scientists at IUPUI, along with colleagues in the United Kingdom.

Evidence for this new view of a remarkably volatile period in Earth’s pre-history is reported in the Geological Society of America Bulletin, one of the oldest and most respected publications in the field of geology. The study was led by Gabriel Filippelli, Chancellor’s Professor of Earth Sciences in the School of Science at IUPUI, and Matthew Smart, a Ph.D. student in his lab at the time of the study.

“Our analysis shows that the evolution of tree roots likely flooded past oceans with excess nutrients, causing massive algae growth,” Filippelli said. “These rapid and destructive algae blooms would have depleted most of the oceans’ oxygen, triggering catastrophic mass extinction events.”

Natural carbon dioxide reduction implemented faster and with less risk than high-tech approaches

Researchers have investigated the potential of various carbon dioxide removal processes. 
Photo Credit: Shameer Pk

Carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by natural or technical means. Natural sinks such as peatlands can be restored, and innovative technologies already exist to extract carbon from the air. Researchers from the Helmholtz Climate Initiative's Net Zero 2050 Cluster have identified the approaches with the highest potential for carbon removal in Germany. They show that natural sinks can be expanded in the short term, while high-tech approaches can reduce greenhouse gases only in the medium term and carry potential risks.

To reach the targets of the Paris agreement and limit global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, simply reducing our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will probably not be enough, and it will likely be necessary to additionally remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Such CO2 removal could be realized naturally through natural sink enhancement (NSE) such as forest reforestation, or through new technologies which use chemical processes for carbon capture. However, the potential and feasibility of these so-called carbon dioxide removal (CDR) measures depend on many variables, like the availability of infrastructure and resources such as land and energy, to name a few.

Study uncovers widespread and ongoing clearcutting of Swedish old forests

Photo Credit: Ulrika Ervander

Almost one fourth of Sweden’s last unprotected old-growth forest was logged between 2003 and 2019. At this rate, all of these ecologically unique and valuable forests will be lost in about 50 years. These findings add to the growing body of evidence for widespread cryptic forest degradation across the global north.

A small fraction of Sweden’s forests consists of older forests which have never previously been clear-cut. These rare ecosystems have a rich biodiversity and give us a valuable glimpse into the functioning of natural northern landscapes before widespread human interventions.

A new study published in the journal Earth’s Future has uncovered evidence that almost a quarter of the few remaining forests of this type were lost between 2003 and 2019, equivalent to a loss of 1.4% per year. "This land use change is not well documented across all northern countries. Its thanks to a uniquely rich dataset we could investigate this issue for Sweden and get such clear results, says Anders Ahlström, Associate Professor at Lund University, Sweden.

In the study, the research team paired Swedish national forest inventory data on forest age from more than 90 000 forest inventory plots with a government database documenting almost a million individual clear-cuts since 2003.

Old Bone Links Lost American Parrot to Ancient Indigenous Bird Trade

A thick-billed parrot.
Photo Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

For centuries, Indigenous communities in the American Southwest imported colorful parrots from Mexico. But according to a study led by The University of Texas at Austin, some parrots may have been captured locally and not brought from afar.

The research challenges the assumption that all parrot remains found in American Southwest archaeological sites have their origins in Mexico. It also presents an important reminder: The ecology of the past can be very different from what we see today.

“When we deal with natural history, we can constrain ourselves by relying on the present too much,” said the study’s author, John Moretti, a doctoral candidate at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences. “These bones can give us kind of a baseline view of the animal life of the ecosystems that surrounded us before huge fundamental changes that continue today began.”

The study was published in print in the September issue of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology.