The Washington Post
It’s 70 degrees warmer than normal in eastern Antarctica. Scientists are flabbergasted.
The coldest location on the planet has experienced an episode of warm weather this week unlike any ever observed, with temperatures over the eastern Antarctic ice sheet soaring 50 to 90 degrees above normal. The warmth has smashed records and shocked scientists.
“This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system,” said Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, in an email.
“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” tweeted Stefano Di Battista, a researcher who has published studies on Antarctic temperatures. He added that such temperature anomalies would have been considered “impossible” and “unthinkable” before they actually occurred.
AP News
Great Barrier Reef suffers widespread coral bleaching
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is suffering widespread and severe coral bleaching due to high ocean temperatures two years after a mass bleaching event, a government agency said on Friday.
The report by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority, which manages the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, comes three days before a United Nations delegation is due to assess whether the reef’s World Heritage listing should be downgraded due to the ravages of climate change.
“Weather patterns over the next few weeks will be critical in determining the overall extent and severity of coral bleaching across the Marine Park,” the authority said. […]
The reef has suffered significantly from coral bleaching caused by unusually warm ocean temperatures in 2016, 2017 and 2020. The previous bleaching damaged two-thirds of the coral.
BBC News
Climate change: Wildfire smoke linked to Arctic melting
The dense plumes of wildfire smoke seen in recent years are contributing to the warming of the Arctic, say scientists. Their study says that particles of "brown carbon" in the smoke are drifting north and attracting heat to the polar region.
The authors believe the growing number of wildfires helps explain why the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet. They're concerned that this effect will likely increase. […]
To develop a better understanding of the impacts, researchers travelled around the Arctic ocean on the Chinese icebreaker, Xue Long, in 2017. […]
"To our surprise, observational analyses and numerical simulations show that the warming effect of brown carbon aerosols over the Arctic is up to about 30% of that of black carbon," says senior author Pingqing Fu, an atmospheric chemist at Tianjin University in China.
Space.com
Satellites show Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than scientists realized
A new study based on NASA and ESA satellite data shows that Arctic sea ice is thinning at a "frightening rate."
Measuring the ice via satellites each month from 2018 to 2021, polar scientists Sahra Kacimi of the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ron Kwok of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory observed that it thinned 5 feet (1.5 meters) during that period.
"We weren't really expecting to see this decline, for the ice to be this much thinner in just three short years," Kacimi said in a statement released by the American Geophysical Union, which published the new research in one of its journals.
The Conversation
Why flocks of birds swoop and swirl together in the sky — the science of murmurations
A shape-shifting flock of thousands of starlings, called a murmuration, is amazing to see. As many as 750,000 birds join together in flight. The birds spread out and come together. The flock splits apart and fuses together again. […]
The European or common starling, like many birds, forms groups called flocks when foraging for food or migrating. But a murmuration is different. This special kind of flock is named for the sound of a low murmur it makes from thousands of wingbeats and soft flight calls. […]
Scientists think a murmuration is a visual invitation to attract other starlings to join a group night roost. One theory is that spending the night together keeps the starlings warmer as they share their body heat. It might also reduce the chance an individual bird would be eaten overnight by a predator such as an owl or marten.
Gizmodo
Ancient Residue Reveals 69 Volcanic Eruptions Bigger Than Any in Recorded History
Dozens of volcanic eruptions in the last 60,000 years were larger than the massive 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora, the largest in recorded history, according to a team of scientists that recently analyzed sulfuric residues in ancient ice cores.
The ice cores the researchers analyzed came from six different sites—three from the Greenland ice sheet and three from Antarctica. By comparing how greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols were distributed in the cores, the scientists were able to line up the eruptions they came from chronologically. Then, the team estimated the amount of sulfate aerosols the eruptions spewed into Earth’s atmosphere. The team’s findings were published this week in Climate of the Past.
Mongabay
Tropical deforestation emitting far more carbon than previously thought: Study
The rate at which carbon escaped from the deforestation of tropical forests more than doubled in the first two decades of the 21st century, according to new research.
Earlier assessments relied primarily on government statistics on the land, which “painted a much different picture,” Paul Elsen, a climate adaptation scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and a co-author of the paper, said in an interview. That picture was one in which tropical deforestation is still a serious problem, with each razed hectare of quality forest representing the loss of wildlife habitat, ecosystem services and the ability to continue siphoning carbon from the air. But the calculations of the amount of carbon lost from deforestation around the world suggested the emissions from this major source of atmospheric carbon had stabilized or even started dropping.
At the same time, members of the team had previously documented the worrisome expansion of deforestation into mountainous forests in Southeast Asia. Their analyses showed these higher-elevation forests had a “massive carbon stock,” said lead author Yu Feng, a doctoral student at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in China. They found that the annual figures for the amount of carbon emitted when cleared were “unprecedented,” which they reported in a 2021 study published in the journal Nature Sustainability.
Nature
China’s first Moon rocks ignite research bonanza
Until recently, geochronologist Li Xian-Hua’s research focused on molten rocks on Earth. But when a Chinese spacecraft delivered the country’s first rocks from the Moon in December 2020, Li pivoted to study them. “I’m a new person working on extra-terrestrial rocks,” says Li, who is based at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics (IGG) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
Li is one of many planetary scientists in China who have had the chance to study lunar rocks for the first time. The samples, collected by the Chang’e-5 spacecraft, are the first brought back to Earth since NASA’s Apollo and the Soviet Union’s Luna missions more than 40 years ago. They are being examined for insight into the Moon’s evolution.
Those studies are starting to yield exciting results. About half a dozen papers have been published on the Chang’e-5 samples in the past six months. And last week, at the Lunar And Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, a session on China’s lunar missions saw roughly a dozen studies presented.
Popular Science
COVID’s coming back in Europe. Are we next?
Across Europe, COVID cases are rising once again. Much of the western part of the continent, including Germany, France, the UK, and Italy, are experiencing sustained increases in outbreaks over the last two weeks. Switzerland and Austria are both reporting per-capita case rates that exceed those during the Omicron surge in the US. In Scotland, one in every 14 residents had COVID in the last week. So far, however, deaths haven’t increased across the region.
There are signs that the US could be headed in the same direction. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 25 percent of the wastewater surveillance sites it tracks across the country, COVID readings have at least doubled in a week. As the Pandemic Prevention Institute pointed out on Twitter, those counts could just be noisy data—when COVID rates are low, as they are now, doubling isn’t necessarily a significant change.
Scientific American
Even Mild COVID Can Increase the Risk of Heart Problems
Scientists have long been aware that respiratory infections—such as influenza or certain types of coronaviruses—can trigger heart disease. This happens because they cause inflammation, which plays a major role in cardiovascular problems.
Even before the first case of COVID-19 had been confirmed in the U.S., interventional cardiologist Mohammad Madjid began looking into the potential effects of coronaviruses on the cardiovascular system. Madjid, an associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, expected to see a similar increase in heart complications associated with COVID. “I knew that was going to happen because I’d seen this during influenza epidemics,” he says. As far back as 2004, during the avian flu outbreaks in Asia, he urged public health organizations to consider cardiovascular issues in pandemic preparation plans.
Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, it is becoming clear that the cardiovascular impact of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID, is not restricted to people who have had severe COVID. Even those with mild disease appear to be at a higher risk of heart problems one year after infection, according to one of the largest studies to evaluate the long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID. The study was published in February in Nature Medicine.
The Atlantic
America’s Flu-Shot Problem Is Also Its Next COVID-Shot Problem
About 18 years ago, while delivering a talk at a CDC conference, Gregory Poland punked 2,000 of his fellow scientists. Ten minutes into his lecture, a member of the audience, under Poland’s instruction, raced up to the podium with a slip of paper. Poland skimmed the note and looked up, stony-faced. “Colleagues, I am unsure of what to say,” he said. “We have just been notified of a virus that’s been detected in the U.S. that will take somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 lives this year.” The room erupted in a horrified, cinematic gasp. Poland paused, then leaned into the mic. “The name of the virus,” he declared, “is influenza.”
Call it funny, call it mean, but at least call it true. Poland, a physician and vaccinologist at Mayo Clinic, had done little more than recast two facts his colleagues already knew: Flu is highly contagious and highly dangerous, a staggering burden on public health; and for years and years and years, Americans, even those trained in disease control and prevention, have almost entirely ceased to care. Vaccines capable of curbing flu’s annual toll have existed since the 1940s. Close to a century later, some 50 to 60 percent of Americans adults still do not bother with the yearly shot. The crux of the uptake shortfall “is this normalization of death,” Poland told me. He predicts this pattern will play on repeat, and at higher volume, with SARS-CoV-2—another devastating respiratory virus that’s tough to durably thwart with shots.
COVID-19 is not the flu, and no one knows for sure exactly how often we’ll have to immunize ourselves against it. But it seems inevitable that someday, the entire American public will be asked to sign up for shots again—perhaps quite soon, perhaps every fall, as some vaccine makers would like. We have just one template for this: the flu shot. And expecting even similar levels of so-so uptake may be optimistic. “I’m guessing that flu-vaccine coverage is going to be a ceiling,” says Alison Buttenheim, a behavioral scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “I just don’t think we’ll have 70 percent of U.S. adults saying, Oh, an annual COVID shot? Sure.”
Live Science
First image snapped by iconic Webb telescope pushes limits of the 'laws of physics'
The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has released its first sharp image and it is a doozy — a spectacular view of a twinkling orange star that is focused with such sharpness that it pushes the limits of the laws of physics.
The image shows that the telescope's 18 separate mirrors are now accurately aligned and acting as one, and the photo is even better than scientists hoped it would be, NASA officials said in a
statement.
The Webb team released the photograph of the Milky Way star, designated 2MASS J17554042+6551277 and located roughly 2,000 light-years away, Wednesday (March 16). It was taken with a red filter to maximize the visual contrast between the star and the blackness of space, while dozens of other stars and distant galaxies can be seen in the background.
The Guardian
Air pollution linked to higher risk of autoimmune diseases
Long-term exposure to air pollution can increase the risk of autoimmune disease, research has found. […]
Researchers at the University of Verona have found that long-term exposure to high levels of air pollution was associated with an approximately 40% higher risk of rheumatoid arthritis, a 20% higher risk of inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, and a 15% higher risk of connective tissue diseases, such as lupus.
The study, published in the journal RMD Open, took comprehensive medical information about 81,363 men and women on an Italian database monitoring risk of fractures between June 2016 and November 2020. About 12% were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease during this period.
The Washington Post
Pig sounds are associated with emotions, scientists found
Pigs are noisy creatures, from their contented oinks to their terrified squeals. But could those sounds contain clues to their emotions and welfare
An international team of researchers say so. For a study in Scientific Reports, they created an algorithm to analyze thousands of pig sounds — and say it’s a tool that could one day be used by farmers. […]
The scientists used a data set of over 7,000 vocalizations made across the life span of 411 pigs on commercial farms and in a variety of experimental scenarios. They assigned positive or negative emotions to different situations; for example, a fight or imminent slaughter was categorized as “negative” and suckling was categorizes as “positive.”
NPR News
How a fossil with 10 arms and named after Joe Biden changed the vampire squid game
Researchers say they have found the oldest known relative of octopuses and vampire squids, in a fossil dug up decades ago in Montana.
The official name of the newly discovered species is Syllipsimopodi bideni, named after President Joe Biden, in a nod to what the researchers say is his embrace of science.
The well-preserved 328-million-year-old fossil was discovered in Montana's Bear Gulch Limestone in 1988, but it hasn't been closely studied until now.
The specimen's ancient Bear Gulch neighborhood was like a tropical marine bay during its time. It was no stranger to seasonal monsoons, which would be an important factor in the preservation of rare details, including soft tissues and individual suction cups on the arms of the specimen.
The Scientist
Voles Trim Tall Grass to Prevent Attacks
iny rodents native to the plains of Inner Mongolia in China have been spotted trimming tall grasses to prevent predators from perching near their nests. A study published in Current Biology on Friday (March 11) found that the animals, known as Brandt’s voles (Lasiopodomys brandtii), actively shape their environments to make them safer, an example that experts call “ecosystem engineering.”
The voles’ primary predators are shrikes (Lanius spp.), also known as butcherbirds, which are notorious for their gruesome habit of impaling their prey on a thorn or twig to eat later or attract mates. Shrikes use bunchgrass, a tall, bladed grass that usually grows in discrete tufts, as perches when hunting and as sites to store prey for later consumption, the authors write in the paper.
Oregon State University News
Huge forest fires don’t cause living trees to release much carbon, OSU research shows
Research on the ground following two large wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range showed the vast majority of carbon stored in trees before the blazes was still there after the fires.
Published in the journal Forests, the findings are an important step toward understanding the connection between wildfires and climate-change-inducing carbon emissions, according to a scientific collaboration that included Mark Harmon of Oregon State University.
Carbon dioxide, a product of combustion, is a major greenhouse gas and one of the primary causes of climate change.
Knowing how much carbon is released during fires can help inform decisions about the carbon storage and emissions implications of forest management decisions, say the scientists.
Science
Ancient magnetic fields on the Moon could be protecting precious ice
For years, scientists have believed frigid craters at the Moon’s poles hold water ice, which would be both a scientific boon and a potential resource for human missions. Now, researchers have discovered a reason why the ice has persisted on an otherwise bone-dry world: Some polar craters may be protected by ancient magnetic fields.
“It’s really exciting,” says Jim Green, NASA’s former chief scientist, who was not involved with the work. “It makes these areas even more fascinating.”
Hundreds of polar craters are in permanent shadow because of the Moon’s small tilt to the Sun, 1.5° compared with Earth’s 23.4°. The Sun never rises above their rims, keeping temperatures as low as –250°C. In some of the pits, radar instruments on orbiting spacecraft have detected the reflective signature of water ice, perhaps delivered by comet impacts. And in 2018, scientists using an instrument aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft reported measurements showing how molecules of polar ice absorbed infrared light—some of the most definitive evidence yet.
Yale Environment 360
Unnatural Barriers: How the Boom in Fences Is Harming Wildlife
[…] Until recently, the study of fences and their role in conservation biology has been scattershot. Half of the studies were done in just five countries, with many focused on the effects on medium-sized animals. And fences still are not part of the Human Footprint Index, a database of human changes to the earth used by researchers to measure the cumulative impact of human development.
But that is changing. Several years ago, biologists in the Northern Rockies published a paper titled “A fence runs through it: A call for greater attention to the influence of fences on wildlife and ecosystems.” In 2020, a meta-analysis in BioScience looked at all the studies of the effects of fences and found that their profound impacts are often ignored or greatly underestimated.
Recent research shows that these impacts extend far beyond blocking animal migration routes and include furthering disease transmission by concentrating animals, altering the hunting practices of predators, and impeding access to key areas of water and forage. Fences may also prevent “genetic rescue” if an isolated population is decimated by disease or a natural disaster.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Hightails It to Martian Delta
[…] NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is trying to cover more distance in a single month than any rover before it – and it’s doing so using artificial intelligence. On the path ahead are sandpits, craters, and fields of sharp rocks that the rover will have to navigate around on its own. At the end of the 3-mile (5-kilometer) journey, which began March 14, 2022, Perseverance will reach an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater, where a lake existed billions of years ago.
This delta is one of the best locations on Mars for the rover to look for signs of past microscopic life. Using a drill on the end of its robotic arm and a complex sample collection system in its belly, Perseverance is collecting rock cores for return to Earth – the first part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.
“The delta is so important that we’ve actually decided to minimize science activities and focus on driving to get there more quickly,” said Ken Farley of Caltech, Perseverance’s project scientist. “We’ll be taking lots of images of the delta during that drive. The closer we get, the more impressive those images will be.”
Ars Technica
Largest Aztec temple was decorated with over 100 starfish
Aztec priests at Tenochtitlán offered a whole galaxy of starfish to the war god Huitzilopochtli 700 years ago, along with a trove of other objects from the distant edges of the Aztec Empire. Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) recently unearthed the offering on the site of the Templo Mayor, the main temple in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, in what is now Mexico City.
The offering included 164 starfish from a species called Nidorella armata, known less formally as the chocolate chip starfish because it’s mostly the color of cookie dough, but it has dark spots. (It shares the nickname with the other chocolate chip sea star, Protoreaster nodosus, which provides an excellent argument in favor of scientific names.) Nidorella armata lives along the Pacific coastline from Mexico south to Peru, where it hangs out on shallow-water reefs of rock and coral.
For Tenochtitlán, the nearest source of chocolate chip starfish would have been nearly 300 kilometers away from the Aztec capital.